HPCAthon 2008 (and Shep/Hipper manlove)

[Adrian Laguna]

Stuart has a British accent? Or is that just a trick of the video?

Stuart is British, IIRC. He does work and live in the United States, and has for at least a couple of decades, but he's British.

[MKSheppard]

First day's research done at Wright Patt.

Fun things:

1.) The F-108 had a zoom climb capability of 100kft plus.

2.) The estimated PKill for a trio of FALCON missiles fired was around 0.8 or 0.9 on a subsonic bomber -- this assumed PERFECT missile reliability.

3.) They had separate SACs and CSes for each of the three projected XB-70s ; AV-1, AV-2 and AV-3 due to all the differences. I also got the SACs for the projected B-70A version, CS for the YB-70, and SAC for XB-70B.

Here's one page from one of the B-70A SACs.



Note the optimal combat speed of 1,700~ kts at 80,000+ ft.

4.) The mighty Falcon could manouver at 40+ Gs below 10k feet, but at 70k, it can only manage a mere 4-5 Gs.

5.) Behold the mighty SUPER SCORPION:

[TimothyC]

Before I start - I'd like to mention that

1. Plants don't die when Stuart enters a room
2. The room doesn't get colder when he comes it.

Stuart has an excellent narrator's voice. He could probably get a second job doing voice-overs for documentaries.

The one thing I wished I had was an audio recorder so that I could record everything Stuart said. One thing to keep in mind is that the large amount of information in Stuart's posts here is an accurate representation of the amount of information in what he says. So HPCAthon was in one respect like reading Stuart's posts ALL DAY LONG. It is also a very interesting voice to hear in my head when I read his posts now.

Maybe you should put it in YouTube so it reaches a wider audience?

I don't have Stuart's direct approval for that yet, and I'd want it before I do (he has the grid co-ordinates for where I currently live you see).

It's a pretty cool summary.

He had explained this once through, and then I asked him to repeat it so I could record it.

Stuart has a British accent? Or is that just a trick of the video?

Stuart is from England, but is an American Citizen.

[MKSheppard]

[MKSheppard]

Can we curse Carter like we do McNamara?

[TimothyC]

I didn't take as many pictures as I should have, but here is an overview (all images are links to larger versions):



The Group (Me, Hipper, Shep, Edgeplay CGO; WD Martin, Lord Herrick, Stuart)



For the Senior Chief of HPCA, a B-10





Hipper's back and the YF-12.





Stuart with the Mark 41 Device. I think he was thinking of how to liberate the B-36J behind him.





The map shown in the video.




The map shown in the video with an overlay.




Myself, Stuart, and Edgeplay CGO in the Valkyrie Cafe in front of a really cool painting.





The frosted glass partitions in the cafe.

[Stuart]

Stuart is British, IIRC. He does work and live in the United States, and has for at least a couple of decades, but he's British.

I'm actually an American and have been for quite a long time. I was born in the UK though and later emigrated. So, I'm an American by choice rather than by birth. The voice thing is a trick more or less. I've done a lot of presentations and conference papers and the art is not one's voice itself but how one uses it. It's a matter of pitch and inflexion rather than accents or volume.

By the way - many apologies but I flipped Ten and Twelve Groups in the bit about the BoB. That's the trouble with talking off the cuff like that. Stupid mistake to make.

You know, there would be a good market for brief presentations like this, taking a commonly-held belief and combining it with visual aids. Something we could look at. For example, rather than trying toe xplain to the creation-nuts why a particualr isea is false, demonstrate it with a film and some video-aids.

[Shroom Man 777]

Wow... Stuart is certainly a jolly-looking fellow for a man entangled in the military-industrial complex!

Sort of like Herman Kahn, who was also jolly-looking while espousing that contaminated food should be fed to the old and infirm in the advent of the nuclear holocaust

The XB-70 is HUEG! That long... cylindrical fuselage! Made of rigid steel to withstand supersonic speeds, piercing through the stratosphere at impossible velocities! Penetrating the enemy airspace again and again... and again!

[Darth Wong]

You know, there would be a good market for brief presentations like this, taking a commonly-held belief and combining it with visual aids. Something we could look at. For example, rather than trying to explain to the creation-nuts why a particular idea is false, demonstrate it with a film and some video-aids.

People are generally more amenable to a message which is presented in a visual manner, particularly in the form of a movie or dramatic story. But it wouldn't convince creationists, because the instant they detect that something might have even the most vague anti-religious undertones, they refuse to watch a second of it.

Witness what happened to "The Golden Compass", which required a LOT of creative interpretation to be considered anti-religious (it depicts souls as distinct from physical bodies, for fuck's sake), but which was boycotted by religious groups across America because they knew its author was atheist and it was rumoured (mostly by people who hadn't even seen it) that the film was "pushing that viewpoint".

[CaptainChewbacca]

I didn't see Golden Compass because I'd never heard of it and it looked like crap. I did get emails telling me to boycott it, though in my case it was just like someone had asked me to boycott a nail salon.

[Pelranius]

I didn't see the Golden Compass because I had read all three of the books and hated HDM utterly (it bored me horribly) so I was determined not to give Mr. Pullman any more of my time or money.

[MKSheppard]

Day two completed.

About 400+ pages in.

Tomorrow : Finish SNARK -- begin work on the other stuff, like GRB-36

[MKSheppard]

Snark Assembly. At this point in today's scans, my scanner was being affected by SOMETHING, so a lot of my scans came out a bit weird; but nothing that can't be corrected in PSP.

[MKSheppard]

Boyd's Folly.

[Mayabird]

While I may have been wrong about Stuart's appearance, that's exactly how I imagined that he'd sound. Not that I have any evidence to back that up, but it's true.

Also, the hastily scratched out "Confidential" and "Secret" lines there made me chuckle.

[MKSheppard]

(Note: bottom is sliiightly cropped out -- missing nothing though -- stupid oversized SACs, stupid small scanner)

[MKSheppard]