what an odd laptop.

My Dearly Beloved gave me an old Royal typewriter for my birthday in October. Since it was stored at a friend's place here in New Hampshire, I didn't get to take possession of it until we moved. Now I find myself oddly fascinated by this archaic piece of writing machinery.

It seems to be a Royal Model H10, made in 1935.

Anyone know where to get ribbons for it?

out with the old, in with the new.

In the most recent issue of S.W.A.T. magazine, Clint Smith reviews Aimpoint's latest offerings in the combat optics sector. He muses that "in a world of changing technology, one area that has seen quantum leaps forward over the last few decades is visual acquisition systems for weapons."

He's absolutely right, of course. Twenty years ago, electronic sights were new-fangled gizmos with some utility, but the old pros preferred (and preached the use of) iron sights for serious applications.

These days, everyone who's anyone in the business of professional violence has some sort of advanced combat optic on their rifle, and iron sights are mostly relegated to backup or emergency use. It's still important to be able to use iron sight, of course, but the latest generation of optical sights has made the rifleman far more effective. As the saying goes, if you can't see it, you can't hit it, and a rifleman these days has many excellent optics from which to choose, tools that make him or her drastically more efficient by several orders of magnitude. An infantry squad with iron sight-equipped rifle would be at a distinct disadvantage against a squad equipped with ACOGs, ELCANs, Aimpoints, or Leupold CQ/Ts on their rifles.

I thought about the article for a while, and then realized that this technological trend extends to other applications as well. Small, inexpensive electronics are now attainable to the regular guy on the street that make any super-expensive industrial-grade stuff from twenty-five years ago look completely ancient by comparison.

Take civil aviation as another example.



This is the cockpit of a Beech Baron 58 equipped with analog "steam" gauges. You have your avionics on the left side, your engine gauges in the center, and the radio/AP stack to the right. It's fairly easy to keep an eye on things once you're used to the layout. With steam gauges, the Baron feels and flies like a nice light twin.



This is the cockpit of the same plane equipped with the Garmin G1000 "glass cockpit" integrated EFIS. All the information of the steam gauges in the previous cockpit shot is consolidated on two 12-inch flat panel TFT displays, with an integrated communications panel between them. The left panel serves as the PFD (primary flight display), and the right panel serves as a MFD (multi-function display). On the left screen, the pilot can view all the information related to aircraft attitude, speed, heading, and vertical speed, without having to scan multiple steam gauges. On the right screen, the pilot has access to all engine- and fuel-related information, along with a moving map. With the G1000 avionics suite, the Baron feels and flies like a miniaturized airliner.

Aircraft equipped with the G1000 system also retain some steam gauges as backup (and primary) instrumentation in the event of a system failure. The whole thing is designed for redundancy--if one display fails, the other automatically switches to PFD mode, and the system is designed to run off a secondary power source in case the aircraft's alternator and primary battery go "kablooie".

Once you're used to flying with a glass cockpit, it's hard to go back to steam gauges. The difference in situational awareness and functionality is quite substantial. With the G1000 and its competing products, civil light aircraft now have flight information and navigation systems that were reserved to modern airliners just a few years ago, and unavailable at any price just two decades ago.

Of course, in both the shooting and flying communities, there are always the grumpy holdouts that pooh-pooh the newfangled gizmos. There are lots of rifle shooters that use (and preach the use of) iron sights as the only "true rifleman's sight", and there are doubtlessly many pilots that eschew the new glass cockpits in favor of the tried-and-true steam gauges. ("If it was good enough for Lindbergh, it's good enough for me!")

Alas, time and technology march on, and the newfangled technology of today is going to be the mainstream of tomorrow, even in fields that have more than their share of traditionalists.

engineering trivia.

Those Germans engineer some interesting stuff.

The most exotic use for a Wankel engine (itself an exotic German-invented combustion engine) is the seat belt pre-tensioning system in the New Beetle and some Mercedes-Benz models. When the deceleration sensor in the car detects a potential crash, it triggers small explosive charges. The expanding gas from those charges is piped through tiny Wankel engines, which then rotate to take up the slack in the seatbelts.

This is why Germans keep losing wars--they go overboard with the engineering. The German design philosophy seems to be, "Why use three simple parts for the job, if you can use eighteen complicated ones?"

secure in my masculinity.

Our old digital camera, an ancient steam-powered Sony Mavica that was a hand-me-down from Tamara, has finally been retired today. The battery pack is seven years old, and no longer holds a charge. Replacements are available, but they cost half as much as a new low-end digital camera with vastly increased capabilities and far more internal storage (the Mavica uses 1.44MB 3.5" disks.)

So, this morning I loaded up the kids, and headed over to Giant Electronics Conglomerate, Home of the Annoying Service Plan Push. I had a camera in mind, and their website said that they had it in stock. I wanted the Kodak EasyShare C513, which is your basic point-and-drool camera, intended for techno-illiterate soccer moms.

They had one in stock (not on display, of course, 'cause they don't really want you to go for the cheap models when they can fill their display table with the more expensive ones for you to peruse), so I asked the salesdroid to get it out of the restock dungeon and hand it to me.

Turns out they only stock one color of the C513, and it's not the most, uhm, butch color choice. I briefly contemplated getting the more expensive model after all, seeing how that one was more neutrally hued, but in the end I did the fiscally responsible thing.

So, here's our new digital camera, complete with matching protective case:



You know, the more I look at it, the more the color is actually growing on me. At least it's easy to spot on my usually cluttered desk, and most male thieves probably wouldn't touch it.

christmas in august.

The FedEx truck just showed up and dropped off a large box from Dillon. It contains a whole bunch of stuff, including a Square Deal B, an accessory kit, and a copy of the Lyman Reloading Handbook.

(Thanks, Mark! I think I'll follow your advice and read that manual cover to cover before I even slice open the box with the reloading press in it.)

The FedEx guy mistakenly dropped the box off on the neighbor's porch, and the poor thing kind of duck-walked it over to our door. It has a bit of weight to it, you see.

Now all I need is some powder and a big box of lead semi-wadcutters, and I'll finally be recycling all the brass that's been taking up space in the coat closet for the last year or two. I'll report on the experience in detail at a later date.

on word processors, the weather, and guns.

At the risk of sounding like a shill for Alphasmart, I have to once again sing the praises of the little Neo.

I've had this thing for a little over a month now. I've written roughly 20,000 words on it, five or ten or thirty minutes at a time. The battery meter just dropped to 99% a few days ago. At this rate, the three AA batteries in this thing will run out of juice at some point early next year.

There's not a thing I don't like about the Neo. It's very well designed, and it does its one job better than anything else. No boot time--hit the "On" key, and two seconds later, you're ready to type away. No power issues--forget having to lug around a power adapter, or secure a seat next to a power outlet at your local Sip-N-Type. No big-ass laptop bag or thrown-out backs--the Neo weighs two pounds, which is half the weight of the skinniest sub-notebook out there.

Yes, it really is the best thing since sliced bread, and yes, you do need to toss out your laptop and get yourself one of these if you do any kind of heavy-duty writing. It lets you untether yourself from your desk, and you won't believe how many productive five-minute writing sessions you can squeeze into a day if you don't have to first grab your eight-pound laptop, wait for it to boot up, and hope that the battery is topped off.

It's the hottest stretch of the year. Here in the Tennessee river valley, that means heat and humidity so oppressive that it feels like you're walking into an industrial-sized bakery oven every time you leave the house. At this time of the year, I don't mind being stuck in the house with the kids, and any excursion is basically a quick transition from air-conditioned house into air-conditioned van to go to the air-conditioned store. Weeks like this one remind me of a line from that mediocre movie with Matthew Perry and Salma Hayek, where his parents spend time with her parents at some lake in Arizona for Cinco de Mayo...the Mexican part of the family has a great time in the sun, but the Anglos just sit there and sweat, until the white dad shouts at the Mexican dad, "The white people are melting!"

In Germany, residential air conditioning is virtually unknown, and considered a wasteful use of electricity. When I left the place in 1996, they had just started putting AC units into new vehicles as standard equipment, but I didn't walk into my first air-conditioned dwelling until I came over to the United States. We may use far more energy with our central and window AC units, but if its between me sitting in subtropical Tennessee heat sweating out a gallon an hour, and Gaia taking it in the pants, then set the thermostat to 68 degrees, baby. They make more kilowatts at the nuclear power plant every day.

Concealment is tricky in this kind of climate, of course, but I've had very good success with a close-fitting pancake holster under an untucked t-shirt. I never really understood the desire for those little subcompact guns made out of styrofoam--the smaller you make 'em, the harder they are to shoot well. If I can hide a steel K-frame revolver under an untucked t-shirt without even having to use an IWB holster, then why would I get one of those little compromise guns?

That's not to say that pocket guns like the Jetfire and P32 aren't neat. They are, and I've owned my share of both. I used them for backup, though, and not as a primary choice of sidearm. For that job, I want something made of steel, something that'll accommodate all the fingers on my shooting hand. There'll be enough factors spoiling my accuracy in a gunfight; trying to win a life-or-death shootout with a gun the size of a credit card is something I don't want to add to the menu.

got an ipod? got too much money?

A few days ago, I wrote about simplification.

This is not it.



A seventy-odd pound jukebox that serves as a docking station and speakers for a four-ounce iPod? Talk about taking a great concept (the simplification of your music CD collection) and turning it upside down.

But hey, it's a free country. Statistically, there are roughly three iPods for every man, woman, child, and village goat on this planet, so I'm sure there'll be plenty of people out there who can't wait to turn their pocket-sized music player into something the size and weight of a respectable minifridge.