Showing posts with label Fun. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Fun. Show all posts

Thursday, 13 January 2022

Also known as The Egyptian Diamond

Quoted in part in Randall Garrett's SF short story "The Foreign Hand Tie" 1961 writing under the pseudonym David Gordon and until recently, erroneously attributed to him.

It was originally published  in the children's magazine "St. Nicholas" No 19 part 2 in May 1892.

Thursday, 8 December 2016

Four weeks de-stressing

Some people knit. Some meditate. Some gafiate. Some crochet.

I take 3D printed nylon models of WWI aircraft in 1/144 scale, white and somewhat rough textured blanks, and transform them into fairly accurate representations of the originals. I say "fairly accurate" because some compromises have to be made regarding thickness of struts and so on to allow these to be printed. 0.1mm instead of 0.05mm etc.

Similarly, the paint schemes are often informed guesswork. We have, if we're lucky, one or perhaps two photos in black and white of the originals, taken from one or two angles. We also have descriptions in letters and diaries of those that flew them, perhaps some swatches of the fabric, formal specifications from military authorities of colours and patterns to be used  - often these were ignored - and in general much ambiguous and contradictory data. We know the dope they were covered with discoloured over time too, the same aircraft in June 1915 could look quite different in November, even it it hadn't been repainted or reconstructed after a heavy landing. As almost all were, at least once.

There are many published profiles, colour paintings and drawings, of many of these aircraft. All guesses based upon different subsets of data, some more accurate than others.

Anyway, here is the result of 4 weeks destressing. Surface preparation, sanding, smoothing, undercoating, then putting on layer after layer of colour, designing and printing decals, then coating with a protective finish.


Monday, 5 September 2016

In a Universe next door...

Things to come.
Handley Page H.50 Heyfords escorted by Westland Pterodactyl Vs, somewhere over the North Sea.

Painting by Daniel Bechennec, Fana d'Avation magazine cover, April 2010

Wednesday, 30 December 2015

A new Camel for Snoopy

Because I gave the other one away to someone whose need was greater than mine. This one's lighter, and made of stiff card reinforced with matchsticks and an internal PVA coat.

His opponent is not the Red Baron Manfred Von Richthofen, (despite the colouring) but Austrian ace Godwin von Brumowski.

Saturday, 12 December 2015

Curse you, Red Baron!

There are times I realise I'm being entirely too serious.

Wednesday, 12 February 2014

Puff the Magic Dragon

This song always bothered me. This lovely song seemed just plain wrong, and far, far too sad. I always instinctively felt there was something missing.
And apparently, there was.
The original poem had a verse that did not make it into the song. In it, Puff found another child and played with him after returning. Neither Yarrow nor Lipton remember the verse in any detail, and the paper that was left in Yarrow's typewriter in 1958 has since been lost.
http://www.songfacts.com/detail.php?id=1276
Before I found this out, here's the verse I composed myself, a long time ago, as a child.
My song is nearly finished.
All good things have their ends.
But there are new beginnings,
And dragons find new friends.
Puff's new friend's Suzy Alice,
They laugh and have great fun.
For Suzy's great-grandfather
Was Jackie Paper's son.
Consider it released under the Creative Commons license for anyone else who wants to sing a more complete version.

A slightly variant form of this appeared in the comments at http://aebrain.blogspot.com.au/2009/12/some-girls-have-thing-for-horses.html

As far as I'm aware, the lyrics of the original verses, though not this one are (C) Leonard Lipton and Peter Yarrow and no challenge to the current copyright owners is intended.

Monday, 2 December 2013

Little Did I Know...

Courtesy of the Wayback Machine, at http://web.archive.org/web/20010719173326/http://www2.dynamite.com.au/aebrain/alan.htm 

 Birthplace and All That

 To quote Hoffnung, "I was born, through no fault of my own, at a very early age.". Or in my case, in 1958 in Earley, a small suburb of Reading, Berkshire, England. Or at least it was a suburb. Now its been swallowed up in Reading proper. Last time I was there (1986), the fields I used to watch the Foxhunters go through are now a high-density housing development ("Lower Earley", and you can't get much lower, I'm telling you...), and the stream I used to fish in is a concrete storm water drain.. Sic Transit Gloria Mundi, and the song "Tar and Cement" comes to mind.

When I was 10 and at boarding school (a place called Bigshotte, which appears to have vanished with the snows of yesteryear), I got an unscheduled visit from my parents. Who informed me that in 2 weeks time we were emigrating to Australia. You can take the boy out of England, but you can't take England out of the boy, and it wasn't until 1988 that I finally decided to take out Australian Citizenship. I still retain dual nationality, though the England I came from no longer exists, but has been transformed into a diverse multi-ethnic European state. Overall, a great improvement, but not a place I can identify with very much.

Good Things, Bad Things

After attending Sydney Grammar School for 6 years, I entered Sydney University in 1976. My father was unemployed, my mother hospitalised. Not a good time. Things picked up, but then I had a number of life-threatening medical problems. Picked up a little brain damage from Encephalo-Meningitis (yes, I know, it shows...). Spent half my lectures zonked out from Painkillers. Operations etc. Nuff Said. For much of the time, I resided in International House (and this is a link well worth following up, the whole concept is a great idea).

Then I met Carmel for the second time, in 1980. Love at first sight. (The first time was when I was at Sydney Grammar, which is next to the Australian Museum. The one girl that I ever noticed as a schoolboy was a schoolgirl who I saw exactly once in the geological section. We both only realised we'd met there only a few years ago, as she remembered someone who looked exactly like me at the same time and place.) Anyway, within 2 months of first meeting, we were engaged. Hey, she had her own copy of Panzerblitz! And a Model Railway! I figure I've blown about 10,000 years of Good Karma by meeting her, but it's been worth it and more.  

A bit about my Brilliant Career*
* Career - To go downhill fast, without control

I graduated from Sydney University in 1981, with a BSc in Computer Science and Pure Mathematics. Since then, I've been CompSci-ing in various industries and businesses, but for the most part, doing what is euphemistically known as "defence work.". Some of the software I wrote early in my professional life performed according to specification in the Gulf War, on HMAS Brisbane.

 I can remember joking that it would work with any Air Defence Doctrine, except possibly Saudi Arabia's, but what were the odds of that happening?

 I've worked on software for a number of vessels in various Allied Navies. From analysis work on the 76mm gun system on the German Navy's new F-124, being Chief Designer for an Artificial Intelligence based Anti-Missile system for the Turkish Navy, to programming and design work on "very expensive machines that go PING" for submarines of the Israeli Defence Force, Hellenic Navy, Armada de Chile, Royal Swedish Navy, Italian Navy, and various others.

I've spent a ridiculous amount of my life peering into PPIs and Waterfall, DEMON and FRAZ displays, but also sunned myself on the Fantail of a Destroyer in the middle of the Pacific, relaxed watching a magnificent sunset in the Gulf of Thailand, and shared my personal space with half a tonne of high explosive sleeping on top of a Mk 48 Mod 3 torpedo.

In the course of my work, I've personally chiselled a hole through the Berlin Wall, inhaled Pad Thai (Thai Noodles) on the banks of the Chao Praya river in Bangkok, domiciled on the fabulously expensive Bahnhofstrasse in Zurich, gotten nervous when the Air Raid sirens wailed in Seoul, Korea, and consumed with gusto Alaskan King Crab in Akron, Ohio. It's been fun so far. (note from 2013: Now, talk about tempting Fate....this is what I wrote at the end.) Can't wait to see what happens next. 

Last updated 09 February 1999

What happened next of course is described at http://aebrain.blogspot.com.au/2006/05/annus-mirabilis.html ....

A miracle.

Tuesday, 26 November 2013

Tuesday, 14 May 2013

The definitive version - Space Oddity

Cmdr. Chris Hadfield's last task as commander of the International Station before leaving for Earth - make this video.

He landed only a few hours ago.




Wednesday, 27 March 2013

Search inside the decimal representation of Pi

The Pi-Search page

My home phone number did not occur in the first 200,000,000 digits of pi after position 0.

Sunday, 10 March 2013

An Original

From "At last it's the 1948 show", progenitor to Monty Python.

Thursday, 21 February 2013

SpraySpace

We live in a wondrous world, where such talent can be shared planetwide.

Wednesday, 23 May 2012

Existence

Existence
 Text : David Brin
Art : Electric Sheep
Content : 100% Win

Friday, 19 August 2011

Air Sharks - and Clownfish too



Available via Hobby-On.com - when they're back in stock, and their servers are getting hammered pretty hard too. The manufacturers, x-zylo, have a fascinating range of other aerial toys too.



When I was young, I would definitely have preferred a Shark rather than a Fairy. Not exactly terribly feminine, I know. I had an inflatable shark bought in Italy when I was 6. Named "Cutty", as in "Cutty Shark".

I used to cuddle Cutty in bed, along with Neberick Moledewarp, my plush aerodynamic mole. OK, I'm weird. But my readers already know that.

Thursday, 11 August 2011

An Alternate Universe

From the MightyGodKing blog, a what-if. Scenes From An Alternate Universe Where The Beatles Accepted Lorne Michaels’ Generous Offer
April 24, 1976. Lorne Michaels offers the Beatles $3,000 to appear on Saturday Night Live, as a gag mocking the full-page ads taken out in the New York Times offering the Beatles millions of dollars to reunite and play in Shea Stadium. Unbeknownst to Michaels, both John Lennon and Paul McCartney are in New York City at the time, and see the sketch airing live. They consider actually going to the studio, but decide they are too tired.
That much is history. Now go to the MightyGodKing site and read on to find out what happened next in a Universe next door...