Telstar Logistics

Ridiculously Cool New Map Shows Live Location of San Francisco's Vintage Streetcar Fleet

This is geeky, but for San Franciscans or visiting tourists, it's also way cool. There is a new, live data feed available via San Francisco's NextBus and Market Street Railway that offers a realtime visualization of which vintage streetcars are operating on the F Line, and where exactly they are along the route. 

The map is even animated, so it's basically like having a dashboard for San Francisco's vintage streetcar fleet. In fact, here's a photo of the new map in actual use inside the Telstar Logistics Mission Control facility:

For normal civilians, the new map means if you want to go streetcar-spotting (it happens), you can efficiently collect the whole set. Even better, the map works like a charm on the iPhone. Bookmark!

Harried parents will love it when their precocious children say, "But, but... I want to ride on a GREEN ONE!!"  (Been there.) Railfans will know if they can hop on one of the rare super-bonus streetcars, and where they'll want to be when to make that happen.

Check out the map! (NextBus)

Check out the current in-service fleet! (Market Street Railway)

PHOTOS: Telstar Logistics

SPLASHDOWN! A Special Congratulations for Space X

Telstar Logistics gives hearty pat on the back to the team at Space X for completing their historic commercially launched orbital roundtrip spaceflight yesterday.

Neil Young's 1959 Lincoln Electric Car Catches Fire, Destroys Music Memorabilia Collection

This is sad, on many levels.

Musician Neil Young converted a white 1959 Lincoln Continental into a hybrid electric vehicle. Unfortunately, the car, called Lincvolt, caught fire last week in a California warehouse, and along the way it burned $850,000 worth of Young's rock and roll memorabilia collection.

Initial reports suggest the fire might have been triggered by an error in the vehicle's plug-in charging system. SFGate has the full story.

Images: Lincvolt, Fire photo, AP

Internet Killed the Video Store: A Sing-Along Lament from a Struggling Local Institution

Once upon a time not all that long ago, we lived a few blocks away from Lost Weekend Video, an excellent mom-and-pop video rental shop in San Francisco's Mission District. For many years, it was our preferred movie-rental provider. Then things changed, and we found ourselves visiting Lost Weekend less and less often.

Why? For one, we moved a few blocks farther away, which made the store that much less convenient. But even more, we got a Netflix account, which eliminated the need to go to any video store whatsoever. Yet even as miserable chains like Hollywood Video and Blockbuster shuttered their local stores, Lost Weekend is still open -- even today.

But tomorrow is uncertain.

Telstar Logistics walked by Lost Weekend Video recently, and when we did we saw this clever-but-sad commentary about technological change and creative destruction posted in the store's window, along with a yellowed clipping of this September 30, 2010 article from the Wall Street Journal, entitled "Fade-Out Nears for Video Stores."

As Netflix and cable entered the fray, consumers turned away from video stores and spent more entertainment time online, on sites such as YouTube and early services that streamed movies to computers. Automated DVD-rental kiosks have taken a bite, too.

By 2007, the number of video-rental shops in New York halved from its 1997 level of 1,206, according to census data. In Los Angeles, stores fell to 595 in 2007, down from 1,047 a decade earlier.

In 2010, physical rentals from U.S. video shops are expected to be down 56% to $3.65 billion, from the 2001 peak, according to SNL Kagan. In the wake of this week's bankruptcy filing, Blockbuster is expected to close a big chunk of its roughly 3,000 stores (a few years ago it had more than 5,800). Movie Gallery, the owner of Hollywood Entertainment, liquidated in February.

As video shops, like record stores before them, began to vanish, trips to Blockbuster or the corner rental shop were reserved for "old times' sake" or a novel date night.

Lost Weekend soldiers on, for now, but when we spoke to the store's proprietors, they were candid: Times are tough, they said. As an indication of that, in the window of their shop they posted the lyrics to a sing-along remake of a familiar song about an earlier generation technological change, specially modified to suit today's circumstances:

We've transcribed the lyrics below. Start up the melody to "Video Killed the Radio Star" in your head, then sing-along to this clever new version to honor the memory of your favorite video store, wherever it might have been...

INTERNET KILLED THE VIDEO STORE
(Sung to the tune of "Video Killed the Radio Star," by The Buggles)

I bought a VCR in Nineteen Eighty-Two
I rented "Breakin' 2: Electric Boogaloo"
I didn't have a car or anything to do

They took my favorite films and put them out on tape
I got the Laserdisc of "Planet of the Apes"
Then DVD and Blu-Ray blew them all away

They're obsolete now
I'm wondering how

Internet Killed the Video Store
Internet Killed the Video Store

Now we watch our movies on a telephone
Or a laptop when we're sitting all alone
We click a button pay price and down it loads

We weren't the first one
But we're the last one

Internet Killed the Video Store
Internet Killed the Video Store

Netflix came and broke our heart
On-demand tore it apart
In my mind we lost the store
Be kind rewind forever more

We are your video store
(Repeat and fade out)

**2010 Lost Weekend SF**

IMAGES: Signs, Telstar Logistics. Storefront: 3030vision

 

Jetman Performs One-Man Aerobatic Airshow (Without an Airplane)

Yves Rossy is a 51 year-old Swiss pilot who has developed a technology that allows him to strap a pair of carbon-fiber wings on his back and fly through the air powered by four small jet engines. Cleverly, he has branded himself "Jetman." Quite possibly, he is completely insane.

Fortunately, he's also technically adept and more than a little lucky. Rossy has been flying successfully with his strap-on wings since 2006, completing such feats as crossing the English Channel and flying in formation with conventional prop-driven aircraft:

Last week, Jetman notched a new first by completing two aerial loops while wearing his tiny wings 7800' above Lake Geneva. From his website:

Yves Rossy, a.k.a. Jetman, successfully realized today at 10:03 am (Swiss time) his first looping in front of a hot-air balloon piloted by Brian Jones above Bercher.

The Swiss Yves Rossy took off from Bercher at 9:45 am (Swiss time) this morning on board of the hot-air balloon “Esprit Breitling Orbiter” , piloted by Brian Jones, to reach an altitude of 2.400 meters in 18 minutes. His wing on his back, the 4 jet-engines turned on, he jumped out of the balloon’s basket. He flew a few minutes to stabilize his wing and find the optimal angle to begin two loopings. Jetman executed a rotation in front of the balloon. Then, he deployed his parachute to land in Denezy (VD).

This flight has been achieved with Yves Rossy’s new wing, smaller (2 meters instead of 2.5 meters) and without unfoldable parts. This new prototype, designed by Yves and the RUAG Company, possesses a better aerodynamic profile and more stability. Two years after crossing the Channel, these technological evolutions allowed Jetman to perform his first acrobatics in the air.

Aviation Week pulled together a nice video about the Jetman's feat, which you can watch below. Behold, marvel, and pity the Jetman's life insurance provider:

Images: Jetman

Man Builds Full-Size Boeing 737 Cockpit Simulator in Las Vegas Living Room

The mysterious thing about the stucco suburban subdivisions that dot the landscape of the American West is that you never really know what might be going on within those homogenous exterior walls. From hydroponic marijuana farms to the rehearsal room of our next Mozart, the outsides of these ticky-tacky structures betray precious little about the wonders that might lie indoors.

In one such home in Las Vegas, for example, a gentleman built a full-scale Boeing 737 flight simulator in his living room. It's insanely detailed and 100 percent functional -- including full-motion graphics via a 24' curved projection screen, authentic audio effects, a working passenger-address system, live weather and airport feeds, and so much more...

The 737 sim is exacty like the real thing, but the residential setup offers some unique advantages; During long flights, for example, there's a heated pool you can use while the plane jets to your destination via autopilot:

The builder explains how he did it all in the video below. Watch, enjoy, and think about this next time you pass through Suburbanville USA:

Want to see how it looks when you put all the pieces together for a wintry flight from Buffalo, New York to Reagan National in Washington DC? Just stow your tray table, and leave the flying to your very capable sim-pilot:

Neither Helicopter Nor Airplane, Hybrid Eurocopter X3 Prototype Unveiled

Eurocopter publicly unveiled its mutant X3 prototype yesterday. A cross between a helicopter and an airplane -- but with none of the complexity of a tiltrotor like the V-22 Osprey -- the X3 is designed to combine the vertical capabilities of a chopper with the speed advantages of a fixed-wing prop plane. If moved to production, the X3 might compete against Sikorsky's no-less-bizarre X2, which unofficially set a new helicopter speed record earlier this month when it was clocked at 290 mph in level flight.

Black Horison summarizes the X3's highlights:

The aircraft was shown to reporters for the first time during a ceremony at Istres airbase in the south of France, where the X3 - short for High-speed, long-range Hybrid Helicopter -- has been undergoing testing since the beginning of September.

Clearly recycled from the fuselage of an EC155, the demonstrator is a compound design equipped with two turboshaft engines powering a five-bladed main rotor and two propellers on stub wings. At the rear, the fenestron has been removed and replaced with a standard tail plane and twin-vertical stabilisers fitted with rudders.

Eurocopter says this configuration allows it to offer the speed of a turboprop-powered aircraft as well as the capabilities of a helicopter. The X3 flew for the first time on 6 September from Istres AB -- the flight test base of the French armed forces -- 24km southwest of the Eurocopter factory at Marignane.

X3 flight test video, narrated by gentlemen with very satisfying German accents, follows:

Image: Eurocopter

Meet the World's Largest Remote Control Vehicle (Caution, It's Armed!)

The USS Paul F. Foster (DD-964), shown above, was the second ship built in the Spruance-class of US Navy destroyers. Launched in 1974, Foster served during thirteen deployments during her active-duty career, until the ship was decommissioned in 2003. Today, it's the last surviving ship of its class.

Decommissioning was not the end of the line for Foster, however. In 2004 the ship was designated to become the Navy's Self Defense Test Ship (SDTS) -- a role that involves serving as a platform for exercises to test the Navy's shipboard weapons systems, including rockets, missiles, guns, radars, and thermal imaging systems.

Here's how the ex-Foster STDS looks in its current role:

Our friends at gCaptain explain how the ex-Foster evolved in the process:

Since her decommissioning in 2003, her maneuvering and propulsion controls have been replaced by computerized systems that allow her to be remotely controlled.  Her new role as a Self Defense Test Ship requires that she be unmanned, as it involves live-fire exercises at a barge towed 150-feet astern.  At 563 feet in length and 8,000 tons, she may very well be the world’s largest remote control vehicle. (Emphasis added)

That last bit caught our attention.

A former Navy destroyer, converted into a robotic test ship intended to assess the effectiveness of armamament and defensive systems?

The image conjurs up memories of "The Ultimate Computer," a dark episode of the original Star Trek series in whch the Enterprise is turned over to tactical computer called the "M5 Multitronic System" that can operate the ship without human intervention. All well and good, until M5 goes on a murderous rampage after confusing wargames with actual live combat. (Watch a video of that scene here.)

Reassuringly, the Foster has not been equipped with phasers.

Instead, the Navy explains:

Paul F. Foster, in becoming the Navy’s new Self Defense Test Ship (SDTS), will play a significant role in the Navy’s future. It becomes part of a program that has proven its efficiency by providing the most realistic combat scenarios for test events, while leaving ships and their Sailors available to the fleet to perform their normal duties. The remote-controlled ship provides a flexible test platform, free from the safety constraints and in-port problems associated with manned ships, and alleviates the impact that scheduling difficulties have on fleet assets. [...]

During a typical live fire test, various threats are launched at the SDTS, and the installed combat or weapon system being tested responds to that threat in defense of the ship. While this predetermined attack is actually aimed at a decoy barge pulled 150 feet behind the unmanned SDTS, protecting the ship and its assets, it provides an opportunity to assess the responsiveness and success of onboard systems. Navigation is performed from Naval Air Systems Command’s Weapons Division at Point Mugu, Calif., and combat systems are controlled from Port Hueneme Division’s Surface Warfare Engineering Facility.

This still leaves unanswered the question of whether the ex-Foster really is the world's biggest remote controlled vehicle. Let's do the math: At 529 feet long and 8000 tons, the ex-Foster is far bigger and heavier than the world's biggest unmanned aircraft, Israel's Eitan UAV. It's obviously more massive than any pint-sized Army tank or planet-exploring robot. Ex-Foster is even bigger (and of course heavier) than the 250-foot Long Endurance Multi-Intelligence Vehicle (LEMV) drone airship.

Suffice to say, it does indeed seem likely that the former USS Paul F. Foster wins world's biggest RC prize. Just remember to keep your distance.

 

"Death Star" 747 Airborne Laser Shoots Down Missile

Combine a Boeing 747 freighter with the Star Wars Death Star and what do you get? Probably something that looks like the YAL-1 Airborne Laser, a prototype missile defense program under development for the Pentagon. 

In it's first major live-fire test, the Airborne Laser successfully knocked down a Scud-like missile last night over the Point Mugu Naval Air Weapons Station in California. The Los Angeles times explains:

During the experiment, a 747-400F took off from Edwards Air Force Base in the Mojave Desert. The laser, which was affixed to the 747 and powered by chemicals loaded into the aircraft, shot a super-heated, basketball-size beam that traveled 670 million mph to incinerate a missile that was moving 4,000 mph, the Pentagon said.

It took just a few seconds for the beam to create a stress fracture in the missile, triggering it to split into pieces.

Here's a video of the shoot-down. It doesn't look like much, quite frankly, but it's a dramatic view nevertheless:

 

(Hat tip: Ben Smith)

Photos: Boeing

A Google Snowmobile for Olympic Slope Views

Brrrrrrrr. To provide Street Slope View coverage of the Vancouver Winter Olympics, the geeks engineers at Google fitted a panoramic camera rig to a snowmobile so folks at home can experience the Olympic venues and Whistler-Blackcomb Mountain from the safety and comfort of their desk chairs:

This marketing-oriented promotional video with somewhat-grating background music explains how it was done:

To see the end result, pour yourself a cup of hot chocolate and start exploring.

LINK: Google Maps Olympic Slope Views

On Air Freight and Old IBM Hard Disk Drives

This photo has been floating around the Interwebs for a few years, but it's new to us, so perhaps it's new to you as well. Since the image involves both an old Pan American Airways plane and a big piece of hardware, it piqued our curiosity.

As the much-forwarded email we received yesterday asked, "Can you guess what they are loading into the aircraft?"

The answer:

It's a hard disk drive back in 1956... with 5 MB of storage.

In September 1956 IBM launched the 305 RAMAC, the first 'SUPER' computer with a hard disk drive (HDD).  The HDD weighed over a ton and stored a 'whopping' 5 MB of data.

Do you appreciate your 8 GB memory stick now?

Now, Telstar Logistics has been around the Internet for many moons, so at first we were reluctant to take this story at face value. That's why we fired up our Google terminal, and dove into the case. Much to our pleasant surprise, it seems the tale is true. According to Hoax Slayer:

The photograph is genuine, and the information in the message is factual. Another photograph of one of the disk storage units can be viewed on IBM's archives website, along with the following caption:

The IBM 350 Disk Storage Unit was rolled out in 1956 to be used with the IBM 305 RAMAC to provide storage capacities of five, 10, 15 or 20 million characters. It was configured with 50 magnetic disks containing 50,000 sectors, each of which held 100 alphanumeric characters.

Here's a closeup of the 350 Disk Storage Unit:

 

The Wikipedia provides some additional verification...

The IBM 350 was part of the IBM RAMAC 305, the computer that introduced disk storage technology to the world. IBM publicly announced the IBM 350 storage unit as a component of the RAMAC 305 and RAM 650 computer systems on September 13, 1956.RAMAC stood for "Random Access Method of Accounting and Control."

Its design was motivated by the need for real time accounting in business. The 350 stored 5 million 7-bit (6-bits plus 1 odd parity bit) characters (about 4.4 megabyte). It had fifty 24-inch (610 mm) diameter disks with 100 recording surfaces. Each surface had 100 tracks. The disks spun at 1200 RPM. Data transfer rate was 8,800 characters per second. Two independent access arms moved up and down to select a disk and in and out to select a recording track, all under servo control. A third arm was added as an option. Several improved models were added in the 1950s. The IBM RAMAC 305 system with 350 disk storage leased for $3,200 per month. [...]

Currie Munce, research vice president for Hitachi Global Storage Technologies (which has acquired IBM's storage business), stated in a Wall Street Journal interview^[6] that the RAMAC unit weighed over a ton, had to be moved around with forklifts, and was delivered via large cargo airplanes. According to Munce, the storage capacity of the drive could have been increased beyond five megabytes, but IBM's marketing department at that time was against a larger capacity drive, because they didn't know how to sell a product with more storage.

All of which is to say... yes, you really should think of this photo next time you stick a USB flash drive into your pocket!