test please delete

[NickFitz]

Gone grey out here now

I should probably be working on this maps stuff, but I've allowed myself to become distracted reading Don Eyles' Sunburst and Luminary. Now on to the software changes they made to help Apollo 12 make a precision landing near Surveyor 3

[DoctorStrangelove]

My grandmother died for that. Painless quick way to go.

Quite.

Tea/dinner this evening was chili con carne with rice which was nice enough.

Followed by stewed blackberrier (added sugar) with custard.

Which was very nice.

The televisual feast began with The World At War about the Allied bombing campaign from 1939 to 1944:

Whirlwind: Bombing Germany - September 1939-April 1944

Next is the Abandoned Engineering: Fordlandia: or how not to build a rubber production facility in Brazil.

War Factories is at 20:00.

[ladymuck]

Busy day at work, waiting to get home to play with my new laptop. It arrived at 9am and the caretaker put it in my flat just in case someone walked off with it. Dell don't exactly ship in plain packaging!

Wow, I know I picked the 4k screen option but you really realise how lousy 6 year old screen technology compares when the new stuff is in front of you! Currently having fun installing everything. Fortunately, I have an install share on my NAS that has all the essentials to hand.

In the background I have the first of a six part BBC4 documentary series called Revolutions: The Ideas that Changed the World. Presented by good old Jim Al-Khalili. The first one is about planes, by which they mean aircraft not woodworking equipment.

I burnt dinner as I was too busy setting up the laptop. Whoops. Multitasking goes out the window when shiny toys are about.

[ladymuck]

My grandmother died for that. Painless quick way to go.

1st April 2001 she received a census form for 30th April 2001. She filled it in and sent it back immediately as she knew she would live forever.

Of course, she died 13th April. Who says God does not have a sense of humour?

My granddad died of that too. Local GP diagnosed his abdominal pain as a muscle strain. Next day he was dead.

[ladymuck]

Olives, blueberries and raspberries for lunch.

That does not sound like a nice combo

[DoctorStrangelove]

"World War Weird" starts at 20:00 which should be good for a larf.

Never mind, using chickens to keep your nuke warm makes up for it all.

Blue Peacock - Wikipedia

[DoctorStrangelove]

In the background I have the first of a six part BBC4 documentary series called Revolutions: The Ideas that Changed the World. Presented by good old Jim Al-Khalili. The first one is about planes, by which they mean aircraft not woodworking equipment.

The rockets one was on yesterday.

Aside from his inability to pronounce von Braun correctly, it was quite interesting.

Now watching Zachary Quinto talking about sinkholes.

It's on "Blaze" so the level of weirdness is considerable.

Dunno what the feck the god botherer is on there for.

And now, on Quest Red, the classic "My Baby has Two Heads".

Delightful.

[NickFitz]

For tea tonight, chicken in red wine sauce with potato wedges and peas; and jolly tasty too

[WTFH]

Just been watching that BBC show about baby animals, I grabbed my iPad towards the end of it and was very silent. After it was over I said “no, not there”, to which my wife replied “you’ve just checked all our photos of elephant in Samburu to see if you have one of that single-tusk matriarch”

She knows me too well.

[NickFitz]

Four more episodes of From the Earth to the Moon watched, covering: Apollo 13; Alan Shepard's progress from being the USA's first astronaut, to being grounded with Ménière's disease, to being successfully treated for that by innovative surgery, to becoming Mission Commander of Apollo 14; the intensive training as geologists of the astronauts of Apollo 15 onwards; and the Apollo wives and their many travails.

Don Eyles was portrayed in connection with Apollo 14, as he devised a quick fix (like, in forty minutes or so while they went around the Moon, including testing in the various simulators) for a problem where a loose bit of solder or some such was activating the Abort button in the LM. His cunning plan was to directly poke a value into a flag register that would make the control software think it was already in abort mode, so it wouldn't try to re-enter that mode by aborting, while then carrying on in lunar descent mode, though the astronauts then had to do some stuff manually. All in all, it involved entering 61 words into the LM's AGC and saved the mission, for which he won several awards, though when a trip to meet President Nixon in the White House was offered, he politely indicated that he'd rather not

Anyway, he mentions in his book that the depiction of him in the show is quite wrong as it shows him being woken up on a couch in an office to help deal with the problem, when he'd never be asleep as a landing was happening; there's a labrador with him as he's sleeping, and he didn't own a dog, never mind take one to work; and he asks for coffee, which he hated, only drinking Coke

Goodnight all