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Showing posts from December 16, 2012

LavaCon 2026 and the future.

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LavaCon is a conference now going on 25 years. Its always fun at conferences where folks collaborate on what the future holds. This year I drove to Charlotte NC from Duluth GA to attend. I used the Tesla in Full Self Drive. I went park-to-park without touching the wheel for over 200 miles. It's crazy. I don't think most people understand how well it works. Lots of nay-sayers still, but it really does work. Be on guard, but enjoy. I spent some of my time "driving" while conversing with Grok as part of my daydreaming. I was discussing with Grok an idea I have of building a West system (cold molded) old style barrel-back runabout maybe 20 feet long- all varnished Mahogony. Of course this boat would have an exotic 12-cylinder engine under a transparent engine hatch between the twin cockpits. We discussed the designs, available actual study plans and pre-lofted design documents for the hull. We also discussed the best engine (perhaps a BMW N73) coupled with a Velvet Dri...
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I am somebody. I am the 985,632,518 viewer of Gangham Style on Youtube. Consider me an early adopter as the video is sure to be the first to hit a billion views. There will be 14,367,482 after me before Christmas. It is trending at least 3 million hits a day.
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I went to a presentation a couple of Saturdays ago by a ex navy pilot who had hundreds of combat missions in Vietnam. He had lots of photos he took from a hand held camera in the cockpit, very dramatic and never really seen before. The pilots started taking their own pics seriously to confirm damage and for intelligence since it was better than what they got otherwise. The end of the presentation focused on pilot friends who were killed, their pictures, stories and descriptions of their personalities. It was quite moving. I am in LaGuardia airport in NYC at the moment. It was a quick trip up to NY. 4 days in NY, 2 upstate and 2 in NYC. I drove the truck up, slept in the truck when I got tired. The most interesting thing was about sleeping in the truck was realizing how much more comfortable it was sleeping in my truck in the cold temps than it is sleeping in an airline seat on an overseas flight. I slept hard in the parking lot of a car wash with temps below freezing, weird.