Flyin’ and Ridin’

Where? On my desk ! Actually, I can’t see it anymore… the desk! Someone told me the other day I should stop about 80% of the things I am currently doing. I think she may be right….. just one problem: I’d go broke. Or maybe not… so if you don’t hear from me anymore I may have gone to doing just one or two things with my life.

Meanwhile, we’re readying Plum Island and doing strings of all-nighters in the process. The Installer installs, the documentation is documented and the scenery is, well, sceneried. We’re now at the stage that we’re fending off our highly appreciated beta testers….. time to put a stop to things and tinkering, learn to live with the few remaining flaws, and start making some much needed money. And then ON to the NEXT project: Emma Field X !!!!

See ya next time…. maybe.

Yet another 3/4 of a day with heavy headaches hasn’t stopped me from making progress. I think I’ll open yet another blog, related to migraine only. That way I don’t have to bore you with it here.

The good news is that Plum Island now looks VERY close to finishing and we’re busy making the product page, finishing the installer and trying to get it all done by the coming weekend!

There’s a lot of other (FSAddon) stuff in the wings, but I’ve already mentioned that on the FSAddon site.

Amazing how time flies….. two more weeks and Nina and I are going for our second attempt to spend some time in France, and riding the BMW. Cross your fingers for us !

Well, you KNOW I’m an Internet freak, geek and buff….. so am I serious !?

Think of it for a moment…. no rush to the monitor after getting up BEFORE a proper coffee and some breakfast. No e-mails to attend to, no support calls, no forums to read and above all no nasty people to deal with. You know them, the ones that poison the forums, comments on web sites and e-mail inboxes with their drivel and hatemails. Weird people in this world, more and more.

And no projects to stress about, no ISP’s to battle anymore, no resetting routers and PC’s, no testing of products, no hiccups in download shops.

And no need to break one’s mind over what hardware to buy next, and next and next …. no expensive software that asks for expensive upgrades right after you’ve installed it.

Oh the peace and quiet one would have………

…….. probably boring me to death .

Folks, there is still hope for humanity. Some companies still ‘get it right’, indeed.

I am talking about 123Inkt (at www.123inkt.nl), my supplier of ink cartdriges (and sometimes other supplies). I must be one of their worst customers, because I don’t print a whole lot (saving paper= saving trees, and I happen to love trees).  When my color cartridge did ‘burp’ 2 weeks ago, and I took one of my two new ones I had in reserve, only to have the HP Photosmart printer to reject it….. I wasn’t a happy camper. After many tries I reluctantly opened the second cartridge… and this one worked at the first go. Tried a few other things… no dice, the cartridge was not recognized.

Now if you are like me, always stressed with an ever-growing lack of time and coupled to that a shrinking patience, you can imagine my state of mind. Having to find the invoice, seeing what their (123Inkt) terms and conditions had to say…. Oh right, I need to log in and file a trouble ticket. Grrrrr….. done, now wait for a reply. This was Friday evening of course….. of course…. so wait until Monday!

But sure enough, everything was nicely taken care of. They asked me to send the faulty cartridge back, at THEIR cost, they sent me a new one, at THEIR cost….. AND they included a small bottle of wine as an apology.

Now THAT is what I call Customer Focus ! Well done 123Inkt. They assured getting my business again once I have printed yet another couple of trees

Yes, WOW, two blog posts in one day !? I am so excited! Check out the tabs atop this page and compare them with the order of the ‘Pages’ in the column on the right.
Notice anything?
Right, they are THE SAME !

But that was not the case after implementing this nice Wordpress theme. The author had programmed the tabs to be on Page ID order and not on Page Order order….. if you follow me.
So today after having done my usual chores I set out on studying the various bits and pieces of php coding that make up the themes of Wordpress blogs. And after much digging I found the variable name for ‘Page order’ AND I found where to substitute it in the original theme code.

Expect more customization from now on… I am back into tinkering - oops, I mean programming - and getting the hang of it in a very modest way

I just had a flick through my early morning simFlight ‘news folder’…… we use a Google Groups account to filter all ‘news’ sent to us, before putting it on the web site. That would be flight simulator related news.
Yeah, right.

Of today’s submissions (only some 60 this morning since I cleaned it out late last night) the main subjects were (in order of repetition):

Britney Spears
Angelina Jolie
Paris Hilton
Pharmacy
Rolex
Replica
Watches

Now I am BOUND to get a load of HITS on my blog today (let me tag them to find out) !!!! It is incredible that apparently the vast majority of humans browsing the Internet fall for these cheap sex ‘lines’ in their e-mails !

You don’t believe that’s true? Well, why else would it make sense to send this drivel time and time again, 365 days a year? Enough people must actually OPEN these stupid e-mails to make it worth while. Oh yes, AND buy their aspirins and viagra through the sites then revealed. Because THAT is what’s inside folks (yes, I looked to see). Pharmacy web sites or other totally useless crap to buy from shady marketeers.

Yes, I am embarrassed being part of the human race at such times…. no wonder the world’s a mess !

How come when you get older the days go faster !? Shouldn’t that be the other way around? Am I not getting slower and more relaxed? Oh wait… maybe because I AM slower the time appears to be going faster?

Anyway, enough philosophy already. Another day has gone by, filled with ‘being busy’ and ending with ’still so much to do’. Will it ever change? Actually, I hope not! I thrive in chaos, I would be utterly and truly bored when I would have to sit on my hands. I have no patience for fishing, or for laying on the beach. Maybe I am overly creative. So?

Anyhoo…. work on Plum Island is now really in the last phases, the Lysander is on the radar screen of many, hits on the web sites are steadily going up…. if all that would translate in some income in the last months of this year then at least I can claim to have survived yet another year as entrepreneur ! Hows that !? Help me cross my fingers folks! Maybe cross a few of yours too, all help is welcome.

Oh, and here’s another problem I have. I am sitting here watching a plastic bag filled with chocolate !! Kilo’s of the stuff !!!
I am designing this web site for a chocolate factory and the owner gave me ’samples’ to make photos of.
"Eat them after you’re done" he said.

Yeah, right….. my avatar will not fit within mandatory 80 pixels anymore … soon !

One day you have nothing, and the next the world is at your feet….. or at least you can watch it from above !

I have a subscription for Google Earth Pro for our documentation work at FSAddon and I just LOVE searching zooming and watching all sorts of places on earth. Not all are as detailed as I’d like of course, but it is getting better by the day.

And now we have TWO, because Microsoft’s Virtual Earth looks to be a worthy contender….. in future. They’re not there yet. GE is better equipped, has more options and is easier to use….. so far. Partly because I am used to it, of course. But the source material differs in places. I found differences in detail of the same place in the two products.

So if you are looking for something, and don’t like what you see on one, try the other. I may have a more up-to-date photo !

The pre-ultimate Beta of Plum Island will go into action this weekend. After that we’ll test the installer and docs.

We also have a second Beta of the Lysander flying now…. screenshots are made and will be uploaded tomorrow for y’all to gawk at ! That’s the good news. The bad news is that it is pretty well done as far as the OUTSIDE is concerned. But we still need sounds, flight model, instruments and some ‘actions’.

I also had an e-mail from a frustrated customer, asking if he could have the Emma Field ‘landscape’ without Emma Field, and complaining we’re not working on it, let alone delivering it. That in turn triggered a very frustrated answer from both Bill and myself. We’re doing all we can, we only have two hands and one designer and we did not and WILL NOT give a release date.

The problem is twofold: resources and lack of money (so we need to do other work in between FS work….. SORRY !! ).

Now you’ll excuse me, I’ve got work to do, even though it is past 21:00 yet again (yes dear, I know I promised to only work 16×7 for a year or two… yes dear, I know this is the 4th year already….. coming dear……. … NOT !).

… or the lack of them, rather.

I need to put up a calendar on a client’s website. It should be easily updatable (is that a word) by himself, i.e. someone with not much PC knowledge nor interest, and depict the days his cottage is rented out.
Sounds easy enough, eh?
Turns out it isn’t.

After much searching I found a nice looking product….. but they require weekly payments. Yechch! Another one looks okay, albeit it not very graphically enticing, and costs 60 British Pounds. I forgot these even existed, let alone that I remember how much they are worth these days. Anyway, the product I am going to try is here, on Availcheck !

Meanwhile I found several hundreds of products that were either too big, too complex, too expensive or too shabby to consider. Life of a web designer can be pure hell at times.

As far as I am concerned it is easily the proper thing for virus makers. Seriously.

I am normally a peaceful young man, but these sort of people get to me. Needless to say I was once again their innocent victim. Don’t know how I got it…. I run a hardware firewall, a good and reliable anti-virus software, have as many security holes plugged as I can, never click on silly links (sex, drugs or other) and don’t even open half of my emails.

And yet….. I somehow attracted the Vundo virus/malware code and it played havoc on my browsers, adding unwanted pop-ups and other stinking ads, infesting my hard disk, slowing down my PC and who knows what else it did.

Worst of all, it took me an evening and half a day to find it and get rid of it! My time, my dear friends, is all I have left in this life, and not enough of it as it is. So taking that away from me is like taking (part of) my life, and that in turn is more than sufficient reason to kill the bastards. There !

Always has been one of my favorite regions in the US. Perhaps because it most resembles Europe. Or perhaps it was the first area ever that I visited when first coming to the US many years ago.

Like so many other States it has lots of slumbering little towns, villages and AIRFIELDS. And Bill Womack is going to take us along in FSX with his new 100 Dollar Burger Series of highly detailed, but simple scenery titles. You’ve probably read about it by now; Plum Island is the first in a series of affordable, highly detailed and  super-realistic places.

Bill is using aerial photographs. Ouch !! I know, I used to be an opponent of those myself. But wait until you fly over THIS incarnation of it….. they come in FOUR SEASONS, they are extremely well BLENDING in with the surrounding default textures, and Bill placed thousands of autogen objects to make it very realistic looking.

On top of that he has beautifully modeled the little sleepy airfield near the town….. can you say Emma Field Quality!? This is not in the Pacific Northwest, but equally characteristic. You can almost TASTE the salt air from the tidal flats nearby and SMELL the fuel dripping from the old tank near the hangar. Oops!

Land your Piper or Cessna, park it on the grass, get your thermos with coffee and your sandwiches and sit down at one of the two picnic tables where you can have a chat with the local pilots or the airfield manager.

Check out the PREVIEW HERE !!!

Already some time ago I have started moving many of my websites to Wordpress ‘format’. Especially for ‘news’ sites, i.e. sites with regular changes, it is much more flexible than ‘regular sites’. With those I need to start my Dreamweaver, find the proper folder within my 10.000’s of folders on my PC’, add text (and/or pages) to the site on my PC, save it, then start my FTP program, find the site and find the folders on my PC, then upload the proper pages…. hoping I don’t forget anything.

It makes for nicer web sites, for sure.

It also makes for lazy editors….. just too much of an effort to add anything, so I don’t. Wordpress changes all that and I can type a new message, or a new page, in minutes, press the ‘Publish’ button and get the news to you.

So if you click on your trusted www.FSAddon.com link today, you’ll be automatically redirected to the new site. I will add the missing parts (products and their pages) over time….. and leave out some of the old stuff. For now the downloads still point to the old site, so they’re not lost !

…. is in an hour-and-a-half from now. Or more precisely, the cremation.

Sorry for the absence over these past days. We’ll try and pick up ‘normal’ life again starting tomorrow, with news from the flightsim and motorbike fronts.

François

Nope, they never met. But there are similarities.

They both were extremely important. One for the Russian population, history and indeed, the ‘free world’.
The other for my Dad, my brother and me personally.

They both were born at almost the same time, and lived to be 89 years old.

They both died almost at the same time too. Mom died last night at 23:30.

Guess who I think was more important !?

Yes, Mom died last night in the nursing home. Nina and I, Vivian and Menno were with her. She never regained consciousness after she fell asleep on Saturday night. The medical staff saw to it she had no pain and was laying there peacefully.

It was not nice….. for us. If you can, avoid being around dying people. Having said that, please make sure you are there for your loved ones if you can, even if they can’t hear, see or feel you anymore…… or so you think!

This morning I arranged the funeral, for Friday. I also have a major migraine…. I guess at least this time I have a good reason for one.
We are at peace with the fact that Mom’s gone. We saw her every day for the past 4 months, except for the 4 days we drove to France….. and back.
Dad was with her for 6 hours every day, keeping her company.
We have said things to each other, laughed together, and cried some. We have helped each other, she leafed through our book many times, enjoyed the paintings we hang on the hospital wall for her, and the plants we put on the table.

Mom would not have gotten better, the cancer took car e of that, thank you very much. So it is good she is gone now and will be spared for any pain and further hardship. The operation she had and the stay in hospital was bad enough.

When this is all ‘wrapped up’ maybe we can go back to the mountains for a few weeks….. and ride….. before we focus on our next ‘issue’: Dad.

You’ll excuse me for not having been around much, or being around much over the next days and weeks.. we’ve got things to catch up, things to do, and some crying to do on some mountain top or other.

Yesterday we had planned and prepared to celebrate Dad’s 89th birthday at Mom’s bed in the nursing home. It didn’t turn out that way. Saturday afternoon Mom already had problems waking up, and seemed very confused. Yesterday she didn’t wake up at all anymore…. and she now is still sedated and in a coma. We’re waiting for the end, trying to arrange things for Dad, the upcoming funeral….. trying to get our heads around the unimaginable…. trying not to get annoyed at each other.

Not a good time, so not much to post here, sorry.

Yup, good news at last! Bill Womack has been working hard (see his blog) and Plum Island is now ready for Beta testing. The Beta Team has been formed, the beta forum opened and we’re now all eagerly awaiting the first beta version to be uploaded! We expect this NOT to be a very lengthy process…… and we’re aiming at getting this product published during the Summer months still ! That’s especially for all of those poor souls who for one reason or other could NOT go on summer vacation this year!

Being a (sub)webhost myself I am always on the lookout for good ‘deals’ for myself and my customers. Nowadays there are SO many webhosting companies on the market that it is impossible to find them all and very difficult to find ‘the best’.  And ‘the best’ is a relative thing at best.
Deciding on a web host is not only about how much one pays per month, but just as much about how much disk space, bandwidth, free e-mail accounts and number of MySQL databases one gets. And more importantly how RELIABLE a host is and how good their service is.

Now the BEST place to rent a website from is HERE, obviously….. but should you be looking for alternatives then the site of Web Hosting Geeks offers some good reading, with interesting pages such as ‘Top 10 Web Hosting’, ‘Multiple Domain Hosting’, ‘Webmaster Reviews’ and lots more.
 

Remember I decided to finally buy me an airco? Well, I did! And guess what ?? The ruddy thing has a 5 feet exhaust tube on it that needs to go OUTSIDE. Dang, I though I bought a model with an ‘internal’ exhaust…. somehow. Goes to show that sometimes I forget to do my research. So the sensible thing to get would be a REAL unit, with a part inside and a part outside. Except….. they cost about 3 times as much as the cheapo thing on wheels I hoisted into the Jeep this afternoon.

So now I not only wrecked my already painful shoulder a few times times by getting the thing into the shopping cart, then into the car, out of the car, out of the box and BACK INTO the box…. I will also waste MORE fule taking it back to Amsterdam. Well, green, yes, sort of! Oh well, live and learn…… I’ll sweat until we move to France and THEN I’ll get me a proper one !

Meanwhile the Piper sells like Pepper… I am really pleased. Some people are so enthusiastic that they even make videos of the little bird. Check out Eddy van Gelder’s very nice ‘Piper Movie’ on Youtube here !

Flight Sim Labs Ltd. too is doing well. We’re getting lots of initial reactions and there is also a lot of interest in the Concorde X project ! Keep reading folks !

Oh alright, you probably already know all this and I am running behind as usual. A while ago I read the announcement from Microsoft about their acquisition of trueSpace, a design tool to be compared to some extent with Sketchup that Google offers. Thanks for reminding me,Manfred, I already forgot again……. But it is better (well, at least I think so).

TrueSpace ‘occurred’ on the good old Amiga microcomputer that old hands like me still remember vividly…. and has been developed ever since. Now that MS has bought it, to extend their Virtual Earth project (and team), no doubt it will grow into something even bigger!

Will we see parts of it in FS11 maybe ??

Read more about it on this blog entry, and you can freely downlaod it (yes, FREE!) from this place!