Sportflier

Mont-St-Pierre Highlights

skyhopper — Fri, 07 Aug 2009 13:31:00 -0400

In July 2009 I took a trip to Mont-St-Pierre with some friends to participate in the annual hang gliding festival held there. What a neat place, and what great people! Special thanks to Harry and Roxanne for the drive and their wonderful company. Thanks to Lindsey and the Chew family for our day hike on an iffy flying day. As always it was great to be in the air with Harry and Lindsey at a wonderful site and to get their wise input into hang gliding there and in general. Flying there is no sweat for a hang 3 like me, just make sure you talk to the locals about the peculiarities of all the launches as well as micro-meteorology to be mindful of.

I had several flights during the course of our stay in Mont-St-Pierre; most were sledders. On our last day before the trip back I had a 90 minute flight working the ridge over launch. The lift band is quite narrow, a lot smaller than what we're used to at Ellenville, so you need good gaggle skills to stay up. Toward the end of the flight I saw a small squall moving east along the coast toward launch and eventually some of the local pilots standing on launch indicated that I should head for the LZ and land. I later discussed with some local pilots and was told that the LZ can get really hairy when squalls move through, so this was a safety issue. On my flight it was not a problem but better safe than squashed. This flight was a great way to conclude the trip and I really got a chance to appreciate the special quality of the site.

My feeling is that as Ellenville ambassadors we made a good impression. Don't be surprised if we have some Canadian visitors at our site in the near future!

Harry clowning around.

Harry and Roxanne

Moon over the valley

Sunset on the beach

Panorama of the ramp launch at Mont-St-Pierre, at center.

Panorama of Mont-St-Pierre LZ, originally uploaded by falcon170ct.

Here is a picture of the landing zone at Mont-St-Pierre. The peak with the main launch is in the center of the frame.

To see all of the pictures I took on this trip, click here.

Video highlights of ellenvillers at Mont-St-Pierre

Below are a few of the many videos shot on this trip. There is a link at the bottom for the rest of the videos.

[youtube:2Wf1ZzZZj8o]

Lindsey makes a landing

[youtube:32ylXKqr2-E]

Harry makes a landing

[youtube:-AOiKhXSDY0]

On this flight I land in the bushes and relearn the value of not going brain-dead when setting up my approaches. The camera is pointed in kind of an odd angle but you may notice me popping the glider over a large bush at the very end then parachuting down into the bushes; the grass there was up to my chest. The good news is, all of my landings after this one were great!

[youtube:-9fUDvi3cJw]

One of my first flights off of the east launch... Lindsey gives me encouragement while Harry records the video (thank you gentlemen!)

[youtube:ZT15eDrRoVI]

Lindsey makes a low transition and a nice landing.

Here is the full playlist of videos from the trip. There are 54 videos in all, and include a number of launches and landings, as well as views of clouds over the mountains and other scenes from the area.

Links for May 13, 2009

skyhopper — Wed, 13 May 2009 15:17:00 -0400

Stubborn Ella

Nicole Sullivan's Object Oriented CSS

Quince

SubSonic

ContractDriven.NET

HttpHandler

ELMAH

Introducing the Techie Guide to Google Website Optimizer

Google Analytics

Klok (AIR-based time tracking app)

Is Good (URL shortener)

A look at Microsoft .NET 3.5 certification exams

Links for March 19, 2009

skyhopper — Thu, 19 Mar 2009 21:50:00 -0400

Community
Platinum Bay Blog (Steve Andrews)
Steve Souders - High Performance Web Sites
Leaning Into Windows (Kathleen Dollard's blog)

If broken it is, fix it you should (Tess Ferrandez blog)
INETA North America
CTDOTNET
Community Credit

T4
Oleg Sych - » T4: Text Template Transformation Toolkit
T4 (Text Template Transformation Toolkit) Code Generation - Best Kept Visual Studio Secret
T4 Toolbox - Home

Entity Framework
ADO.NET Entity Framework - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Why use the Entity Framework? Yeah, why exactly? - Frans Bouma's blog
Entity Framework Petition - Leaning Into Windows

ASP.NET MVC
NerdDinner

WPF
Tim Sneath : Announcing Family.Show v3 – Our WPF Reference Application

Dependency Injection
Ninject: Lightning-fast dependency injection for .NET

jQuery

Warn before navigating away using jQuery

Web Browsers

Calling Time on IE6

Mike Nash Talks IE8 and Windows 7!

Getting the Skinny
DotNet Developers Search
KBAlertz.com: KBAlertz.com - Knowledge Base Alerts

Books & Magazines
patterns & practices: App Arch Guide 2.0 Knowledge Base - Home
patterns & practices: Application Architecture Guide 2.0 (The Book) - Home
Microsoft Visual Studio Tips (Paperback) by Sara Ford
slide:ology: The Art and Science of Creating Great Presentations (Paperback)
:: CoDe Magazine ::

Stuff
Snorg Tees - New Funny T-Shirts Every Week (Vintage T-Shirt, Cool Graphic Tee Shirts) –
Woot : One Day, One Deal (SM)

Fixed Comments Bug

skyhopper — Mon, 16 Mar 2009 23:44:00 -0400

Woohoo! Finally found out what the problem was with BlogEngine comments. It turns out the problem was an element in the parent web.config called xhtmlConformance. Here's an article about it in Scott Guthrie's blog:

Gotcha: Don't use <xhtmlConformance mode="Legacy"/> with ASP.NET AJAX

I had figured it wasn't really a problem with BlogEngine, and was probably some sort of configuration issue, for this simple reason: the site was identical (except for content differences) on my server, vs. my local machine. In my case, the legacy switch had been turned on in the web.config of the parent web... which is why I had trouble tracking this down. Not knowing about the legacy switch didn't help the situation.

Thank you Scott Guthrie!

BlogEngine widget update: Quotations

skyhopper — Fri, 13 Mar 2009 14:29:00 -0400

Here is a revised version of the Quotations widget for BlogEngine.NET 1.4.5. This version of the widget includes miscellaneous bug fixes and enhancements:

The "lastshown" field is now hidden (reserved for future use)
Clicking the "cancel" link when editing a quote now works properly
Added paging to the gridview
Text wrapping fixed on the quotation textbox
Fixed bug when last item is deleted

Quotations.zip (5.02 kb)

Windows Live Mail / Hotmail is down

skyhopper — Thu, 12 Mar 2009 12:16:00 -0400

Wow, hotmail / windows live mail is down:

I wonder what happened?

Links for 2009-03-06

skyhopper — Fri, 06 Mar 2009 14:56:00 -0400

In the spirit of A Continuous Learner's Weblog, and to try to update my blog more frequently, I'm going to start posting links here. I'll try not to recycle Steve's excellent choices, but I can't guarantee that I won't inadvertantly (or even deliberately) repeat these moving forward.

Client Scripting

jQuery and JavaScript Coding: Examples and Best Practices

My first BlogEngine widget: daily quotations

skyhopper — Thu, 05 Mar 2009 00:46:00 -0400

Prior to upgrading BlogEngine I had written (actually borrowed/rewritten) a fairly ugly user control to show a daily quotation. Now that BE 1.4.5 is here, the new widget framework looks pretty nifty. So I took the LinkList widget and massaged it into something I could use to store and display daily quotes.

My original quotes setup only shows one quote on any given day and uses a datestamp to keep track of this. I've attached my first pass at a quotation widget below. This widget picks a quote at random each time the page loads. However when you edit you will see a date field... eventually I want to make a daily quote as with my original (or perhaps you can choose to display random quotes or to rotate at daily intervals, or even time intervals). So the date field is there for future use.

The quote is displayed in a div styled with the selector "quotation". The author/source is displayed in a 2nd div with the style selector "quotation_author". So you can update your theme stylesheet to modify the appearance of these.

Enjoy!

~~Quotations.rar (4.21 kb)~~

---------------

3/13/2009: There is an update to the quotations widget.

Installed BlogEngine 1.4.5

skyhopper — Mon, 02 Mar 2009 23:01:00 -0400

Finally installed BlogEngine 1.4.5. Something goofy happened with my web hosting provider permissions on the app_data folder... I kept getting exceptions, but with tech support finally got it straightened out.

Now I just need to fix my daily quotes control. I want to turn this into a widget and contribute to the community.

Programmers should not design UI

skyhopper — Wed, 03 Dec 2008 18:51:00 -0400

After seeing my parents' new ATT Uverse setup, I've made the decistion that I'm going to give Cablevision the boot. The only decent thing about Cablevision has been my experience with the technicians I've had to meet at my apartment. The service is overpriced and corrupt IMO (they charged me a fee to cancel HBO); and the online guide/DVR is slow and poorly designed. The big problem is that over the years I've registered with many websites using my optonline.net email address. So I am going through the tedious process of updating my accounts, since I won't be able to use that email address once I've discarded cablevision.

Which brings me to IEEE, a professional organization focused on computing which I joined while I was looking for work after the dot.com bubble burst. It took me about ten minutes to figure out how to change my email address (and site opened two new windows and required me to log in twice during the process). If you've never been to IEEE.org, it's clear that it wasn't designed by anyone possessing tremendous usability skills. Having to log in a 2nd time isn't a huge ordeal, but it seems from the way finding the profile editor unfolded, the 2nd login wasn't intentionally designed as a security measure... it was more of an accidental security bonus.

The main problem is in making the profile editor so hard to find. Once you've logged in, a link for "my profile" (or something along those lines) is absent from the page. A website search revealed nothing. Only after clicking 'membership FAQs' did I find a link to what turned out to be a different subdomain, which is where I had to log in again.

End of rant.

WCF looks cool

skyhopper — Wed, 04 Jun 2008 10:04:00 -0400

Last night at my .NET user group meeting the topic was WCF (Windows Communication Foundation); our speaker was a Microsoft evangelist from Hartford (his blog). WCF is Microsoft’s next evolution beyond webservices; my take-aways from the presentation:

separation of concerns; focus on the business logic and not the plumbing
configuration magic (also seen as the rough edge of the current version of WCF; MS is working on improving that piece for admins)
unshackled from IIS
Retarget your end point to JSON, RSS, you name it, with just a few lines (one line?) of code

Of course there’s a lot more to it than that… I plan on looking into it more when I can find the time. If you like webservices I think you're going to love WCF. .NET 3.5 SP1 is coming out sometime this summer, they’re going to be adding further enhancements to WCF in that release.

A great day at Ellenville

skyhopper — Mon, 02 Jun 2008 22:49:00 -0400

Arrived at Ellenville launch yesterday about 2pm, found it blasting NW. Dave and Stan (?) were already on their XC adventure. It being too strong to launch, I decided to hike up to check out Bear Cliff and the new SW launch; in retrospect not a long walk but I wouldn't want to drag a glider up there without a lot more conditioning. Talked to some locals on the rock and had to sit down because of the strong surface wind. Saw a hawk hovering about 50 feet away.

Got back to launch around 3:30, Tom Galvin and Chad were set up and getting ready to go. Chad launched about 4 and shot up like a rocket, Tom not long thereafter.

Stepped in some pilot's dog poop which I wasn't too happy about, but I kept my mouth shut and focused on setting up. (got home later with yellow socks, not sure what that's about)

I launched around 5 when it was still somewhat strong but had calmed down (direction was very consistent). Good launch; went up immediately, textured air but nothing too nasty. Hopped on a couple of express elevators to 4400 feet msl. Felt a bit of vertigo on the first turn in the core but shook it off and was fine (it's been a while since I've been in a nice strong thermal). The airport by the prison was probably doable. Whizzed by a bald eagle (I think) at my level, going the other way. Strong lift wasn't hard to find, and it wasn't crazy-crowded like it sometimes gets. Came in to land at sunset. Some bubbles around 600ft agl. Bled off altitude over the pumpkin patch, had a nice 2-step landing about 20 feet from the bullseye without doing anything stupid down low. Flight time: 2 hours 46 minutes; felt like 30 minutes. I think I've finally fixed my launch and approach problems, just need to repeat it a few times for consistency. Feeling pretty good this will be my first year for XC.

Software I wouldn't want to be without

skyhopper — Tue, 06 May 2008 15:24:00 -0400

Here's a smattering of software I wouldn't want to be without on my Windows work computer:

FastStone Capture for Windows
This is a great screen capture utility. Unobtrusive, efficient, powerful, simple & easy to use.

Winmerge
Visual differencing and merging tool for Windows.

SyncToy
Free Microsoft tool for synchronizing folder pairs.

KeePass
Secure password storage program. Main build for Windows; builds available for Linux/Mac and handheld platforms.

CrossLoop
Secure screen sharing. Help family and friends with their computer problems.

Mozilla Firefox
It's not my primary browser but the developer plugins can be life savers.

TextPad
Powerful text editor. I know there are others out there that developers like; this is one I've been using for years... it's quite good. Perhaps if I have time I'll play with other text editors I've heard about.

Super Unleaded Hitting the $4 Mark in Connecticut

skyhopper — Thu, 24 Apr 2008 22:17:00 -0400

I went to fill up my tank on the way home from class tonight... holy crud, super unleaded is now $3.9999 (four dollars for all practical purposes). I use regular; that was $3.80 ($3.9999). Taking the train to work is looking more and more inviting.

Vista 64 + Palm = no joy

skyhopper — Thu, 24 Apr 2008 00:58:00 -0400

Well, I'm close to being fed up with trying to get my Palm TX to play nice with Vista 64. This is the third time in six months I've had to uninstall Palm desktop, clean the registry, etc ad nauseum; and I still can't get hotsync to work. So it seems I must ditch the Palm or ditch Vista 64. Looks like I'll be performing an OS install this weekend.

Just for fun, here's an error I got to click through about a dozen times when I reinstalled Palm desktop:

Sounds like a conundrum to me.