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Leadership Character

2011-12-21T02:07:00.001+00:00

A six-part series by West Point’s Col. Eric Kail

Parts 1 through 5 have been published. In my opinion a must read.

My Introduction to Steampunk

2011-12-18T23:18:00.002+00:00

I have been a long time fan of Tanya Huff. Her Keeper's Chronicles series is a favourite of mine, as are the Blood Books (I did watch and enjoy all the TV episodes as well). A tweet from Tanya turned me on to Cold Magic by Kate Elliott. That lead to the Crossroads Trilogy while waiting for Cold Fire. Finishing up Crossroads put me a bit behind in reading Cold Fire So I'm only about halfway through. I think what I enjoy most about Kate's writing in the Spiritwalker series is that the Steampunk world she has created serves as a backdrop for the main characters' interaction with the spirit realm and each other in much the same way that late twentieth century Southern Ontario serves as a back drop for Tanya's Keeper's Chronicles and Blood Books.

Back After a Long Hiatus

2011-12-18T03:06:00.002+00:00

I have been off working on other things, and neglecting my blog. But now I hope to be able to put some effort into this part of my on-line life. I'm glad to see many of my old friends on my blog roll are still active.

It was also time for a make over.

Happy Canada Day

2010-07-01T12:58:00.002+01:00

Software Kudos

2009-03-29T18:32:00.003+01:00

I haven't posted much lately. I the reason is simple, I had a large Blackberry project coming to IOC deployment and my new Blackberry (a Bold) decided that third party applications were toxic, and after loading some number of them it would turn into a brick. For a long time, the only information I could get was that it was the fault of the third party (ie me) application writers. Much angst and many sleepless nights later I find out there was a bug (well two bugs actually) with the Bold OS, one that causes random failures during reboot, made more frequent with more applications loaded not just mine; and one that prevents third party applications from launching Blackberry Maps. Being able to use the blackberry is a very important feature of my project. Launching Maps is cool, but useful. So first kudos given, albeit grudgingly, to RIM for finally getting around to fixing these bugs. I will recommend the latest release 4.6.0.418 / 4.6.0.247 (Multilanguage) because that is what I'm using.

Next, my shop is full of virtualization fans. So kudos to VMware for releasing ESXi for free use. If you are using data centre virtual servers ESXi is the tool to use.

USB is a big problem for virtualization. It was never designed for that, and it shows in the difficulty virtual servers have in trying to support it. VMware neatly solved this problem in ESXi by ignoring it. No USB support. But what do you do if you want to connect a USB device to your virtual client? There are many solutions out their but I decided to use USB over Network from FabulaTech. It worked flawlessly for everything I tried, which is more than I can say for USBAnywhere.

Then I had to upgrade my Blackberry OS (see above). The macine I use to do this is where I had the USB over Network server running. My Blackberry wasn't shared, so the Blackberry Desktop software was abel to connect and start the upgrade process. At a point in this process the Desktop software must reboot the the Blackberry, then connect to low level software to replace the operating system. Now, the USB over Network server has to grab each USB device as it is connected so that it knows what to do with it. Once that decision is made the server may release the device. Unfortunately this release tells the Blackberry to reboot. So the Desktop software can never replace the OS and the upgrade fails.

I was in a bit of a hurry so I justed un-installed the USB over Network server. This resulted in being sent to a web page to let FabulaTech know why I was removing their software. So I told them, did my upgrade and re-installed the server.

The next day I got an email from a product manager looking for more details. So kudos twice to FabulaTech for makeing good software, allowing a free trial, and standing behind what they make.

Last but certainly not least Zarafa. They claim all the advantages of Exchange at 50% the cost. From what I can see they are being far too modest. For one Zarafa runs on on Linxu using open source products like Postfix and MySQL. They provide a virtual appliance, so if you are using a VMware virtual server product installation is as simple as plugging in the appliance and making a few simple configuration changes. They even supply tools to support the Blackberry Enterprise Server. So if you, like me, have been wanting to set up and take advantage of a small Blackberry Enterprise Server, but don't know how, or don't want to deal with the issues of setting up and maintaining an Exchange server give Zarafa a look. They will aslo give you a free trial license to check it out. Their web mail client is well worth a test drive even if you don't need all the enterprise stuff.

Oh, and I got some good long cross country flights in the plane over the last few months.

Google Latitude Thinks I'm in Arkansas

2009-02-11T14:36:00.005+00:00

I installed Google Maps 3.0.0, then 3.0.1 on my Blackberry. Both have Latitude (press has not been universally positive). Big brother worries aside for now, for some reason when ever I get to work, it thinks I'm in Arkansas. Never been, though I'm sure it's lovely.

So, if people are worried about the implications of Google tracking and storing where one is, what about where one isn't?

Update

I couldn't leave this alone. One of the location based technologies Google uses to support Latitude is WiFi based. It turns out that by turning off WiFi on my Blackberry I am now back from my Arkansas vacation. So I guess my WiFi router is in Cozahome, not on my desk where I put it. Bad router! Time for a leash. ~~I don't seem to have this problem with my router at home.~~ I do have the same problem at home.

There's a Party in my Blackberry, No One Else is Invited

2009-02-06T02:49:00.003+00:00

I've had a Blackberry Bold for a while now. I haven't blogged about it because the OS it was launched with became famous for instability. I upgraded twice looking for a stable platform. I'm also a developer for Blackberries, and there is nothing that can take the confidence away as fast as bricking your own Blackberry with the latest version of your own software.

I managed to beat down all the bugs except a pernicious and difficult to isolate one. Occasionally I would install a new version of my precious project. A reboot would be required, fine, no surprise. But, partway through the boot process it would halt at the dreaded white screen with tiny writing "App Err 200" and a "RESET" button. Some times resetting would result in a clean boot, often and more frequently as time passed, not. Finally I'd have to give up and wipe the device and re-install the OS. A good learning experience but once was enough. I eventually tried a removing the IT Policy. That worked by not really better than a re-install.

The event log was clear that the Application Manager (the program that displays the home screen and lets you launch other applications) detected too many processes, and just stops. I understand that a small device has limited resources, but stopping is perhaps a little drastic. Sometimes removing my, or other applications would result in a clean boot, often not. Frustration writ large.

Finding information on Blackberry errors is always a challenge, but when I found this knowledge base article I was a bit embarrassed. It claims to have been around since May 2006, I should have found it sooner. So Blackberries can only run 48 concurrent processes. That should be plenty no? Well apparently not. There are a lot of processes that run all the time in the background to do useful things. Over the past few months lots of user applications have been released for the Blackberry; Facebook, Flicker, Twitter, MySpace and a whole drawer full from Google. I don't run all of those, but some. Many need, or can be configured to run at startup. Most of my own applications also have to run at startup. So a routine reboot can turn into a process storm.

If RIM wants to keep pushing the social networking applications to broaden the appeal of the Blackberry beyond the boardroom they will have to come up with a more robust way of dealing with this situation. In the mean time their advice for developers building multiple auto starting applications is to have one seek out and run the others. And it works.

Yippie! Stability, it's a good thing.

Farewell Soldier

2009-01-19T11:23:00.000+00:00

The funeral for Trooper Brian Richard Good was today. I did not know Trooper Good personally, but he is a soldier, a comrade in arms. I grieve the loss of all my comrades who die in service but Trooper Good is special to me. Not because his story is special, though if you read about him you will know that it is. All soldiers' stories are special if you take the time to learn them. Trooper Good is special to me by fiat of chance.

On a cold Saturday in January my wife and I found ourselves driving East on Highway 401 leaving Toronto. The Highway of Heroes, though the heroes travel West. My first trip on the road since it had been renamed. As we traveled past Oshawa around 2 PM we started to see people standing on overpasses, looking East, into a cruel wind. In ones and twos. In groups of ten, twenty, thirty and more. Some with firetrucks, others with police cars, or ambulances, or all three. Every group had Canadian Flags. Small ones on sticks in small hands. Larger ones held between two or three. A huge one stretched on a guard rail. Mile after mile, bridge after bridge, on each one more and more people arriving to take up vigil. By now we were nearing Trenton and it was nearly 3 PM. The people we had seen on the first bridges had been waiting an hour. Would be waiting at least another hour for Trooper Good to pass. The Highway of Heroes climbs a hill just West of Trenton. We descended that hill and turned the final corner to find dozens of cars stopped. Some on either side of the lanes, some on the road. Stopped out of respect. Just beyond was an overpass covered with emergency response equipment, and just entering the West bound lanes was Trooper Good's motorcade.

It was a very moving experience. Not just seeing the motorcade, but knowing so many Canadians care enough to brave a cold and windy January day to stand on an overpass and wait so long to bid farewell to a fallen hero.

To Sandra, Kayla and Jessica, my heartfelt condolences.

To Brian, farewell.

Resolutions for 2009

2008-12-29T03:06:00.004+00:00

I don't normally hold with the tradition of making resolutions at the turn of the calendar. I believe that if I find a deficiency in my life, or just want to change my direction, I don't need a celestial trigger to take action. That said, the last two months have been a watershed of introspection for me. I've made new friends, both on-line and in real time, I've been offered new opportunities in both my paid, and volunteer work. Finally I've taken two weeks off to be with family over Christmas. A very fertile environment for new plans and hopes for the future. Also a number of other pilots who blog are committing resolutions to the net. I'm not one to let a band wagon pass without at least testing the ride so here goes:

Loose 20lbs. This is a fairly standard resolution, but I have a slight twist which I hope will motivate me to make it happen. My airplane burns 1lb of fuel per minute at maximum cruise. If I loose 20lbs I can cary 20 minutes more fuel, which is a third of my personal reserve. It will also make my wife and doctor happy.
Spend more time with my family and friends. This unfortunately means cutting back on some of my volunteer activities. Sulako has set a target of 10%. I think that is reasonable and what I'll aim for too. The problem is, there are so many good causes out there, and so few people actually willing to commit time and energy to them.
Do more long cross country trips in the plane. I hope to combine this with #2. I learned, or perhaps relearned, on a trip earlier in the month that the distance spanning abilities of GA can bring us together with people we care about that is not possible with other modes of transport.
Finish two renovation projects. I have four or five on the go, some for an embarrassing long time. I really should finish them off, and I can combine this with #2 as well.
Because 5 is a Dihedral Prime, there is a certain asymmetric symmetry that I like, so my fifth and final resolution is to spend more time kayaking. Since this will also help me with #1 and #2 it will be an efficient use of my time. Besides, there is nothing half so much worth doing than messing about in boats.

Have a safe and prosperous new year.

Dell Insperon Mini 9 - Ubuntu Remix

2008-11-05T19:14:00.003+00:00

I've been playing with a Dell Insperon Mini 9 for a while. Dell has released an ISO image for the Ubuntu installation on the Mini 9. So far it has been a painful download, and I still have 2 hours to go. Apparently this is a re-install image so it will wipe the hard drive, so I will have to put some thought into how best to create an image of the current Windows XP installation. Right now I'm thinking of shrinking the partition, then using a live CD to copy the image to some place safe.

I'll have to see, download first.

Move to Canada Eh?

2008-10-27T16:01:00.001+00:00

I'm thankful it isn't that easy.

Morning Routine, XKCD Style

2008-10-17T18:33:00.002+01:00

Which is why I use a Blackberry.

Dell Insperion Mini 9 - Initial Thoughts

2008-10-02T01:39:00.002+01:00

The Dell Inspiront Mini 9 Netbook is reviewed at PC Magazine. I've gotten my hands on a unit with 1 GByte system memory, 16 GByte solid state disk drive with Windows XP Home installed. The unit has been with me for about eight hours and I'm writing this post with it. The actual specifications are available from Dell, or from the PC Mag review, so here I will limit my comments to my impression of how it is to use.

The first impression is the size, as the PC Mag review says it has the same footprint as the ASUS EE PC but a much better screen. The keyboard is also small and has some odd shaped keys around the edges. A machine of this type is always going to be a compromise between ease of use and power vs size and weight. If you are looking for a light duty maching to surf, email blog or office tasks while on the road and you don'd have a lot of space or weight for a lap top the Mini 9 could be for you. Initially I thought I would never be able to touch type on the keyboard, I'm still making some mistakes but it isn't too bad, and I think after a few days I will be back up to my normal speed.

It is really a great package, I'm sitting on the couch, watching PVR with the Mini 9 on my lap and it isn't cooking my thighs. The screen is bright and very readable, there is no fan or disk noise and it isn't much heavier than some of the remote controlls I have for my entertainment system. When the lid is closed, or I just ignore it for too long, it takes some time to get prepared for standby. When I'm ready to go again it takes almost no time to come back up. This is one of the great things about having a solid state disk drive.

Battery life is quite good, the wall wart power charger is tiny compared to other laptops. It would have been very nice if Dell could have arranged to fold the power prongs into the unit like Sony has been doing for a long time. Recharging is very quick, so if you are travelling it may be worth while to pop in the charger for a five or ten minutes during a layover.

I ordered the unit with XP pre-loaded for two reasons: the shipping date was earlier, and I like to have my portable computers dual boot to Linux and Windows (preferably XP) for ultimate flexability. With the XP preload and Open Office installed I still have 10GBytes of disk space left for a Linux partition. I expect the low end versions with 512MBytes of system memory and 4GBytes of disk and Ubuntu pre-installed will be very good, and inexpensive tools for road warriers.

So far I really like it, and it is my favourite mobile computer at the moment.

Blackberry OS 4.5 - The First 12 Hours

2008-08-08T14:03:00.002+01:00

So after about 12 hours of use here are my impressions.

User Interface:
The included applications (Mail, Calendar, Address Book, etc) all have a dressed up user interface. This doesn't add anything but eye candy, but its nice.

Browser:
The WiFi Browser is now called Hot Spot Browser. It now has a start page separate from the bookmark list that has a URL field; a search field that searches Google, Wikipedia or Dictionary.Com; Bookmark and History mini lists that link to full lists; and it does favicons. There also seems to be better JavaScript support. The best thing though is the cursor in column view. This is a cross between what were mobile and desktop views. Instead of scrolling through text and randomly (or so it seems) jumping between links, you can now have a cursor that you can drive exactly where you want. Wonderful.

Calendar:
Appointments can now be "Sent using" one of your configured mail sources. What, exactly that means in every case will need some investigation. Each "calendar" can be configured for wireless sync (if you have a Unite or BES server), and each gets its own colour.

So far I'm pleased, but don't use the Rogers version. Search the web to find the latest release.

Blackberry 8820 OS 4.5 Rogers Upgrade

2008-08-07T13:04:00.004+01:00

I found the official Rogers version of Blackberry OS 4.5 (4.5.0.37 Release 52, the "latest" release for this device is 4.5.0.75) so I've decided to install it today. Normally when upgrading the OS on a Blackberry you want the desktop software version to match that of the OS upgrade. Rogers doesn't have the Desktop Manager 4.5 so I installed the RIM generic version. This simply means that I had to track down and delete (actually I rename) the vendor.xml file. Vendor.xml determines which versions of what software the Desktop Manager will install on the device. If someone else is managing your Blackberry, you probably don't want to do this without their permission, but I manage my own.

Once vendor.xml was taken care of the Desktop Manager offered to upgrade my unit. You will probably, like me, want to go into the advanced options and change the load out somewhat; enable Blackberry Maps, disable languages you don't need, etc. Make sure a complete backup of your data is enabled and click next.

The process of the upgrade proceeded very smoothly but it does take time, and you don't want any interruptions, so make sure you have good reliable power supplied to your PC. The longest part of the installation is after the new software has been installed and the Blackberry reboots. I can take a very long time to come back. This is normal but can be worrying the first time you go through it. My device took nearly a half hour of flipping the hourglass to get everything sorted out. Once it came back the desktop automatically restored the data.

Most things came back just fine. I had to reload Facebook, the starter icon was on the ribbon, but the application was removed. You still can't past the password from the password keeper which is stupid.

So far I haven't noticed any real significant changes. The GPS has a location enable/disable option and location assist. It will take time to see if location assist does anything useful. There is a new theme, but I don't like it any better than the one I'm using now. There are some changes to the WiFi configuration screens that I will have to explore. BIS activation came back automatically, but I had to re-activate on Unite.

Update:

Should have gone with the latest release. 4.5.0.37 has a really stupid bug to find its way into a production release. Sigh!

Cessna 206 - Tiweano Equador

2008-07-21T12:39:00.002+01:00

I came across this video of a jungle landing and just had to share it. Unfortunately the quality isn't really good. Is that a dog on the runway or a trick of the light?

So What's up with the COPA Website - its Back

2008-07-02T14:55:00.004+01:00

~~It looks like the Canadian Owners' and Pilots' Association domain registration has expired.~~

Copa is back. If you go to their web site www.copanational.org you will see ~~a Network Solutions page offering a back order or renewal of the domain. I hope they get this sorted soon.~~ their normal informative pages.

Fabric Covered Car

2008-06-11T20:38:00.001+01:00

We've had fabric covered airplanes for a long time. Shrinking the fabric as part of the finish process allows for quite complex forms without complex production methods. Now BMW is using this in a concept car called GINA. Fabulous! You have to watch.

Climate Change, Food Crisis

2008-04-16T16:18:00.003+01:00

The only thing I have to say about predictions of climate change is: learn some math, look at the data, make your own decision. Perhaps have a look at: Earth's Temperature History: How Well is it Known? for motivation.

If you want to know what happens when a large portion of the world population goes off half cocked in a panic without considering the full impact of a decision have a look at this Google search for the words "climate change ethanol food".

Fast Cars and Faster Planes

2008-03-17T15:08:00.002+00:00

Time for a little mind candy. A Bugatti Veyron vs Eurofighter.

Lindsay Airport Economic Study

2008-03-04T18:22:00.003+00:00

Aviation.ca is reporting the results of an economic impact study for CNF4. Seems to be more good news. Now we just have to wait for the task force report in June.

Bumpy Landing

2008-03-04T17:21:00.002+00:00

Sulako posted a video of an Airbus having difficulty with the wind on March first that got a lot of discussion in the comments at Cockpit Conversation. Here is one of a landing at London City airport January 17th.

More on Spot

2008-02-28T19:23:00.002+00:00

I've blogged on the Spot before, as have others. Since my last post there has been more from Kevin Psutka at COPA. Basically every thing that looked so reasonable about the proposed ELT regulation has been washed away. US pilots take note, the proposed regulation will require you to install a 406 ELT before venturing into Canadian airspace. What impact this will have on our tourist economy I do not know, but on top of high gas prices and the dollar, it can't be good.

However, this is only a proposed regulation. As Kevin advises, if you have issues with the proposal, let Transport Canada know. Kevin tells you how.

Lastly, there is also an article about Spot at InterGovWorld.Com.

Good News for one Small Airport

2008-02-28T13:23:00.002+00:00

I've had posts about airports coming under threat from municipal government and local groups before. Happily I found this article about a small town airport that seems to be getting some recognition at least for the fiscal contribution it makes to the area. A bit more digging turned up the actual study posted on-line.

COPA: Aviation Language Proficiency & You

2008-02-28T12:54:00.004+00:00

I recall Aviatrix wrote something on her blog about this~~, but I can't find the actual article~~. In any case COPA has a short write up on the rather complex issue of Canadian pilots' licence and the ICAO language proficiency certification requirements. There seems to be lots of promises not to violate each other's pilots wafting across the Canada-US border, but I wouldn't want a trip to depend on everyone having gotten the message.