Richard's Moment

I'm missing which "Richard"... I'll comment for myself.

I've side-stepped everything. I've got on with doing a lot of crewing on sailing yachts out at sea. With working on the water then most jobs being re. marine begged to be capitalised on. Naviagation at sea and seapersonship very much to the fore now.

Nothing come through yet(?) on "fatigue resistant welds" ideas. That's the idea that welds done as they should be could have about the same cyclic-stress fatigue endurance as the steels they are joinning. Pressing various parties in cluding a nearby research group a follow-up citing this ("square wheels")

also didn't elicit any response, surprisingly... (they said they were too busy at that time to consider my idea)

Basically everything is in a "holding pattern" which is why the sailing, to give me a "compass North" for structure.

The "Ukraine war" situation is causing a look at resources here, and as most of the "North Sea oil boom 'Gold Standard'" have retired since the oil price crash of early 2014, I'm wondering whether opportunities might result. Only whimsical thoughts, seeing as I know the managerialist grip has only increased and any money aimed at a goal of increasing real resource production will be tipped into "feasibility studies" and other anything-but getting on with the actual job.

Likewise talk of having some Quality Control is like being a derranged off-their-heads long-haired wild aging social outcast standing on a storm-lashed rock outcrop shouting into the winds a message no-one will hear.

So I'll just get on with a bit of sailing for now... :-)

Rich Smith

Rich Smith

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There's a large difference between doing things open-loop and having feedback for correction. Open-loop encourages following existing rules, often without understanding them. Feedback requires possibly expensive instrumentation to measure performance, the skill to use it which can be hard to acquire, and a mindset which tolerates being proven wrong. That last may be the highest barrier.

Some of the most brilliant and well-educated Ph.Ds I've worked for were the most open to change and the tradesmen were the most defensive of the little they knew. The research Ph.Ds had the instruments to prove or disprove their design concepts.

This is a very useful instrument of that type at an amazingly low price:

The article on collectively writing screenplays I posted also applies to collaboration in a research environment. The difference is that scientists tend to hide their feelings while theatre people express them, for practice, which provides immediate feedback. I attended a seminar on corporate management styles in which the speaker referred to the difficulties of working for Leonard Bernstein.