Image 1 — Practical sliderule use
Image 2 — Practical sliderule use

Practical sliderule use

I'm building a small shed, a frame of wooden beams. All angles are 90 or 45 degrees, which makes things easy.

Calculating the length of beams I used as a sliderule practice. The sliderule won over the calculator!

For an isosceles triangle with 179cm legs, what is the hypotenuse?

Calculator -- SQRT((179^2)*2)

SR -- D1.79/C1, cursor to B2, outcome on D (253)

The sliderule defenately wins with a minimum of moves!

The thickness of the handsaw (2+mm) makes precise reading or rounding irrelevant ;-)

Explanation: the square of 1.79 on D is read on the A-scale. On a sliderule this value is irrelevant, we just need to compute it further. The value on A is multiplied by 2 on B, just a cursor move. The square root of B is back on D.

The drawing in one of the picts is 4cm on paper to 100cm in real. By setting the C or D index to 4 on D or C you'll get a table with all the conversions. As 4 is mid-scale you'll have to use both indexes for small or large numbers.

For those interested: the book is a re-print of a research and catalogue of historical wooden constructions in the Netherlands, mainly regionally way of building farm houses and sheds.

u/2016-679 — 9 days ago

New boots!

After more than 25 years of offroading and the last two years supermoto, my old boots were finished. The orange Gearne let go of the shin guard, the Hebo has a serious crack on one of the ankles. Time for new ones!

I got the Sidi on sale, saving roughly 150 euros! Very comfortable boots!

u/2016-679 — 23 days ago

Sliderule club member? Or just curious?

Internationally there is a declining membership of Sliderule clubs, societies, etc. It seems not only due to aging members. As members of the Dutch Circle for Historical Calculating Instruments [http://www.rekeninstrumenten.nl/\] we ask ourselves in what way people are interested in sliderules and other historical, mechanical devices for calculating, navigating, etc.

In what way are you connected to sliderules and communities?

  • Being a member of a sliderule club
  • Attending open club meetings sometimes live a/o online
  • Following specific sliderule websites, Facebook or Reddit pages, a dedicated forum
  • Just occasional curiosity because you heared about sliderules or found one
  • Like to, but can't find what I'm looking for (and what is what you're looking for)

Thanks for your replies!

reddit.com
u/2016-679 — 2 months ago

East German artillery sliderule -- gauge marks?

On the Reiss artillery sliderule there are two gaugemarks 'M' and 'H'. See http://www.rekeninstrumenten.nl/workshop/AndreasP/index.htm

The same marks are on a similar Russian artillery slide rule. I suspect the marks are just copied on the Reiss, where the Cyrillic 'H' wasn't translated into a Roman 'N'.

The GDR army handbook 'Handbuch für Artilleristen' describes the working of this Reiss sliderule, but doesn't mention the gauge marks.

Is there someone out here that served in the NVA Artillerie and knows about it?

reddit.com
u/2016-679 — 2 months ago

Wadnows goes commandline (broken, what else)

A coworker wants to know the last access dates of files in a directory. Simple question, but not for a W11 environment on the boss box.

Searched for "windows command last date file access" and found two strings that read the 'lastaccesstime' of files. The first only came with very recent and unlikable dates, 'probably because a virus scanner touches the file'. The second one only gives the file names on a directory with many files. On just a few files the accessdate was more plausible, but it needs to state 'Microsoft.PowerShell.Core\FileSystem::' before every path in the output (ehrr, I knew I was using that shell) and discontinued the output per line at the end of the screen so the interesting part of the path is lost.

Utterly useless

Comapred to a mere 'ls -ltu -R' on a UNIX box and the results of 8200 files and directories in the blink of an eye.

A missing command is one thing, but apparently an entire community of 'admins' without a basic tool like 'ls' is just insane. Probably that is why IT departments want to keep Redmondish software -- they don't even fathom what to want from a basic IT-system.

//EOR

reddit.com
u/2016-679 — 2 months ago

De SWOV heeft een erg goede en heldere dieptestudie gedaan naar ongevallen met motorfietsen, de oorzaken, afloop en wat we er ook als motorrijder ZELF aan kunnen doen:

https://swov.nl/nl/publicatie/motorongevallen

Soms is het de weginrichting of een andere verkeersdeelnemer. Maar altijd is het de motard die aan het stuur en het gas zit, met of zonder beschermende kleding en goedzittende helm.

Soms zijn de omstandigheden niet optimaal -- rotweer, oogstseizoen, filedrukte of veel recreatieverkeer met fietsers, keutelende of plotseling remmende ('hé, een konijntje!') automobilisten, overstekende voetgangers. Blijven opletten dus! Je omgeving is iedere keer anders.

Beroerde infrastructuur heb ik 25 jaar geleden al zo opgegeven. Veel 'oplossingen' zijn niet gezond voor motorrijders. We hebben het er mee te doen. Uitkijken dus.

Beheers je rechter hand, trek een goed pak en enkel-hoge schoenen aan, knoop je helm goed vast. En als je deze post leest gedraag je je waarschijnlijk al een beetje -- voorkomt ook wegafsluitingen.

Motorrijden is gewoon LEUK! Ride Safe!

reddit.com
u/2016-679 — 4 months ago