Douglas' Blog

Marking My Territory

Since September of this year, I spend the majority of Monday through Friday working for Critical Mass. And since that time, I’ve been on the Hyatt account, responsible for a lot of the Hyatt website. I don’t do much programming and when I do it tends to be little pieces here and there, and nothing all that noticeable or worth mentioning. But last week that all changed when Hyatt joined the Web 2.0 revolution and added an AJAX-driven auto-suggest on the Location search field on the main page of the Hyatt site.

Of course, it was Aaron that did all the cool stuff® that you can see – all the HTML, Javascript and other associated markup magic. But I did all the coding on the server-side that made Aaron’s stuff possible. Regardless, it’s cool to say that a certain piece of a large, high-traffic website is your handiwork.

The auto-suggest piece has been on the Hyatt website for over week now so I think it’s fairly safe to say that my mark on Hyatt is here to stay. You can click on the image for a larger sample view or you can visit the Hyatt website and check it out for yourself. And if client (and hopefully user) reaction to this new piece is good, then I expect that we will see used in other areas of the site.

Flying Goals For 2007

Last year I didn’t really have any goals related to flying. As January 2006 rolled around I was well on my way to getting my instrument rating, which was more than a good enough goal but I never really thought of it as that. As it turned out, finishing up my rating took more of the year than anticipated through no fault of my own but I feel like I need a list of sorts that I can cross accomplishments off of. And so, I’ve decided to compile a list of flying goals, in order of the likelihood of being achieved:

1. get checked out on a retractable gear aircraft; this is a reasonably easy goal, especially at the Calgary Flying Club as the club owns an Piper Arrow (essentially a Piper Warrior with retractable gear and a constant-speed propeller). And I am already confident with constant-speed props due to my experience with the club’s Cessna 182.
2. build up my instrument flying time and approach count;
3. get an introductory lesson in a helicopter (leaning towards Big Horn Helicopters)
4. visit six new airports;
5. fly over a large body of water (should be accomplished with a flight to Nanaimo);
6. log at least 50 hours of flying time (last year I logged perhaps half that due to IFR training);
7. get some good video and still photography of my flying (I love admiring myself *g*);
8. fly deep into the United States – preferably somewhere in southern California;
9. get a multi-engine rating;
10. buy a share in an aircraft

I’ll try and post some updates throughout the year as I work my way through the list.

The Internet Is Annoying

I read Aviatrix’s entry on Badgering Badger, in which she ended with a link to the Badger Badger Badger website. Be warned, the Badger website is another one of those useless websites that’s made it’s way around the Internet because it’s so unbelievably annoying that you can’t help but send it around to all your friends. Which is exactly what I did at work (along with a link to Zombo.com).

But of course, no one here at Critical Mass can let an email like that go so replies were sent out with links to the Hampster Dance and a Badger vs Banana remix. So yes, the Internet is annoying.

Raw Life

Sometimes life hits you with a few raw packets (sorry for the geek metaphor) at the most unexpected times. I took a half an hour to walk from my workplace this afternoon to go pay a City of Calgary (or should I say Corporation) parking ticket. That in itself is worth a post, since the fines are outrageous and especially since it wasn’t even me who got the ticket. But I digress.

As I was returning from City Hall, I was nearly accosted by a magpie. It basically flew right in front of me for no apparent reason. Normally a low flying bird is not a big deal except that he landed beside a city trash can and proceed to scamper around the can. The whole thing seemed rather peculiar. That is until I saw that he was chasing a small mouse around and around the can. And then the magpie caught the mouse in it’s beak; right in front on my eyes. Life doesn’t get much more raw than that.

You Got ID To Go With That Boarding Pass?

I was reading ’slight paranoia’ this morning and was reminded again that you can legally board a commercially aircraft without showing ID. Personally, I think that is wrong; the airport authorities and airlines should have every right to know who is using their facilities and boarding their planes. And so what if they know who I am, where I was going and when? And even if they report all that to the government, big deal. Though perhaps I don’t care because I’m not a criminal and have no intent of doing anything wrong. But even so, can someone please explain how my privacy is invaded by asking to see my ID? ‘Cause I just don’t get it.

Want to rent a car? You’ll need ID for that. Want to pick up a package from a courier? You need ID for that. In fact you need ID for a lot of things. It’s the way life is. Do I feel my privacy is invaded? No, not in the least.

But the more I think about it, the more I feel that by insisting that people be able to maintain their so called privacy, the more the safety of everyone else is compromised. So if some traveler feels slighted because they have to show ID but the overall result is greater safety for all, then I choose the good of the many over the feelings of the few.

Stop Motion Movie

Since my intent with this blog is to publish my thoughts and opinions on various things of interest, I don’t normally like to post entries that consist solely of links to other sites. But this mini movie, titled ’Tony vs. Paul’ is probably the best stop motion movie I’ve seen to date. Very clever.

Noticeable Spam Increase

Several technology news sources have noted in the past month that the amount of spam being sent out has increased dramatically. On my mail server, I didn’t notice any changes until last week when I saw a huge jump in the number of spam emails – from 4 or 5 emails getting through my filter to an average of 20 per day. The emails are actually all the same content and with only slight variations in the subject line and different sender name/email. So I’ve once again dropped my filter score in the hopes of catching more of this crap. It’s a bit of a pain as dropping the score in simply a change to a configuration file but I need to scan my email inbox to ensure that dropping the score won’t trap any emails I actually want to receive.

Also, I’ve now set up my server to automatically remove old emails caught by the spam filter. I’ve set virus emails to be removed after 7 days and other emails to be removed after 14 days. That way any emails which are caught unnecessarily can be recovered. I set up a daily cron job which runs the following script:

#!/bin/sh

cd /var/amavis/quarantine/
find -atime +14 | grep "badh-" | xargs rm
find -atime +14 | grep "spam-" | xargs rm
find -atime +7 | grep "virus-" | xargs rm

Now I just need to find a web-based application that will allow me to preview the emails caught by the spam filter and allow them through if necessary. The Astaro firewall product has a similar feature and it was invaluable.

IFR Training In Canada

After 13 years of VFR flying in Canada, I decided to get my Instrument Rating. I had two main reasons behind this decision: I wanted to learn something new and I wanted the added flexibility an instrument rating gives you.

I met with the Chief Flight Instructor at the Calgary Flying Club in the summer of 2005 and at that time picked up all the information, books and older copies of maps and CAPS that I’d require. In October 2005 I started the actual training. Just over a year later, in November 2006, I did my instrument rating flight test and passed.

Below is a list of links to my entries regarding various lessons throughout my training. It was my original intent to document every lesson I did, however, a lack of time has prevented me from doing that. If I manage to find some time to spare, I will try to eventually update this list with the missing entries.

Entries: (newest entries last)

1. IFR Preparation
2. Introduction to the Simulator (lesson #1)
3. Timed Turns & Rated Ascents/Descents (lesson #2)
4. Navigation Aids (lesson #3)
5. Lesson 4
6. Lesson 5
7. Lesson 6
8. Lesson 7
9. Lesson 8
10. Lesson 9
11. Lesson 10
12. Lesson 11
13. Lesson 12
14. NDB Holds w/ Wind (lesson #13)
15. NDB Holds w/ Wind (lesson #14; aka #13 continued)
16. Approach Briefing (lesson #15)
17. VOR Approaches (lesson #16)
18. VOR Approaches (lesson #17)
19. VOR Approaches (lesson #18)
20. NDB Approaches (lesson #19)
21. Localizer Approaches (lesson #20)
22. Localizer/BC Approaches (lesson #21)
23. ILS Approaches; DME arcs (lesson #22)
24. IFR Flight Planning (lesson #23)
25. INRAT Exam
26. IFR Simulated Cross Country (lesson #24)
27. IFR Cross Country #1 (lesson #25)
28. IFR Cross Country #2 (lesson #26)
29. IFR Cross Country #3 (lesson #27)
30. IFR Cross Country #4 (lesson #28)
31. IFR Pre-Flight Test
32. IFR Flight Test

Current status: training completed (12 Nov 2006)
Sim Time: 22.6 hrs
Flying Time: 15.0 hrs (10.9 hrs hood; 0.8 hrs actual)

IFR Flight Test

Long story short: I did my Instrument Rating flight test and passed. But to actually get the test done took me four attempts due to the weather. The previous three times I showed up at the airport only to have the ceilings at Calgary International drop to 200 feet, which would be fine if it was summer and the freezing level wasn’t close to the ground level. In any case, today the weather held nicely and I was able to get off the ground, fly from Springbank to Calgary, do my hold and approaches and return back to Springbank.

The flight test went as expected, which was pretty much on par with my pre-flight test. And both flights were carried out as laid out in the Flight Test Guide on the Transport Canada website. I won’t bother listing the questions that the examiner asked as they won’t ask you anything you won’t have learned in your training. And I suspect that every examiner is different and has their own list of ‘stock’ questions that they ask.

The flying part of the ride was done on one of the Calgary Flying Club’s Piper Warriors, thus I would be getting my Group 3 Instrument Rating. Since the clouds today were far above the service ceiling of the Warrior the test was done using a hood, which Transport Canada mandates that you wear the entire flight. And that was fine by me since the more instrument time I have to practice, the more confident I feel with instrument flying. I was the PIC for the flight so the examiner talked only when necessary, and since I didn’t need to ask him any questions, the only time he really spoke was when he needed to to give me instructions like when to put the hood on or when to finish holding.

Each skill on the test is marked on a scale of 1 to 4, where 4 is perfect and 1 is all bad. You can read the complete details of the 4-point Marking Scale on the Transport Canada website. Any skills marked as a “1” will result in a re-test of some kind, either a partial or complete. For me, my marks were all 3 and 4, except for my NDB approach which I was given a mark of 2 for flying 125 feet too high during the procedure turn. Overall the approach was successful but the deviation resulted in a lower score than I would have liked. But overall, my pass was an acceptable 81% which is well above the required 60% for a pass.

Flight time: 1.7 hrs
Instrument time: 1.4 hrs (hood)
Approaches: 2