This just in from our Canadian correspondent, Jeremy Swanson. Thanks J!

This is a photo of the Global Hawk UAV that returned from the war zone recently under its own power. (Iraq  to Edwards AFB in CA) – Not transported via C5 or C17…..

Notice the mission paintings on the fuselage.
It’s actually over 250 missions…. (And I would suppose 25 air medals). That’s a long way for a remotely-piloted aircraft.  Think of the technology (and the required quality of the data link to fly it remotely). Not only that but the pilot controlled it from a nice warm control panel at Edwards AFB!

Really long legs — can stay up for almost 2 days at altitudes above 60k. The Global Hawk was controlled via satellite; it flew missions during OT&E that went from Edwards AFB to upper  Alaska and back non-stop.

Basically, they come into the fight at a high mach # in mil thrust, fire their AMRAAMS, and no one ever sees them or paints with radar. There is practically no radio chatter because all the guys in the flight are tied together electronically, and can see who is targeting who, and they have AWACS direct input and 360 situational awareness from that and other sensors.

The aggressors had a morale problem before it was all over. It is to air superiority what the jet engine was to aviation.

It can taxi, take off, fly a mission, return, land and taxi on its own. No blackouts, no fatigue, no relief tubes, no ejection seats, and best of all, no dead pilots and no POWs.

I thought that they were just going to pretend they weren’t installing Flash Player, so that they would announce it at the very last minute, or even after the launch as a way of getting all the fence-sitters to rush out like lemmings and buy one, you know: “Oh wow – I wasn’t going to buy one because Apple is a big fuckhead for not including Flash – but now, well now they’re no longer evil, I’ll buy five!

No such luck. There’s no clever marketing strategy, no late announcement, and no goddamned Adobe Flash!

No matter what Apple says, the sole, glaringly obvious reason for Apple not bundling Flash Player is because it would open up the iPhone to all the fantastic Flash content and games on the internet. They just want to grub every little cent out of us by locking us into only getting content from the Apple App Store.

Um, hello? Antitrust? Isn’t this what all the fuss was about years ago with Microsoft, where they locked everyone into using Internet Explorer? How come Apple is suddenly allowed to get away with it?

I cry foul!

Something must be done! Someone sent me a link to a petition for Apple to please include Flash on the iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch. Of course I signed it, so now I’m putting it up here for you to go sign.

Here’s the link.

Oh, and for the record, I’m an Apple Fanboy. I have a Macbook Pro primary system with a G5 tower as my server. I recommend to any PC user I come across to switch to OS X, simply because I honestly and wholeheartedly believe it is the best system. So no, this post isn’t just a “let’s flog Apple” rant.

Thanks to my old friend, Jon, I now have a bunch more to add. So, without any further ado, here is Cape Town’s past, part 3.

Camps Bay - Ox Wagons

The old waterfront around 1900

Table Mountain from Table Bay, early 1900s

Old Waterfront, Cape Town

Long Street 1883

Kalk Bay

Chapel on Greenmarket Square looking up Berg St towards Table Mtn

Cape Town foreshore

Cape Town early 1900s

Camps Bay

Camps Bay

Camps Bay - Ox Wagons

The site/blog/phlog is run by Lee Chapman, an English dude in Japan. His use of light, shadow and subject are excellent, and I often catch myself thinking how the hell did he manage to get that pic?

Here are some samples, but please go visit the site. It’s fantastic.

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These two… er… things are named Wenlock and Mandeville, and they are the two official mascots for the London Olympics in 2012.

Thank God, the Mayans and Roland Emmerich we’ll all be dead by then!

The story goes that some steel worker was putting the final beam in place for the Olympic stadium, when some molten metal fell to the ground. He took it home and formed it into these two freakazoids.

So, not only is he a shitty builder, a thief and on psychoactive drugs, but we now all have to watch these two little bastards do all the marketing for the next Olympics. It’s like the Teletubbies all over again.

Fantastic.

Still, if you think that’s bad, you should see the official Olympic logo.

I guess the pink blobs are supposed to look like the numbers “2012″, and the Olympic Rings are the eyes of this strange creature-like mess. It has some white offset between the pink foreground elements and the baby blue background, so it doesn’t completely ruin your eyesight. But tell me, in all honesty, considering the state of the world in general…

Should this logo and those mascots have cost a total of £800,000.00 to create?

I mean, seriously, someone needs to be put up against the wall and have a bullet put through their skull for this.

Preferably several someones.

I’m a stay-home dad, writer and photographer, and my coffee table is pretty much where I do all my work, so I was wondering if there wasn’t some way I could hook up a keyboard and use my TV as my main screen. Why? Because it’s fucking huge, that’s why. Oh, and because I’m a bit of an IT geek and thought it’d be fun to try.

The basic idea is that I can do my close-up work like writing and photo editing on my MacBook screen, but leave a web browser window open permanently on the TV so I can do my research and surf porn from there.

The output from my Mac is HDMI, and the input on the TV is DVI, so I have a straightforward HDMI to DVI cable plugged in between the two.

So far, so good.

Getting the resolution right is pretty straightforward. Once the cable is plugged in and the TV is switched on, the Mac automatically detects the full 1920 x 1080 pixel HD display. Woo! But…

There’s a flicker. Not much of a flicker, but for someone like me (pedantic, obsessive, neurotic and easily irritated, but also cool and kinda sexy) it’s enough of a flicker to make it unusable. I go do all the basic IT stuff, and see that the maximum output for the TV display is 60hz. The TV itself has a 600hz sub drive so, like what the hell, dude, right? That image should be as steady as a master surgeon’s hands over Angelina Jolie’s tits.

So, does anyone know why this is? I’ve Googled and Wikipediophiled, but can’t find a single bit of information (that I can understand) as to why my MacBook LCD running at 60hz should look steadier than my Plasma running at 60hz.

Answers in the comments please (or alternatively on the Wikipedia discussion page).

There could be a story behind this photo, folks. In fact there could be a great one. Only I’m guessing there’s just one word behind it. Can you guess what it is kids?

That’s right. Alcohol.

It just goes to show that it can really impair your judgement.

Why else would she be wearing mustard yellow?