Rubenerd

I’ve long been curious why the 747-300 sold in such small numbers, at least relative to other Boeing jumbo jet variants. It pioneered the stretched-upper deck (SUD) which made its way into the successful -400 series. It also boasted minor aerodynamic improvements which gave it a range and efficiency bump. Yet it barely warrants a footnote in most aviation restrospectives, with most airlines flying by. It didn’t fly off the shelves. Jumbo.

Photo of a Swissair 747-300 in 1984 taken by Georg Gerster, part of the ETH-Bibliothek collection, uploaded to Wikimedia Commons. That’s desktop background material.

Justin Hayward recently broke down some reasons for Simply Flying:

The additional offering of the 747-300 over the 747-200 was in many ways minimal – especially given the higher price. Many airlines that wanted 747s had already ordered the 747-200. There was also a strong second-hand market in place by now.

Alexander Pask quantified the price delta in International Aviation HQ, even though his site pictures a -200 under the title!

Whilst they appreciated the developments Boeing made, they weren’t enough to justify the $82 million ($223 million today) price tag, compared to the $66 million ($165.5 million) for a brand-new 747-200.

That’s not that much of a capacity improvement for $16 million. It also foreshadowed the airline industry’s lacklustre response to the -500X and -600X.

The 747-400 introduced barely a few years later included winglets, improved fuel capacity, more automation, and a two-person glass cockpit which airlines were demanding by the mid-1980s. By the time the last -200s had been delivered, most airlines jumped to the -400.

Another point I’d considered was that the -300 might not have made as good a freighter. The SUD would have been all but useless in that Dutch Roll (hah, so good), so it would have made financial and logical sense to stick with the -200. The fact all subsequent freighter variants still shipped without a SUD would seem to support that.

That’s not to say the -300 was just a stopgap. A friend of mine back in the day was training to be an airline mechanic for Qantas, and he told me their crews loved the relative simplicity of the airframe. I’ll bet flight engineers preferred it as well! I’ve also read comments on mailing lists saying the -300 is what the -200 should have been. SUD upgrades were made available for these earlier airframes, which suggests a degree of commonality between the airframes or it wouldn’t have been economically feasible.

I’m sure I flew on Qantas 747-300s at least a few times growing up, but the -400 Longreach had become the workhorse of the fleet by the time I got into aviation.

We’ve been building this world together since the 13th of October last year. It’s been a wonderful Covid distraction and evening chill activity.

Pictured below is our anniversary cake in the park from this evening, and a map of our peninsula. We’ve been avoiding chopping down trees or levelling the land as much as possible, which has lead to all sorts of boardwalks, bridges, and underpasses to get around. Fun!

Thanks to the Hololive characters for finally getting us into this. They may as well rebrand themselves as Holocraft given all the hundreds of hours they’ve played even in the leadup to the server merge! Which would be fabulous.

@heyjovo posted about a phenomena I still don’t think is appreciated or well understood about the Internet:

It wasn’t until I started doing user research that I realized just how many people can’t internet good. Designers, people are badder at internetting than you think.

Where do I even start with agreeing here? I feel as though my neck is about to snap from nodding!

This manifests in so many ways, but perhaps none as stark as the pervasive attitude of PEBKAC. Even without leaving the realm of design, so much of the modern web is left wanting when it comes to accessibility, ease of use, and respect. I’ve been working in the industry since primary school, and I struggle to understand certain websites and mobile applications sometimes.

The Internet isn’t just an idle curiosity, place for research, or intellectual area of discussion for nerds, as much as people may wish for it to be the case. It’s a mandatory component of modern society, and as such we have a duty of care as IT professionals. See my quote earlier in the week from Martin Fowler about software as an example.

I’ve worked in support, and I know how tempting it is to dismiss people’s skills on the basis of a lack of maturity, knowledge, or refusal to learn how something works. But being dismissive cuts both ways, and we have the advantage of expertise to assist.

@heyjovo also mentioned:

Sometimes it’s because a system is too complex, poorly designed, or manipulative.

Manipulative is a brilliant descriptor. I wouldn’t even say Internet novices or the technically challenged have an uphill battle, I’d say the Internet is actively hostile to them.

I’m paraphrasing, but a few months ago Jim Kloss discussed on an web stream that the Internet you and I inhabit is different from that of other people. Turn off your dynamic content blockers like uBlock Origin or NoScript to see what the rest of the world has to go through while performing daily tasks. I made it half an hour last time before succumbing to despair and frustration. And these are systems we’ve built.

Manipulation also covers misinformation lies, behavioural tracking, and the business models that foster the former and perpetuate the latter.

It’s been a while since I created a saved search on Thunderbird, but I’m adjusting how I do stuff and want to have a few virtual folders.

This works on FreeBSD, but unfortunately not on the Mac. For the past six months the New Saved Search Folder window among others loses focus and retreats to the background when you select folders, making the entire UI inaccessible. You can still quit with Command+Q.

There’s an open bug report on Bugzilla, but the issue looks thorny enough that it won’t be a quick fix. If you have access to a *nix or Windows machine, you can create your saved searches there then import your profile back. Not ideal, but it works.

Passing on in case this was driving you batty too.

Jonathan W saw my recent post about reading manga on a larger Kobo device, and referred me to this PC Mag review that discusses my exact use case! Thank you for sharing this.

I read a bunch of books and manga on the Forma over two weeks. Manga tend to have trouble on smaller e-readers because some of the English annotations can be quite tiny, but even the tiniest text in a CBZ version of Kiyohoko Azuma’s Yotsuba&! (a family-friendly book about a cheerful, possibly alien five-year-old) was totally readable.

I assumed a larger screen would be better for manga, but it was useful to have someone validate it.

I’ve just put in my preorder for a Sage after a year of indecision. I’ll report back how I go.

Holley Morgan wrote an article for Introvert Dear, explaining the adventures with her new in-laws:

If you’re an introvert who has extroverted in-laws, it’s probably going to take more understanding on your part than theirs.

That’s the crux of the issue for introverts in almost all settings, unfortunately. The burden is always disproportionately on us to empathise, understand, and accommodate the requirements of others. It’s pervasive, especially in the West.

That said, is a phrase with two words. She has some useful advice which, again, is broadly useful everywhere. Don’t use alcohol as a crutch. And in unavoidable social situations, make it clear that you like and appreciate people. Extroverts take introverts to be cold because we don’t communicate.

Ruben Schade walked up to the podium and prepared for the day’s press conference. Being the Chancellor of Earth gave him sweeping new powers, though he still had to arrive to meetings on time. What a concept, he thought as he remembered some of his old clients.

He arranged his small stack of index cards. There was to be no teleprompter today after last week’s misadventures. How someone broke into it live and had him swearing in Dutch for fifteen minutes flummoxed him. He couldn’t even pronounce any of it.

Good morning, afternoon, or evening, depending on your locale. I have an ungainly posterior and my face contains regrettable uglyness.

Damn it, they got to my cards too.

I’m keen to share today’s legislative agenda which I’ll be taking to the Parliament. We’ve had success this month trying the developers of systemd and K8s in The Hague, and introducing a mandatory requirement that all socks only be made of cotton.

Today, we’ll be introducing a mandatory leaf blower buyback scheme, which I’m dubbing The Mandatory Leaf Blower Buyback Scheme.

Murmurs and smiles swept across the crowd. A hand shot up among the front row of journalists, presumably attached to someone.

Yes, you there with the bankrupt reality TV star on your shirt.

This is— hey!—a broad overreach of your powers. My right to make noise trumps everyone else’s rights.

The crowd looked back at the Chancellor, who was now deep in thought.

Sir, you articulate a compelling case. Tell you what, we’ll permit the use of leaf blowers under the strict condition they only be used when citizens aren’t asleep.

And that’s the story how leaf blowers were permanently banned on Earth, on account of there always being someone asleep. Dreaming of a world without leaf blowers, perhaps.

Today’s Music Monday takes us to Peter Mulvey and his video channel. I always have time for this poet and wearer of epic hats.

Martin opened his most recent blog post with this:

Those of us developing software don’t need to be told what a big impact it’s had on humanity this century. I’ve long maintained that this places a serious responsibility on our profession. Whether asked to or not, we have a duty to ensure our systems don’t degrade our society.

See: Bitcoin.

An astute observation readers always make about my writing here is that it’s accurate, witty, and with a degree of brevity that would make the most time-poor worker’s head spin with possibilities about all the disparate activities such compact prose frees them to do. When those aforementioned readers ask how I impart such wit, brilliance, and sophistication in so few words, I answer with a response containing impactful references to the Commodore 128, Hololive, and that time I accidentally fell down a flight of stairs because my crush was coming the other way.

I belabour this succinct, terse point of short, clarifying brevity to mention, impart, and advocate for the position that everyone’s writing is unique. We have different audiences, mediums, motives, artistic direction, style, and voice. Being prescriptive for specific use cases is fine, but I treat any claim of a universal truth for writing with skepticism. Here be dragons, as my favourite high school English teacher Ms Gravina used to say in response to such advice.

Which leads us to this article on why brevity is important, and how it’s bugged me every time I see it recommended to aspiring writers on Twitter. I fear people are taking its message as rote, or are being discouraged.

The writer also doesn’t heed his own advice. He identifies “waffle” (mmm, waffles) in his introduction by striking out words, but then runs afoul (mmm, chicken waffles) of Skitt’s Law:

Regardless of industry, audience or approach, all successful content exercises extreme brevity is brief.

[Will] Do you really think someone is going to sit and read a[n] 2000 word essay on a topic that could be summed up in a paragraph? Of course they’re not [No]. They’re going to go [They’ll visit] to the website or publication that has covered the story in as the few[est] words as possible.

Is that true? I’ll take a detailed explanation with diagrams over a brief, terse summary when learning a new concept.

People are busy. They don’t want to waste time reading your fluff. That fluff might make your article sound nice [thank you!], but it distracts from the main point of your article and bores your readers.

Is that true either? Brevity is the soul of wit, depending on audience and purpose. But not always.

Impactful copy always gets to the point. Its author has ignored the desire to waffle, they’ve trimmed every last piece of fat ensuring [has ensured] the only words left are those that have [with] meaning.

“Impactful” also bugs me; it borders on synergistic meta-linguistic paradigm shifts. The large, empty website banner and redundant header image also took two spacebar hits to dismiss, but that’s more to do with the wasteful nature of modern web design. He also employs filler words like “really”, and repeats himself with a “featured download” within the text, having told us not to.

Clarity is important. I aim to be succinct in my technical writing, documentation, diagrams, compliance forms, etc. There’s joy in realising prose can be removed when explaining a concept, just as one can remove refactored or redundant code.

But such advice isn’t universal, and can be harmful. Clarity is beautiful, but so is a bit of fun. Or should I say, I endeavour to engage in levity in order to inject some amusement and personality into the prose for which I derive such joy typing. I’ve read so many whitepapers, and been to so many webinars and online industry events in the last few months, and the ones I remember weren’t the briefest.

I’d hate for people to come away from articles like that thinking they need to remove personality to reduce their word count by 5%. That’s what I worry about when experts pitch blanket advice. Maybe that’s due to my impactful morning encounter with a cyclist.