Flex Flint's Favourite Fun

Return to Flight

Wed, 27 Jul 2005 07:46:27 +0200

If all goes well I will be able to follow all of Discovery's movements during its six day voyage, then it's back to work again.

The astronauts just started working again too, after a good nights' sleep, and they already encountered some minor problems:

...
[Houston]: Discovery this is Houston did you get the papers we uplinked you?
[Discovery]: No Houston, but ifyou say they're the same ones that are on board we don't need you to uplink them again.
[Houston]: Discovery it's just that when we uplinked them the file was too big to attach any summaries.
[Discovery]: Well, apparently you sent them to the network, but that's working under Windows NT and the printer is under Windows 98, so that's probably why one or two things aren't working... .
[Houston]: Ok Discovery copy that.
...
It's not word for word what they said, but that's what happened. Just now one of the astronauts is asking Houston to try and send the files again. And we, mere earthlings thought only we were obliged to work with crappy software. Ha!

Links:

http://www.spaceflightnow.com/shuttle/sts114/statustextonly.html: kind of a blog with the latest developements.

http://spaceflight.nasa.gov/realdata/tracking/: Nasa's applet showing realtime tracking of ISS ánd the Shuttle.

Godspeed to Discovery!

Being treated like a terrorist?

Tue, 26 Jul 2005 17:34:20 +0200

(click on image to enlarge)

H/t and more over at Harry'sPlace.

Final messages

Sat, 07 May 2005 19:51:32 +0200

Will be posting the last few messages soon, everything needs a proper ending.

Apologies for the hideous design by the way, the personalised script dissappeared overnight, hence hyperlinks are not underlined.
The images are gone because of the ISP concerned decided to change its URL ... also overnight.

Ellen is back!

Tue, 08 Feb 2005 12:33:33 +0100

Heartfelt congratulations to Ellen MacArthur for an astonishing effort!

Michael Moore and me

Thu, 27 Jan 2005 19:51:37 +0100

Finally, the obligatory "Look where I stand in that search!" - post: a search for fun in flint makes me come out first on Yahoo, second on Google. (Flint, Michigan is the home town of Michael-newsspin-Moore ... if only I'd known earlier.)

Frankfurt, Munich, Rotterdam, Istanbul, Stockholm, US: smallpox contamination.

Tue, 18 Jan 2005 01:17:00 +0100

"If all we talk about are institutions when people are dying, they're gonna think we're crazy."

Quote of the day by Madeleine Albright in a staged exercise where different sections of the world (Europe and Northern America) are being contaminated with smallpox due to terrorist attacks.

According to BBC Newsnight, (see link for related program ánd .ram-file of this night's subjects), one of these exercices convinced George W. Bush to invest in the production of vaccinations for the complete population of the USA.

Recap of this exercise:

*Panic on the ground within the first few hours of the attacks.
*I believe they [the simulated crises-team] finally decided, after having had tea --France was in there as well you know-- to let the World Health Organization be responsible for one or two things (the UN wasn't available due to being occupied with "assessing" stuff ...).
*Too little, too few: some countries had enough vaccines, others could hardly cope.
*In a few weeks, millions of casualties.

Television thanks Auntie Beeb, as do I tonight.

Japan bracing for Chinese threat

Sun, 16 Jan 2005 05:48:03 +0100

(h/t Instapundit):

Defense plan prepared for remote islands

The plan calls for a dispatch of 55,000 troops from the Ground Self-Defense Force as well as planes, warships and submarines from the main islands in the event the remote islands are attacked.

Scary, the article being "a leak" or not (see the link Glenn Reynolds is providing). The EU doesn't seem to worry:

The EU embargo on arms exports to China is likely to be lifted in the next six months despite US objections, UK Foreign Secretary Jack Straw has said.

When the world bends over for the French and the Germans ... .

Sri Lanka in for tropical cyclone

Sun, 09 Jan 2005 07:33:44 +0100

~~Map here, textfile here~~. (Data are adapted but links disappear)

Go here and see under "Tropical Cyclone 01B Warning #...". The Sri Lankan Weather Forecast is here.

Tsunami video bandwidth project

Fri, 07 Jan 2005 17:16:45 +0100

23.000 Hiroshima bombs

Mon, 03 Jan 2005 18:21:29 +0100

Days shortened by 2.676 milliseconds

Help, donate!

Sat, 01 Jan 2005 22:14:55 +0100

Jolly Europe! Hi-ho there!

Wed, 11 Aug 2004 19:12:20 +0200

Yesterday there was the cat on the plane, now, or better say three months ago, there is/was the plane itself that went on the run:

(Belga) About three months ago two French fighter planes intercepted an airline passenger jet from Spanish aircompany Air Europa. That's what RTBF reported on wednesday [yes, August 11th, 2004 that is], based on an article in Spanish newspaper El Pais. The incident took place on May 1st, the day of Europe's enlargement.

No less than three air-traffic controllers in Denmark, Germany and Holland had tried to contact the crew of the Air Europe Boeing 737, to no avail. The plain was on its way from Bergen in Norway to the Spanish [island] Palma De Mallorca. On board were 186 passengers. The alarm was raised because of fears for a suicide attack on Brussels or Paris. Six German, French and Dutch jetfighters tried to intercept the Boeing 737. Above Brussels the French fighters eventually succeeded in making contact with the Spanish pilots. The two are being sued by the Netherlands on violations of air-traffic rules.

Translation is mine, as you may have noticed, my apologies if a few things are unclear. The original article in Dutch is here.

So, how come we haven't heard of this before? Three months ago!?! Is this because of things not passing the tests of the Editor-in-chief-of-this-is-more-important-news-than-that-other-bit, or just because "Classical media" were too afraid to air this on Eurup-cheer-up-day?! Is it a new procedure to air the news only about three months after it happened?

All right, rantmode [off]. Duh.

If anyone can find more on the Walloon (French-language) RTBF-site or the one from Spanish newspaper El Pais (subscription required), also mentioned in the article, don't hesitate to throw me a line or just chip away in the comments.

Thank you, my lawnmower is waiting for me outside, and he probably knows more about recent news than the media above mentioned. Captioncontests would be really fun at this moment, don't you think?

Noooh, about the plane!

Possible WMD's found

Tue, 10 Aug 2004 23:02:59 +0200

We have waited a long time for this, but finally a new set of regulations has been announced to counter terrorism on Belgium's national airlines:

* Try not to fall asleep; always maintain a vigilant state of mind; keep your eyes peeled.

* Keep a close watch on children, make sure they do not engage in playing around with possible suspects' luggage.

* In case of small furry animals in vicinity, ánd crew having an abundant meal, encourage crew to shut cockpit doors.

What follows shows us how important it is to really keep these regulations in mind:

A "lot of coincidences", as the airline told BBC News Online, ended with the animal running wild in the cockpit and attacking the co-pilot.

There's no telling what might have happened if things had gotten further out of hand.

Sheesh ... said the cat. (h/t Kapingamarangi's blog)

A medal for the Captain!

Sun, 08 Aug 2004 18:08:00 +0200

This is all over the Blogosphere by now, but in case you have not read this, please do. Very short excerpt:

When the shoe moves to the other foot, suddenly the Democrats switch from "Bring It On" to "We'll Sue You Into Silence," quite a difference in tone.

Looks like Kerry's medals, if existant at all, are being deep-sixed one by one. Thank God Edwards has some experience in suing people, maybe that's why he's there after all, or is it really just because he looks cute?

If you are wondering what the picture looks like in Europe: do not expect this kind of details to show up in the news, even the word "flipflop" will not ring a bell to very much people.

A few months after G.W.Bush was elected in 2000, you could hear all kinds of Belgian dino media pundits say "they were afraid they didn't know which direction this man was going to take them", or in people-speak: "this is a lunatic that'll push the red button for no reason at all". Only a few days ago, Belgian newspaper Het Nieuwsblad twisted Bush's latest gaffe into a rather different meaning. "My administration will do everything to harm our country and our people" was what they heard (h/t Luc over at LVB). Even the BBC got it right the first time.

The expression "Illegal Aliens" in a Simpsons-episode is being translated here into "illegal extraterrestrials" ... with voting rights of course. (It's the episode where Lisa is the President of the United States. Hey, being in your early thirties does not mean you can't watch a top cartoon now and then).

Belgian media had their own thoughts about Bush in 2000? To use a quote: "Shove it!", I'm having mine about Kerry in 2004. Thanks Captain for clarifying.

(You expected that link to be in the first paragraph didn't you? At least now you read first before clicking).

FFFF: crispy spiffy features!

Sun, 01 Aug 2004 15:19:58 +0200

Flex Flint's Favourite Fun now comes with extra techy features.

You can now view some pictures --hopefully of some quality-- shot with the digital camera mentioned in the previous post. Feel free to comment on the photoblog as well! (Requires registration but the basic service is free, with a 10Mb storage limit).

Then there is the extra blogroll from Bloglines (in addition to the main one on the left). Basically it's just presenting the Bloglines RSS-feeds that are public. Note that these are very much subject to change; the Bloglines service really is userfriendly, so it makes it very easy to decide whether you want to be kept up-to-date about someone's blog.

Another feed I have added on the site is the "Published clippings"-feed that Bloglines provides. You can find the reason why I have put it up here. The Skynet blogsoftware seems to cough on the RSS-feed published on the bottom right of this site so the URL's are being replaced, but it's just fun to share each other's interests, and it helps me in deciding what the subjects of posts will be.

Future projects: hmmm, too bad TypePad isn't here yet in a completely free version. French ISP Neuf Telecom has launched a free version for its subscribers. Details can be found here on Loïc Le Meur's blog, one of the blogging gurus.
Dutch readers can find news about TypePad coming to Belgium or the Netherlands (TypePad.be and TypePad.nl next to TypePad.de?) on Maarten Schenk's TypePad development blog. (Hat tip to LVB, where you can also find an interview with Maarten about the launch).

This blog's future will greatly depend on how much time can be spent on posting, and/or how much time can be spent on developing or designing something. NucleusCMS looks nice enough for example, although most free CMS require server space, together with PHP, MySQL etc. And yes, complete independency is simply fun.