A couple weeks ago we took a helicopter demo flight and lesson from North Carolina Rotor and Wing. It was a short and to the point classroom lesson, and then a ~30 min flight in a Robinson R22 helicopter.

The helicopter itself is tiny. Two passengers, shoulder to shoulder. A small piston engine. Less than a 1000 lbs sans passengers.

Flying a helicopter is an interesting experience. There are alot of things going on to keep track of, and the controls are sensitive,but with a bit of delay to control input.

This was a gift from Gina since I had often remarked I had never been in a helicopter. Although I have flown in a glider, a single engine kit plane, a zeppelin, and a hot air balloon. Any one know where one could take a gyrocopter flight?

I’m not sure I understand the point of wide screen monitors.  With my useage patterns, about 25% of the screen is wasted, over there, off to the side, full of white space.

Most of the time, I find myself wanting more vertical space than horizontal. Especially, when writing code, or web browsing, or reading email, or running commands in a terminal. Aka, 99.9% of what I do with a computer.

I kind of miss CRT’s for that big, almost square aspect ratio. I’ve been tempted to find a wide screen LCD that I could rotate vertically. Never really been able to get a hardware/software combination that actually worked that way, though in theory, it should be easy.

I think it’s about time to put a new desktop machine together (and probably a new laptop as well).  So I’ve been thinking a new monitor setup as well. Currently got a 21″ dell.

[And of course, the Civil War nerds will point out the Monitor was actually called the CSS Virginia]

I managed to get a picture of my gloved hand holding a oxy-acetylene torch and cutting through a metal plate into the Durham Herald Sun. It was an article about the Durham Tech Shop and was taken during the oxy-acetylene class. I’d post a link to the article, but the Herald Sun’s website seems to be from somewhere in the past.

Tech Shop Durham seem to be making progress getting things setup for the opening, but there’s still a lot to do. It take’s a lot of work and time. It certainly took us longer to get Rod-O-Rama setup and ready than we expected, and Tech Shop is much bigger.

I’ve noticed on my blog, that I get more requests to update the spam protection plugin than I get actual spam. I’m not sure if this is good or bad.

If you get a chance, take a look at Not Yet Rain. It’s the website for the Not Yet Rain documentary about womens reproductive health in Ethopia. lintqueens been working on getting the site launched for a bit.

Last night I got a weird call from where I get my glasses. The message was “You need to come by the store to pick up the glasses you ordered in June”. Slightly odd. I did order glasses in June, and picked them up shortly there after. Obviously someone made a mistake of some sort.

So this morning I get out of bed, put my glasses on, and manage to break them. The side piece broke off of the frames. I barely touched them.

So now I have to call the glasses place and try to figure out what they are confused about. I tell them that I have the glasses I ordered, so something is odd. Then I get to tell them that I need to come by anyway since I broke that pair this morning. More confusion.

Of course, they don’t actually have replacement frames available, so I’m stuck with my old pair that are scratched all to hell and are now driving me crazy. There’s a limited warranty, so I can get the frames replaced.

Since the old glasses are bothering me, I try to fix the old ones. That didn’t work too well. Glues don’t really like attaching nickel alloy to nickel alloy. Even http://www.thistothat.com/ doesn’t offer much help. Epoxy’s don’t work since the contact area is so small. I could glob a big pile of JB Weld on there, but I don’t think I could get the lenses out then. Other even less wise repair technique flash into my head. Brazing nickel is unlikely to work.

I’m tempted to wrap a big gob of wire or tape around it. That would be a nice touch, since I’m going to https://opensource.ncsu.edu/FossFair2009 (aka, linux/open source conference at NCSU, aka, NerdCon).

Diebold sued over GPL infringement in voting machine software

Just to continue the weird open source/election/government posts.

The time-warner DVR is painfully bad, and attempts at recording the olympics makes this even more obvious.

Various highlights:

– not recording anything for three days? The fix: hit the soft power on/off to “power cycle” it. Awesome.

– Deleting a recorded show _while_ I was watching it. 85% of the way done and black screen, go to the the “list” and the shows are gone. Awesome.

– There is no real way to prioritize season passes. The latest stuff is always higher priority. You have to delete a a show and readd it to the list to make it a higher priority. Awesome.

– If I’m watching something “live” (say, the olympics) I should be able to pause/rewind. Thats what DVR’s do. But no, this only sometimes works.

– It crashes alot. Weekly at least, sometimes more.

– The UI. Aiiiieee.

Anyone using a HD Tivo with time-warner? Any particular hassles I liked my old non-hd tivo’s alot.