Z-Car

Bell X-2 StarBuster Replica

By Warbird September 3, 2010 Bell, Planes, X-2 No Comments

Replica Bell X-2 at Planes of Fame

In the back lot of the Planes of Fame Museum located in Chino, CA is a full-size replica of the Bell X-2 StarBuster research aircraft (s/n 46-674). The replica was built and used as a prop in the 1989 pilot episode of the NBC TV series “Quantum Leap”. It was also used in several other movies, including “Space Cowboys”.

Constructed out of fiberglass and foam in less than 10 days, it now sits, wingless, on a wheeled dolly poking its nose between two trees. Even after sitting outside for many years, it is still in remarkably good condition.

The X-2 was a very significant test vehicle, and was instrumental in advancing high-speed aerodynamic research. On 27 September 1956, Capt. Milburn G. “Mel” Apt, flying the real X-2, became the first man to fly faster than three times the speed of sound (Mach 3.196). Unfortunately, he lost control of the aircraft when returning to Edwards and died in the escape capsule. The wreckage was recovered, and although many of the engineers wished to rebuild it, it was ultimately buried in an unmarked grave somewhere on Edwards Air Force Base.

For more information on the real Bell X-2, visit A SHADOW OVER THE HORIZON, THE BELL X-2 by Robert W. Kempel with Richard E. Day

Bell X-2 with no wings

MySQL – Innodb Slow Shutdown – Dirty Buffer Pages

By Prodromus September 3, 2010 Innodb, MySQL, Optimization No Comments

girl working on computer

If you have a MySQL server that reserves a large amount of memory for the Innodb buffer pool, you may have seen that it can often take a very long time to shutdown.  During the shutdown process, the server will not be able to serve any requests.  From my experience, I have seen that it can take 1-5 minutes per GB of buffer to perform a shutdown.  So, for example, if you have a server with 50G of memory allocated to the Innodb Buffer Pool, and 50% of the buffer is dirty (unwritten to disk), it can take anywhere from 25-125 minutes to shutdown.  Multiple hour shutdowns on large, busy Innodb MySQL servers is not unheard of.

Luckily, there is a fairly easy way to speed up shutdown while still allowing the server to stay up and handle requests.  The secret is to lower the maximum percentage of dirty pages allowed.  This is controlled by the global variable innodb_max_dirty_pages_pct. On my servers I usually have this set at 75%. This variable can be changed at run-time, which allows us to modify this variable to speed up system shutdown.

First, enter the command :

set global innodb_max_dirty_pages_pct=0;

You can then enter the following to verify the new value:

show global variables where variable_name rlike ‘dirty’;

To monitor the number of dirty pages that have not been written to disk, enter the following:

show global status where variable_name rlike ‘dirty’;

You will see this number begin to drop, although it is unlikely to ever reach 0, once it drops to a low level and reaches a plateau, you can then shutdown the server. You will find that the server will shutdown very quickly, allowing you to minimize downtime.

James Lee – Savetheplanetprotest.com – Rant (Copy) – List of Demands

By Jimmy September 1, 2010 Politics 1 Comment

c1main_james_lee_2008_flickr

The Discovery Channel MUST broadcast to the world their commitment to save the planet and to do the following IMMEDIATELY:

1. The Discovery Channel and it’s affiliate channels MUST have daily television programs at prime time slots based on Daniel Quinn’s “My Ishmael” pages 207-212 where solutions to save the planet would be done in the same way as the Industrial Revolution was done, by people building on each other’s inventive ideas. Focus must be given on how people can live WITHOUT giving birth to more filthy human children since those new additions continue pollution and are pollution. A game show format contest would be in order. Perhaps also forums of leading scientists who understand and agree with the Malthus-Darwin science and the problem of human overpopulation. Do both. Do all until something WORKS and the natural world starts improving and human civilization building STOPS and is reversed! MAKE IT INTERESTING SO PEOPLE WATCH AND APPLY SOLUTIONS!!!!

2. All programs on Discovery Health-TLC must stop encouraging the birth of any more parasitic human infants and the false heroics behind those actions. In those programs’ places, programs encouraging human sterilization and infertility must be pushed. All former pro-birth programs must now push in the direction of stopping human birth, not encouraging it.

3. All programs promoting War and the technology behind those must cease. There is no sense in advertising weapons of mass-destruction anymore. Instead, talk about ways to disassemble civilization and concentrate the message in finding SOLUTIONS to solving global military mechanized conflict. Again, solutions solutions instead of just repeating the same old wars with newer weapons. Also, keep out the fraudulent peace movements. They are liars and fakes and had no real intention of ending the wars. ALL OF THEM ARE FAKE! On one hand, they claim they want the wars to end, on the other, they are demanding the human population increase. World War II had 2 Billion humans and after that war, the people decided that tripling the population would assure peace. WTF??? STUPIDITY! MORE HUMANS EQUALS MORE WAR!

4. Civilization must be exposed for the filth it is. That, and all its disgusting religious-cultural roots and greed. Broadcast this message until the pollution in the planet is reversed and the human population goes down! This is your obligation. If you think it isn’t, then get hell off the planet! Breathe Oil! It is the moral obligation of everyone living otherwise what good are they??

5. Immigration: Programs must be developed to find solutions to stopping ALL immigration pollution and the anchor baby filth that follows that. Find solutions to stopping it. Call for people in the world to develop solutions to stop it completely and permanently. Find solutions FOR these countries so they stop sending their breeding populations to the US and the world to seek jobs and therefore breed more unwanted pollution babies. FIND SOLUTIONS FOR THEM TO STOP THEIR HUMAN GROWTH AND THE EXPORTATION OF THAT DISGUSTING FILTH! (The first world is feeding the population growth of the Third World and those human families are going to where the food is! They must stop procreating new humans looking for nonexistant jobs!)

6. Find solutions for Global Warming, Automotive pollution, International Trade, factory pollution, and the whole blasted human economy. Find ways so that people don’t build more housing pollution which destroys the environment to make way for more human filth! Find solutions so that people stop breeding as well as stopping using Oil in order to REVERSE Global warming and the destruction of the planet!

7. Develop shows that mention the Malthusian sciences about how food production leads to the overpopulation of the Human race. Talk about Evolution. Talk about Malthus and Darwin until it sinks into the stupid people’s brains until they get it!!

8. Saving the Planet means saving what’s left of the non-human Wildlife by decreasing the Human population. That means stopping the human race from breeding any more disgusting human babies! You’re the media, you can reach enough people. It’s your resposibility because you reach so many minds!!!

9. Develop shows that will correct and dismantle the dangerous US world economy. Find solutions for their disasterous Ponzi-Casino economy before they take the world to another nuclear war.

10. Stop all shows glorifying human birthing on all your channels and on TLC. Stop Future Weapons shows or replace the dialogue condemning the people behind these developments so that the shows become exposes rather than advertisements of Arms sales and development!

11. You’re also going to find solutions for unemployment and housing. All these unemployed people makes me think the US is headed toward more war.

Humans are the most destructive, filthy, pollutive creatures around and are wrecking what’s left of the planet with their false morals and breeding culture.

For every human born, ACRES of wildlife forests must be turned into farmland in order to feed that new addition over the course of 60 to 100 YEARS of that new human’s lifespan! THIS IS AT THE EXPENSE OF THE FOREST CREATURES!!!! All human procreation and farming must cease!

It is the responsiblity of everyone to preserve the planet they live on by not breeding any more children who will continue their filthy practices. Children represent FUTURE catastrophic pollution whereas their parents are current pollution. NO MORE BABIES! Population growth is a real crisis. Even one child born in the US will use 30 to a thousand times more resources than a Third World child. It’s like a couple are having 30 babies even though it’s just one! If the US goes in this direction maybe other countries will too!

Also, war must be halted. Not because it’s morally wrong, but because of the catastrophic environmental damage modern weapons cause to other creatures. FIND SOLUTIONS JUST LIKE THE BOOK SAYS! Humans are supposed to be inventive. INVENT, DAMN YOU!!

The world needs TV shows that DEVELOP solutions to the problems that humans are causing, not stupify the people into destroying the world. Not encouraging them to breed more environmentally harmful humans.

Saving the environment and the remaning species diversity of the planet is now your mindset. Nothing is more important than saving them. The Lions, Tigers, Giraffes, Elephants, Froggies, Turtles, Apes, Raccoons, Beetles, Ants, Sharks, Bears, and, of course, the Squirrels.

The humans? The planet does not need humans.

You MUST KNOW the human population is behind all the pollution and problems in the world, and YET you encourage the exact opposite instead of discouraging human growth and procreation. Surely you MUST ALREADY KNOW this!

I want Discovery Communications to broadcast on their channels to the world their new program lineup and I want proof they are doing so. I want the new shows started by asking the public for inventive solution ideas to save the planet and the remaining wildlife on it.

These are the demands and sayings of Lee.

Picture of James Lee outside Discovery.

MySQL Collate and Case Sensitivity – Flexible Compare

By Prodromus August 31, 2010 MySQL No Comments

computer girl

In a typical MySQL installation, the default character set and collation are latin1 and latin1_swedish_ci.  This means that all string comparisons will be performed in a case insensitive manner.  So, ‘Search String’=’search string’.  This is great for most WHERE expressions, however there are occasions where performing a case-sensitive search is required.  Luckily MySQL provides the collate clause which allows you to override whatever the default collation is for a comparison.   As an example :

select * from mytable where first_name collate latin1_general_cs=’damon’

This will only return rows will the first_name matches damon exactly. Damon will not match.

You can also use latin1_bin which performs an exact binary match.

If you are unsure of a field or strings collation, you can use the COLLATION(str) function to return the collation of the string argument.

The Remains of a Wrecked Datsun 260Z

By Jimmy August 29, 2010 Cars, Datsun, DIY No Comments

This page shows the dismantling of a 260Z. There are a lot of pictures on this page, so it will take a couple minutes to load them all.

 

What remains of the 260Z on jackstands.
Looking in through what used to be the windshield
The interior with some of the left over parts.
It is amazing how little the empty shell weighs whenstripped. I could easily lift the front and rear of thecar.
The L28 engine that we pulled sits in the background.
The roof was the first to go. With Sawzall in hand,Steve chops the top.
I think Steve is starting to like this.
Well, we now have a 260Z roadster. That was quick.
Ever wonder what is protecting your head. Asurprising amount of steel.
Front fenders gone.
Stef was lucky, as his frame rails were slowlyrustling away. Both sides had significant loss of metal.
Again, a fair amount of steel holding the roof up.
Notice how the front frame rails are bent to theright. This was the result of running into the corner ofa median strip. The rusted frame rails did not help much

in this case.
It is kinda hard to see, but this is the damage onthe drivers side frame rail.
The Dodge pickup waiting to be loaded with Z. I fitthe whole car into the pickup, and took it to the localdump where the steel was recycled.
Steve is starting in on the left front. I havealready removed the right side.
Cutaway of the frame rail.
Whoops, there goes the rear end. This is fun!
Not much left now, just the cab.
Of all the pieces that we cut off, this was theheaviest.
Hey, now we can easily fix those rusted floor panels!
Steve sure looks proud, huh? The complete chop jobtook less then two hours. While we hate to see a Z bedestroyed, we sure had a good time doing it. Miller time.