Grant Hutchison's Blog, page 8

Until / Till

ʌnˈtɪl / tɪl until / till: up to the time of (an event); during the whole time before So I was perusing the pre-operative fasting guidelines for a local hospital the other day (as you do), when I discovered a heartening bit of text: Once in hospital the ward staff will allow you to sip … Continue reading Until / Till →

Brian C. Kalt: The Perfect Crime

Say that you are in the Idaho portion of Yellowstone, and you decide to spice up your vacation by going on a crime spree. You make some moonshine, you poach some wildlife, you strangle some people and steal their picnic baskets. Brian C. Kalt “The Perfect Crime” Georgetown Law Journal (2005) The content of Kalt’s … Continue reading Brian C. Kalt: The Perfect Crime →

Converting Apollo State Vectors To Orbits

OK, another mathematical one. This is the fourth in a series of posts about the orbits followed by the Apollo spacecraft as they travelled to and from the moon—something I suppose is getting a little more topical now that NASA has finally got underway with its planned return to the lunar surface. I started with … Continue reading Converting Apollo State Vectors To Orbits →

Moebius 1/144 Discovery Spacecraft: Part 4

Last time, I reached the point at which I needed to start lighting my Paragrafix cockpit. I wanted to provide a source of illumination at the front of the cockpit, which will probably be invisible from outside but will provide a little front-lighting for the couches and pilot, as if coming from the large panel … Continue reading Moebius 1/144 Discovery Spacecraft: Part 4 →

Pretentious

prɪˈtɛnʃəs pretentious: professing or making claim to great merit or importance, especially when unwarranted among […a]nd amongst. Most such forms ending in -st, such as whilst and amidst, are archaisms in American English. Amongst is no exception: in American English it is pretentious at best. Bryan A. Garner, Garner’s Modern American Usage (2009) I bow … Continue reading Pretentious →

Dave Hutchinson: Cold Water

What can readers expect?If they’re already familiar with the other Fractured Europe books, it’s more of the same kind of stuff. Pocket universes, insanely-complicated intelligence ops, hotel breakfasts, huge conspiracies, Texel sheep, trains. That sort of thing. Dave Hutchinson, talking about Cold Water (2022) I’ve reviewed Dave Hutchinson’s previous novels from the Fractured Europe Sequence … Continue reading Dave Hutchinson: Cold Water →

The Advent Of Atomic Time

This is, to a large extent, a companion piece to my post about leap seconds, in which I described how the irregular rotation of the Earth means that the time as measured by our atomic clocks would fall out of synchrony with the actual movement of the sun in the sky, were it not for … Continue reading The Advent Of Atomic Time →

Moebius 1/144 Discovery Spacecraft: Part 3

Last time, I finished lighting and preliminary painting on the engine compartment of my Discovery spacecraft from the film 2001: A Space Odyssey. This time, I’m working on the cockpit. I’m using the Paragrafix photoetch set for this, combined with the HDA Modelworx decal set. There are two areas to light—a rear corridor and the … Continue reading Moebius 1/144 Discovery Spacecraft: Part 3 →

Angel

ˈeɪndʒəl angel: One of an order of spiritual beings superior to man in power and intelligence, who, according to the Jewish, Christian, Islamic, and other theologies, are the attendants and messengers of the Deity And there were in the same country shepherds abiding in the field, keeping watch over their flock by night.And, lo, the … Continue reading Angel →

Ralph Bagnold: Two Memoirs

In the following pages I shall try to trace the unpremeditated steps by which a few army officers, with no initial thirst for exploration, and no desire to do anything unusual except to see the country they were in came gradually to break away from this conventional city outlook towards things outside; and how, beginning … Continue reading Ralph Bagnold: Two Memoirs →