Convoy escorts - SPOILER for SNIPPET 8 of HFQ

Randomiser wrote:

Runsforcelery wrote: Of course, one reason I've been able to devote as much time as I have to it over the weekend is that the hard drive on my desktop computer crashed at about 4 a.m. on Thursday morning. I'm supposed to have it back sometime tomorrow

Ouch! 4 or 5 days downtime from a disk crash.

Nobody likes a smartass, but can I diffidently suggest you might benefit from getting at least mirrored disks in a network attached storage box to keep your stuff on? I'm not up on US prices but would guess 2 or 3 hundred dollars would do it. That plus a copy of your voice recognition software for one of your other computers would keep you going almost seamlessly next time a disk crashes. (I'm going off to think about how to back up my own hard disk right now )

I had all the relevant files on cloud storage, so I didn't lose the data or any of the projects on which I was working. The problem is that (as you noted) because of the damage to my wrist I use Dragon Naturally Speaking when I write, and I hadn't backed up the voice files with all of the specialized vocabulary in over a month. That equates to all of the new names, dialect, specialized terms, etc., from a manuscript which was already over 165,000 words. My super bad.

That meant that I could work on my backup (although it's a lot slower than my desktop and really doesn't like files of over 4,000-5,000 words using Dragon, especially with tech bible files simultaneously open for reference ), but without the current voice files, I couldn't work on the current project which "freed up" time for other uses. (Well, I really could have, but it would have been extremely slow and much less productive than on my desktop, given the need to re-enter all of the lost vocabulary info into the laptop profiles.)

My SOP is to back up the voice files after each session, but I was working 14 hour days trying to finish the book before Honorcon and it slipped my mind somehow. Besides, to be perfectly honest, my voice had reached the point where fatigue had so roughened it that the software was having an awful time understanding me anyway, not to mention programming it with cracked pronunciations which don't help future recognition problems. So, everything taken together, it just made sense for me to take a break and "play" with Dilandu.

Besides, I really enjoyed it!

In the meantime, I'm taking the opportunity for a major hardware update (since I didn't have a whole heck of a lot of choice ) and I'll be going to a pair of completely separate towers, plus mirrored drives in each, and a new, heavy-duty laptop with bunches more memory, RAM, and speed. "Take that, you silly cyber k-night!"

Hi RFC,

I'm glad you played with Dilandu. It was a real learning experience for those of us a bit less informed.

Thanks.
Don

Highjohn wrote:Question for those of a historical bent. What were the three world wars. WWI and WWII are obvious but I've never know what the other one was though I've heard mention of it before. The closest I can come is either the Franco-Prussian war, but that only involved Germany(pre-Germany) and France, or the cold war, but that doesn't seem right as a full scale conflict never erupted.

If you're asking about the title of Freeman's book he's counting the Cold War as the 3rd.

He tracks the development of network (or picture) centric warfare starting with manual plotting of ships based on cables, radio, wireless intercept, etc from even before WW-I. Then on through the radar integrated plotting for the Battle of Britain and other radar driven WW-II strategic or tactical visualization and direction; not to mentioned the strategic and tactical u-boat tracking from HF-DF, code breaking, and observation. Then into the digital data link systems that eventually proliferated during the Cold War.

On the subject of data saving...1 simple solution, use an IBM mini-mainframe as a server. At one installation, I went through 3 box upgrades and innumerable storage additions over 12 years and never lost a byte! I did use mirrored disk, however.

runsforcelery wrote:..snip..
My SOP is to back up the voice files after each session, but I was working 14 hour days trying to finish the book before Honorcon and it slipped my mind somehow. Besides, to be perfectly honest, my voice had reached the point where fatigue had so roughened it that the software was having an awful time understanding me anyway, not to mention programming it with cracked pronunciations which don't help future recognition problems. So, everything taken together, it just made sense for me to take a break and "play" with Dilandu.

Besides, I really enjoyed it!

In the meantime, I'm taking the opportunity for a major hardware update (since I didn't have a whole heck of a lot of choice ) and I'll be going to a pair of completely separate towers, plus mirrored drives in each, and a new, heavy-duty laptop with bunches more memory, RAM, and speed. "Take that, you silly cyber k-night!"

It was interesting reading your discussion with Dilandu, for some reason it reminded me of a Wimbledon tennis match from 1980; the famous match between Björn Borg and John McEnroe. Go figure...

Personally I use BT Sync on all my computers, I just point it to the folders I want to have backups on, then it automatically replicates all the files on the fly to all my other computers, which also means it doesn't matter which computer I work on.

I do recommend that people use some automatic backup/sync software for important files since the investment in time to set it up is minuscule compared to the time it takes to try to restore a crashed disk and lost data.

And now we have strayed far from the discussion of convoys and snippet 8...

Actually one of the most important aspects of this discussion is will it affect our next snippet?

"Junkie" said the pot to the kettle.

Joat42 wrote:I do recommend that people use some automatic backup/sync software for important files since the investment in time to set it up is minuscule compared to the time it takes to try to restore a crashed disk and lost data.

Just remember that the statistical minimum for a good backup is 3 independent copies, which means *power supplies* as well as storage devices. So USB stick, external drive, cloud (all cloud together counts as 1 because you're really depending on your network connection) and you've got a backup. Just an external drive, and you don't.

Which, arguably, means the Charisian Empire's nascent industrial revolution isn't properly backed up until there's an equivalent of the Delthak Works on Chisholm and in Siddarmark.

Graydon wrote:Which, arguably, means the Charisian Empire's nascent industrial revolution isn't properly backed up until there's an equivalent of the Delthak Works on Chisholm and in Siddarmark.

It would be clearly an enormous stress on the Charisian tools and machinery production capabilites.

Hovewer, it would be effective to create at least some industrial capabilites in Charisian dominions, colonies and allies (the problem with later, is that the ally may someday turn into the concurrent). Actually, one of my objections agains iron-hulled ships (like KH's) was that it would be nearly impossbile to repair them anywhere but in the Charis itself.

Dilandu wrote:Actually, one of my objections agains iron-hulled ships (like KH's) was that it would be nearly impossbile to repair them anywhere but in the Charis itself.

This is true, but it's a bit like the coaling stations; if they were fighting another equivalent navy, you'd need lots, and distribution of facilities, and depth of trained crews, and so on.

The ICN isn't fighting an equivalent navy; they can totally expect to get away with loading up a couple ships with spares and artificers and a small flotilla with coal and sending it along behind. The most likely source of damage to the KH's is a collision within the squadron.

Defeat happens in the other's guy's head, and the Charisians do need to defeat the Church. Part of that is showing up in something the Temple Loyalists simply can't build, and fail to be smote by God for the presumption. So I'd say there's a good strategic purpose to the KH's right there. (Rather like the USN parking battleships in Tokyo Bay at the end of the Great Pacific War. It makes an inescapable point.)

Of course, the KHs might actually be needed at some point; I can't see how the Church could possibly build unreasonably many ships in a way that escapes detection, but I can see a combination of weather, misdirection, and swarm tactics being used to get a significant number of ships somewhere the ICN isn't. There isn't a whole lot of depth to various blockades, and if one of them fails I can see some high-speed steaming from the KH's being the only way to get something in front of it, before, for instance, rebellious Chisholmian nobles receive weapons and reinforcements from the Church.