what going on ?
not much. thunderstorm activity. getting ready to paddle Glacier. work work work. never ends.
ALL repeat ALL computer mavens tell us AVOID THESE SITES.
Good grief…these sites tell you to AVOID THESE SITES.
The evil software goes in and you do not see hear or taste it.
So the remaining question is…is the risk for information worth taking?
What you’re doing isn’t my concern. I’m asking for your opinion.
Did you even read what I wrote?
– Last Updated: May-29-14 12:15 AM EST –
All I said was that I haven't seen these warnings myself, and that I suspect something other than the site itself is the cause of what you see. Apparently, most other people haven't seen such a thing either since links to this and related videos have been provided numerous times, followed by discussion of the content, without anyone making comments regarding spyware alarms popping up (and if you've been here a while, which you haven't, you'd know that plenty of the folks here will comment about such things when they see them).
The thing that seems weird, and I won't speculate as to the reason, is that you say the site itself (which I presume is Youtube, since that's where the video was posted) warns you that you should stay away. That's not the way any spyware works which I've heard of. Do they usually come with warnings?
Who are the "mavens" that say stay away from sites like youtube? Who says don't trust any file posted by the National Film Board of Canada? I've yet to hear of this. If it's as bad as all that, I'll just take my chances. Maybe I've just been lucky, but my computer has never picked up anything destructive online.
By the way, on those occasions when I DO get a warning about an "untrusted site", I generally back out, though I don't if I know the site has always been fine in the past. Earlier this year I got a couple of warnings that p-net is an "untrusted site". I think the reason was that I had a new computer, and the first time I went to p-net, my web browser set off the alarm because it hadn't seen it before (actually, Firefox would go bonkers with alarms over every new site I went to for about a week, then finally settled down. I couldn't even check my own email without being warned that my computer was at risk. I have no clue what that was all about).
position
No, I am not reading your material.
Mason’s sculling angle
I rewatched “Path of the Paddle: Solo Whitewater” by Bill Mason. It appears to me that his sculling “axis” at minutes 3:08 to 3:15 does indeed point about 45 degrees back from the centerline rather than parallel as in a regular or stern quadrant sculling draw. That would mean that there is some back travel component as well. But it is a little hard to see and I could be wrong.
My take on that moment of video
– Last Updated: May-31-14 11:26 PM EST –
Background:
There has been an awful lot of discussion about sculling to draw the boat sideways, or to draw one end of the boat sideways, but almost nothing has been said about the actual question which was asked. The key feature of this difference regarding which stroke is being described is the part about a sculling draw in the stern quadrant pulling the stern toward the paddle. That by definition is what makes it a sculling "draw", not a reversing scull.
As I mentioned in my other post, sculling with reverse-directed thrust causes the stern to veer AWAY from the paddle, not toward it. The mechanics of this motion are exactly the same as if you were paddling forward, but reaching way up toward the bow and applying the power at that location, and without correction. In that case, the bow would start to veer toward your off side. In short, the boat would turn.
To further clarify, during reverse-thrust sculling with the paddle back near the stern, the boat is moving backward through the water, and the "through-the-water" aspect is the only thing the boat "knows". In the video, at the moment you refer to, the boat is moving forward and downstream but only because the current is so much faster than the boat's reverse travel speed. As far as the boat "knows", it's simply going backward through the water that supports it while being propelled by a paddle blade alongside the end that's parting the water, so the mechanics of that motion would be identical if the boat were turned around and paddled forward in the manner described in the previous paragraph.
Now to the details:
During those few seconds of the video that you refer to, Mason wants to apply reverse thrust to go backward in the water (and thus go downstream slower), but to counteract the unavoidable turning action that I described above (where the stern veers away from the paddle side), the direction of thrust is angled substantially to provide enough drawing action to keep the stern from veering, but still applying a significant component of reverse thrust. I've done this exact thing countless times, and it's what I was describing in my other post. In a solo boat, this type of stroke will impart a noticeable side-slipping motion if continued for any length of time, but it DOES prevent the turning action so it keeps the boat pointed along the original heading. On a much larger boat like Mason is using, and with just those few seconds of angled-thrust application, I really doubt that any noticeable side-slip happens, and the overall result is for the boat to go backward through the water, and thus have a slower travel speed downriver.
So, your observation about the angle of thrust during that part of the video is absolutely correct, and the reason for that angle is to keep the boat's heading from shifting as would happen if the reverse thrust were applied directly in-line with the boat. As has been pointed out, other strokes provide stronger reversing action, but those methods require you to include a correcting action with the stroke as well. The reversing sculling action isn't a powerful stroke, but it can be "enough" if only needed for brief moments, and it's a lot easier, in terms of controlling the necessary correction (with other reversing strokes, you can easily loose control of your heading if you screw up, but when sculling in reverse, even a big mistake in applying correction to the stroke results in a slow, minor deviation from the desired heading, so it's a very forgiving method of slowing your drift).