Another day, another Baktun

In spite of the best efforts of Hollywood and shock media, December 21st came and went without catastrophe  or a bang, or even a wimper.  Nope - aside from a raft of humorous Facebook posts, it was not much more that the scheduled winter solstice exactly as predicted.  So the thirteenth long-count of the Mayan calendar comes to an end exactly 144,000 solar days (a Baktun) since the last one started, and we start counting again. This marks the end of the first Great Cycle and presumably the beginning of another. I want to believe the rest of their predictions are accurate as well, in particular the regeneration of the cosmos and the re-ordering of space and time.  It couldn't come soon enough - things have been a little chaotic lately, and not in a good way.

Really, what is wrong with people? Do we crave chaos, and drama so much that we have to twist every amazing feat of science and math into a horrific apocalyptic event?  Okay, well, I guess we know the answer to that is yes.  It is disappointing none the less to know that so much misinformation has clouded the fact that 3400 years ago, the Mayan people were able to build a calendar that accurately predicted every solar and lunar event in a repeating 5125 year time loop.  How did we miss that?  I mean as a society - how is that not the front page news?

There is a great post from NASA here with a commentary on what we should really be talking about.  The world didn't end because that was never the plan.  The calendar did not end, it just cycled, like the one on your office wall does every January 1st. The next 5125 year cycle in our history is just a few days old now and we should be celebrating the coming of the new age.  That is not fringe level crazy talk, that is science.

As we wind down the current version of our modern Gregorian calendar and turn the page on yet another one, I have to wonder how many other ancient sciences we have dismissed and forgotten because they were not convenient to our common religious or political views.  I have to wonder if there are technologies we buried a millennia ago in favor of less accurate, but more socially acceptable ones.  Maybe this Baktun we will set things right and figure it out.


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$>ReadyPlayerOne__

OMG.

I finished reading Ready Player One by Ernest Cline about one o'clock this morning and I would have blogged about it immediately if I was not seriously in need of sleep.  I just could not put it down.  I am already considering reading it again sometime this week.

This is the best cyberpunk novel I have read is quite a while and is likely the best book of any kind I have ever read.  I firmly believe Ready Player One is this generation's Neruomancer or Snow Crash.  Like those other two icons of cyberpunk, William Gibson and Neal Stephenson, Ernest Cline has completely captured the essence of the technology revolution.   The prose is easily readable, the references are relevant and the flow is perfect - every chapter is a cliff hanger.  

I seriously could not put this book down.  At one point on an earlier evening at about midnight, my eyes were blurry and I was fighting off sleep.  Just as I was ready to put the book aside for the night I read the line:

        I lie awake, staring out at the bleakness of Megadon.  

        City and sky become one, merging into a single plane, a vast sea of unbroken grey.

        The Twin Moons, just two pale orbs as they trace their way across the steely sky. 

Recognizing the stanza above from one of my favourite Rush albums, I got up, splashed water on my face and read for another 2 hours before finally being pulled unwillingly into the realm of sleep - book still in my hand.

Cline has managed to touch on the very heart of the technology revolution - not inventing an unimaginable future, but building a realistic model based on the real events of the past.  There are hundreds of references to 1980's pop culture, digital revolution, music, books, movies, and the general philosophy shift that was happening at that time.  That decade was a pivotal point in history on all facets and Cline has capitalized on that while speaking directly to the geeks of that generation.  From WarGames to Pat Benatar to Japanese Anime, this book touches every aspect of the 1980s revolution and does it with very close attention to detail.

That is the thing the bothers me the most about books and movies about technology - the accuracy.  When I watch a show or read a book that tries to sound technical, but their tech adviser is obviously uneducated, I get completely turned off.  Ready Player One has NONE of that, even down to the detail of serial numbers of console games.  This guy is a geek god.

If you are a geek and you lived through the eighties, drop everything and go buy this book now.  Seriously.  If you must actually walk to a physical bookstore, then do so as soon as possible, but as the book reminds us "Going outside is highly overrated".  Even if you have never heard of Zaxxon or Qbert, if you have any interest in reading an amazingly well written book and have any interest at all in technology, then you are welcome to wait a day or so, but then go get a copy and read it anyway - you will not be disappointed.

Okay, that is enough rant ... I have to go re-read that book now.

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Ode to the Dash8

This past week I was on a business trip that had me on six different flight segments.  That in itself is not all that unusual, but three of those flights were on "Dash8" aircraft.  I fly on these quite a bit and I started to wonder about the popularity of this aircraft, so I thought I would do and share some research.

I know that somewhere in my travels, I have heard that the "Dash8" (shown at left) was actually an acronym for "de Havilland Air Short Haul version 8 (D.A.S.H.8), but I have found no evidence that is actually true, however it certainly could be from the information I uncovered.  Officially the plane is called a "Dash8" because the official designation is DHC-8 (pronounced: Dee Aech See DASH eight) and it has no other nickname like most of it's predecessors the DHC-1 through DHC-7.  The Dash8's immediate predecessor, the DHC-7 was also referred to by a similar name, "Dash7" and was built as a commercial carrier with a very Short Take Off and Landing (STOL) capability.  Fully loaded, it could lift off in only 610 metres (about 2000 ft) which is pretty amazing for any commercial aircraft.

   

The earlier DHC-6 (image on right) is more commonly known as the "Twin Otter" which will be very familiar to people who often take short hauls from Vancouver to Victoria, or from Toronto to Ottawa.  These commercial "Short Hauls" are a difficult market niche for aircraft manufacturers because they have to balance agility with maintenance costs.  The Dash-7 was popular at the time, but was quickly replaced by the Dash-8 due to it's lower maintenance costs and comparable STOL capability.  The Dash-8 can lift off in only 910 metres of runway (about 3000ft) which is considerably less than the comparably sized CRJ200 which requires about double that (1835 metres).


The "short haul" legacy of the Dash-8 has a familiar successful legacy in the DHC-5 (left) which people in forest fire territory will recognize as the "Buffalo" as well as the DHC-4 "Caribou" (shown below) that earned a place in history for short haul work supplying troops in Vietnam.


The Dash-8 actually comes in 4 distinct flavours including the popular Q400 which is actually the "Dash-8 type 400", a 78 passenger version of the original.  Even Westjet, who's entire fleet consists of Boeing 737's, just placed a conditional order for twenty Q400s to add to their fleet.  Bombardier passed the 1000 unit mark of deliveries of "dash8" aircraft over 2 years ago and they still keep shipping.

An interesting note to this is that even though the Dash8-400 (AKA the Q400) is a brand new aircraft, the Dash8-100 first shipped in 1983 - Twenty Nine years ago - and many of those early birds are still in the air (I think I was on one today).

Anyway, I spend quite a bit of time in that particular make of aircraft and thought I might share some of the detail around why it is so pervasive in the short haul markets.

Hope you had fun reading about it :)