Piero Bosio Social Web Site Personale

From somebody on bsky.

#NigelFarage

Back in 2020–2023 or so, I was very interested in Flight Simulation. Specifically, Microsoft Flight Simulator 2020. (The current version is 2024.) My favourite way of using it was in virtual reality.

I attempted to build several add-on aircraft for it. Interesting historical military aircraft, mostly. Occasionally I even thought I might have a chance of producing something people would pay money for.

Each time, the start was fun and promising, but the further I got, the more important small details I noticed that I honestly did not have any chance of ever getting "good enough"... and the enthusiasm waned until I realised I had given up. (Hey, it was a fun hobby anyway, lots of rabbit holes to dig yourself into, I am not sad. Like books describing various jet engines in history, as developed by Rolls-Royce, General Electric, etc.)

The competition in the add-on market is very demanding. Small companies or individuals that make the best virtual reproductions of real aircraft often have access to actual existing such aircraft. In museums if it is a historical aircraft, or in-use ones. (And Microsoft itself and its contractors of course have lots of funds to purchase hands-on investigation of the aircraft they are modelling.)

Anyway, here is a screen grab video from November 2021: https://youtu.be/3U-1vCWvsjE . My model of the glorious XB-70 Valkyrie https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_XB-70_Valkyrie. You see the landing gear extension and retraction sequence, and the wing tip rotation. The main landing gear moves in a very interesting way.

Sure, it looks okay-ish from a distance, but if you would inspect it closer, you would notice lots of problems. Not to mention the cockpit and other accessible space inside. To get those "good enough" one would need to have access to the single remaining aircraft (of only two built), in the USAF Museum in Ohio for careful measurements and photography.

Sure, there are nice photos and videos of it online, including cockpit interior. But it is not easy to determine good enough angles and dimensions from such. In photos you see various equipment typically only from one camera location anyway. To be good enough for VR use, one needs to model all sides of a thing, more or less.

#FlightSimulator #XB70

I think it is time to start planning* a pre-winter-#Interrail. Sicily again? Next week? Prices for a Milano–Palermo "vagone letto relax uso singolo - cabina intera" are still reasonable, on some days.

*) When I say "planning", I mean "buying tickets, where necessary, on short notice". That's the kind of planning I love.

Helo #JavaScript and TypeScript programmers. (To which I don't count myself, even if I have to use it a bit now and then.)

This is an anti-pattern, right?

if (foo.indexOf("bar") === 0) {
...
}

Because if foo does *not* start with "bar", indexOf() will still search through all of foo for "bar". Even if you are only interested in seeing whether foo *starts* with "bar".

Or are JavaScript interpeters and JITters clever enough to recognise this and silently turn it into effectively a use of startsWith() anyway? I suspect so. But still, nicer to write it optimally (and more obviously) from the start, right? Like this:

if (foo.startsWith("bar") {
...
}

Britons and their hobbies.

The rate started increasing again after the Brexit referendum. Coincidence, I think not.

When people use the term "polishing" for software, are they aware of the saying "to polish a turd"?

@vitaut Not Actually A Number?

I love it when old analog photos very usefully come with inline metadata. Like the timestamp here. (The location is Karlsruhe Hbf, the date is 1998-06-26.) #interrail

The Internet Archive accepts Apple Pay. Makes it so easy to donate. Thank you @internetarchive

Who has the better hat? (Photos in follow-up.)

#WrongColoursOnly

Guess what the file autogen.sh in the LibreOffice sources is. No cheating! Wrong answers only.

Go on, I will wait.

Always sandbox unknown code.

No, this is not just relevant for pimple-faced* JavaScript etc developers that would run "npm start" as mentioned. Even we senior citizens (hello @fridrich) can easily be tricked into running "./configure && make".

https://blog.daviddodda.com/how-i-almost-got-hacked-by-a-job-interview

*) Joke. I know many such are in their forties or more.

#Bahnzeit in Mikkeli/S:t Michel.

Olipas hyvät muikut. Ehkä paremmat kuin Salven tai Eliten silakat. Eino-nimisessä osuuskaupan gastropubissa Mikkelissä. Juomana tumma paikallinen Marsalkka-olut. Olisikohan pitänyt ottaa Marskin ryyppy, vai saako sellaista vain jostain enempi herraskaisista ravintoloista?

Puolisolla keltajuuricarpaccio herneenversoilla ja burratalla.

Ruokaa.

#TertinKartano

Vähän kuvia Tertin kartanosta.

#TertinKartano

Except that I am not. @martinvermeer , can you explain? Different coordinate system? The artist has been a bit careless? The milestone is perhaps 180 m to west and a bit to the north from those coordinates.

Edit: I refreshed my memory of this stuff, and yep, the X and Y values are (of course) old YKJ coordinates, and seem to be very correct. The geographical coordinates are then for the corresponding ellipsoid etc, not WGS84 ones. And the error matches the expected.

You are here. #Geocoding