Craigslist hoax...

People are just sick.

http://www.theinquirer.net/gb/inquirer/news/2008/03/25/man-loses-stuff-fake-craigslist
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2004302237_webhoax24m.html

If you ever see a post to the effect of "I'm giving it all away", flag it. Don't let this happen to someone else.

Podcast test

This post is just a test. Try subscribing with iTunes and see if you get the attached music file.

So is free speech dead?

Let me get this straight: if I want to create an anti-Christian web ring, that's perfectly acceptable. After all, free speech rules on the Internet.

If I want to accuse our government of being complicit in the 9/11 attacks, that's also allowed.

But if I speak out against Islam, I will have my web site shut down and be sued to suppress my views? To all those Iranians and Pakistanis who wrote to Network Solutions to complain about this site: If you're so insecure in your faith that you have to sue someone in order to prevent him from having his say, maybe you need to re-evaluate your own beliefs, because obviously you feel threatened.

Of course, with all the censorship in both Iran and Pakistan, the source of the complaints that shut down the Fitna web site, they probably wouldn't see this little note anyway.

Bye bye, forums.

My forum software got hacked. I wasn't using it for much anyway, so I took it down. Future discussion will be done by way of Google groups.

Everything that's wrong with the music industry....

In an article on the New York Post, we learn that the music industry really doesn't care about the people who create the music.

In short: the RIAA has been filing dozens of music piracy lawsuits, targeting guilty and innocent alike. Suing for hundreds of thousands of dollars, they literally ruin people's lives over sharing a couple of CD's worth of music.

So what do they do with all this money? They give it to the artists who were pirated, right? Wrong.

"What's more, these sources said that after the labels recouped their legal expenses, there wasn't much left to pass along to the artists.", the article says.

So, in this new world, does this mean that only the lawyers win?

Increasingly, record companies are becoming an anachronism in today's society, and it's becoming more and more apparent that the RIAA doesn't have the musician's best interests at heart. It's time to end the music business as we know it. Give the artists control over their own works and let them sell through places like iTunes and Amazon.

New wiki (CR users only)

I'm working on a new addition to the site. By using Google's Sites feature, I can create a kind of Wiki, this will allow me to quickly set up and edit my site.

the first page is a download page here:
http://sites.google.com/a/compiledreality.com/aviation/Home

What's more evil than a super villian?

A building contractor.

On flying model planes...

Those of you who know me know that I've been interested in airplane flight.... for a long time.

I can't afford to fly a real plane, so I've taken up the hobby of radio controlled flight. The first challenge? Buying the right first plane!

I considered 2 planes: The Hangar 9 Alpha, and the Hobbico NexStar. Both aircraft are aimed squarely at the new flier, and both are about the same price.

What interested me about the NexStar was the hi-tech wing. It has leading edge droops and fixed-position flaps, which act as half speedbrake and half lift-inducing flaps. The Alpha, on the other hand, is traditionally configured aerodynamically, but has a 3-bladed prop with a very flat pitch.

Other than that, the two planes serve the same market: the new pilot. Both planes are .40 size They both have a wing span of somewhere around 5 feet, are powered by a .4 cubic inch engine, (That's right: 4 tenths of a cubic inch.) and weigh in at around 6 pounds.

However, a wrinkle worked its way in to my plan: I came across a used plane for sale. And the guy was selling everything: radio, field kit... everything. The catch was, the plane wasn't a NexStar or an Alpha. It was this thing called a Giant Kadet Senior.

The Giant Kadet is a .60 sized plane, with a 6.75 foot wing span, but it weighs the same as the NexStar. So where the NexStar goes for drag & gimmicks on the wing to keep the speed down and the lift high, the Kadet does it by just having HUGE wings. Of course, the tailplane is huge, too. The elevator and rudder account for about 1/3 of the tail surface, so you get a ton of control authority.

On my first flight with this thing, which was my first flight in any nitro powered plane, I greased it in... the landing was perfect. Half of that was the fact that I've spent a lot of time on the computer, but a lot of that was due to the fact this plane glides very well. Because the wing is so large, you can cut the power while still on the downwind leg in the pattern, and you just kind of float in to the runway. I actually ran it out of fuel yesterday, and I just kind of tootled back to the runway, made a left turn, and set it down. Basically, you point this plane at the runway, kill the engine, and it just kind of floats above the ground, slowly settling in.

Now, I did say that this was my first nitro plane. It is also my first plane with landing gear. I actually started on an Easy Star, which is a fun plane to fly. In fact, I recommend that everyone who wants to fly buy an Easy Star, fly it for a couple of weeks until they learn to land without crashing, and then jump in to Nitro... but not without spending some time at a simulator first. (FMS is a good sim to practice with if you don't want to spend the money for RealFlight.)

So back to the Kadet: This plane is versatile. Because it's so light, you can power it with an engine designed for a smaller plane. You can use it to carry payloads or to tow gliders. You can even do some aerobatics... at much slower speeds than the sport planes out there.

Of course, now that I've gotten used to flying on fuel, it's time to get in to something more interesting. Pics of my first "assembled by me" plane coming soon....