Nuke

in our case, its cat treats. every time somone rustles a chip bag or something like that, the cats think they are getting treats, and get really demanding. we usually feel guilty and get out the cat treats at that point. one time i got a bag of cat nip and the cats were disapointed it wasnt treats, look at us all judgy like, before turning into total nipheads over the course of the next 30 seconds.

my machine is called "trust me, im an orbital mechanic" but it stuck me in the middle of an undeveloped part of the map. orbital mechanic 3 looks like it was perma added. and its still up.

theres another xkcd game up. this time you need to build a rube goldberg ball machine. https://xkcd.com/2916

you also want to keep the cross sectional area of the aircraft down. you could always go back to the og prone configuration implemented by the wright brothers. though i cant imagine that being all that great for acceleration, but when doing climbs and dives maybe. a traditional seat still seems like it gives you the most stable position from which to control the aircraft.

you know kerbin doesn't have any axial tilt and its orbit is circular. part of the reason our calendar is what it is was because it was designed with agriculture in mind. but on a planet without seasons, there is no reason to have a complex calendar. meeks and minths does let you track tidal events (along with time of day for solar tides), which will be the primary use of the calendar. kerbin has enough water, and kerbals float, so there was likely a rich seafarer tradition amongst the ancient kerbals (fishing for skwids, a common snack when deep fried, marketed as skwideos or kraken-rings). tides would also indicate when it is safe for landlubbers and sailors to visit the sea shore, as 3 tidal sources stacking is likely going to cause some flood issues, or reduce navigable waterways for the stacked low tides. something to think about. interesting factoid, ancient kerbal lore states that a skwid once grew so angry with the kerbal's insatiable lust for their primary snakstuff, that it swore an oath to destroy all that kerbalkind has created. some say though some magic and others by consuming a very large number of klankton (small singlecellular organisms abundant in the kerbin oceans), the kraken grew to massive proportions and started hunting kerbal skwiding boats. a brave kerbal by the name of jibidia kerman (jebediah kerman's ancestor) set out in a grand quest to slay the kraken. thus he sailed a skwiding ship full of explodium into the depths of the great kerbin sea. when the kraken swallowed the ship whole, with jibidia at the helm, it is said that the kraken was cast out beyond the mun, perhaps even beyond minmus to lie in wait while it plotted its revenge. at least that's the story on the back of the kraken-rings bag.

i blame hardware store culture. was over at our little hardware store yesterday. mom got a used power wheelchair and it needed a few parts. they are all made in china so everything is metric. i find this ironic because these things are so well regulated by the relevant agiencies that they still use lead acid batteries and brush motors, eschewing lithium ion and brushless motor technology ubiquitous on e-bikes, drones, and children's ride-on toys (i guess its ok for children to die in battery fires but not old people). they also regulate replacement parts, one time my mom had to get a prescription for a motor and new batteries. you even need a cert to do the repair even though its all pretty much off the shelf technology (its really just a paywall for service manuals and proprietary tools). the us government seems to swing either way, military uses metric and nasa seems to alternate, at least on their public facing information. reguardless our hardware store mostly speaks freedom units. so when i went to look for grub screws, there were 7 trays of imperial and only 1 with metric (and frankly i was shocked they had any at all).

its all vector math. i wrote something like this for a custom lead indicator back in my freespace modding days. now its a matter of finding the damn code. leadtarg = function(epos, evel, ppos, wvel) --pretty much the same math as wanderers, but reduced in size local vlen = evel:getMagnitude() local edis = ppos - epos local dlen = edis:getMagnitude() local trig = edis:getDotProduct(evel) local a = (wvel^2) - (vlen^2) local b = trig * 2 local c = -(dlen^2) local d = (b^2) - 4 * a * c if d >= 0 and a ~= 0 then local m1 = ( -b + math.sqrt(d) ) / ( 2 * a) local m2 = ( -b - math.sqrt(d) ) / ( 2 * a) if (m1 >= 0 and m1 <= m2 and m2 >= 0) or (m1 >= 0 and m2 < 0) then return epos + ( evel / (1 / m1) ) elseif m2 >=0 then return epos + ( evel / (1 / m2) ) else return epos end else return epos end end here is the lua function from my mod. should note that this is for a non-newtonian game, but i do seem to recall it working in my newtonian mod attempt (i think the only difference is you need to add your ship velocity to your weapon velocity, but i do believe this was done in the engine when certain command line parameters were set). ymmv. evel and epos are the enemy position and velocity. the thing you want to shoot at. ppos is player position, and wvel is weapon velocity. returns a point in space you need to shoot at. all calculations are done in world space.

in the books they mention riding the worm to exhaustion after which the worm sulks for awhile (becomes lethargic) before departing. hence the 20-thumper trip to the southern regions, you would need to call 20 worms to have the range. if you have range left in your last worm, just circle your destination until it gets tired. none of the movies show it but there is also a goad (pretty much just a drum) used to control a worm's speed to some degree, usually placed near the tail. suspensors are not used for the same reason you don't use shields. of course if the fremen are insane enough to ride a worm they probably have a way to get off at an arbitrary time. i suspect the best way would be to run for the tail and jump off while someone is manning the makerhooks. one fremen can remain on to run the worm down. you may also be able to "beach" the worm on rocks and get off that way. of course the worm would probably thrash its way back to the sand and so long as you fled uphill you could maybe survive. just taking the worm close to a rock formation you limit what it can do when you get off, and thus flea in the direction of the rocks. you used a natural feature to get on you might as well use it to get off.

fun and trip do not belong in the same sentence.

if i could afford to go to the path of totality, i wouldn't.

what is it exactly that bombardier beetles excrete? what would its isp be? beetle powered rockets anyone? makes more sense than fungus drive.

the weather has done like five different things today. so im staying in now.

human hands are actually quite devolved from our ape roots. though still enough to make us able toolsmiths. for exoskeletons, take your typical crab claw, square it up a bit, elongate, and multiply by 5. also a big fan of cephalopod aliens. tenticles are actually quite dexterous but aquadic environment might limit technological progress. and bombardier beetles are a thing. figure when designing a non-humanoid alien is to look at all the tricks life has managed here. imagine the evolutionary pressure that gets them there. then figure out what kind of evolutionary pressures are in the setting. once you throw genetic engineering into the mix all bets are off. but you are probibly going to start with an existing species as a substrate and then adapt changes to it, often from other species of compatible genetic makeup (pretty much from its own biosphere). cross sphere intermixing might be a hallmark of more advanced genetic engineering. being able to create a species from scratch would require god tier genetic engineering.

the reduced view angle was mostly a byproduct of making the pixels directional so either one eye or the other could see them. so you are actively reducing the viewing angles.

there used to be a large number of methods for stereo vision. interleaving vertical scanlines was one of them. this could be used with a prismatic layer to send alternating scanlines to one eye or the other. i think a number of products used technology like this, but its one of the many stereo technologies that never caught on (read all of them). modern vr headsets have mostly solved this problem. though frankly i miss shutter glasses.

peeps are best served on fire.

who summoned me from my cave!

you need to get it at least over to one of the loading cranes. probibly offload and then take the ship to drydock for repair. of course you need to clear the channel first before you can do that.

its a neopanamax. which is bigger (read more expensive).

so, WE MUST CONSTRUCT ADDITIONAL PYLONS. sorry, il leave now.

im not sure what the mass of the ship was, but based on the displacement value from wikipedia, i think i pegged the impact energy at around 41 gigajoules. any idea on how to stop or deflect that?

oh please, they are both playing with money guns right now.

not to say i don't like movies about pirates. i just don't like fantasy pirates.

am i a bad person for not liking any of the pirates movies?

any safety is an illusion anyway. sure we learn where the gotchas are, sometimes there is something that can be done, but usually theres not, and if it is human ingenuity will inevitably find a new way to screw up. all while everyone involved tries to cya while families of the dead cry out for blood and those in power are more than willing to give it to them. its the price of progress, otherwise we risk getting eaten by a bear when we leave our cave.