The vintage beauty of Soviet control rooms (2018)
designyoutrust.com
designyoutrust.com
If you like control board designs, probably the most elegant control boards ever built were the ones for the Panama Canal locks.[2] All that chrome and brass! Those towers are water level indicators. The long polished stone slabs represent the two lock lanes. The black diagonals across them represent the lock gates, and those follow the movements of the real gates. The "faucet handles" control the gate valves. The chromed things that look like jukebox stations show the positions of the gate valves.
Everything is mechanically interlocked. Water levels have to match before a gate can be opened. There's an elaborate system of constraints, using mechanical railroad interlocking technology.
That control system was in active use for almost a century. It was only replaced a few years ago, as part of a modernization that included replacing the valve and gate drive systems.
[1] https://images.seattletimes.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/a...
> For some reason, though, the plant’s owner, Northern States Power, never got around to informing the residents of the neighboring Prairie Island Indian Community that something had gone wrong.
Oof. Thank god it turned out ok in the end.
Yeah, max dose at site boundary was 0.1 millirem. Sounds like it was a relatively minor release.
Growing up and watching Homer in his role of safety inspector on the Simpsons only further reinforced that feeling.
Now I’m a computer programmer and I feel like some of the projects I have worked on could make a nuclear reactor feel simple by comparison. I also have had many an occasion where I have felt like Homer Simpson.
So you are faced with a certain amount of complexity. Do you really have any idea just how complicated a nuclear reactor (and associated engineering is)? Let's start off with a simple problem: You need a shit load of concrete in structures like this. At what sort of volumes does concrete curing become dangerous? It's exothermic and there is a danger of fire (yes fire) in a concrete structure that is poured too quickly. This is one small worry in the Civil Engineering bit. Geotechnics - ground stability across a large structure is a whopping set of problems. The sheer size of the thing will move the topsoil, subsoil, strata around. The distribution of water will change too. Now you have the Structural Engineers diving in. Some of the structures involved are huge and involve multiple materials. Nuclear plants are often near the sea for the water cooling benefits but you also get additional corrosion to think about, including concrete cancer and what salts do to steel and other metals. Also you generally get extra weather to worry about.
I have not even scratched the surface of the complexities involved in designing, building and operating a nuclear power plant. Those two engineering disciplines I mentioned alone are at least three years at Uni for a degree and a good 5-10 years time served before you do anything close to critical.
Likely a large amount of complexity in these control setups is the lack of efficient screens for displaying data - compare a modern airliner to a 1960s.
I felt they were comparing themselves to a huge multi disciplined stack of actually Chartered Engineers, let alone all the rest of the technicians and staff of a nuclear power station. I thought a little change of perspective was in order.
Just another small example of the complexity involved, without even involving the nuclear bit - the equations involved when worrying about the forces on a simply supported beam are up to fourth order differential equations. OK there are tables of standard stuff but when the structure gets complicated then it gets ... complicated.
The electrical requirements are staggering and so are the hydraulics. The logistics. Simply feeding the staff on site at all points of a plant's life is a hard problem with multiple sub problems.
I’m perfectly happy to concede that I don’t know anything about operating a nuclear power plant and that my comparison may just be the Dunning Kruger effect speaking.
But if you want to go into all the various engineering disciplines that go into building a nuclear power plant, I think it’s only fair to go into all the disciplines that allow my applications to run. Microprocessors, the Internet, etc. The apps that we interact with daily for communication, shopping, etc. are miracles of collective human engineering every bit on par with nuclear energy.
The architects of a plant would have to interact a lot more with a concrete specialist than you have to with the TCP spec to spin up an Http server. Because our industry demands a packaged product, we are quite good at it.
I do however believe you are wrong. Biased from the perspective of a SE, I'd think a whilst a simple banking app involves more agreed protocols and touch points, it is less complicated than a nuclear reactor.
I wonder, between the two, how many specs and manuals would you have to read to design either.
One thing that I will say is that I think our team’s “velocity” is governed primarily by our ability to process complexity. Basically we are operating at the maximum rate that we are able to take in new information and incorporate it into our product. Sometimes we even go beyond that maximum rate and bad things happen.
Definitely we make it harder on ourselves than necessary. We’ve switched hosting providers 5 times in the history of our app - each time with a non-trivial amount of effort involved. There’s a non-trivial amount of effort involved in making sure that all of our package dependencies, many of which were hastily chosen, are up to date and free of security vulnerabilities. Things like the TCP spec may not get a lot of thought when launching a new webapp, but when you’re dealing with some obscure bug it certainly can be something that requires consideration. We don’t even really read specs - we read stack overflow - because we have an endless backlog of feature requests and the focus is on delivering things ASAP. Maybe we suck at engineering and the complexity is self-imposed, but it’s complexity none-the-less and I’ve worked at enough companies to know we’re not alone here.
And my assumption is that progress in a lot of creative endeavors is likewise limited by humans’ capacity to process complexity.
https://www.sweetwater.com/insync/media/2019/05/060119-insyn...
The ones that stood out most as being good were some Red Hot Chili Peppers songs produced by Rick Rubin. A lot of other 90’s Alternative recordings were dreadful by comparison.
This is a typical setup at an average venue. Note this guy is not running the sound that the audience hears. This is the monitor mixing station. He is mixing the sound that the band hears on stage in thier earpieces. There is a whole other rig in a separate space mixing to the front of house speakers. The total number of audio channels for a typical stage show is staggering.
Dumb question 2: I thought each band member typically gets their own mix emphasizing their instruments so they can adjust better?
Dumb question 3: How many of these knobs would actually be touched over the course of a performance? I'm assuming the overall process is something like:
* Phase 1: Initial default calibration for the specific genre/band
* Phase 2: Fine-tuning during practice/sound-check
* Phase 3: Some additional adjustments during the first song to account for...i dunno last minute changes?
* Phase 4: Changes during every song?? This is the part that I'm curious about.
Headphones probably aren't necessary, as you're usually just making small adjustments at the request of the talent. For a large show, I would imagine everything would be thoroughly pre-planned and tested.
The knobs in the center horizontal stripe of the mixing console are generally "aux sends". Each vertical column is an input channel, and each horizontal row is an aux bus. The knob adjusts how much of each channel gets sent to each aux bus. There are other things that can be tweaked, like toggling whether the aux sends are pre-eq or post-eq, as well as pre-main-fader or post-main-fader. Those little banks of 2 x 4 buttons at the bottom of the sends knobs bank usually control those settings. Each band member will get their own monitor send with the appropriate mix of instruments for each. It's also possible for other types of things to be mixed in, for example a click track, or a producer or director's microphone to give instructions or information to the performers.
I would expect that most of the settings would stay static over the course of a show. The engineer might do some muting/unmuting during instrument changes, or if some performers are using in-ear monitors, and there may be some scripted adjustments if some songs are wildly different in terms of instrumentation or volume. It's also good just to have someone available to correct things quickly if there's a problem. The monitor mix console is generally pretty close to the stage, so they could, for example, hear if there was some feedback occurring and quickly drop or mute a channel to kill it.
You can't really mix monitors on a big analogue desk very easily, they're not set up for the number of output channels (sends) you need. Usually every main performer of a band has their own separate stereo mix.
During the show, for FOH it's usually just riding faders (adjusting volume of each channel) and making little effect/EQ changes if something sounds off, most of that stuff should be pretty well set up beforehand.
Finally and most nit-picky, the parametric eq on this board is almost certainly more than 3 bands. Likely something in the 5/7 band range, and with assignable mids.
Edit: note how a large number of the pairs of pots in the middle of the channel strip have the same color as the faders in the center of the board; those will be (stereo) submix assignment and overall level, respectively.
In my opinion, it's one of the funniest, most memorable old school SNL episodes of all time, including Rodney Dangerfield, Bill Murray, Dan Ackroyd, Richard Benjamin, Tom Davis, Al Franken, Laraine Newman, Garrett Morris, Jane Curtin, and Gilda Radner.
https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=533858710873763
I'm sorry for the Facebook link, but for whatever reason it's impossible to find on youtube, and not included in the SNL archives. My theory is the Pepsi company got pissed off about it, and threatens anyone who publishes it with legal action.
Script and screen snapshots:
https://tmi.papost.org/the-pepsi-syndrome-saturday-night-liv...
>Dr. Edna Casey: It means, Mrs. Carter, your husband, President Carter, has become [ camera zooms in on Dr. Edna Casey ] The Amazing Colossal President.
>Rosalynn Carter: Well how big is he?
>Dr. Edna Casey: Well Mrs. Carter, it’s difficult to comprehend just how big he is but to give you some idea, we’ve asked comedian Rodney Dangerfield to come along today to help explain it to you. Rodney?
With and ad blocker, the new url is better formatted but man, the number of ads if you disable the ad blocker...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i6LAVk1sHW8
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zzlzx8D4hYw
It's the uncanny-valley of media.
At some point, it becomes cost efficient to replace the complete system, or at least large components, with modern equivalents.
I guess if we include the symbols, in Europe the swastika is gonna be taboo for my lifetime at least given that it is effectively THE symbol of genocidal hatred. Hammer and sickle is a little more complex - it is connected to a broader international workers movement so I think it’s less tainted in many places.
It doesn't help that Nazism was almost single-mindedly focussed on white supremacy and domination, it was their entire thing during their existence. The Soviet Union had its own atrocities and repression, but these weren't the single guiding principle behind the project overall. That's no comfort for the victims of the USSR (I don't think the Hammer & Sickle will be popular in Czech Republic, for example) but there it is.
It also depends what you mean by "kitsch" - if we broaden it a bit to include interest in engineering like guns, tanks and planes then this is not taboo (see Ian McCollum aka "Forgotten Weapons" on YouTube who has covered a few Nazi weapons over the years).
- you’re implying that communism === Soviet Union
- you are implying that the ideology behind communism was centred on the destruction of an ethnic group (the Ukrainians)
"Anyone who doesn't regret the passing of the Soviet Union has no heart. Anyone who wants it restored has no brains." Vladimir Putin
A reason he may have opted for the previous model.
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https://culturemachine.net/vol-16-drone-cultures/the-control...
Have to study Carl Schmitt again about that unholy communion of sentimentality and inhumanness in the idea of the Reich. Putin is fond of it.
If I'm fully honest with myself, this is the main reason I'm spending way too much money on modular synthesizers
"History Doesn't Repeat Itself, but It Often Rhymes" – Mark Twain.
“Hegel remarks somewhere that all great, world-historical facts and personages occur, as it were, twice. He has forgotten to add: the first time as tragedy, the second as farce.”
Karl Marx, The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte
It maybe the other way round this time.
Things like this, or its space program. Instead, it's all the bad parts (territorial conquest) with none of the good.
What about it? Or did you mean Afghanistan?
Considering that I described territorial conquest as "bad", I think we can safely say I did not mean Afghanistan.
On the other hand, I think it’s healthy to take a step back and remember that even in dark times and people that you may hate, there are positive qualities. And even things like this that can be strangely beautiful.
I guess we don't all have the same sort of humanitarian feelings. Or a lot of us can quite easily put them aside. Which is fair enough, it is stressful to think about that after all.
In the middle of all that is going on in bad taste right now (eg. Condoleeza Rice doing an overnight 180 and deciding wars of aggression are bad), this seems to hardly even register.
It looked exactly like this.
Things that, for all the oppression, were accepted and obvious part of USSR - there was Ukrainian SSR, not Ukraine as region of Greater Russia. Even with effective forcing of Russian language for all technical uses, even Stalin at his worst dealt with USSR as union of many nations, even if some artificially created from displaced people (in order to create single-nation autonomous regions).
Tactile is not really relevant in most control rooms, where you want people to look at what they are doing anyway.
Also, screen-based interfaces have more advantages, such as the ability to show documentation that is 1 hover/click away. And showing warnings with precise information, right where you are looking (rather than have a red light somewhere turning on, and you have to find it).