Keeping with the previous two posts about quiet flight, I bring you the OpenSky Aircraft Project – the best anime-inspired jet-powered personal sailplane project I could find on the Internet.

You can find a couple of test-flight videos on the YouTube:

June 2006

September 2006

But I think the most compelling video is this one: How to Make OpenAircraft M01, a compilation of hundreds of photos of the design, prototyping and testing. It’s a QuickTime file, so you can load it and hit pause and use your arrow keys to flip between the frames. Awesome stuff!

OpenSky @ Wikipedia

From the article Solar plane en route to everlasting flight:

For the first time a solar-powered plane has flown through two consecutive nights, UK defence research company QinetiQ claims. In a secretive weekend mission, their craft Zephyr took off from a US military base in New Mexico and landed 54 hours later.

Check the handlaunch!

Simpler, lighter, more efficient. Exciting stuff. Soon I think we’ll see one of these things fly ’round the world, following the sun, perhaps… but then again, maybe not!

The late 1970s were an interesting time for alternative methods of flight. The day before I was born, August 17th, 1978, the first trans-Atlantic flight by balloon was completed. One year earlier in 1977, Paul MacCready had won the Kremer Prize by creating the first-ever human-powered airplane, the Gossamer Condor.

Two years later in 1979, MacCready would make aeronautical history with the Gossamer Albatross by crossing the English Channel. The achievement was substantial, but not in the same direction as previous achievements of “bigger, higher, faster”, but “lighter, more efficient, stronger”. MacCready studied the flight of birds and was himself a sailplane champion, and this informed his designs. In an age of fighter jets and big airliners, he showed that flight could still be a very personal achievement.

NPR Obituary w/ pilot of the Gossamer Albatross

Paul B. MacCready @ Wikipedia

Excellent short bio @ MIT, with video

Synopsis: Norweigan FM Pirate explains his buriable transmitter from 30 years ago while inside his homebuilt cat-cage (complete with hamster wheel). A fascinating contraption! He is nutty as squirrel poop, and I love it.

Avoid the loony Zune: A just vicious destruction of Microsoft’s “Zune” media player, by Chicago Sun-Times writer Andy Ihnatko. (Update: cholly tells me he is a Mac fanboy from way-back. This has not been double-sourced.)

The Zune, for those who could give a flivver, is Microsoft’s new iPod Killer. It’s got a few things going for it, but having fiddled with a number of MP3 players, from the iPod to the Creative Nomad series to the Zune (they had one at Target), I’ve got to agree with Andy – it’s not good.

The Zune has some really intriguing ideas – like transferring music between two Zunes via Wifi and some neat interface tricks that are things that A) users want and B) the iPod doesn’t do. But when you take those innovations like the Wifi transfer and completely cock them up by crippling that innovation (in this case by wrapping WHATEVER you send to your Zune buddy in a 3-play or 3-day timebomb of deletion) you get an unnovation. Why even put that in your device if it’s so crippled? The Zune is also large, expensive, and no doubt will suck down the battery juice because it’s constantly showing album art on its screen. Nice and showy, but I rarely see my MP3 player when it’s playing.

Sigh.

You can temper Andy’s reaming of the Zune with this more positive review from Ars Technica, if you should wish: Microsoft Zune: Welcome to the social.

And as loath as I am to say it – chalk one up for the cable company. I received in the mail a printed piece from my broadband provider saying that they were upping the download speeds 250%, now allowing me to download a 650 megabyte CD image in a little over 10 minutes. (They also quadrupled the outgoing speed, which is nice for when I pull my music from my house to work).

Kudos, Insight. Now can we work on the ala-carte cable television lineup? Please?

Listening to a song just now from the great compilation I am the Resurrection – A Tribute to John Fahey, I was thinking that I’d really, really like to hear more music like what I heard in that song. But where do I start? How do I describe that music? How would I search teh intarwebs to find such things? If I put “acoustic jangly music” into Google, I doubt I’d get what I’m looking for. Further, I wondered what it’d be like to search for images with only basic cues, like “cat fuzzy” and be presented with images specifically of fuzzy cats and nothing more.

What I’m looking for is a more abstract search – which I think is something that humans do every day in their minds. The equivalent of asking the video-store clerk “You know that movie with that guy with that shiny thing on his head,” or like what Kelly refers to as “fall music” – music that somehow evokes the feelings of the season that is “fall”. Obviously this isn’t something that you can easily divine from a filename, and even the search terms like “fall music” mean different things to different people, so it’s a tough challenge.

As you might imagine, Google’s already pushing things in this direction. In a small step to make their image search better (it’s already fairly awesome), they introduced the Google Image Labeler a while back. It puts you head-to-head with someone else to help “tag” the images with words of what you see in the photo. If you see a cat in the image, you can put in the word “cat”. Your description doesn’t get accepted unless the anonymous person on the other end puts in the same word, thereby ensuring some level of quality.

The problem is that humans are intelligent, but not quite intelligent enough to transfer equivalent intelligence into machines. This is a whole branch of science, as you might imagine, and we are certainly pushing things forward every day. It’s only a matter of plumbing the depths of our own minds and learning just how we learn.

The mind, it boggles.

The title says it all. While I normally keep work-life out of the blog-life, I’ll make an exception now, on account of the many, many lurkers that frequent this site, many of whom are either former co-workers of mine, or are of the nerdly persuasion.

Power Creative needs web developers, and in a good way. We’ve got plenty of work and we need people (like me) who can walk, talk, chew gum and code in a number of languages. Communication, problem-solving and learning skills might even be more important, and I’ll tell you why: Power Creative is an advertising agency, and the “Interactive” (it’s ad agency speak) department where you’d work is not like the dinosaur-pen or cube-farm to which you might be familiar.

It’s not for everyone, it’s true. You’ll be doing some serious warrior-poet sorta stuff here – a little analysis, a little design, and a good bit of development. You won’t just be “the developer”, but rather someone who works as part of a larger team inside the agency. You want project ownership? You’ll have it. Power’s “Interactive” department is small, but growing and more often than not you’ll be the point-wo(man) on the job at hand.

What is for everyone, however, is the stability of the job, the varied experience and the culture of the place. Power (which has been around since the late 1960′s) is a ridiculously diversified compared to the strictly Interactive agencies. We’ve got photo studios, copywriters, creative designers, set builders, ad buyers, media planners, etc, etc. We service any number of high-profile clients, like GE and Lennox to hometown favorites like Hillerich & Bradsby and Louisville Stoneware. We develop in many languages on many environments (PHP, ASP/VBscript, .NET, Windows, *nix, Mac), and you’ll be sure to expand your skill set. Finally, the culture of the place is excellent. I can’t imagine anywhere else I’d rather work.

Are you interested? Are you up for the challenge? Can you hit a softball while batting switch-handed? Let me know. Drop me a line here: ben{aye-tee}thelocust{deeohtee}org. Full position description after the jump.

{more}

INTERACTIVE ANALYST/DEVELOPER

Power Creative is seeking a versatile and personable interactive analyst/developer with strong technical knowledge and good client-relation skills. Candidate must be completely comfortable working in both Linux and Windows environments, must have extensive experience with XHTML, CSS, XML and Web Standards, must be familiar with installation, configuration and usage of Apache, IIS, MySQL, PostgreSQL and MS SQL Server, and must be able to switch easily between several scripting languages, especially PHP, VBScript and JavaScript (.NET/C#, Java, Ruby, Python, and Perl a plus).
Candidate must also be able to communicate well with clients.

JOB REQUIREMENTS

• Analysis, functional design specification, design, code development, testing, documentation, implementation and maintenance of Web-based applications
• Design and implementation of SQL databases
• Work with clients to analyze, understand and document user requirements for Web-based applications, and suggest solutions to problems and needs
• Perform cost/benefit analysis to determine the feasibility of a requested feature and suggest alternative solutions
• Work with client’s IT staff to implement necessary server configuration for databases and Web applications
• Analyze and resolve coding and scripting errors
• Research new technologies, techniques, trends and best practices in Web-based application development and apply this expertise to client applications
• Supervise development progress of projects

QUALIFICATIONS

• BS in Computer Science (or equivalent experience) preferred
• Solid record of good client interaction
• Proven track record of business process analysis and software design experience
• Proven track record of Web-based software design and development, with a focus on seeing projects through from beginning to end.

OTHER SKILLS

• Excellent troubleshooting skills a must
• Willingness, ability and desire to learn new technologies and techniques a must
• Ability to work as a part of an organic, networked organization
• Ability to creatively apply skills and technologies to achieve client needs
• Gathering of system requirements, mapping of processes and time and effort estimation
• Documentation of preliminary and functional specifications, model analysis, database designs, etc.
• Understanding of print media, page layout, and artistic abilities a plus
• Must be able to hit a softball switch-handed.

Power Creative

11701 Commonwealth Dr

Louisville, KY 40299

www.powercreative.com

email: opportunities{AT}powercreative{DOT}com

Remember how I said I was going to make a large catapult and call it THE POWER OF LOVE? Well, I did it! It took me only a handful of hours to complete over the 4th of July weekend, and at M@ and Sara’s 4th of July Party, it made it’s debut!

M@ was kind enough to video the thing in action (firing incendiaries) and put it up on YouTube:

Behold the Power of Love!

As previously reported, Kelly and I were on The Great Prius Hunt, and as of last night, that hunt came to a satisfying close!

We got a call from Jim Parker over at GreenTree Toyota to let us know that the car was in and that we could seal the deal that evening. After a little wait for the financing lady to finish up with some other folks, we signed our lives away, and rolled on out the door.

This morning, I put the Prius to the real test, which was this: Can it fit all my sailplane stuff in the rear?. The answer to that most critical of questions is Yes, and handily.