Our team at Red Hat is looking for talented software developers to work on systemtap, valgrind, and/or pcp. Please see this job posting if interested in this opportunity to get paid for hacking on free software!

Posted Mon Apr 16 20:51:00 2012 Tags:

In case the reader ever searches for the audio equivalent of the netpbm (nee pbm) utilities, look no further than sox. It makes converting, batch processing pipelines just as easy as pbm did for image conversions, batch manipulations. For general multimedia (audio/video), perhaps gstreamer. Lovely little tools to write scripts to chew through thousands of media files.

Posted Mon Apr 23 18:42:00 2012 Tags:

I thought the luckiest pilot-man alive might be this guy at our very own airport two years ago, who (illegally/dangerously) attempted a single-engine take-off on a twin-engine plane, and crashed it into an adjacent cornfield, but walked away.

But now I read an accident abstract from last month’s COPA Flight magazine, this CADORS report

TSB reported A11P0138: The privately registered Aero Comp Air 6 was landing at 100 Mile House, BC (CAV3). During the landing, the elevator trim assembly separated from the control stick at touchdown. Full nose up elevator trim occurred as a result and the aircraft began to bounce out of control down the runway. The pilot executed a go-around and the aircraft struck a tree with the left wing. The damaged wing was affecting controllability causing a roll to the left. The aircraft then struck a second tree and tore off the damaged material allowing the pilot to regain roll control. The aircraft was then able to divert to Kamloops (CYKA) and make a landing without further event.

A quick review: during the landing roll, the airframe breaks. Instead of stopping, the pilot elects to take off. The airplane hits a tree and damages a wing – another important part of the airframe. The airplane hits another tree, and damages the wing again enough to break off the broken piece. The pilot continues the flight with a three-times-broken vehicle for perhaps an hour, over mountainous terrain. He walks away. Congratulations (?).

Posted Thu Apr 26 16:48:00 2012 Tags: