Category Archives: People who love their jobs

Exploded Views: Animagraffs on the SR-71

Jake O’Neal’s meticulously researched and lovingly rendered engineering animations are one of the highlights of modern-day Youtube.  He’s outdone himself with his recent masterpiece on the SR-71’s innards and outards.  The Blackbird is one of the last century’s artistic triumphs and has inspired admirers all over the world.  O’Neal dove deeply into the literature and pulls back the covers from beak to tailfeathers.  The section on the inlet and J58 powerplant is as accurate as the 2015 benchmark from “Tech Adams.”

O’Neal goes beyond the “glamorous bits.”  Pay close attention to the “mixer” that translated pilot stick inputs into precise actuator motions to control a plane flying at Mach 3+.  I’ve been following the Blackbird family for decades and I never knew about this.

On top of that, he has just released a behind-the-scenes film on how he created the model and animations using the free Blender program.

Youtube Channel: Animagraffs

LAX Maintenance: Stig Aviation

SpeedbirdHD has dramatically cut back on his insider views of LAX.  Stig Aviation is a new channel that fills that gap.  SpeedbirdHD focused on insane closeups of takeoffs and landings thanks to his unparalleled access.  Stig is a maintenance technician for a major airline who documents interesting aspects of the job through sixteen hour shifts which he nevertheless enjoys.  Tires, engines, cockpits, or fluids, he’s got the scoop.  He optimizes for mobile phones so the videos are all in portrait mode but other than that, There’s a lot of good stuff for the aviation curious.

Youtube Channel: Stig Aviation

 

Fella of the Royal Society: Q&A with Keith Moore

I have always imagined that Paradise will be a kind of library
— J.L. Borges

No, I haven’t read any Borges but this is one of those quotes that is very popular with my ilk.  But, libraries are indeed wonderful things and I remember hanging out a lot – and later volunteering – at the old Albany (California) Public Library on Solano Avenue in the late 1970s.  Don’t look for it there now, it is a youth center affiliated with the YMCA.  I spent as much time at the Doe and Bancroft as any science major at Cal could.  The specialty books and journals were in Hildebrand Hall but the atmosphere in the general purpose stacks was unbeatable.  The Internet has obliterated what little attention span I once had so sitting down and reading a physical book is next to impossible and yet the lure, the promise, and the perfume of endless shelves of books is still strong.

“Objectivity” is one of Brady Haran‘s strongest and most addicting channels.  Most of the episodes are filmed at the Royal Society‘s Library in London and feature Keith Moore, the hypnotic and wildly popular head librarian who pulls from a bottomless collection of manuscripts, paintings, sculptures, and  instruments from Newton to the present.  The Brits were pieces of work for several hundred years but there can be no denying that they made a few positive contributions to somewhat offset their spherical bastardy.

Visiting the Society’s collections may just be sufficient to deal with the rigors of travel in whatever a post-COVID landscape may look like as well as London’s notoriously high prices.

Enjoy the long-requested Q&A with The Man which includes a very candid answer to a probing viewer question.  Be sure to check out the rest of the channel – some selections below.

Youtube Channel: Objectivity

It was the Dukes: Balls for Test Cricket

Baseballs are one-and-done, discarded after even the merest nick or scrape.  Cricket balls  are used continuously and degrade progressively after countless bounces off the pitch and strokes of the bat.  Fast bowlers start off with the new ball giving way to medium pacers and finally the slow bowlers take over when the damage has been done and make the ball dance.  Crafting the classic red balls for  Test Matches is a fascinating blend of art and manufacture – Dilip Jajodia explains.

Youtube Channel: Dukes Cricket

Sage on the Stage: Prof. Balakrishnan on math and physics

The Internet overall is hastening the demise of what’s left of civilization.  That’s hard for an early adopter to say but even harder to refute.  The availability of online courses is a refuge of sweet in a tsunami of  bitter.   These series by Prof. Venkataraman Balakrishnan of IIT Madras explain subjects I thought I knew and give me an incentive to understand topics I never thought I would.   One man, one chalkboard – utterly engrossing.

The sequence: Classical physics, Selected Topics in Mathematical Physics, Topics in Nonlinear Dynamics

Youtube Channel: nptelhrd