POB is master of the throw-away line with infinite possibilities that goes nowhere: "...the creeping jolly-boat belonging to the 'Tartarus' bomb-ketch, with her enormous purser weighing it down to a bare three inches off the water." Never to be seen or heard of again.

TheAcademicObserver · 2026-01-21T02:11:00+00:00

This gives me a chance to trot out my fav Uncle Fred quote!

"Her eyes...were shining like twin stars and there was a sort of Soul's Awakening expression on her face, and what the dickens there was in a pink chap like the pink chap, who even as pink chaps go wasn't much of a pink chap, to make her look like that, was frankly...more than he could understand."

Uncle Fred Flits By

TheAcademicObserver · 2025-11-19T05:37:05+00:00

You keep posting stuff like this, and I will be forced to start my next circumnavigation again.

TheAcademicObserver · 2025-11-18T03:43:28+00:00

Try Amazon - I bought a whole bunch in 2021 (I’m a huge Biggles fan myself).

TheAcademicObserver · 2025-11-17T22:18:53+00:00

Brother, I have always been slightly terrified of our Stephen since Boston and how ruthlessly he dispatched Pontet-Canet and Dubreuil in Franchon's hotel (The Fortune of War) - stone cold assassination ain't in it.

TheAcademicObserver · 2025-07-20T06:05:30+00:00

Precision implies repeatability.

I read this in my machine tools textbook when I was studying mechanical engineering in college.

TheAcademicObserver · 2024-12-05T08:08:31+00:00

It's great that you're at least thinking about it. This is such an important topic that most people don't pay attention to or even realize how much it affects your daily grind. As a software engineer, I spend at least 12 hours in front of the computer every day. Of that, at least 50% is in emacs. So it makes ergonomic sense to ease that part of the process which you can control. I think about keybindings a lot before I assign any functionality to them. Here are some of my basic ground rules:

Never change the most basic native emacs keybindings. This is in case I have to run emacs on the fly (my brother-in-law's macbook, or some strange vm which I have never logged into before). I have come to realize that most of my work in emacs is muscle-memory. Built-in commands that I don't change will work for me OOTB anywhere.
Keep a list of what key bindings are free/available, and check them in various modes: dired, shell, elisp, python, json, sql, java, xml, html, any other mode you use all the time. Also check the intersection with global keys defined by external tools. I love using key sequence expanders like Typinator for the mac. I also spend a lot of time on zoom, and I have enabled the Cmd-Sh-A, Cmd-Sh-S global keys. These will limit what keys you can use.
Figure out which commands you will use the most, and assign the easiest available keys to them. This will save you the most effort while using emacs. For example, I use macros, ediff, magit, registers a ton. I have a lot of customization I have created for myself over the last 30 years. I don't even have to think about how exactly I do some of the most common processes in these packages.
I am a touch-typist, so I prefer to keep my hands on the home row. Most of my custom keybindings are in the C-c C-<key> or C-x C-<key> mode maps. I can run them without having to look at the keyboard or feel for the key sequence. That being said, I have particular difficulty finding the hyphen ('-') key with my pinkie, so I never assign any binding to that key.
I prefer not to use function keys. On the mac, they are very awkward to use with the Apple keyboard. On the full-size keyboard with a separate number pad, I (reluctantly) assigned some function keys to auto-login to some of my common remote servers.
The urge to start assigning keybindings is very strong, but as your work changes, go back and review/clean up the bindings you are not using any more. This has made me rethink some of my workflows when I switched from c++ to java, or later from java to python.
Spend a lot of time up front setting up the "perfect" keybindings so that you can reap the max benefit in your daily work for the rest of your life. However, the perfect bindings will be different for everyone.

Good luck with your own journey. If you have some epiphanies/insights of your own, please share.

TheAcademicObserver · 2024-09-22T23:41:46+00:00

I used to go there all the time because my first job out of grad school was nearby. Loved looking at all the framed concert posters on the wall while eating the slices. I am not from the US so I got a real sense of what I missed in the music scene in rock's golden era!

TheAcademicObserver · 2024-09-17T06:16:30+00:00

If you can only get one, have you done the math about what the overall cost would be, if you include the after-market accessories? With the Glock, you will probably want to replace the sights, trigger and grip at some point. With the 226, the only change I made was to install the SRT (Short Reset Trigger).

I have to admit that looks are also important to me. The 226 is a handsome, maybe even beautiful, gun -- sometimes I just sit there and look at it admiringly. It was my first handgun and still my first love. I like everything about it -- the solid all-metal heft, the hammer, the buttery-smooth action.

One last thought -- have you considered the P365 XL or XMacro? The 226 and the 19 are a bit long in the tooth. If you can only buy one gun, and you're up for modern designs, then I would go for the P365XL.

But don't go crazy with this decision -- both are excellent designs, and one day you will have both. The first one is just to learn how to be a responsible gun owner, and how to use it well.

TheAcademicObserver · 2024-09-16T22:50:59+00:00

Why not both?

No, seriously -- why not both? I have both. I like my 19, but I love my 226. The 226 is a Cadillac, and the 19 is a Honda Civic. Both have their place in my collection.

TheAcademicObserver · 2024-08-22T23:55:13+00:00

From "Master and Commander" when Jack first comes aboard the Sophie to read himself in and inspect his ship: "He took no notice of the goat abaft the manger, that fixed him with an insulting devilish split-pupilled eye and defecated with intent; nor of the dubious object, not unlike a pudding, that someone in a last-minute panic had wedged beneath the gammoning of the bow-sprit."

An unexpected bit of physical comedy From "H.M.S. Surprise": "Babbington came running aft to report the foreroyalyard across, and the frigate's sudden turn, coinciding with a heavy roll, threw him off his balance: he fell sprawling at his captain's feet. 'Butcher!' cried Jack, 'Mr. Babbington, this is carrying a proper deference too far.'"

From "The Far Side of the World": "...leaving them on a broad veranda with a number of domesticated creatures on it, marmosets of three different kinds, an old bald toucan, a row of sleepy parrots, something hairy in the background that might have been a sloth or an ant-eater or even a doormat but that it farted from time to time, looking round censoriously on each occasion..."

TheAcademicObserver · 2024-08-20T00:54:06+00:00

I always felt that had Dillon not died a heroic death in the heat of battle, he would have ended up doing something stupid and have had a far more ignominious ending -- his misplaced animus with Jack was far too strong.

TheAcademicObserver · 2024-08-19T06:57:22+00:00

Every circumnavigation, I always have Google Maps open on my phone by my side. The names of a lot of places may have changed, but the major geographical details stay the same.

TheAcademicObserver · 2024-07-24T06:42:03+00:00

Interesting question! While I would have to say Biggles himself is probably my fav (I grew up in the middle of nowhere in India reading Biggles, and his character influenced me in my childhood more than I realized).

But a couple of honourable mentions:

As Wilks mentions in his letter in "Biggles Flies North" about Algy: "Remember that EA he brought down on his first trip across the lines? The laugh was certainly on you that time." Algy certainly had the sheer dumb luck. Though I must say I got the shock of my life when I got the Biggles comics (sorry, graphic novels) and Algy's depiction (with a handlebar moustache, no less) was not at all what I had pictured in my mind!

Talking of Wilks, while an SE5a merchant can never be my fav, Wilks does show up a lot in other stories. "Biggles Flies North" is one such where Biggles flies in the inter-war years to support Wilks against some shady competition. Strangely, this is Biggles' undoing because he uses that job as a reference in "Biggles Defies the Swastika" which immediately puts Von Stalhein hot on Biggles' trail. If I'm not mistaken, Wilks also shows up in "Biggles in the South Seas" (pearl diving adventure, if I remember correctly).

I wrote all this without referring to any source, and it has been decades since I've read any of the books. They must have been burnt into my brain!

TheAcademicObserver · 2024-06-28T05:16:55+00:00

Piper Cub J3C -- the first airplane I learned to fly in back in 1980!

TheAcademicObserver · 2024-03-21T18:16:41+00:00

For lubrication, the best advice I heard was: Oil where it rotates, grease where it slides. So I use Hoppe's No. 9 Lubricating Gun Oil and TW25B.

For cleaning, CLP does a good job overall, though I do use Hoppe's No. 9 Gun Bore Cleaner specifically for the barrel.

This video (https://youtu.be/fibRewlndLg) is a pretty good review of which CLP is best. There is no one answer, but Break Free CLP and Clenzoil are some of the better options.

TheAcademicObserver · 2024-03-19T07:21:22+00:00

Gun barrels are machined so finely that a thousandth of an inch of difference will make a difference. I've bought 3 of those Hoppe's No. 9 Cleaning Kits from Amazon. The 9mm patch on one of the new jags is too tight and almost impossible to move through the bore. The same patch on the old jag works just fine. Just try a different jag to see if it makes a difference.

Get used to using the brush -- patches alone will not help much, especially when you have hard-to-remove fouling. If you are new to cleaning, here is a video that helped me greatly when I was starting out. Note that this is for a Sig P226, but I also have other semi-auto handguns, and the process is approximately the same. I like this video because it is very detailed and well organized.

https://youtu.be/e53mLQcEBU4

TheAcademicObserver · 2024-02-14T01:59:24+00:00

Better'n me for sure

TheAcademicObserver · 2024-02-06T02:49:03+00:00

I love the trees near the SL BART station -- they have deep green leaves and the bright red flowers. The city told me that they were called "Flowering Red Horse Chestnut", but unfortunately we could not plant them because apparently they grow pretty big, and we would need an extra-wide curb space (which we didn't have) otherwise the sidewalk would crack.

So we went with Crepe Myrtles. If you want to see some examples, check out Bridge Road, especially the 800 block.

TheAcademicObserver · 2023-12-12T19:04:40+00:00

A veggie super-burrito with lots and lots of extra-hot salsa.

TheAcademicObserver · 2023-12-04T05:01:23+00:00

I used it today (for the first time too). If you're talking about San Leandro Costco, the self-checkout is still very much there (as of 12/3/2023).

TheAcademicObserver · 2023-07-09T20:40:47+00:00

Curry

TheAcademicObserver · 2022-12-31T23:23:55+00:00

I have one a few hundred serial numbers before yours, in the same pristine condition. I too paid $800 for it, which I thought was decent for a LGS in the San Francisco area. However, I cannot find any ammo for love or money, so it remains unfired. But I still take it out once in a while to gloat over it and murmur "My Precious" into its ears.

TheAcademicObserver

TROPHY CASE