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What an insanely beautiful model. It makes me happy to think that humans find the time to do things that have no value beyond their beauty and the pleasure they give to people who work on them.
Second time I link to this video this month, but Sir Roger Scruton has a truly impactful message on this subject: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bHw4MMEnmpc

Can't find one without Portuguese subtitles, so hope that's OK

Since we are on this forum, I'll take a bite:

Carousels need to die. Everyone hates them, no one interacts with them unless they have to. The carousel doesn't work for the user and it doesn't work for the product.

http://shouldiuseacarousel.com/

https://www.dgtlnk.com/blog/website-carousel/

The plane model is nice.

Tip for this site: disable javascript. It falls back to just a big list of photos which you can browse at your leisure.

If you're somehow forced in to using a carousel, at the very least, make it so that it stops auto-changing once I've interacted with the arrows. There's nothing worse than having to repeatedly click the back arrow to just look at a single photo.

When you have a team of designers who can't agree on which image to put on the frontpage, the dreaded carousel is frequently the result. The more bitter their disagreement, the shorter the timeout on the slideshow.
I'm on mobile, and honestly the only problem I found with the carousel here is that it's actually too small; full screen height would be better. (This may be an issue with my use of Materialistic, some css and js don't work well with it)

On mobile, whether the article is long or not, it's nice being able to quickly scroll back to a section of text to find something you read previously; if there's 25 pictures in the way, that gets obnoxious quickly, and I'm more likely to just leave.

Having a carousel means the user can see all the pictures (used to good effect with overviews and varying levels of detail/zoom/cutout); scroll horizontally (or tap icons, but scrolling would be better) for more images and vertically for more text. A way to improve this one would be to make it an embed that can enlarge itself to take up the full screen and restyle itself vertically or horizontally; I know I've seen this functionality somewhere, possibly a php image hosting script.

The carousel here serves as a secondary accompaniment to the main article text though. The fact that most people won't look through the pictures is only a bug if you actively care that people look at them. For content that's included in more of a "some people might want to look through this" manner, the carousel feels natural.
Upon first reading, I thought this meant baggage claim carousels
Although I don't really like them, http://shouldiuseacarousel.com/ is made bad on purpose ... I have never seen one that bad actually. What I hate most about them is usually the ads, but in that case it is that it doesn't let me read at my pace (which is a lot worst).
Like other generalizations, this is not absolute. Carousels have their place. I used one recently on a simple site which has three nouns in the name. Three small SVG icons scrolling in a carousel fit the theme.

However, I agree that they are terrible where a gallery of thumbnails would be more suitable. The controls and auto scroll always seem to be cross-purpose.

Building paper airplane models was a very popular hobby in Israel (and probably other countries) during the 1960's. Each issue of the Israeli Air Force Journal came with a model which you would painstakingly cut and glue. Here are some examples of what these models looked like: http://starry-side.com/wpe/wordpress/index.php/2019/08/08/ol... Of course, this guy is on a whole different level of detail and dedication (plus he designs everything himself). Amazing work.
Request - any books/articles anyone can recommend on the human mind's instinctive need to become obsessed with something? Periodically, like many others, my mind becomes obsessed with something and I need to learn/build until it ceases to be interesting which can range from days to years. Like hoarding, I think there's probably an evolutionary drive in this, but curious if there are good resources to better understand the different attributes of wanting to learn/do something to 'irrational' levels of details whether it's something seemingly inconsequential or consequential, which seems irrelevant to this human drive. So much joy has come out of these periods of obsessions, I'm curious to better understand it's source.
As a young adult I could absorb myself in projects like this...in recent years, mid career, it just doesn't seem to happen. I can't make myself care enough about anything to the extent it's very hard to imagine how someone could do anything like this project. Anyone have a suggestion for how to find that again? Maybe I lost the ability to focus on anything I'm not required to do to get paid. Or maybe I'm mildly depressed and don't know it...how does someone do this?
He had me at this door hinge mechanism: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a8M-3dK4h1Q

And the steerable, retracting landing gear is phenomenal.

I've gone down this particular rabbit hole before, it's pretty deep. Make sure to view the landing gear timelapse. Crazy attention to detail. I can't help myself and wonder if you'd stick a couple of ducted fans in it and a remote control whether it would fly.
Apparently manila folders are sheets of stiff paper folded in half. They look like folder icon in windows or other OSes. I have never seen one in real life. :-)
I will always upvote this.

My brother worked out the landing gear articulation, with mechanical locking; previous Boeings had complicated hydraulic valving to make the gear stop moving at the bottom, with the failure mode that it immediately folds back in.

Here's hoping some of the 777s are chosen for hydrogen-fuel conversion. A 2-4 year job for a dozen A/Ps, by my guess. Aerogel-insulated LH2 tank amidships, all new fuel piping, new or reconfigured engines, for tens of tons more payload, and ultimately all wind- and solar-powered.

This is absolutely beautiful!!

It speaks for his mindset as I would not have the patience to finish something like this. Besides skill, there's a high amount of perseverance and focus needed that most people don't have. Wow!

If you're interested in getting started with paper crafts like this, PePaKuRa [1] is a great software that takes care of all the 2D shapes arrangements and addition of padding for gluing pieces together.

[1] https://tamasoft.co.jp/pepakura-en/

What a great story. I was wondering if a story about this guy have been posted before and indeed, it was.

A Kid Spent 9 Years Building a Detailed Paper Model of a Boeing Jet (2017)

- https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19448365

The great takeaway for me from the story is his quote related to how he did all these things.

"I was not born with these skills, I developed them over time. And the original model was actually pretty crude. And I've really learned a lot over the past number of years, and that's how I've gotten to where I am at now."

Someone get this guy a job at Boeing. He seems like a better engineer than some of the people making real planes.
Nevermind the model - those Illustrator skills!
"Making of" landing gear:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=77oRSCxGmYA

"Gear Stats:

•3 months' work between design and build (early June - early September). About a month per side.

•Over 200 hours of work total (design+build).

•Over 1,000 parts per side (not including the wheels), for a total well over 2,000.

Video Stats:

•Over 600GB of raw footage/130 hours.

•Editing took 2 weeks.

•Video was sped up 100-200x.

•Produced in Final Cut and Motion."

Lots of good videos by and about this guy https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=luca+iaconi-ste...
Reminds me of someone who makes car scale models mainly out of silver: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JSS7uBzDOio
Absolutely incredible. I clicked on the link expecting nowhere near that level of detail. One of the pictures even shows individual wires on the landing gear. I'm thoroughly impressed by the dedication here.
This blew my mind, wow! The level of detail is surreal, especially the cabin, wings, and wheels. Feels like looking at a manilla 3d rendering...
It's always struck me as bizarre that it's the convention to refer to length when using the word "scale". When I read it my mind is naturally inclined to think "volume" and I have to remind myself that 1:60 scale does not mean the model is 1/60 the size of the original.
Wonder if the SpaceX team should have a chat with the designer about trying a Falcon 9 or Heavy next? :)
I got a bunch of manila folder after being inspired...but I proceed to do nothing with it.
Wonder how they're doing. Their socials linked on their site are all from 2-3 years ago. Followed this early and I think he may have mostly finished.
vector art layout step is surprisingly manual! I wonder if there's a market for a CAD tool that focuses on creating 2D cutouts for 3D models
Great job. Handmade detailed models are always very impressive. Making it out of an odd material makes even more interesting.
In a romantic sense, I'd like to think this is what trust fund recipients do with their time.
I wonder, if you fit some kind of propulsion and controls - will the model become flyable enough?
Why is this particularly Air India though? Is the Boeing 777 different for other airlines?
This level of dedication is so inspiring.
This guy has truly mastered 3d printing!
damn, the amount of time that must have taken, the landing gear and the wing ribs are insane
Even the thrust reverser works
this guy is hilarious.
The level of detail, thought, and painstaking effort behind creating this model is incredible. I imagine it was a fun or cathartic hobby for this person, but man when you think of what else they could have accomplished with a similar level of effort. They could be in a substantially better place financially, which probably would have been more valuable to them personally. If not, then by all means it is time well spent.

Some people would counter that money is not everything, which I mostly agree with. But it can be traded for time, in as much as you are currently trading time for money in a hateful device called a job. And everyone knows that time is both valuable and limited.

That's my opinion, I can't justify time consuming hobbies like this one.

Still, it's a beautiful work of art and the creator should be justifiably proud of it.

Just going to be very, very disappointed if it doesn't actually fly...
This community is so weird/random