Flex Flint's Favourite Fun

Return to Flight

2005-07-27T07:46:27+02:00

If all goes well I will be able to follow all of Discovery's movements during its six day voyage, then it's back to work again.

The astronauts just started working again too, after a good nights' sleep, and they already encountered some minor problems:

...
[Houston]: Discovery this is Houston did you get the papers we uplinked you?
[Discovery]: No Houston, but ifyou say they're the same ones that are on board we don't need you to uplink them again.
[Houston]: Discovery it's just that when we uplinked them the file was too big to attach any summaries.
[Discovery]: Well, apparently you sent them to the network, but that's working under Windows NT and the printer is under Windows 98, so that's probably why one or two things aren't working... .
[Houston]: Ok Discovery copy that.
...
It's not word for word what they said, but that's what happened. Just now one of the astronauts is asking Houston to try and send the files again. And we, mere earthlings thought only we were obliged to work with crappy software. Ha!

Links:

http://www.spaceflightnow.com/shuttle/sts114/statustextonly.html: kind of a blog with the latest developements.

http://spaceflight.nasa.gov/realdata/tracking/: Nasa's applet showing realtime tracking of ISS ánd the Shuttle.

Godspeed to Discovery!

Being treated like a terrorist?

2005-07-26T17:34:20+02:00

(click on image to enlarge)

H/t and more over at Harry'sPlace.

Final messages

2005-05-07T19:51:32+02:00

Will be posting the last few messages soon, everything needs a proper ending.

Apologies for the hideous design by the way, the personalised script dissappeared overnight, hence hyperlinks are not underlined.
The images are gone because of the ISP concerned decided to change its URL ... also overnight.

Ellen is back!

2005-02-08T12:33:33+01:00

Heartfelt congratulations to Ellen MacArthur for an astonishing effort!

Michael Moore and me

2005-01-27T19:51:37+01:00

Finally, the obligatory "Look where I stand in that search!" - post: a search for fun in flint makes me come out first on Yahoo, second on Google. (Flint, Michigan is the home town of Michael-newsspin-Moore ... if only I'd known earlier.)

Frankfurt, Munich, Rotterdam, Istanbul, Stockholm, US: smallpox contamination.

2005-01-18T01:17:00+01:00

"If all we talk about are institutions when people are dying, they're gonna think we're crazy."

Quote of the day by Madeleine Albright in a staged exercise where different sections of the world (Europe and Northern America) are being contaminated with smallpox due to terrorist attacks.

According to BBC Newsnight, (see link for related program ánd .ram-file of this night's subjects), one of these exercices convinced George W. Bush to invest in the production of vaccinations for the complete population of the USA.

Recap of this exercise:

*Panic on the ground within the first few hours of the attacks.
*I believe they [the simulated crises-team] finally decided, after having had tea --France was in there as well you know-- to let the World Health Organization be responsible for one or two things (the UN wasn't available due to being occupied with "assessing" stuff ...).
*Too little, too few: some countries had enough vaccines, others could hardly cope.
*In a few weeks, millions of casualties.

Television thanks Auntie Beeb, as do I tonight.

Japan bracing for Chinese threat

2005-01-16T05:48:03+01:00

(h/t Instapundit):

Defense plan prepared for remote islands

The plan calls for a dispatch of 55,000 troops from the Ground Self-Defense Force as well as planes, warships and submarines from the main islands in the event the remote islands are attacked.

Scary, the article being "a leak" or not (see the link Glenn Reynolds is providing). The EU doesn't seem to worry:

The EU embargo on arms exports to China is likely to be lifted in the next six months despite US objections, UK Foreign Secretary Jack Straw has said.

When the world bends over for the French and the Germans ... .

Sri Lanka in for tropical cyclone

2005-01-09T07:33:44+01:00

~~Map here, textfile here~~. (Data are adapted but links disappear)

Go here and see under "Tropical Cyclone 01B Warning #...". The Sri Lankan Weather Forecast is here.

Tsunami video bandwidth project

2005-01-07T17:16:45+01:00

23.000 Hiroshima bombs

2005-01-03T18:21:29+01:00

Days shortened by 2.676 milliseconds

Help, donate!

2005-01-01T22:14:55+01:00

Jolly Europe! Hi-ho there!

2004-08-11T19:12:20+02:00

Yesterday there was the cat on the plane, now, or better say three months ago, there is/was the plane itself that went on the run:

(Belga) About three months ago two French fighter planes intercepted an airline passenger jet from Spanish aircompany Air Europa. That's what RTBF reported on wednesday [yes, August 11th, 2004 that is], based on an article in Spanish newspaper El Pais. The incident took place on May 1st, the day of Europe's enlargement.

No less than three air-traffic controllers in Denmark, Germany and Holland had tried to contact the crew of the Air Europe Boeing 737, to no avail. The plain was on its way from Bergen in Norway to the Spanish [island] Palma De Mallorca. On board were 186 passengers. The alarm was raised because of fears for a suicide attack on Brussels or Paris. Six German, French and Dutch jetfighters tried to intercept the Boeing 737. Above Brussels the French fighters eventually succeeded in making contact with the Spanish pilots. The two are being sued by the Netherlands on violations of air-traffic rules.

Translation is mine, as you may have noticed, my apologies if a few things are unclear. The original article in Dutch is here.

So, how come we haven't heard of this before? Three months ago!?! Is this because of things not passing the tests of the Editor-in-chief-of-this-is-more-important-news-than-that-other-bit, or just because "Classical media" were too afraid to air this on Eurup-cheer-up-day?! Is it a new procedure to air the news only about three months after it happened?

All right, rantmode [off]. Duh.

If anyone can find more on the Walloon (French-language) RTBF-site or the one from Spanish newspaper El Pais (subscription required), also mentioned in the article, don't hesitate to throw me a line or just chip away in the comments.

Thank you, my lawnmower is waiting for me outside, and he probably knows more about recent news than the media above mentioned. Captioncontests would be really fun at this moment, don't you think?

Noooh, about the plane!

Possible WMD's found

2004-08-10T23:02:59+02:00

We have waited a long time for this, but finally a new set of regulations has been announced to counter terrorism on Belgium's national airlines:

* Try not to fall asleep; always maintain a vigilant state of mind; keep your eyes peeled.

* Keep a close watch on children, make sure they do not engage in playing around with possible suspects' luggage.

* In case of small furry animals in vicinity, ánd crew having an abundant meal, encourage crew to shut cockpit doors.

What follows shows us how important it is to really keep these regulations in mind:

A "lot of coincidences", as the airline told BBC News Online, ended with the animal running wild in the cockpit and attacking the co-pilot.

There's no telling what might have happened if things had gotten further out of hand.

Sheesh ... said the cat. (h/t Kapingamarangi's blog)

A medal for the Captain!

2004-08-08T18:08:00+02:00

This is all over the Blogosphere by now, but in case you have not read this, please do. Very short excerpt:

When the shoe moves to the other foot, suddenly the Democrats switch from "Bring It On" to "We'll Sue You Into Silence," quite a difference in tone.

Looks like Kerry's medals, if existant at all, are being deep-sixed one by one. Thank God Edwards has some experience in suing people, maybe that's why he's there after all, or is it really just because he looks cute?

If you are wondering what the picture looks like in Europe: do not expect this kind of details to show up in the news, even the word "flipflop" will not ring a bell to very much people.

A few months after G.W.Bush was elected in 2000, you could hear all kinds of Belgian dino media pundits say "they were afraid they didn't know which direction this man was going to take them", or in people-speak: "this is a lunatic that'll push the red button for no reason at all". Only a few days ago, Belgian newspaper Het Nieuwsblad twisted Bush's latest gaffe into a rather different meaning. "My administration will do everything to harm our country and our people" was what they heard (h/t Luc over at LVB). Even the BBC got it right the first time.

The expression "Illegal Aliens" in a Simpsons-episode is being translated here into "illegal extraterrestrials" ... with voting rights of course. (It's the episode where Lisa is the President of the United States. Hey, being in your early thirties does not mean you can't watch a top cartoon now and then).

Belgian media had their own thoughts about Bush in 2000? To use a quote: "Shove it!", I'm having mine about Kerry in 2004. Thanks Captain for clarifying.

(You expected that link to be in the first paragraph didn't you? At least now you read first before clicking).

FFFF: crispy spiffy features!

2004-08-01T15:19:58+02:00

Flex Flint's Favourite Fun now comes with extra techy features.

You can now view some pictures --hopefully of some quality-- shot with the digital camera mentioned in the previous post. Feel free to comment on the photoblog as well! (Requires registration but the basic service is free, with a 10Mb storage limit).

Then there is the extra blogroll from Bloglines (in addition to the main one on the left). Basically it's just presenting the Bloglines RSS-feeds that are public. Note that these are very much subject to change; the Bloglines service really is userfriendly, so it makes it very easy to decide whether you want to be kept up-to-date about someone's blog.

Another feed I have added on the site is the "Published clippings"-feed that Bloglines provides. You can find the reason why I have put it up here. The Skynet blogsoftware seems to cough on the RSS-feed published on the bottom right of this site so the URL's are being replaced, but it's just fun to share each other's interests, and it helps me in deciding what the subjects of posts will be.

Future projects: hmmm, too bad TypePad isn't here yet in a completely free version. French ISP Neuf Telecom has launched a free version for its subscribers. Details can be found here on Loïc Le Meur's blog, one of the blogging gurus.
Dutch readers can find news about TypePad coming to Belgium or the Netherlands (TypePad.be and TypePad.nl next to TypePad.de?) on Maarten Schenk's TypePad development blog. (Hat tip to LVB, where you can also find an interview with Maarten about the launch).

This blog's future will greatly depend on how much time can be spent on posting, and/or how much time can be spent on developing or designing something. NucleusCMS looks nice enough for example, although most free CMS require server space, together with PHP, MySQL etc. And yes, complete independency is simply fun.

HP Photosmart R707. Heh.

2004-07-31T23:54:34+02:00

(link opens new window with original photo -- 846kB)

Finally. The HP Photosmart R707 is ours; buying a digital camera had been in my head for months. As well as the obligatory photoblog of course. Flex Flint's Photoblog will try to tickle your eyes with some newbee experiments.

Some notes and details about the camera will follow, for now we're going to pour ourselves a nice Quinta de Bons-Ventos 2003 (Good Winds?) and enjoy a the rest of what was already a veruy enjoyable summer evening night. We wish you the same!

Hmm, I seem to have cropped this one a little too much, it lost uhm ... quite some pixels. Ah well, he who dares not ... .

Belgium: explosion kills 14, wounds 60

2004-07-30T12:46:49+02:00

CNN is reporting 10 (correction, they've changed it into 14 now) dead in an explosion of an underground gasline south of Brussels. National radio is reporting 14 dead, the De Morgen newspaper (see under 'Gasexplosie Gellingen', they don't like being hyperlinked) also reports 60 wounded. Gazet van Antwerpen has more. The images on screen look dramatic, let us hope that flame is not the gas itself that keeps burning.

At this moment, everyone seems to be sure the fire originated due to the gasline being punctured during works.

The location of the accident is not as close to Brussels as CNN would like you to think, here's a map ('Ghislenghien' is the French name for the village, as opposed to the Dutch one).

Update: BBC-link. On a further note, this may not be terrorism but it may turn out as a test to see how well firefighters, ambulances and other local authorities can react to possible threats or major incidents. There has already been more than one medic saying they were too late on the location of the accident.

Update2: De Morgen now reports 100 wounded, of which 24 are seriously injured. All 14 casualties were firefighters.

Update3: national television is reporting 15 dead now. The army has been called upon. The fire seems to be under control, but in a wide area all cars and factories are completely destroyed.

Update4, 13:29 CET local time: 'Fase 3' of the civil emergencies plan was already announced in the morning, which meant the provincial governor is put in charge. France is also standing ready to help out or is already helping. A central phonenumber has now been announced on television (please contact local embassies, putting this number up on a blog would most probably attract unwelcome callers).

Update5: you may be wondering why there were no earlier reports on all of this. Personally, I must admit to be more up-to-date on international affairs as opposed to national ones. First report I saw was at about noon today, 11.00 AM GMT, and the De Morgen site, which has a relatively fast telex-system (in relation to other Belgium services), shows its first message at 11.48 AM GMT. More interestingly, most of the newschannels, including BBC, say the explosion occured somewhere between 7.00 and 7.30 AM, or 8.00 and 8.30 AM local time, while Fluxys, the owner of the pipeline says it occured at about 9.00 AM local time, half an hour later after they were informed about the leak itself:

Incident te Ghislenghien
Deze ochtend omstreeks 8u30 heeft de dienst 100 de maatschappij Fluxys op de hoogte gebracht van een lek op de aardgastransportleiding tussen Zeebrugge en de Franse grens. Een halfuur later volgde een ontploffing. Het incident vond plaats te Ghislenghien in een nieuwe industriezone.
[italics mine, this is the part that says 'half an hour later']

Update6: national television has put up aerial videoshoots of the place where the leak and the subsequent explosion took place, together with eyewitness reports (you will not immediately arrive on the right page, first locate the text 'Ga verder' on the bottom of the page and click it). Until now, they are the only ones who have reported the number of 15 dead. Some sort of electrical powerplant seems to have been located as close as 10 meters to the leak.

Update7: private television channel VTM also reports 15 dead, together with 200 wounded of which 24 seriously burned. Several sources appear to say the list of casualties will go up, which wouldn't be surprising considering the area that was affected due to the air displacement and the heat radiation (said to be 500 meters wide, reports even mention truckdrivers, on a nearby highway, with severe burns). De Morgen now reports medical and technical assistance is coming from France, among which 5 doctors.

Update8: national television VRT reported half an hour ago that the situation was under control. Fires on the ground have been put out and there is no more danger for the people working there. The same VRT also changed the number of victims back to 14 on their site. Reuters has raw footage (probably the aerial shoot mentioned before, uncut). More news is expected around 17.00PM GMT, the time that Prime Minister Guy Verhofstadt is expected to return from his holiday to arrive at the scene.

Update9: ... count has been brought back to 10 dead, 97 wounded, of whom about 40 are severely injured. Who said anything about the credibility of tradtional media changing facts 10 times in a timespan of less than 10 hours?

Pope John-Paul II and Dutch Prime Minister Balkenende have sent their condolences.

According to this article, aid was received from medical services as far as Lille (North of France). A total of 61 ambulances, 10 MUG's (Mobile Urgency Units), 4 French helicopters, 6 Belgian army helicopters and 1 private helicopter took part in the operation. They served 5 intervention teams, 1 medical post, and 1 command post.

Update10: this is turning into a lesson on how to read "classical media". The link in the previous update pointed to an article mentioning new numbers in casualties. Guess what? They've changed it again, without any mention of correction whatsoever, not even the URL was changed. This blog is going to let the established media cook in its own fat for a while, I'll start a new post later. (Six o'clock VRT television news at this moment is starting out with "at least 15" casualties again, where they too changed their numbers a few times during the day. An anchor on scene mentions "at least 10" five minutes later. Duh.)

Update11, 23.55PM GMT: a few final notes before the end of a moving day, next week the regular dayjob starts again and it's still a nice summer evening outside.

Casualty figures still keep going up and down. Are they that important? For future reference they might very well be. The images taken after the explosion are very intriguing (Via Ine over at Monuments. The site has most of the pictures that you will find on other sites. They're copyrighted but those are the only ones that will give you an overall view of the situation on the ground. Much of what was sent out today was either unclear, blurry, or simply for people feeling comfortable when tunnelviewing things).

Did you know these distribution lines run in pairs? They are burried just 1 meter under the surface, and are running parallel to each other with a distance of only seven meters between them (see this picture for example, the black line on the left is the tube that was still active when the first had already blown up, according to Fluxys' spokeswoman. It was only later that it was shut down as well). The pressure inside is 80 times more than the outside atmospheric pressure, 80bar or 80atm. Contrary to polular belief, the 'gas' inside is in a liquid state. One can only imagine what must have happened on those very few minutes. Notice the patterns in the fields too, as if this highly flammable liquid was sprayed up in the sky, only to fall down in a blaze and scorch the earth beneath it.

According to medicals specialised in treating severely burned victims, a lot of the people wounded have burns on the backs of their bodies, as if they were warned and were trying to run away.

Why all these numbers, all these details? Again, are they important?

It seems clear enough this was not a terrorist attack, but with one of Al Qaeda's own little friends purportedly sending out messages against Europe today, would it have been unimaginable? Luck sometimes comes in strange ways.