Wednesday, August 31, 2011

Windows does not have unixtime. :(

I like my Mac. I like unixtime. It helps keep me organized, but I was surprised to find that Windows does not have a similar feature from the shell. I did find that I could generate unix-like time, which made me happy. :)

In a batch file, can do substrings that can be used to generate new date information.
My batch file sui.sh was:
echo %date% %time%
echo %date:~-4,4%%date:~-10,2%%date:~-7,2%.%time:~0,2%%time:~3,2%%time:~6,2%%time:~9,2%

The output produced:
Tue 08/30/2011 11:28:31.09
20110830.11283109

Happy, happy sui. :)

Friday, August 26, 2011

Compressor jet engines work best at altitude, but you cannot get around being on the ground. Here's my numbers for fuel burn during taxi taken with a stopwatch from single-engine start to runway-hold. 10gal/min is a rule of thumb for taxi, but the carriers keep the actual numbers close to their chest. I have much more detailed information, but you get the gist of it.

FLT Origin Dest. Min sec gal/min total
DL1412 ATL DTW 21 23 10 213.83
NW1730 DTW BOS 10 30 10 105.00
DL1857 ATL BOS 28 55 10 289.17
DL63 ATL LAX 7 30 10 75.00
DL9010 LAX SFO 6 0 10 60.00
DL1074 SFO ATL 12 25 10 124.17
DL1852 ATL BOS 32 20 10 323.33
DL1855 BOS ATL 20 12 10 202.00
DL1516 ATL DTW 12 40 10 126.67
NW25 DTW NRT 30 30 10 305.00
DL500 NRT ATL 5 15 10 52.50
DL372 ATL BOS 10 45 10 107.50
DL1855 BOS ATL 19 27 10 194.50