Families of references for the model builder

I’ve started working on my index of Air International again, but on reflection it occurs to me that a simple list of all the potential reference sources and how to start reeling them in on the internet would be of value, so here’s a beginning,  and yes, I’ll list more of Volume 18 of Air Internatonal!

Which Dewey Decimal and/or Library of Congress filing sections this stuff goes in is a separate matter, and there’s also on-line stuff but here’s a start on books, maybe magazines after this: I’ll put in examples after I get the listings going.

ARCO- ARCO did several different series:

ArcoAircam small, paper-bound volumes of color and black-and-white profiles by artists like Richard Ward

- larger, soft and hard-bound books on a single subject, mostly pix and text – Boeing 707, Lockheed Constellation, P-51, B-58, etc.

Aero series A numbered series of soft-bound books on particular subjects

Colors and Markings – Squadron or Kinzey started this series, they’re a bit too exhaustive for me

Aerofax -A magazine that morphed into paperback books and now covers a wide range. Very scholarly, dry, text, lots of official technical manual drawings and photos.

Aero Detail – Japanese productions with photographs of museum examples, contemporary technical drawings, color profies. Some English text, some in Japanese, photo captions are in both. Scott Hards of Hobby Link Japan serves as translator for this range and does a good job.

Aircraft in Profile, Armor in Profile, AFV in Profile, Classic Cars in Profile, Cars in Profile, Warships in Profile, Locomotives in Profile, Handguns in Profile. – the melting pot of British amateur enthusiasts. Texts can be quite good to pretty poor- I don’t really believe that the P-51 (aka A-36) made no progress in the USA until a bribe was paid by North American to someone, but the photos and color art are always fun. The sun WAS setting on the British Empire while these were being written and the result is a lot more pre-1939 British content than any objective analysis would warrant, but what of that? So there are more between-wars RAF bi-planes than total USSR subjects… even with 260 titles published this was a work of love and devotion, not really a scholarly enterprise. Its all from the heart, and they DO have some airliners and the odd civil subject.

The automotive series are even more oddly focused, or un-focused, but there are some interesting topics, even if the mix is strange. The Ferrari 330 P3/P4 and Porsche 917 are well served, in the more modern series, and a lot of the “Classic” cars at Pebble Beach and so forth can be found.

The Armor series seems to have been aimed at classic WWII subjects, the AFV series was a re-take with something improved, but I’m not clear what. Photos tend to be the official record photo from the proving grounds, the text is too short for all of a general overview, operational history and placing the design and use in context. I never found the text particularly usable, or the range of markings in art and photo worth keeping for reference.

In Detail & Scale – Bert Kinzey’s very impressive if slightly stiff series of books on US subjects (Note ampersand in title). The model kit reviews are sometimes singularly humorless, but the quality of the photographs Mr. Kinzey and his authors turn up is VERY good.

Naval Fighters – Steve Ginter’s slightly less formal take on US Navy subjects, with more photos but messier layouts, plenty of manual pages reproduced, lots of informal photos.

Air Force Legends – Ginter Books stretched out to cover USAF subjects, particularly the unusual and underserverd B-51s and F 103s, etc.

Aeroguide

Aeroguide Classics

Aerofax Extra

Aerofax Minigraph

Air Age Publishing

Aircraft Monograph

Smithsonian

Airliner Tech

Warbird Tech

Air Racer Tech

A J Press

Apogee Books

Windsock International

Aircraft Archive

Ballentine History Of A Violent Century – WWI and WWII battles, armies, weapons, commanders. Very high contrast photo reproduction mixed in the text, generally good text, no color. Trade-paper size, inexpensive, mass-market books from specialist authors.

Berliner, Don

Gunston, Bill

Braybrook, Roy,

Chant, Chris

Ellis, Chris,

Zaloniga, Steve

Green, William, Swanborough, Gordon

Presidio Press

Blandford

Harleyford

Crowood Press

Squadron/Signal In Action

Camouflage and Markings – Dulcimus Press

Kookaburra

Famous Aircraft Of The World (FAOW)

Osprey

Salamander/Crescent/Chartwell

Concord Publications

Schiffer Books

Doubleday Books

Hanover House

Koku-Fan

Maru Mechanic

Macmillian Publishing

Monogram Books

Motorbooks

Munson, Kennith

Ward, Richard

Wanatabe, Ruyuku

Naval Institute Press

Cross and Cockade

SAM Publications

Prentice-Hall

Tanks In Detail

Tankograd

Ventura

Verlinden

• AirFoil – Book

More later!

Monogram’s old Mosquito nose transparencies..

My straight-out-of-the-box Monogram Mosquito is getting closer to being done. I lightly brushed Future floor wax over the clear nose and the two windows into the bomb-aimer’s compartment, sanded the fuselage mating surfaces flat and straight, sanded the clear part edges (only edges) so the glue would have something to work on, and glued them together with Testor’s blue label Non Toxic liquid glue.

On the nose windows, I stretched a modest strip of tape across the width of the window (up and down, not fore and aft) on the OUTSIDE, leaving all 4 corners exposed. Then I pressed the little window in place against the tape, and when I felt it was all seated correctly, I wicked glue between the parts from the two front corners.

Naturally the first of the little windows fit perfectly, so I wasn’t as much on my guard and the other one didn’t and I didn’t catch it, at first. I used a paint brush handle, parts clipper cushoned handle, etc, to push the slightly sunken widow out into its frame. Each day I’d wick in a little of the liquid glue to melt it slightlty free, then push. I told you! After two days, it was acceptable and I stopped.

The best and worst plastic kits IMHO.

Which are the best and worst plastic model kits?

So many qualify, but the criteria I might use are worth discussing, even if nobody ought to care what my personal picks are.

What IS a plastic model  kit? A set of parts, injection molded, on runners or “trees”, vacuum formed on a sheet of plastic, cast in resin and attached to  “pour blocks”,  laid-up with resin  and fiberglass cloth backing, perhaps including some cast metal, photo-etched sheet copper,  brass or stainless steel, possibly vinyl or rubber, metal or plastic tubing, rod and sheet, lead or other soft metal foil, soft wire, music wire. Most kits contain waterslide decals, though dry transfers or preformed stencils are also seen.

A good kit can be assembled without having to be re-designed, re-engineered or re-built, by the builder.

So the shapes have to be correct, within the limits of the materials and techniques.

All the parts have to be supplied- what can be seen looking at the model from outside, but including what can be seen inside windows, doors, vents, hatches, etc.

The pieces supplied have to assemble correctly, without having to be modified or re-thought-out

It should suggest an accurate representation of a specific object- real, imaginary, even speculative, but always specific.

It should be consistant with itself- textures, features, thicknesses, transparent parts, blank holes or paint/decal for windows, etc., should all be similar across the whole of the model.

More as I get time to add it.

A fo’ real Ah Ha! Moment!! learning Java

Ah ha!!!!

Couldn’t get .replace(), .replaceAll() or .split() to work:

String s = new String(“electric foo bar);

s.replace( ‘e’, ‘E’ ); // char, replace every one, WOULDN’T compile

s.replaceAll( “e”, “E” ); // String – this WOULD compile, did nothing
s.replaceAll( “e”, ” -Eek!- ” ); // ditto
s.replaceAll( ” -Eek!- “, “e” ); // ditto

what was needed was:

s = s.replace( ‘e’, ‘E’ ); // MUST Assign the return string.

The compiler probably took returnAll() because it returns a reference to an array of array references… ok, sure, implict cast to VOID. Next.

Consistancy? We ain’t got no stinkin’ consistancy!

How very human this Java stuff is…

Planning to finish The Wisdom of Bones.

We are going to finish Alan Walker and and Pat Shipmans “The Wisdom of Bones”, a truely wonderful book about Homo Erectus and its place as the “missing link” between ourselves and more apelike ancestors. Walker, with Kamoya Kimou and Richard Leakey, excavated and re-assembled the best H. erectus remains found to date, the “Narioktome Boy” #15000, aka 15K, an adolescent about 1.5 million (!) years old.

With this high quality source material, Walker goes through what can be surmised and concluded, bringing in experts from a variety of fields. Its real science, these are the stories underneath the peer-reviewed papers published since the discovery in the 1980s. Walker builds up to a somewhat startling conclusion, Homo erectus, most likely our direct ancestor, wasn’t fully linguate, leaving no concrete evidence of symbolic thought, and lacking a spinal cord sized for fine control of breath and vocal cords.

Rather than the near human in an ape’s body that is often presumed, Walker concludes that H. erectus ws a near-ape in a human’s body. As big or bigger than ourselves, as strong or stronger, wonderfully adapted to standing and running, a very successful tool maker and hunter. An adolescent with a toddler’s brain.

Makes sense, and Pat Shipman is a glorious writer and anatomist in her own right. They are married. The words are hers, the voice is his. So good books, bad cartoons and not a lot else are our story, while we’re all having and recovering from the flu.

Is 98.6 degree F more precise than it ought to be?

I heard somewhere that the “98.6 degrees F” “normal” human body temperature number isn’t really correct, its a conversion artifact from a European study, in C, not F. Lessee, (98.6 – 32) * 5/9 = 66.6 * 5/9 = 333/9=37.0.

Plausable, not proved.  Further investigation supports skepticism. The 37 (no ‘.’, much less “.0″) is far from categoric. There are real numhers, with variation ranges. 98.6 fits in some of them, but if you don’t measure 98.6 you’re not abnormal.

The British survey team that realized Mt. Everest was the tallest in the world got 29,000′ exactly. They figured nobody would believe it, so they published an official value of 29,002.

See the Wikipedia page on Everest (Chomolungma): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mount_Everest

Walk around Lake Chabot

Looks great, and the access point is clearly indicated. I’ve gotta do this one of these daysPreview

http://www.mapmywalk.com/walk/united-states/ca/oakland/460067151

Before that, however, I have to get our taxes done!

When I started Java instruction

Here’s a program I wrote years ago to calculate payroll taxes by binary search rather than Gausian elimination or something else sophisticated and mathematical. The binary search works, and is simple for me to read and understand to make sure it works. Inefficient at runtime, but quick to develop. A real trade off in the real world.  It even has a comment history!

I wrote it in C, using the C++ compiler, and then ported it to Java, some years ago.

Code for Calc.Java:

// #include <iostream.h>
// #include <stdlib.h>

import java.io.*;

/** calc.java
@Apr 13, 2009  wabbott SDI 0.8, UI 1.5%
@Mar 22, 2006  wabbott Port to Java
@Jun 22, 2001  wabbott Take FUTA out of deductions, UI % to 2.6, adjust SDI to 0.9%
@Feb 13, 1998  wabbott Created
*/

public class calc {

public static double asCash( int someValue ) {
return( (double) (someValue/100.00) );
}

public static void main (String argv[] ) {

double dFedW = 0.15;       // Federal withholding 15%
double dStateW = 0.06;     // State (CA) withholding 6%
double dSDIW = 0.009;      // State Disability withholding 0.9%
double dSSIW = 0.062;      // Social Security withholding 6.2%
double dMedW = 0.0145;     // Medicare withholding 1.45%

double dUIW = 0.015;       // Unemployment Insurance, paid by us, 1.5%
double dETTW = 0.001;      // Education tax, paid by us, 0.1%
double dFutaW = 0.008;     // FUTA, whatever that is, paid by us, .8%

int i_DAILY_EXCLUDE = 1020;
int i_WEEKLY_EXCLUDE = i_DAILY_EXCLUDE * 5;
int i_BI_WEEKLY_EXCLUDE= i_WEEKLY_EXCLUDE * 2;
int i_MONTHLY_EXCLUDE = i_DAILY_EXCLUDE * 22;
int i_BI_MONTHLY_EXCLUDE = i_MONTHLY_EXCLUDE * 2;

int iCalcFuta = 0;
int iCalcOurSSIContrib, uIC, eTTC;

int iCalcGross = 0;    // init
int iCalcTakeHomeToTry = 0;    // ditto
int iCalcSSI= 0;
int iCalcFedIncTax = 0;
int iCalcStateIncTax = 0;
int iCalcSDI = 0;
int iCalcMedicare = 0;
int iUserTakeHome = 0;
int iFedExclude= i_BI_WEEKLY_EXCLUDE;
int iAllDeductions =0;

double dBinaryStepToTry = 0.0;    // Set real value when we have input argument

System.out.println (” argv.length ” + argv.length );

if ( argv.length < 1 ) {    // No args, Say what to do.
System.out.println( “calc Take home pay, b/d/w, [ni] “);
return;
} else {                    // There are args,the first should be dollar value.
iUserTakeHome = Integer.parseInt( argv[0] ) * 100;
}

/* Nice idea but this has to look at [ 0 ] only if [ 0 ] won’t parse as a number…
* initialize to some magic value and then check for it as a parse failure? Later….
*            case ‘?’:
*                      case ‘h’:
*                      case ‘H’:
*                         System.out.println( “calc Take home pay, b/d/w, [ni] “);
*/

System.out.print( “Calculate salary for take home pay of ” + asCash(iUserTakeHome) + ” “);

if ( argv.length > 1 ) {
switch (argv[1].charAt(0)){
case ‘b’:
switch (argv[1].charAt(2)){
case ‘w’: iFedExclude= i_BI_WEEKLY_EXCLUDE;
System.out.println( “\tbiweekly”);
break;
case ‘m’: iFedExclude= i_BI_MONTHLY_EXCLUDE;
System.out.println( “\tbimonthly”);
break;
default: iFedExclude= i_BI_WEEKLY_EXCLUDE;
System.out.println( “\t DEFAULT biweekly”);
break;
} // end switch
break;
case ‘d’: iFedExclude= i_DAILY_EXCLUDE;
System.out.println( “\tdaily” );
break;
case ‘m’: iFedExclude= i_MONTHLY_EXCLUDE;
System.out.println( “\tmonthly” );
break;
case ‘q’: iFedExclude= i_MONTHLY_EXCLUDE;
System.out.println( “\tquarterly not implemented” );
break;
case ‘w’: iFedExclude= i_WEEKLY_EXCLUDE;
System.out.println( “\tweekly” );
break;

default: iFedExclude= i_BI_WEEKLY_EXCLUDE;
System.out.println( “\t DEFAULT biweekly”);
break;
} // end switch
} else {
System.out.println( “\tbiweekly” );
}

if ( argv.length > 2 ) { /* count fixed */
if ((( argv[2].charAt(0) == ‘n’ ) | (argv[2].charAt(0) == ‘N’ ))
& (( argv[2].charAt(1) == ‘i’ ) | (argv[2].charAt(1) == ‘I’ ))) {
dFedW = 0.0;
dStateW = 0.0;
iFedExclude= 0; // probably overkill
}
}

dBinaryStepToTry = 2 * iUserTakeHome;
while ( iCalcTakeHomeToTry != iUserTakeHome ) { // since they’re ints…

//while (( dBinaryStepToTry > 0.0005 )) {

iCalcGross = (int) ( ((double) iCalcGross) + dBinaryStepToTry );  // add it in
//System.out.println(  “dBinaryStepToTry = ” + dBinaryStepToTry
//    +”  iCalcGross = ” + iCalcGross );

iCalcFedIncTax = (int) (dFedW * (iCalcGross – iFedExclude));
if ( iCalcFedIncTax < 0 ) { iCalcFedIncTax = 0; }

iCalcStateIncTax = (int) (dStateW * iCalcGross);
iCalcSDI =  (int) (dSDIW * iCalcGross);
iCalcSSI =  (int) (dSSIW * iCalcGross);
iCalcMedicare =  (int) (dMedW * iCalcGross);

iCalcTakeHomeToTry = iCalcGross;        // then take deductions
iAllDeductions = iCalcFedIncTax + iCalcStateIncTax + iCalcSDI + iCalcSSI + iCalcMedicare;
iCalcTakeHomeToTry = iCalcGross – iAllDeductions;
//System.out.println(  “iCalcTakeHomeToTry = iCalcGross – iAllDeductions ” + iCalcTakeHomeToTry + ” “+  iCalcGross +” “+ iAllDeductions );

if (iCalcTakeHomeToTry > iUserTakeHome ) {    // too big
iCalcGross = (int) ( ((double) iCalcGross) – dBinaryStepToTry );  // take if back out
}
if (iCalcTakeHomeToTry < iUserTakeHome ) {    // too small
iCalcGross = ( iCalcGross + (iUserTakeHome – iCalcTakeHomeToTry ) );  // add difference back in
}

dBinaryStepToTry /= 2;                // divide by two
}

//     System.out.println(  “Success!” );
System.out.println(  “Gross $” + asCash(iCalcGross) + ” gives “
+ “net $” + asCash(iCalcTakeHomeToTry) );

System.out.println(  “Details:” );
System.out.println(  “Gross\t”
+ “SSI\t”
+ “Fed\t”
+ “state\t”
+ “SDI\t”
+ “Medi\t”
+ “net\t”
);

System.out.println( asCash(iCalcGross) + “\t”
+ asCash(iCalcSSI )+ “\t”
+ asCash(iCalcFedIncTax) + “\t”
+ asCash(iCalcStateIncTax ) +” \t”
+ asCash(iCalcSDI )+ “\t”
+ asCash(iCalcMedicare )+ “\t”
+ asCash(iCalcTakeHomeToTry ) );

System.out.println( “Total Witholding $” + asCash(iCalcGross – iUserTakeHome) );

uIC =  (int) (dUIW * iCalcGross);
eTTC =  (int) (dETTW * iCalcGross);
iCalcFuta =  (int) (dFutaW * iCalcGross);

System.out.println(  “And we contribute\n”
+ “UI\t”
+ “ETT\t”
+ “SSI\t”
+ “FUTA\t” );

System.out.println(
asCash(uIC) + “\t”
+  asCash(eTTC) + “\t”
+  asCash(iCalcSSI) + “\t”
+  asCash(iCalcFuta) + “\t” );

int weOweFeds, weOweState;
weOweFeds = weOweState = 0;
weOweFeds += iCalcFedIncTax;
weOweFeds += iCalcSSI;
weOweFeds += iCalcMedicare;
weOweFeds += iCalcSSI; // our part

weOweState += iCalcStateIncTax;
weOweState += iCalcSDI;
weOweState += iCalcFuta;
weOweState += uIC;
weOweState += eTTC;

System.out.println(  “We owe Feds ” + asCash(weOweFeds) +
“\t\tWe owe State ” + asCash(weOweState) );
}
}

Lights out for an hour… Earthhour observed.

So I turned off the lights the hour from 8:30 to 9:30 tonight.  Couldn’t hurt, might help. We had too many lights on anyway. One of the things daddys do, is go around turning out lights, and replacing incandescent lamps with compact fluorescent or other energy savers. Regardless of politics.

We were watching “The Kid’s Choice Awards”, Ben and I were fooling with computers, but no dedicated lamps were on. Seems fair to me.

I find myself saddened any time the PG&E bill indicates we’re using more electricity or natural gas than last year- I figure, another year older, another  recognizable increase in thrift.  Problem is, I switched every lamp to CFLs some time ago, unless they were on a dimmer. So there are 5 incandescent lamps left in the house. And I removed the dimmer from the ceiling lamp in the office- 2 more CFLs there.

Good night,

Bill

Alistair Co[ck]burn’s “Scum” speech: developing software compared to rock climbing

My friend Eric pointed me to

http://alistair.cockburn.us/Software+development+as+a+cooperative+game

and I think its terrific! Well worth your time as a reader.

Bill