Greetings from the CIT Cafe and Apprentice Kitchen in Canberra. This is run by students of the Canberra Institute of Technology, with food cooked by the catering students. There is a formal restaurant upstairs open evenings.
Thursday, May 09, 2024
CIT Cafe and Apprentice Kitchen
Greetings from the CIT Cafe and Apprentice Kitchen in Canberra. This is run by students of the Canberra Institute of Technology, with food cooked by the catering students. There is a formal restaurant upstairs open evenings.
Sunday, April 28, 2024
Touchscreen Water Resistant Android Flip Phone
The phone has a big rubber phone keypad, and a minuscule touch screen. To enter text you either use the physical keyboard, or a virtual touch screen keyboard. The problem is that by default the Kika 12-Key Keyboard app, using T9 predictive text is turned on. When I tried to type on the virtual QWERTY keyboard, the predictive text system came up with weird choices, making text entry extremely difficult. Manually selecting Google's Gboard in settings and deselected predictive text helped, but some applications were still doing predictive text. After reading dozens of suggestions on the web as to how to fix this, involving modding the operating system, or installing yet more apps, I simply updated Gboard via the App Store, and the problem vanished.
The next quirk was that I had to set the APN Data Settings manually.
This phone has a tiny screen compared to modern folding phones, but having broken several of those, I am prepared to see how rugged the Cat S22 is. I have suggested Unihertz make something similar, but with a bigger screen, and a physical QWERTY keyboard, and a smaller numeric keypad.
Wednesday, February 21, 2024
Stealthy Optionally Crewed Catamaran for Australian Navy
HMAS Stradbroke Island. Stealthy Optionally Crewed Catamaran for Australian Navy Diagram by Tom Worthington, CC-BY 21 February 2024 |
1. Tumblehome hull: The hull would slope inward above the waterline, and the superstructure would be free of railings, masts, cranes, and other items, to reduce the radar cross-section. All equipment needed on deck would be covered.
2. Vertical Launch Cells: Rows of vertical launch cells would extend down into each of the catamaran hulls.
3. Drone Hangar: A covered hangar forward of the flight deck would accommodate UAVs. Automated systems would launch, recover and service the drones.
4. XLUUV Bay: A travelling gantry with cradle between the hulls would pick up Extra-Large Unmanned Undersea Vehicles (XLUUV), while the ship is underway. The bay would be equipped with ECLIPS robots for automated rearming & refueling, before dropping the XLUUVs back in the water.
5. USV Bay: A bay at the back of the vessel, would allow Uncrewed Surface Vessels (USV) to be launched and recovered. Automated systems would service the USVs.
6. Self Defense Auto-cannons: The four corners of the ship would each have a small caliber auto-cannon similar to the EOS Slinger, for self defence from missiles, drones, and small boats. Each cannon would be equipped with an electro-optical sight, radar, backup power supply, and operator station. This would allow the ship to be defended even if all other power and systems failed.
While the media has made much of the "optionally crewed" feature of the vessels, of more significance is that the ships are highly automated and so only need a small crew, about one quarter of a conventional military vessel, when they are aboard.
ps: John Birmingham's book "Weapons of Choice" featured highly automated ship warfare. One of the ships was an Australia high speed catamaran HMAS Moreton Bay, apparently inspired by the real HMAS Jervis Bay. This was an Incat built high speed catamaran, which transported troops to East Timor. I wrote a review of the book, and as was John's custom, I hoped he would use my name for a sister ship "USS Stradbroke Island", but unfortunately not. ;-)