Flying beyond the Polar Circle

Some photos from our recent flying trip to the Lofoten islands:

Lofoten

Boycott the Beijing Olympic Games!

The famed Hamburg crosswind landing of LH044 on March 1st 2008

As the above event was widely discussed in German and other media, in their usual completely inaccurate fashion, here a link to the official preliminary report by the BFU (the relevant investigative body in Germany, comparable to the American NTSB's aviation branch) - for those who are interested in the true facts and who are as sick as I am of the BILD Zeitung, SPIEGEL and other mass media pumping up an event like this. I will post a link to the final report when it is published.

(The report starts on page 8 of the PDF, it is in German)

Schauma

Ever wondered about the foam that's forming on the beaches in spring/summer?

Seems to be mainly caused by an algae by the Latin name "Phaeocystis" (in German: "Schleimkugelalge", which translates nicely into "Slime Ball Algae" :-)).

Here's some more background. And here's an interesting article in SPIEGEL online regarding this spring's high concentration in the North Sea, supplemented with a fascinating satellite picture (in German).

Just an advertisement...

...for a review about a Flight Sim Add-On for Brussels Aiport I recently wrote on simflight.de ;-)

Karaoke Capitalism and Funky Business...

Don't know about you guys, but so far a certain Prof. Kjell Nordström had evaded me. Now I heard one of his talks ("How to enjoy capitalism") and he really captivated me. Both with his presentation style and the way he wove together seemling trivial tidbits of information to a captivating storyline...

Seems he co-authored at least two books:
Funky Business and Karaoke Capitalism...gotta run and grab these, I think.

Here's an interesting article which characterises him quite well, I think (in German).

M3 Challenge

If you are a BMW junkie like myself, you are bound to like the M3 Challenge, a free racing game released by BMW as a promo for their current M3. It is in up-to-date quality, featuring the complete Nürburgring plus online multiplayer challenges.

HandyTicket rocks!

Just have to share my excitement about the new HandyTicket for public transport currently being tried out by Hamburg's HVV. It allows you to purchase public transport tickets via your mobile which are later charged to your credit card or bank account.

Have been using it for several days now and it works like a charm. No more fiddling with small change or grumpy bus drivers who can't change on a 20 Euro note, thereafter flooring the pedal, sending you flying down the bus aisle all the while holding on to the contents of your wallet and your newly purchased ticket. I love it!

Just curious how the first encounter with a ticket control will look like. "Handy Ticket? Nice try!" is a likely scenario. We will see :-)

Open Source OLAP...

...seems to be gaining momentum.

So far, I was only aware of Eclipse BIRT. Here are some more impressive projects:

Pentaho (with the Mondrian OLAP server and the ETL tool Kettle)

JPivot

Jaspersoft

Jedox

While these tools may not yet have an edge over their commercial pendants in regard to a TCO perspective, they certainly show that competition in the already highly competitve OLAP market is increasing.

Re-booting a loo

A little quiz for you: picture yourself as pilot-in-command of an Airbus A340, sitting at the gate at the airport. One of your cabin personnel comes to you to report that the loos are not flushing. What do you do?

The answer: You "re-boot" the entire aircraft! This is exactly what happened to us today on a flight from Munich to Johannesburg. The captain came on the P/A to announce that he had to shut down and restart the entire aircraft for just that reason! Sure enough, the lights went dark (except the emergency lighting). Only that the toilets still wouldn't flush (to be precise, they just didn't "rinse", but the part that...uhm...takes care of getting out the load did actually work; so for the remainder of the flight, everyone was asked to add some water by using a cup...).

Now you know ;-)