Michael Paul Smith, a modeler and photographer in the US, has posted his skills on Flickr. Being an old modeler myself AND a photographer, I can only awe at his patience, skills and imagination ! I am glad I have something positive for my blog again 
Just CLICK HERE and stay glued to your monitor screen like I did !
Do I really care where you send your messages to me from !? Did our ancestors waste space and paper by having their mail pigeons carry a message ".. sent from my Mail Pigeon….."????????
Is this annoying me just because it occupies extra space on my hard disks, makes me scroll further down than need be and makes me lose time. Or am I just jealous because I can’t afford an iPhone? And is this really just advertising by Apple that cannot be turned off, or is it yet another "mine’s bigger than yours" syndrome of our high-tech information grail?
You choose.
Upon my very strongly worded message yesterday, I was surprised to find a one-liner in my mailbox this morning: "…. your pending image has been re-instated…".
Good, so apparently it DOES help sometimes to get sincerely angry !
Next!
Yeah, you won’t see me angry quickly. I may be grumpy sometimes, but most of that is more out of fun than anything else. But these buggers have really done it now. I’ve been paying for a ‘Premium Site’ since 2002, that’s EIGHT YEARS. I figured I could make a few bucks of some of my photos at the time, and put up (among quite a few others) the picture you see here. You can – or rather COULD – get it on a t-shirt, a coffee mug or a cap. I sold, errrmmm… maybe FOUR of them in 8 years. Whatever.
Out of the blue came a mangled email from CafePress telling me ‘a’ picture was suspended because <insert some vagueries here>. So I replied to please send me the entire e-mail. Returned were more vagueries, but now it became clear that one or the other picture apparently was getting their nickers in a knot. No mention of precisely WHICH picture, NOR what was wrong with it. It took me two MORE emails to get a somewhat clear answer.
Now, if ANY of you thinks that putting said picture (see on the left) of a 50-year old aircraft, from a factory that closed back in 1968, owned by a public flying club, is depriving ANYONE from REAL MONEY, or is in any other way an infringement on copyrights……… then you should go live in the US (if you not already do so). I sure as heck haven’t encountered such behavior on this side of the pond… yet! But chances are that our society here too will turn into a place where the ONLY thing people seem to be after is to SUE each other out of money for no particular reason, just to feed the lawyers… instead of work. OR to downright steal each other’s work.
This is what I call, and pardonnez-moi le mot, anal retentive! I would use stronger language if I had been brought up to. What a load of BS !
And no, I am not going to write to the Avions Jodel, relatives of the original designers, who now sell the old building plans to home builders. I don’t think they would expect me to, I most certainly do not think I am legally obligated, and I even think they and all other Jodel lovers, would be glad to have the plane distributed on coffee mugs and shirts…….. especially with 0,2 copies per year !!! (So you can see, I am not upset becasue of loss of money, other than the monthly payments to CP… it is a matter of principle!).
I simply MUST tell you about the new website (webzine!) of my on-line friends Glenn Norman, Michelle Goodeve, Hal Bryan and Mike Singer. I have been privvy to some of the preparations and to what drives these people. Needless to say, we have lots in common. And I think that goes for most readers of my blog as well, so you’ll be interested ! Below is the text I wrote for my various publications:
A brand new, on-line, commercial ‘web-zine’ has been born. Conceived, designed and ultimately produced and launched by some friends (Glenn Norman and Michelle Goodeve) and people many of us know (Hal Bryan and Mike Singer, both fromer MSFS gurus)! It is called Why Fly and is all about WHY we/you love FLYING (and aviation). "
…… Glenn and Michelle fell in love with each other—and the sky—while they were still in their teens. After getting their start as aviation writers, they’ve spent the past 25 years working as actors, screenwriters, story editors and producers on numerous TV shows. But as most of their stories were about flying, the couple decided to combine their skills and create Why Fly in partnership with their friends Hal Bryan and Mike Singer….".
You can see the FREE initial version by going here ! I know you’ll like what you see, so get a subscription and make sure the mag takes off into a wonderful future, serving us all with great stories about flying !
1-0 for now.
It appears that it is so much ‘easier’ to quickly type a few lines on Facebook, read about what your friends and acquaintances are doing, check again a few times every day, and move on, then to write something worth reading on a blog. I complained about this before, to myself, who else, and am still not happy about it.
Anyway, I’ll try and turn the tide a little and get back to my regular blogging (on various (!) blogs) without going totally insane by trying to remember where I need to go on the Net every day!
Here’s some stuff I am working on today…. learning/tinkering with Google Sketchup!
I did that last year too, and stopped. But since Arno Gerretsen of FSDeveloper.com wrote somewhere that you can port models made with Sketchup to FSX, I have a renewed interest. I am a publisher and not a developer….. but maybe a would-be developer and would-be ex-publisher? Who knows. I’d like to be able to make ’simple’ objects for FSX myself, using maybe some of my 80.000+ digital photos for textures, and being a little bit less dependent upon time that others don’t have 
Don’t hold your breath.
Am also hard at work on some of my many websites/blogs to design new templates for them, using a very nice tool I found: Artistreer.
Ans last but not least, working on designing CD versions of some of the FSAddon products I don’t have in the shop yet, such ast Misty Fjords FS9, the Lysander and some others. Stay tuned.
Now that I am getting more and more involved with doing business in China, of course such headlines draw my attention. Although I am sure that ‘human rights’ are sometimes ‘forgotten’ in athat vast country, I am equally sure that this is the case in more than half the countries on our globe. So I am not going to get into a discussion about right or wrong.
But Google, and maybe other significant information bringing companies, pulling out of China would be a loss for THEM, not so much for Google or for the ‘free world’.
Apparently Google and its email accounts were attacked from sources in China, causing the message that I found today: http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/01/new-approach-to-china.html
Now that is something I DO have an opinion on, and a very strong one. DON’T mess with OUR freedom and privacy…. I pretty much do not care what you di with your own
Lets see what happens next, but China would be ill advised to return to their isolationist policies.
I’ll be posting our best wishes for the next year soon here. But unfortunately I have to finish 2009 with yet another sad story.
For the second time this month I have to post news that will be devastating to many of us.
Herb Morse, aka Lizardo, died of cancer after emergency surgery failed to save him. Herb was a avid ‘bush pilot’ that many of us met for the first time in the Bush Flying United days over at Avsim. He tinkered on airfiles, helped MANY flightsimmers in various forums over the years and was always good humoured. Herb will be sorely missed by all of us and our condolences go to his wife Amy, his children, his relatives and all of his many flightsim friends all over the world.
Like Jun earlier this month, ‘Lizardo’ will be sorely missed by his family AND friends, leaving yet another empty space in the ‘flightsim scene’.
Rest in Peace, my friend.
It is finally here. Christmas. And a WHITE one at that! So Merry Christmas everybody! Hope you have some wonderful days with family and friends. And also my deepest sympathy to some of our friends whom I know are NOT having such a great time. Chin up folks….. life’s tough, but remember the Silver Linings !
Meanwhile the Lysander got released yesterday amidst a huge cloud of stress on my part. Deadlines, deadlines….. I don’t mind them usually, but this time it was a bit much. Am exhausted now and will have to take it easy for a couple weeks. Yeah, right.
Alright, next activities: make newsletter, magazine ad, then Christmas Dinner for Dad, pack car and move the office to our French Subsidiary to celebrate New Year with our friends in our other country. And get some sleep afterward I hope…..
Wishing you all WONDERFUL DAYS from a white Holland!!
Nina and Francois
The Lysander is ready. The User Manual is ready. Nick made beautiful pictures. The Special Operations Guide is written. We have a bunch of marvelous repaints. All the ’scenery’ (landing zones with objects placed) is done. I compiled dozens of maps, flew 5 routes for days on end.
So why isn’t the package on sale yet??????
Well, it is uploading now and soon I’ll send word to simMarket. The problem is that, as usual with any IT project, things went wrong in the last minute. Pictures got formatted wrong, the pdf-maker program all of a sudden started acting up, I found some mistakes, both PC’s ground to a halt, simFlight news still had to be made….. and time slipped through my fingers.
I am dead tired, haven’t slept well for many nights, had to drop all social activities (I know, it IS Christmas… or is it??), and even had to prioritize some of my work.
Karma.
Lizzie will be on sale tomorrow….. and I’ll be asleep and not checking the sales or support forum. Maybe I need another job? Fact is, this has been such a wonderful project, one that I really loved doing, that it still seems worth all the money and time spent on it. I hope you’ll agree.
Tomorrow.
Is it the financial crisis – whatever that may be – that lures people into trying to sell every bit of crap around the corner? I doubt it. I think actually that it is the Internet that’s to blame.
You see, ‘in the old days’ when you opened a shop to sell t-shirts printed with someone ELSE’s logos, or ‘drinks toasters’ made out of wrongly burned CD’s, or the umpteenth greenish satellite picture projected on some perfectly good FSX textures, you’d not have many people even ENTER the shop. Let alone buy the stuff.
And once the word got around and all 15.000 inhabitants of the town would have frowned over your shop window and passed it without buying, you’d have to close the shop unable to pay for the rent any longer.
Idea busted. Consumers’ money safe.
But with the Internet every Joe and Mary can rig up a $50 a year website, pretend they’re a corporation of some substance even and sell this kind of crap to not 15.000 city dwellers but to a couple million naive (?) Internet shoppers.
Unfortunately some industries are clearly not effected by any consumer watch dogs and flight simulation surely is one of those. People NEW to the hobby can walk into various traps with their eyes wide open. And quite a few do, indeed. Sadly.
Now, another phenomenon I have noticed over the years is that for some reason quite a few FS users seem to be dyslexic, or at least have a tendency towards it. I jokingly inquired somewhere else if this is a prerequisite for being a flightsimmer. Obviously not, but as I read MANY support forums and other community forums, it strikes me that quite often a buyer of PC goods really goes off about a purchase, while all he actually did was not properly READ the instructions or manual. A well-known expression in IT circles is that the ‘problem is between the back of the chair and the keyboard’.
Again, not really an issue with flightsimming in itself, but more with the fact of having computers and Internet probably. I mean, if you buy a plastic model kit and paste the wings upside down because you’ve never practiced with IKEA instruction sheets prior to attempting an Airfix model, what are you going to do? Drive into town and rant at the toyshop owner !!??
Hardly. More likely you’ll pry the wings off and somehow paste them back on, putting the damaged-looking result on a high shelf, out of sight of visitors. Or you just trash the mangled model and not tell anybody of your error.
But with the Internet, people just turn around, fire up their favorite forum and blast away at the poor developer, who did everything right. Except for the fact he sells his program to people who can’t read, are PC-analphabetics, have no patience at all or have some other deficiency making them slash out to anybody just because they can.
It is hugely frustrating to BOTH developers and (bad-reading) customers. The only real solution is to get rid of PC’s again….. hmmmmm……
Many of you will have known my good friend Jun Kazama, in many forums known as ‘Gallopinggoose’.
I am sad to tell you that Jun passed away on December 3rd, a victim of cancer.
Our heartfelt condolences go to his dear wife Fumie first and foremost.
But also to all of his many friends all over the world, whom he charmed with his enthusiasm and Internet presence. Jun was part of many Internet communities and forums and always present in our Beta Teams. He was a virtual bush pilot, made wonderful videos and connected many Japanese simmers to the rest of the world.
I know from our conversations that Jun strongly believed in us coming back in another form after passing away. That means we’ll meet again. Maybe, as Jun once said, as the eagles we both loved so much.
Rest in peace, my friend, until we meet again.
Journalism or Marketing?Not an interesting question for many of you, I am sure. Or maybe it is? Here’s my continuous dilemma, one that I face on a daily basis, and have done so ever since I started working for simFlight (and simMarket).
Also one that I have so far managed to work with pretty well, supported by my friend and business partner Miguel.
SimFlight is a NEWS web site bringing you independent news about flight simulation, and aviation topics. And one of the agreements its owner and I had from the start is that I would have total freedom in deciding about WHAT gets written on the simFlight sites. Except for some minor things, because simFlight gets paid out of the profit that simMarket makes, and hence depends on simMarket’s health. So obviously and logically there is a mutual and open interest to make new products on simMarket KNOWN to the readers. The exception of free news publishing is hence that simMarket news gets priority and is always on.
Fair enough.
And since I run an add-on publishing company myself, I use my ‘powers’ to promote that company and its products too, of course. In the end, ALL of the important ‘news sites’ work the same way. Not one of them is financed by a wealthy backer who doesn’t expect anything in return. They are either part of a company with an interest, or sponsored by one (or more). No exceptions. And no surprises to any of you, I am sure.
Marketing is good. YOU want to know what products become available, when they do, as much as I do.
Laying in bed with a terrible migraine headache this morning, and the news of yet another roadside bombing floating around somehow, I thought it was time for yet another Grumpy Tale. This one is about wasting lives and tax money…. I leave it up to you to decide which is more important.
Camel Dung
I am a parent-of-one-daughter. And husband-of-one-wife. TWO women to look after. Or, as THEY would state, to be looked after by. Alright, I’ll go with that, don’t want any arguments inside my own column, now do I.
But I wonder how some other men do it. I mean, there are societies around that have multiple wives!!?? Gosh! Those guys must have more headaches than I have, with my lifelong migraine problem. Or, hang on, maybe not. Maybe they’re a lot smarter than I am and just don’t care. Maybe their only worry is having enough wives to have ALL work done for them, so they can relax at the local café and smoke their waterpipes. Which, I suspect, are fueled by dried camel dung.
…. and I am SO glad. Apparently I (and about agazillion husbands with me, I am sure…. come on, admit it!) am not made to live on my own. Too quiet, nobody to complain to, too much hassle of collecting all that dirty laundry and dishes… and then too much work to redistribute them all…. and above all, nobody to hug once in a while! No, definitely not my thing.
I am also exhausted, because there was nobody to yell to come to bed… or to sternly prod me to get out at 9:30 !! And guess what? You think you’d have MORE time to sink into working and get some stuff done that’s been lying around for ages, wouldn’t you?
Forget it… my backlog has only grown. Yeah, alright, I know, I like doing too many things. But you already knew that.
FenceBuilder is almost ready folks….. stay tuned !
Really, although I’ve been in the ‘computing business’ since 1978 and involved with PC’s (or microcomputers as they were called back then) before that, I could very often well do without the bloody things.
We’ve all been there. A perfectly fine and proper working (Windows) PC suddenly won’t start in the morning. Eerie DOS error messages on a black or blue screen and that’s it. Go make coffee and sulk. And if you haven’t been there yet, believe me, one day you will.
Now, I have friends who stubbornly maintain that this is ONLY happening to ME and that I must be the cause of all the trouble. Me and my questionable PC skills. Well, maybe so.
Fact remains that after 30 years of tinkering with these things I would think I have built a reputable knowledge and experience in doing so. Seen every brand model and make, and had every operating system from good old CP/M, through PC-DOS, MS-DOS, OS/2 and a few hundred I forgot already. I even programmed them. From the old IBM mainframes and HP mini’s, through all sorts of microcomputers and PC’s. In all sorts of languages too, although having started with clean and modular PL-1 wasn’t really helpful in debugging Z-80 and 6502 ‘machine code’. Or spaghetti Cobol source for that matter !
Just to show you… been there, done that. Admittedly I was a lousy programmer. I guess that’s why I soon wound up in management, and I am sure my former employees would agree.
My good friend Miguel often calls me grumpy, a name that until recently I myself attached to quite a few people older than me. Since I am rapidly growing older myself, or so it seems of late, I guess I’m as grumpy as the next old guy. That is if you think 57 is old.
I do, especially on those days that all the old – and new – little pains get out of bed together with me. Hurting back from 40-years old volleybal injury, a hurting toe from god-knows-what, stiff shoulder.
Heck, I can’t even brush my teeth sometimes in the morning, my back hurts when bending over to the wash basin.
So in my mind this gives me all the rights I need to write a ‘Grumpy Column’ every once in awhile, and this one is the first in a series. Maybe now I don’t have to spill it all out on Skype and Miguel can go his business walking his dogs in his holiday resort, without having to worry about his one and only managing editor. Mind you, not all of it is to do with flight simulators. There are many more things in my life, fortunately. And quite a few little annoyances, UNfortunately. But hey, maybe you recognize some of your own and my rants and musings give you a chuckle. If not, just discard and move on. [Read the rest of this entry...]
….. in years, that is. Turning 57 today! There were times that I thought 57 was ANCIENT.
Actually, I still think so… LOL!
I’d rather be thirty again, know what I know now and live according to it. Alas,that’s not the case for any of us. So we get wiser when it doesn’t matter much anymore. We get more spare time when we’re too old to move and enjoy it. And we have more things to do when time is getting scarce it seems.
I still consider myself fortunate, having a relatively good health (knock on wood) and at least NOT feeling the urge – nor having the money, I admit – to be one of these too-old Porsche drivers with a silk scarf, thinking people still notice them…… when all they look at is the expensive and obviously useless sports car.
I’ll stick with the old Jeep for a while longer, and may get myself back into a boring people carrier again one of these days. I’ll find my excitement on the BMW, and on the Internet.
Now, back to reading ‘The world according to Clarkson’, which is an amusing read. Glad I am not really like him either, although I do envy him for all the fun cars he gets to drive in
Actually, I’ve done a training course on similar things, way back when. Something about ‘Monkeys on your Shoulders’. Trouble is, I can’t say NO to people. So I take on more work than I can handle… almost daily. That’s also intensified by the fact that I like so many things and CAN DO so many things…… does that make me old !? It will on Monday…. 57 !! Yuck !!!
So, looking at the most pressing tings currently; the FS Weekend, the 2008 fiscal administration obligation, the FenceBuilder Package, the Chocolate wbsite, the China Venture and now a Texas venture……. oh yes, and the Lizzie…. I may have to find myself turning down some other people (like I already did with my good friends from Greece regrettably).
Why are wise decisions always painful ???
Have a good weekend everybody, gotta run back to my desk.
Travel like a Local at Localyte.com
