TWA 800 fuel-air mix cause?

[Larry Jacks]

Is that because of color blindness?

Two reasons, first colour blindess is a problem, generally people are either red/green or blue/yellow colour blind, on occasions totally (ie, they see things in black, white and grays.) Yiou can't be Red/Blue of Green/yellow colour blind.


I took my 3rd class flight physical a couple weeks ago. Even as a private pilot, I had to be able to read all of the color-blind test cards. Commercial pilots require a much more rigorous 1st class flight physcial twice a year. There are some waiver conditions for color blindnesses but that's only if the pilot can demonstrate the ability to see red and green.

[Sigma_Orionis]

I've been trying to finish The Three Musketeers since the late 1970s. I've come to the conclusion that Alexandre Dumas is fundamentally unreadable.

if you think Dumas is unreadable, try Ernesto Sabato, THAT's unreadable

[SpitfireIX]

If I was a flight crewperson, I'd probably wear Depends during the flight. This is what I suspect they do.

Actually, military pilots use an item known as a "piddle pack" on long flights. See here.

However, "piddle packs" have some drawbacks for certain pilots (if you're curious, you can follow the next link), and the author of this article suggests Depends as one alternative for those pilots.

It's either that or wet yourself, which would not be recommended in a cockpit full of electronics.

As Alan Shepard could have attested.

[SpitfireIX]

if you think Dumas is unreadable, try Ernesto Sabato, THAT's unreadable

I vote for William Faulkner and his 600-word sentences.

[vonmazur]

James Joyce wins the prize from me, for unreadability and obscurantic style..

Dale in Ala

[Gillianren]

I don't read Joyce, because I value what few brain cells Faulkner left me. I wrote a term paper in college about Faulkner's writing style and how I really, really hated it. I quoted a line from Absalom, Absalom!--which I never finished--as an example, and the grammar checker on the school computer on which I typed my paper nearly blew up. Among the many, many problems it had was this--"Long sentence."

[captain swoop]

Try reading Tristam Shandy by Laurence Stern, when they madea movie of it recently they didnt even try and film the book lol

[Joe Durnavich]

The audio mixing board works because it is the same basic pattern repeated over and over. The classic engine display follows the same principles. There are other means of addressing the brain's capacity to notice what is the same and what is different.

As a software developer, what I find interesting about your discussion of mixing board as an interface is not only how satisfying it sounds when you consider it in the abstract like this, but also how it breaks down when have to apply your abstraction into the working environment: As you pointed out earlier, in practice, the channels don't all measure the same qualitiative value, nor are the channels all calibrated the same (different microphone sensitivities, placements, etc.).

We suffer this problem something fierce with our application. The central component of our software is the dispatch system. Like good analysts we abstracted the process of dispatching down to a software process of adding the order, assigning drivers, trucks, routes, delivery, and off to billing. The abstracted process worked great here in our office. Out in the field, however, you find that a dispatch office is shear chaos. The phones constantly ring, drivers walk up to the dispacth office, etc. The dispatcher couldn't be stuck in one "mode", but needed to flip back and forth at will among applications to adapt to the changing nature of the work environment. Contrary to Nefastor's complaints, we don't develop graphical interfaces just because we have the power to do so. All those little buttons are not just eye candy; they are an acknowledgement that the dispatcher works in a dynamic environment and that our software has to keep him in contact with and in control of that changing environment.

In practice, it seems me (as a laymen on this subject) that a big mixing console should work out well in the actual workplace. The sliders on all the channels are immediately accessible. They correspond well to the shape of the hand. You can grab a single slider to adjust the bass drum volue, or you might be able to put his hand on five sliders and adjust the level of the whole drum kit. You can control the drum kit with this right hand and the guitars with your left. By adjusting both sets of controls simultaneously, you can "zero in" the mix to get the best sounding balance between the drums and the guitars. We humans are sometimes like the Apollo guidance system in that we constantly maneuver or manipulate until we make something just so.

Selected groups of channels can be mixed down so that they can be controlled by a single slider of their own. When the time comes to concentrate on general balance, you can adjust the vocal and the instrument levels with just two controls. If the producer tells you, "That balance is good, but I need to hear more cowbell," you can simply slide your chair to the left and bump up the slider assigned to the cowbell. If he instructs you to, "Smother Britney's vocal in effects," the controls are accessible just above the sliders. If you are working for George Lucas, an automated board will be a godsend when while working a sequence for reel 4, he wants to jump back to work on a sequence in reel 1.

Larry brought up the pilots who crashed because they got distracted by the landing gear display. Perhaps the re-configurability of the glass cockpit may allow the pilots to continue to attend to the emergency without foregoing control of the flight. There is a danger of unpredictability here, I suppose. You can sometimes lose track of windows that have become hidden. You don't want the pilot wondering, "Now, where did my altitude display go?"

Varying the value or saturation to indicate a continuum is much more effective than varying the hue. An oceanographic chart where water depth is encoded as progressively deeper shades of blue is eminently descriptive.

Sometimes I see charts in, magazines such as National Geographic that vary a single color to show, say, per capita income per region. You can easily see how income varies across regions, how it increases towards metroplitan centers, etc. But when I want to see how much money people in Utah make on average, I often have a hard time matching the shade of yellow to the right color square in the legend. In this context, spreading the values across hues would be better. One advantage of a computer interface is that you can change the display to adapt to the changing requirements.

[mugaliens]

If I was a flight crewperson, I'd probably wear Depends during the flight. This is what I suspect they do.

Actually, military pilots use an item known as a "piddle pack" on long flights. See here.

However, "piddle packs" have some drawbacks for certain pilots (if you're curious, you can follow the next link), and the author of this article suggests Depends as one alternative for those pilots.

It's either that or wet yourself, which would not be recommended in a cockpit full of electronics.

As Alan Shepard could have attested.

Generally, the electronics are to the front and side, whereas below resides a forward baggage compartment, the nosewheel assembly, and between that and you, just decking and control runs.

However, Shepard was zero-G, so he had other issues, such as worrying about suffocating, in addition to whatever damage it might do to the suit itself (which it did).

[mugaliens]

[B]The audio mixing board works.

You're quite right - all levels of management essentially work by abstracting key elements of essential information from the lower levels, re-organizing those key elements, and disseminating them in an even more abstracted level for the upper levels.

Thus, while the mail room is concerned about what piece of paper gets delivered to what office, the head of the mail room is concerned about how many pieces of paper were delivered, and the delivery accuracy (ratio of initial delivers to re-delivers), while the corporation's Chief Information Officer is concerned about the cost of the various methods of communication (paper, e-mail, phone) with respect to the bottom line of the company, as well as how all information, including accounting (past), finance (future), and others are being managed so as to best support the company's short and long-term goals while maximizing the benefit/cost ratio in the process.

[PhantomWolf]

However, Shepard was zero-G

Actually he was in the launch-pad at the time of the.... um... incident.

[JayUtah]

Sometimes I see charts in, magazines such as National Geographic that vary a single color to show, say, per capita income per region. You can easily see how income varies across regions, how it increases towards metroplitan centers, etc. But when I want to see how much money people in Utah make on average, I often have a hard time matching the shade of yellow to the right color square in the legend.

That's because those charts are intented to show the aggregate behavior of the underlying variable, not its specific behavior. The charge is supposed to show you broad variations and to correlate that, if applicable, with the extent of the domain in which the variable is illustrated.

And the inexactness with which specific data are extracted is a well-known shortcoming of the value-scaled map. So your experience is by no means individual.

Oddly enough, replacing it with a purely hue-encoded map increases readability only slightly. In those maps where distinct regions are represented by solid color patches, the perception of hue also changes in context. Surround a tan square by 10% gray and the square appears a vibrant yellow-orange. Surround that same tan square by slate blue and it takes on an olive-drab appearance. Only where you are able to provide enough distinct hues that contextual shifting does not mar your ability to refer to the legend can you profitably use hue encoding. And you lose any trend analysis, since hues occur in no intuitive order.

Typically you rescue a value-scaled map from ambiguity by providing contour lines with value labels faintly drawn in a similar color between the patches.

[mugaliens]

However, Shepard was zero-G

Actually he was in the launch-pad at the time of the.... um... incident.

While true, said fluid had nowhere to go, so there was a brief discussion of what might happen when zero-G was reached, hence my comment (namely, that one of the principle considerations was, "what's going to happen when you reach orbit?").

[PhantomWolf]

namely, that one of the principle considerations was, "what's going to happen when you reach orbit?"

Well minor nitpick in that Shepard didn't reach orbit, his flight was sub-orbital, but never the less.....

(Well he did reach Orbit with Apollo 14, but one would have hoped he would have changed by then. He had been scheduled to fly the first [and last] Mercury Advanced mission, but it was scrapped in favour of the Gemini Project which of cause he didn't fly in due to his ear troubles.)