Short back and sides

I was right in the first place, the new series, Fringe, is rubbish.

I've now seen two more episodes, and it just doesn't work.

My favourite part was the citing of Occam's razor to support the supposition that a suspect was psychic - surely the more straightforward reason would be that he was commiting the acts that he was supposedly "seeing"! It actually made me laugh, which I don't think is a good thing.

Afoot

Sometimes, it's frustrating that secrets have to be kept.

One of the reasons it's been a bit quiet on here of late (other than my completion of Mario Galaxy) is that there is lots going on in my day-to-day work life that I'm not allowed to discuss for reasons of commercial sensitivity. I did consider just ignoring this, but in the end discretion got the better of me and I decided that I just wouldn't discuss it at all until matters have been resolved, or at least a little more resovled than they are now.

Once again, with things hanging in the air, it's difficult to get motivated, but I do have a number of things to do, which will keep me occupied for the next couple of weeks, by which time I think at least some of this will be resolved and I can return to normality again.

I understand the curse of "living in interesting times" with a little more clarity than I'd really like.

Galaxy Quest

It is now finally, once and for all and definitely over.

I finished Mario Galaxy - really this time. It took more than a month to work my way all the way through all the levels again, this time using Luigi, but I got there and unlocked the legendary Finale Galaxy.

The Finale is the easiest level ever - it simply being a way to re-meet a lot of the characters from the adventure in the setting of the original prologue level. Quite a nice way to finish it off.

To prove I finished (with both Mario and Luigi), the game sends you a thankyou note on the message board and the save game icon goes all sparkly - such excitement. So I can now definitely say that it's done and I now have to move on and find new world to conquer and new things to do of an evening.

Beside the sea-side

Following my flight simulator experience at Bournemouth airport, we headed down into Bournemouth itself to have a look around.

Having travelled 2 hours to get to the airport, it seemed a good idea to take a look around the town rather than just head straight home. I’ve been to Bournemouth twice before, once when flying out to Guernsey (on the very splendid Dan Air), we were forced to divert back to Bournemouth airport because of fog. We ended up staying in the Royal Bath Hotel (which was rather nice) and setting off again (and arriving) at Guernsey the next day. The other occasion was attending a Microsoft developer conference. Neither of these occasions gave me much chance to look around.

By the time we arrived at the sea front it was well into lunchtime and we were both ready for something to eat. Having walked through the gardens into town and had a quick look around, we decided on the Weatherspoon’s pub. It was pretty busy and we had to fight off the pensioners who kept trying to push in front to order their food and drink but we eventually got served. Beer was good but the food was a little indifferent.

After lunch we headed back to the sea front, with only a brief stop to look in a couple of shops. Herself had decreed that we would visit the Oceanarium – and so we did. We arrived at dead on 2 o clock and were told the sharks were being fed, so we rushed through the first several rooms to find the main pool. Indeed there were sharks and they were being fed. The obligatory commentary was provided by one of the staff and a fair crowd of people stood around whilst the sharks generally swam around and around the pool and didn’t seem very interested in the food. The turtles, however, were very interested (albeit in different food).

Having calmed ourselves after that excitement, we headed back to the start and wandered through the first few rooms. I wasn’t really expecting it to be too brilliant – probably a few mangy goldfish in a little tank – but it was, in fact, very good indeed. There were a variety of tanks, some of considerable size, and domes which either allowed you to put your head “inside the tank” or let the fish swim “outside the tank” making for a really good view either way. When trying to find the Piranhas we were rather shocked to find them swimming above our heads. We were also pleased to be able to spot several fish we’d seen on our various diving travels – and I even managed to identify a fish from our holiday that had been troubling me.

There was a very interesting skeleton of a turtle on display – did you know they can actually feel through their shells? – and some lovely baby sharks and rays. The interactive dive cage was, I feel, rather more targeted at children, since it didn’t seem to allow you to get very deep into any subject, but it had lots of interesting facts.

The tunnel beneath the main pool was great – the sharks and rays swam right over your heads and I got a very intimate view of a turtle too! It reminded me of the similar tunnel at the Sydney Aquarium (which is very good indeed).

Unfortunately time got the better of us and we had to rush through the last couple of sections to go and put another parking ticket on the car. But we did spend over an hour and felt we could have stayed much longer – definitely a worthwhile visit, especially if you can go when it’s not too busy.

Having recharged our parking ticket, we strolled down the pier and back. Not much going on, but it was nice to have a look around. We, of course, had to have an ice cream as well – even though the selection was somewhat limited. Finally, I got to have a quick go on some video games in the arcade: Airline Pilots – which was rubbish (and I should know), Tokyo Drift, which also wasn’t great and was over too quickly, and Mario Kart which I did rather well at (can’t imagine why). Then it was back to Oxfordshire for us.

A most agreeable day.

Open skies

It was a quiet, clear night at Heathrow airport as we lined up for take-off on runway 27L. The plane accelerated down the runway and smoothly lifted into the air, climbing to 6,000ft.

Nothing particularly unusual about this, except I was flying the plane. The other unusual thing was that we were actually in Bournemouth and not Heathrow at all.

I finally got to use my Christmas present, which was a spin in a commercial flight simulator. In this case a Boeing 727 (an aircraft not seen in Europe anymore – due to noise restrictions - but still common in Africa).

We travelled down to Bournemouth Airport and to European Aviation. It all looks quite impressive as you drive into their offices as there’s a huge hanger with a number of airliners being serviced – these guys are obviously the real thing. We were soon ushered through into the simulator area where 4 simulators are housed – these are big impressive beasts – and had a great talk about the way they worked and the different simulators (a B737-200, B747-100/200/300, S-61 Sea King helicopter and a B727-200) (Note: their website is out of date).

Then on to the actual flight briefing. I have flown once before in a Diamond DA20 for half and hour from Blackbushe Airport (last year’s present) and have pounded Microsoft flight sim for a few hours in preparation, so the instruments and controls were reasonably familiar to me. The plan was to take off, fly a circuit around Heathrow, try a few turns and then come in for a landing – it seemed a pretty tall order to me, but I tried to sound confident and asked a few pertinent questions about climb speeds and power settings to try to appear as if I had at least a bit of a clue.

Then it was over to the simulator, up onto the gantry and across the bridge. Inside was like stepping back to the 60s or 70s (which we were) – the plane was launched in the mid 60s and this simulator was built in 1979. But this was good – it was a lot simpler than the modern aircraft flight decks with hardly a computer in sight (except the pocket-calculator looking navigation computer). Even the simulator control console at the back looked more like a modified fruit machine than a sophisticated computer, with just a monochrome display and lots of obscurely labelled buttons.

The flight-deck environment appeared very authentic to me, down to the individual circuit breakers on the rear bulkheads, and the air conditioning, keeping it cooler than outside. It was also rather dark, which is when I realised it would be a night flight – computers of the ‘70s weren’t up to generating daytime scenes, so you had a fairly basic set of runway lights through the front window and that was about it.

So, into the big chair on the left (my instructor / first officer climbed in on the right) and a quick run-through all the instruments and controls – including the engine gauges (just for fun). Herself was to be our flight engineer (these were the days of 3 people on the flight-deck). A quick try of the controls – ailerons, rudder, elevators revealed them to be very heavy. The engine controls were pretty much as expected (three levers in the middle), but the flaps and speed brake seemed very clunky and the landing gear was a huge lever to the right of the centre console. I’m pretty sure that modern airline pilots would find it all very quaint and amusing.

It was time to go, so feet on the rudder pedals, a suitably large lever released the parking brake and then it was full thrust on the 3 engines. The whine of the noisy jets grew somewhere behind us and the flight deck started moving slightly – the front window showed us gathering speed down the runway. Some fairly ham-fisted rudder controls kept us on the runway – just about – and the airspeed indicator climbed upwards. “V1” I heard (the point of no return) and then “Rotate”, I pulled back on the column and the flight deck pitched up and the runway lights disappeared beneath us – we were airborne.

It took some doing to keep us climbing at 15 degrees – the plane was quite sensitive but everything had a delay before it responded. We eventually levelled out at 6,000ft and tried some turns. I found initiating them was fine, but it was hard to stop right on the heading you wanted and keep the plane level – I also kept losing height, especially banking at 30 degrees. I got gradually better as the flight progressed though – especially not losing height. I also played with the trim which caused these big wheels to whizz round and round on the centre console, which was good fun.

Eventually I had to do my final turn back towards the runway. The ILS lined us up but we were way over to the left, so I did quite a nice transit (I thought), back onto the approach line and started my approach. Throttles back to idle and nose down to about 2 degrees to give us a 3 degree approach angle. I was pretty well lined up, but kept forgetting to look at the glide slope indicator, so came in rather high. Extending the flaps caused some fun as well as the lift changed, making me even higher, and pulling the big landing gear lever down actually changed the way the plane felt (and made it much more noisy). I pitched the nose down a bit more and managed to come in, albeit a bit far down the runway.

I was rather worried about the flare, but the radar altimeter gave me the cue and I pulled the nose up and then we felt a bump and heard the tyres squeal and we were down. I pulled up the reverse thrust on the throttles, clunked the big speed brake lever on and then cranked up full reverse thrust. I almost forgot to steer, but with a gentle reminder I just managed to keep us going straight. Brakes on, and throttle down and there we were, back on terra-firma – virtually, at least.

We clambered out from the seats and had a look at the simulator track. My landing was pretty good in terms of heading, but right on the limit in terms of glide slope – I kicked myself for not looking at the ILS, but I was otherwise pretty pleased – a couple more goes and I think I’d really get the hang of it.

The folks at European Aviation were really friendly and gave me my full time on the simulator as well as making it challenging but fun. This isn’t something you’d want to do lots of times, but it’s nice to be able to say you landed an airliner at Heathrow, even if you do have to add the footnote that it was a simulator.

Confused

It is confusing how much work I'm suddenly having to do.

After months of quiet solitude and bimbling about with very little to do, things have suddenly come to a head and I'm dashing all over the country giving demos and having meetings. It's just not on.

Admittedly, none of these meetings seem particularly productive and we've just had a major foundation stone unceremoniously ripped out from under us, but I am still surprised at how much interest has suddenly been generated in our company and product. We do have a new freelance sales chap - which does explain a lot of it.

The physical new product (due end August) is still not here - mostly due to the fact we still have some outstanding issues with the supplier (which are a bit commercially sensitive).

So all in all, we seem to be steaming at full speed in ever descreasing circles and probably generating our own whirlpool in which to drown.

Anyway, this, and the fact I decided to embark on a programming project of my own which is rather far-fetched and foolish, but keeps me off the streets, is the reason for lack of posts and general activity in the past couple of weeks.

P.S. I still haven't seen the next episode of Fringe, but if and when I do, I shall be sure to report back

Dodgey Haircut

Is it just me, or was the first episode of Fringe on Sky last night totally rubbish?

I was quite looking forward to it, being pitched as a bit of a modern day X Files, but it was pretty well awful from start to finish.

I am willing to give them the benefit of the doubt for some of the story, although it was riddled with cliches and derivitive ideas, but the acting was so unconvincing and so was the clumsily tacked on love-interest.

Maybe, just maybe it was just the pilot and the series will be better. Hmmmmm, not sure I believe that