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I drove by Double Eagle, because our own FBO was out of sectional charts. It mostly caters to corporate pilots and those guys have largely switched to electronic charts on their fancy MFDs (or iPads). But Double Eagle's FBO, Bode, serves a lot of students and thus has to stock printed charts and A/FD.

The funny part was that at arrival (by car) I identified a building with signs and an entrance off a parking lot. But upon entering it I was treated to a picture not too dissimilar to the infamous abandoned love hotel in Japan. It was eerily empty. Everything looked so fresh, that I was confused for a moment.

It turned out that Bode resided in a building across a ramp area from the car park, accessible through a pedestrian gate in the fence. So simple. Entering out ramp area without an invitation would probably end with airport police beating you with their nightsticks.

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Seen at Spaceflight Now:

As for Lockheed Martin facing contract penalties over the AEHF 1 problem, Madden told reporters he didn't want to discuss that yet. The company's responsibilities include getting the satellite into the proper orbit and successfully checked out.

"I won't get into the financial aspects. There's nothing worse than beating somebody up while they're trying to help you fix a problem," Madden said.

"When you're in a middle of crisis, the last thing I want to be doing is speculating on punishment phases when I want to keep focused on recovery."

Remember "keeping the boot on the neck of BP" while they are plugging a leaking oil well?

Posted by: Pete Zaitcev at 08:33 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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Sitting on the ramp next to Cutter is a T-38 with red stars and inconspicuous Navy markings. They really should think about adding some bands to those stars one day.

Is this just me, or does this aircraft have a (possibly retrofitted) radar?

Taxiing in the background is a workhorse trainer 6693W of Del Sol Aviation.

UPDATE: Wonderduck noted that it was F-5N rather than T-38. That would explain the radar and wingtip rails.

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Not sure if they haul it from dealership to dealership as a display.

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This sad airplane is sitting at a ramp at the east side of Cutter in KABQ. The FAA Registry says the owner is in Texas somewhere. Probably an estate, waiting to be scrapped.

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OK, what actually happened was that he's told me that I was flaring too high, but I took it as an order to flare NOW. His reaction was to resist my input and since I have no clue what control forces should be, mine was "pull harder". Fortunately he won and we didn't stall.

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In a curious coincidence, the "official" (e.g. MSM) "conservative" (e.g. GOP) commentators arose like one to promote gay marriage (for example, Glen Beck and some dude on Sirius Fox whom I heard while testing Sirius radio). Not only that, but they push the same argument: "it does not hurt me, so whatever".

I am not going to speculate as to why it happened (remove it from the table before November etc.), or how it happened (what is the GOP answer to JournoList), but only observe. Still, for people who decried how the liberal media received marching orders courtesy of Ezra Klein, they seem to be too in lockstep.

Posted by: Pete Zaitcev at 09:33 AM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
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Anyone who ever learned to fly airplanes knows that the conventional first step is so-called "discovery flight". In fact, I found by experience that it's positively impossible to bypass it (e.g. try to schedule any appointments with an instructor without taking a discovery flight first). Why is that? Nobody ever explains! Heck, nobody in an FBO ever admits that it's impossible.

I came to think that the discovery flight is a structured way for the instructor to fail you right there without going through the rest of the dance.

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I was not happy about the antenna whip hitting the jeep at every bump, so I decided to try a mount that raised it. Arizona Rocky Road mount does the right thing and I am generally happy with it thus far.

Naked installation:

The necessary washers:

Overall view:

The only fly in the ointment is that Rick shipped 2 of 5/16 washers instead of the necessary 6, so I had to make a trip to Home Depot. Worse, the problem arised from a poor design in the first place: the mounting plate should have had spacers attached to it (a couple of nuts might work). Asking the user to stack washers is way uncool.

The SW Coefficient is about 1.55 at channel 14.

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Just as impressive as they say. We went to "The Magic Flute". Loved the music, Nodame prepared me well. The direction and the act were great too.

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Darcy admitted off-hand:

That brings us to what ties these two articles together – besides the obvious opportunity for me to brag about all the traffic and linkage I’m getting. (Hey, I admit that I’m proud of that.)

Unfortunately, Lord Pixy did not see fit to provide his subjects with any way to see the server logs or any derivatives of them. This is a big thing that prevents me from settling at Meenuvia.

Posted by: Pete Zaitcev at 05:27 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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An article in PopMech purports to debunk "energy myths" with passages like this:

Mining and processing shale also require vast amounts of water—producing 2.5 million barrels of shale oil per day would require 105 million to 315 million gallons of water daily.

Even if we're charitable, an American oil barrel is 44 gallons big (an international 200-liter barrel is 55-gallon big). So, "processing of 2.5 million barrels of shale oil" would require 2.4 to 7.16 million barrels of water.

Posted by: Pete Zaitcev at 09:22 AM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
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I drilled first holes in my jeep. I had doubts about unstalling a proper rear gate adapter, and I am still considering a gate shelf, which would conflict with it. So, as a temporary measure I reused my old truck-mirror mount while I am figuring out the overall architecture.

It went pretty well except that the clearance with the center stop light is marginal, and since it's my ground I am running a risk to burn my transmitter with a short when wind flexes the whip. As a precaution, I put a bit of electrical tape on the stop light.

Posted by: Pete Zaitcev at 06:00 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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Hidden way down the article about Al Gore's sex habits we find this:

With the John Edwards sex scandal, People afforded the opportunistic Elizabeth Edwards a platform to create a martyr/poor-cancer-survivor persona for herself in stark contrast to the inconvenient truth that she knew all along what her husband was doing, tacitly approved of it, and allowed him to run for president again in 2008 anyway. As we’ve said before, it’s sad this woman had cancer, but she had a large hand in giving the White House to Obama because she helped her husband knock Hillary Clinton to third place in Iowa, allowing Obama’s rise. The Edwards candidacy was the spoiler in the 2008 race, and it would not have happened if not for Elizabeth Edward’s complicity. // But, People ran several covers that we can remember featuring the Saint Elizabeth meme in the aftermath of The National Enquirer’s excellent journalistic breaking of the Edwards affair scandal.

It just seems wrong that the National Enquirer is the last bastion of investigative journalism and reporting of truth in news media, but better get used to it.

As for ways Obama became the president, it's water down the bridge now.

Posted by: Pete Zaitcev at 08:09 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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I have an online friend who's a total curmudgeon. Last time he griped about the awesome bar (the thing about it is how after the same initial rejection I loved it). This time it is the Lexus mouse, which we mentioned recently. The main complaint is that to use the mouse, the driver has to take eyes off the road. But it is true to any other interface too! The fallacy J. is pushing is that adding buttons would allow one to count clicks or whatnot. And it's false. Of course, some functions work without looking, for example radio on/off and scan. But the lexmouse does not dispose with them! All it does is replacing the touch-screen or tab-tab-tab-like-crazy UI, the one-touch buttons are still there.

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The Real Life ran a surprisingly insightful strip about the future ideal communicator, for a comedy comic.

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I listened enough of Kasane Territory that I understand what Teto is singing. Disturbing. As it turns out, it actually is Japanese, beyond the crazy announciation. I don't know what "zukou" is for Nico-nico people, but the rest is rather plain. Now I suspect that fans of UTAU quickly get used to its manner of speaking and just do not realize how badly the software works.

Posted by: Pete Zaitcev at 06:52 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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In the end, the difference in price was so small, that Jeep won on the strength of being fun, whereas FJ is just not fun.

So much for the "Weaboo car review".

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There is a stall in Rio Rancho's Cottonwood mall, called "Chibi Metropolis". Here's a sample of their display (not sure if it is for sale):

The CD on the lower left is an OST for Kokoro Toshokan (incest, lesbians, and lolicon in one convenient package on the background of kawaii war).

Posted by: Pete Zaitcev at 09:41 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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Since I got into Vocaloids (even buying MP3 tracks at Amazon), I started paying attention. So, I noticed something new.

It began with the "Tripple Baka" in uRQTZC3uNW4 long version and OMenThq2HAI low-quality short version with better translation that gets you to the ending animation quicker. The question was, "who are these people?" Vocaloids? Short googling shows that the french bread is Teto's item in the same way as a leek is Miku's item, but not story much beyond.

AiE-2TY0Pew "Kasane Territory" goes some way answering that, although mostly it hints. An extended explanation with typical Japanese BAAAWWWW is at qucz-rYnnMc "Uso no Utau-hime" ("Fake Diva"), but it mostly focuses on genesis of the original fake Teto and glosses over UTAU.

Althogh "Tripple Baka" features Miku the character, yT8FfQrS37M "Drill Paen" actually mixes Miku's voice with Teto's, if I am not mistaken (the video also includes "Ahoge Paen").

Another (obvious in retrospect) direction is mixing Miku with IM@S: qjAgi67YaIY and KQrNMp-2tTs are different examples of the dialog, and 8jtXTgFhnTY is Miku performing Do-Dai. The voice quality is far ahead of Teto's, I am sorry to say. Also, the rendering seems ahead of MikuMikuDance (comments suggest the software is called "Vocalomark").

Posted by: Pete Zaitcev at 06:51 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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