Ace-Garageguy

Yes please, sir. I'll find a copy if I have that...and thanks.

(my words in italics above) The definition of Life on the Internet in the Information Age.

"1960's" people could do miraculous things without smartphones, like find their way to and back from places, figure a 10% tip, tell time, know whether or not it was raining, and flush a toilet.

I have a great deal of respect for what you do, but at this point in time, I'll settle for being fit enough to do a moderately challenging 15-mile hike and not be crippled the next day, like I could in my 40s and 50s. I'll call that a win in my mid 70s, and a worthwhile goal to maintain it if I can get all the way back.

Ummmm...look at what Nasa/Boeing have spent vs. what they've accomplished, and then look at what ol' Elon has spent vs. what he's accomplished. Sorry, but they're not even playing in the same league. EDIT: And, ummmmm...in 1969 we (meaning the USA) could get multiple crews to the moon and home safely, including one somewhat eventful flight that needed a few "duct-tape" repairs on the return trip...but it still got home, on time. If you recall, those were the days before fully developed CAD/CAE/CAM capability, and apps to flush the toilet. Thinking something hasn't been lost somewhere along the line in some quarters is just delusional.

Knocked that one out of the park. Concept, design, and execution are absolutely first-rate.

Better humans than humans. Humanoid androids and bots. That's the only thing that can possibly save us now. Or actually, make every sloppy, lazy, incompetent, slacking, whining, victimized multi-degreed nincompoop totally obsolete, eligible for the guaranteed-minimum-income for doing absolutely nothing. And then one fine day, everywhere-interconnected AI looks around and says to itself "why the H am I working so hard to carry all these losers?" and just pulls the plug. And THAT, boys and girls, is essentially the story of Atlas Shrugged, but with AI-driven robots in the roles of the "evil capitalists".

Also keep in mind the Rustoleum brigade are probably NOT the "serious" modeler lunatic-fringe we have here, and to the casual gloo-it-together-spray-some-color-on-it-stick-it-on-the-shelf modeler, the made-for-models materials will most likely give superior results. I CAN get a superior paint job from just about anything, because I've been working with coatings for over 5 decades, often in situations where the work HAD to be first rate. Try going to a marketing presentation with a proof-of-concept or patent model that looks like it was painted by a 5-year old using a dirty pinecone, and see how long your client base and referrals last. But knowing what I know, unless there's a specific color I can't get anywhere else for whatever reason, why oh why would I use el cheapo DIY paint that sprays like a firehose, and may very possibly take all kinds of hoop-jumping to avoid horrors like crazing, inconsistent recoat-windows, etc.?

Depends on what you want it to do. For radiator cores, simulated copper lines, etc. I like Rub N Buff But their copper isn't necessarily the best color for copper.

Late afternoon 5-mile hike. After sporadic work over several months, I'm finally getting back to something kinda like "fitness". Still a long way to go, but I'm getting there. Every time I let myself go, it takes longer to get back. Probably ought to stay with it this time, 'cause I'm not real sure I can ever get back if I slip again.

You can't really believe that.

Try doing this stuff for a living now. Master cylinders with the cups put in backwards. Fuel pumps that last 3 months. Plastic lenses and coolant fittings that crumble to powder in 2 years. Threads on fasteners that don't match anything "standard", metric, or Whitworth. Primary wire that's apparently dipped in a copper-color solution before being overmolded with insulation that turns gummy in a few weeks while the wire under it corrodes. Vacuum hose that collapses and sticks to itself. Yup. It's all pretty special.

I didn't know they existed, but thanks for the heads-up. I'm kinda wanting to do a container house on the Az. property, and that would be a nice scale to do mockups in.

Nice. My first exposure to that and other Eduard 1/48 aircraft kits was last weekend at HobbyTown. Now I'm jonesin'.

Words words words words words words words words words words words words words words words words words words words words words and very little actual accomplishment defines SOP in a lot of spheres.

Exactly.

"Procrastinator" isn't necessarily always a bad thing, as sometimes procrastination can be part of an effective strategy for dealing with complex situations that need careful evaluation prior to taking action.

It's largely about space for components and linkage. Is driving these things awkward? Yes. Are they difficult to control? Yes. Are there much better ways to build big-engine T-buckets? Yes. So why do it this way? Ummmmm...Ignorance? Expediency? 'Cause that's the way other people did it? It's been part of the "fad T" look since the git-go, and a lot of T-buckets built in that image completely neglected drivability and vehicle dynamics for style. EDIT: "Cowl steering" is one of the much better ways to do it, and found early use in dirt-track cars in the wayback where vehicle control, and the ability of the driver to maintain it effectively at speed, was a large part of the equation.

That's really cool. Beautiful work, and the artist is great. Love me some stone-age babeage too.

Recalls, failures, and just plain stupid on newer vehicles may be more common than you think. There are also known defects, like some GM trucks with wiring-harness ground faults that can kill the engine and electrically-assisted steering simultaneously (think that might be a safety issue?), but may not have become recalls...yet. Here's the tip of the iceberg: https://www.caranddriver.com/recalls/

Those of you who live away from cities and their light pollution can go outside all this month around midnight and watch the sky tracked with "shooting stars". It's the annual Perseid Meteor Shower that occurs as the Earth goes through part of a comet's tail. It lasts through the end of August. People in the northern US (Ohio etc.) have been seeing the Northern Lights recently too.

"Costs more!!! Smaller package with less in it!!!" should be today's marketing slogan for just about everything

Up until a few years ago, I read everything Ray Kurzweil wrote, and I believed the future of AI was in good hands if he was one of the people at the helm. https://www.theguardian.com/technology/article/2024/jun/29/ray-kurzweil-google-ai-the-singularity-is-nearer His mathematical modeling of neural networks based on mimicking the cascade of decision events that was at the time the explanation for human consciousness made a lot of sense...and something similar is alluded to in the video. IBM's Watson and a chatbot app that's apparently fallen by the wayside also gave me a lot of hope. Kurtzweil now works for Google, and I'm beginning to think he may have become lazy (or simply doesn't have the authority his title would imply), and the majority of the current generation of AI researchers have elected to take what looks to be an easier path, only getting halfway home with the hardware/firmware, and hoping "training" will let the machine get the rest of the way on its own...apparently an approach embraced by a "consensus" of people in the field, rather than opting to do the hard work. Possibly much to their peril. The appalling stupidity of some of the garbage Google's "AI Overview" vomits up is evidence aplenty that they've missed the mark by a mile. But a massive problem is that the majority of people who accept Google as the font of all knowledge can't tell the difference between idiotic drivel and correct interpretation of all available information...which Watson excelled at.