I've spent the past few weeks learning how to fly a Piper Aztec.  The winds have been out of the west, and I've been landing into the sun.  Today the winds were from the east, and so I had the sun behind me on landing ( Read more... )

I bought Professor Elemental's latest album "The Father of Invention" back in November, but with one thing and another I haven't been able to listen to it until just now.  So I've been doing months without realizing that I'm personally name-checked in his lyrics.  Track is Back in the Swing of Things, 2:50.  It can be found hereI suppose this is ( Read more... )

Transactional Analysis has been generally determined to be nonsense.  It attempts to break down all human interaction into a small set of archetypes, and I think it remains useful as a metaphor even if it lacks scientific predictive power.

I mention this because I've realized I've been playing the Why Don't You -- Yes But game a lot over the past ( Read more... )

Christmas didn't really happen for me this year.  Every day in December that was not spent dealing with a family death was spent in the office.  There was no tree, no turkey, no presents.  I'm not too bent out of shape about that.  The Christmas celebration is usually a time of high anxiety for me.  There's a little 5 year-old in me that wants toys ( Read more... )

A week ago today I embarked upon an adventure.  Here is the story, as best as I can recollect.  I may back-fill with photos later.

( Read more... )

Air traffic controllers usually try to stick to a small repertoire of stock phrases. "I feel your pain" is not supposed to be one. This has not been a good flying day.

Tomorrow I may feel different, but right now I'm sick of rental planes that break down hourly. Time to look hard at buying my own crate.

An old manager of mine used to say that every piece of British engineering had a metaphorical penny in the fusebox somewhere.  But it's not just British things.

jo_etal has a 2003 Jeep TJ.  It's more than ten years old, and is doing remarkably well.  But as of yesterday evening the sum total of its failures has been ( Read more... )

Saturday night was Nuit Blanche.  We dutifully trooped down University to Nathan Phillips Square, taking in art as we went.  Very little of it spoke to me, as is sadly becoming the norm for this event.

Instead, most of the fun was to be had at the renegade sites.  We caught the Alice in Wonderland story mob at city hall and the Morpheous' Bondage ( Read more... )

On Friday, KS and I went to the Nine Inch Nails concert at the Air Canada Center in Toronto.  We dressed up fabulously silly, as one does.  I was a refugee from a Hamlet/Rocky Horror mashup, and she was a gothic wild west saloon girl.  Or something.  This earned us immediate recognition from fellow fans on the subway, and numerous compliments at ( Read more... )

I've been quiet here for a while, but a few things have happened in recent days and they justify some reporting.

On Thursday my 3D printer arrived.  It's sitting on a table in the lab, next to our old 2D printer.  The 1D printer is on order...

I got the Formlabs Form1.  So far it looks good.  Packaging and hardware quality is good.  Setup is ( Read more... )