April moon

Hmm, I really should make an efford to updating my blog more regularly. That way I can make the posts smaller.
Lot's is happening these days, not all good though I'm afraid... WIthin the next 2 weeks the aircraft I have been working on, the A380 will take to the skies for the first time. I'm sure everyone will be holding their breath as it is quite a landmark in aviation history.
However good Airbus may be, Boeing managed to secure their position in the market once more. Apparently their 777ER (extended range) has taken to the skies. Though it is not exactly a brand new aircraft, it does have one huge feature over all airbus aircraft: Range. It is now the longest range aircraft in the world, beating the A340-500 with barely a couple of thousand miles. One slight problem I think they made, is that the 777ER has a longer range than their new dreamliner, the 787. The 787 has a smaller range than even the A340-500 I believe.

These days I find myself watching Manga more and more. Manga is really not a good term. I should say Japanese animations. They can actually be quite good you know? I'm following a series called Ghost in the Shell. So far so good. There is a longer storyline in there but most episodes are standalones. I like the music though. My favorite however, is Noir. It is about a girl who suffers from amnesia and she discovers that she is really good in one thing: killing! She goes out in search of her own background. That series also has good some real good music. Too bad that these animations tend to be pretty expensive.
Tina gave me an animation before. It is called "Castle in the sky". It is from a fairly famous animation writer/producer. He also produced an animation called "Spirited away"

April has arrived, with the dubious weather it tends to bring. Sunshine and rain simultaneously! At least the weather is slowly improving and I can take out my cameras again. Recently I bought an Olympus OM1-N, probably one of the smallest SLRs around. The size is not my main concern though, it's the quality. Apparently it is optically of very high quality and mechanically it is pretty good too. WHat I liek about this camera is that it is fully mechanical! No more messing around with batteries! Ok, I admit it does use a battery, but only for the light meter. It works fully without batteries though (except lightmeter ofcourse).



This is the Camera I bought. Well... Almost anyway. I have an f1.4 50mm lens on it while this one has an f1.8. I like it a lot! I already bought extender tubes for it so I can do some macro photography.

I also bought a Bronica S2A recently. It's a 6x6 camera. I lik ethat one too as it is very rigid, but it is very VERY noisy when you press teh shutter release. It is like a bomb explodes! So when you photograph models warn them in advance. I'm keeping an eye out for a Mamiya TLR C33. These are supposed to be very very quiet (no mirror slapping around) and it has a build in bellows for close-ups



Bronica S2A. I will need to order the extension tube as well. I saw it for sale and it was pretty cheap, so gotta have it! I'm not gonna build on this set though. I want a 50mm lens (it came with a 75mm and a 100mm f2.8 and 2 magazines) for landscape, and that's it really. I'm mainly gonna use it for landscape. The mamiya I could buy if I can get it very very cheap. Won't spend more than 30GBP on it though. One thing I want for the Bronica though, is a winding crank. It only has a knob and that just isn't very comfortable to me.



The mamiya...

Now it's time for some pics I think. These have been taken with my Canon 10D, not with any of my new all mechanical analogue kit. I first need a GOOD scanner for that.



This girl was aware that I was making this picture because she was walking pretty fast down the hill. Could she have been afraid? Doesn't make sense though. Who would be intimidated by a 6'4" (1.90m) 15 stone (95 kg) dutch guy carrying cameras around his neck with telelenses that exceed his own height?



A window... yes, a win-dow...



Well... I gues they're leaves arend they...?



Another lodge... Actually the area I live in is pretty nice. Many fancy-pants houses WOrth only a few million pound sterling... In fact, teh area is soo posh that we actually have our own dedicated police patrols 24/7. While I was making these images a police car pulled up from behind and the constable inside asked me what I was doing (apparently observation and awareness weren't his best subjects during training as I was quite obviously pointing my huge zooms in all directions and had about 3 cameras on my neck!). So I gave him an answer that matched teh intelligence of his question: "Oh, I'm observing houses and police patrols sir. I'm planning a big burglary operation and I need to know teh details of the houses, What their owners do, if and what alarms are installed, you know the usual...". He looked at me like ... Then I said That I was making some close ups of plants and features and I showed him the pics I had on my 10D. That seemed to satisfy him and he drove off again...



One of many flower close ups I made. I don't have extension tubes for my canon. I might buy some cheap tubes (no optics inside so what can go wrong???)



A typical english phonebooth. And no, it is not the tardis. The tardis is green! I actually quite like what I did with this image. B&W with a red phone booth... Thank you adobe!



Close up of a daffodil. Not too bad I guess... I think this is one of the few flowers that I know the name of (well, in english anyway)

Well, I'll have to keep it at that for now. Lets pray I will make some more updates to my blog in the future...

It's about time!

I really need to make an appology. I haven't updated my weblog since December (as you surely will have noticed). Unfortunately with the holidays taking 2 weeks, and after that work picking up rapidly, I haven't had much time to do any blogging whatsoever. Today I have a very lazy day, so I thought it was time to create a new post.
Work is very stressful, and will be for another 2 or 3 weeks. the A380 is about to take off at the end of the month and I need to make sure teh paperwork convinces the top level engineers and the authorities the aircraft is actually fit for flight.

Last x-mas I spend in Holland, visiting my family and friends. After reading the news every day in the morning over a cup of coffee (strong, black, 2 sugar ^_^), I was expecting I wouldn't enjoy being back in the country. However, nothing could have been further from the truth. Having been away for a whole year, I realised again how much better things are in good old Holland. Things are so much easier to obtain, people are friendlier. You actually get customer service when you go shoppinG! I forgot about that completely. Normally in Bristol I enter a shop, look around (the shops being so small and so lacking of stock I often spend no more than 5 minutes in them).
I remember going to a huge book store called Donner in Rotterdam. They have soo much. They have all the Brittish magazines, PLUS many american magazines, German magazines, sometimes even french!!! I decided to pick up some of the newer magazines on digital photography. When I left I remembered there were two major dutch photography magazines and at the time I left they merged as they pretty much covered the same subjects in a very similar style. I picked up this magazine, remembering how it lacked in advertisement and was cramped with actual articles! And guess what... It still is... As I said I also picked up some of the newer magazins on digital photography. I expected something similar as the british magazines, but again, it was filled with actually useful information! Ofcourse there are advertisements in there, how else would they be able to publish??? There was one magazine, fairly small, but about the best info I had ever seen! It is called 'Digitales' and is, obviously, about digital photography. It appears about 4 or 5 times per month, and it seems to be published by a photography school. It has a fairly lengthy section on equipment listing, which for me they can do without. Unless I happened to have picked the one, I think they should stick by publishing such a list once per year, after photokina in germany. Other than that it actually had very useful information in it. And lot sof it! Despite it's A5 size, it is a fairly bulky magazine, and it saved me from 4 hours of boredom on Schiphol Airport while I was waiting to check in.

I also got my best x-mas present ever (though I paid for it myself): a 70-200mm f2.8 USM IS L zoom lens from Canon. What a gem!!! needless to say I tried it out. Having Tina over from Taiwan I had to play tourist in my own country, which also meant lots of photo opportunities. I made many many pics, of which I will only show you some...


I think this photo came out pretty well. I was visiting a friend of mine and while he and his wife were out of the room, I made this close up shot of these tea lights.


This was a fairly common view during the holidays. We went to a couple of Zoo's This photo was made in Diergaarde Blijdorp, a fairly victorian-style zoo. there were a surprisingly amount of animals outside though! We had been to Arnhems Burgers zoo, which is many times bigger and more enjoyable for both viewer and animal than Rotterdam's Blijdorp. But in Arnhem most animals were hybernating or were in the stables. The weather was better when we went to Rotterdam too. Most animals displayed as much energy as this Tiger.


Actually I'm not too sure if this is an austridge I photographed in Rotterdam or its smaller cousin in Arnhem. Both animals are very arrogant and cocky! You don't want to stand near these 'birds'.


Playing a tourist, obviously I needed to visit the Euro Tower in Rotterdam. The whole day had been splendid with miles of visibility. We were a bit hesitant to go because it would be dark by the time we would get there. We decided to do it despite the freezing cold. And we were rewarded by a beautiful nightly sight of city lights. Tina was becoming an icecream as the wind was blowing rather hard and being used to 20 degrees at night, she really was suffering. Luckily the tower went all the way up, which is done by an enclosed elevator, and the sight was amazing. I took an interesting 360 dgree shot of the town, but that one is so unconventional I suggest you look it up in my album on flickr.


Believe it or not, but this little gritter was classified as a prarie dog... If they called it a guinea pig I would have believed it as well...


Komodo Dragon. Blijdorp had quite a few of those, big ones too! Don't want an argument with this guy...


Blijdorp is known for its collection of reptiles


What's a zoo without baboons...


Pretty colors...


Hmm, where did I go again?


Can you believe it? The trains actually have nicer signs than teh aircraft do! Please not this is not standard practise in Holland...


A quick stop at the observation terras. Quick in this case means 2 hours... Had a lot of time to kill...

Well, guess that is enough for the first post in the new year...

"extreme engineering"

beer tree, originally uploaded by ksporry.

This week was a revelation of engineering feats. Three items revealed themselves to the world, in a most unique way. The first one is this Christmas tree. It is not just a Christmas tree, it's a gigantic Christmas tree. Over 12 meters high. 'So, big deal' I hear you thinking, except... that this tree is not just a tree... It was made of beer crates! In the city of Delft students from the faculty of civil engineering, designed and build this monstrosity of a christmas tree, made of crates for beer bottles (beer bottles in Holland usually come in crates of 24 bottles). This ofcourse is only possible in Delft, where the students run the daily affairs of life...

The tree was build from about 15.000 crates of beer in 50 layers, with a height of 12 meters (ca. 40ft). It was even fitted with lights! Unfortunatly it was broken down on wednesday. Here's one more shot of the tree...



Another feat of engineering, which actually dwarfed the Christmas tree, is the recentlyy opened Millau Bridge in France. This is bridge is supposed to be the highest bridge in the world, with 343 meters surpassing even the Eiffel Tower! The bridge spans the valley of the River Tarn, a 2.5 km wide gorge dividing two plateaux in France's rugged Massif Central region. The largest pylon is 343 metres high- taller than the Eiffel Tower. The bridge has cost 390 million euros ($517m) to build. Drivers will pay a 4.9 euro toll to use it. For more information have a look at the website of the BBC where I got some of these pictures:

BBC News

What surprises me, is that this bridge is not a suspension bridge. With this size and height, they might have preffered a slightly different construction... Oh well, I'm only an aeronautical engineer. Don't know anything about bridges, just aircraft...









Wait, I haven't finished yet...! Last week, the good people of Holland were shaken up by a Boeing 747 maunoeuvring itself through the canals of Amsterdam! The enormous aircraft made it's way from Schiphol Airport to Lelystad Airport. Did it take a wrong turn when it received it's taxi instructions? Or was it an emergency landing on The Dam? No, it was actually fairly simple. The 747 is the oldest 747 KLM had in its posession. The 747 is one of the oldest generation. In fact, it is one of the oldest 747's that was actually converted to have the extended top deck! The massive aircraft was donated by the KLM to the Auerospace museum on Lelystad Airport, where they have all kinds of aircraft, ranging from the Fokker spin to, well, this 747... and some of those planes still fly! They transported the 747 by boat through the canals of Amsterdam and manoeuvred it to Flevopolder, where the lats bit was done over land. Apparently this operation was cheaper than flying it over from Schiphol to Lelystad. Actually I wonder if that is true. First of all I doubt that Lelystad Airport can actually receive 747's, secondly I doubt the flight worthiness of this particular aircraft. I suppose that does make the statement true from a certain point of view: I'm sure it is more expensive to enlarge the runway on Lelystad Airport to cater for 747's and getting this aircraft flightworthy surely isn't cheap either. Anyway, here are some pics of the operation. Enjoy!







One more thing. Tomorrow I'll be flying to Holland to spend the holidays with my friends and family. So I won't be updating this website for 2 weeks. But when I'm back I'm sure I've got some new stories and photos to show you.
For now I wish you all a merry christmas and all the best for the new year!

Relocation, relocation

Sorry for not posting for a while. I have been in the middle of a relocation. Last week I started and this weekend I finally finished! What a nightmare! I was once again reminded of the horror of moving house. Though I don't have a whole house worth of stufff to move, I do have a lot of junk!
Earlier tonight I was talking to my (now previous) landlord. As expected my flatmate Chris, f*cked up my rent calculations, claiming to know better what I paid than my bank does. I keep waiving the bills, receipts and statemnets under his nose, but no luck. So I had to clear things up with the landlord. He wants to write us a big fat cheque for the deposite and the money he now owes me (I paid half a months rent too much, which he is now giving back). I also would like to recalculate whatever he plans to pay back because he seems to have deducted 100GBP for 3 days rent and I don 't believe that is right. Chris seems to think so, but to be honest, Chris likes to think complex and needlessly difficuult so he could easily miss things.
Anyway, I'm gonna need the money because this morning my PC packed up! The processor just died on me (the pc still turns on, but nothing happens due to a lack of processing power, or actually, due to the non existing processing...), so I have to try and get a P4 2.4 GHz processor cheaply or get really disappointed as I will have to buy as a minimum a new motherboard, processor and memory! I also want to replace my monitor for an LCD. My monitor is still great but it just takes up way too much space.

Ok, I hope to do another post later this week before I leave for the holidays.

Japan Food Festival

I mentioned before that I've been to another Japan Festival, so let me tell you about that.

It was a glorious day. We arrived by bus on Victoria station and walked to the. Unfortunately British efficiency popped his head up here. We needed some day tickets and Tina had to get a discount card for the coming week. She ordered it in advance so it was just a matter of picking that one up. We arrived in the main hall of teh station, and as couuld be expected, it was crowding with people. The train ticket desks were absolutely packed, with queues running through 3 halls! We weren't looking forward to waiting hours in a bloody queue, so when we saw a fairly short queue we jumped into that one. It was for reservations, so that was good. After half an hour it was finally our turn. So I immediatelt do my story and the guy says I should go to the next hall for day tickets with the underground. Ofcourse, half an hour waisted. So we walked to the next hall, but no signs whatsoever. Now I have lived in Bristol for 4 years so you would guess that I would be able to spot where we need to go. Wrong! I couldn't find any evidence of an office where to collect subway tickets. Thus we asked about 5 shops around, and finally were told we should go downstairs into the underground itself. So we did. First I walked up to the automatic machines, but they stated that day tickets were only valid from 10.00 to 16.00. That was not what I wanted, so we had to stand another 30 minutes in yet another queue. We got our tickets for the day (the guy was helpfull luckily). We asked where we could collect reservations and we had to go upstairs again. Andd ofcourse: another queue awaited us, but not before we had another half an hour of searching before we found the place. There we gave them the reservation of Tina, and they gave us the week ticket. Leavin gthe station we noticed that the dates were all wrong. the reservation date was for monday to wednesday but the ticket said saturday to monday! So we went back because I could have sworn teh dates were stated on the reservation. the guy told me to point it out, and unfortunately they were not. The guy was still kind enough to change it over. he said that the reservations are open ended. you had to specify the dates you wanted otherwise they assume "from today". Luckily he was kind enough to exchange it for a ticket with the right dates.



After what turned out to be quite a ride on the underground, we ended up somewhere on the second ring of London. the station was only about 5-10 minutes walk to th evenue, and the weather was absolutely fabulous. The area was very very nice. Beautiful houses, quiet, clean.

So when we got there we bought some tickets. Thank god it was outside as well! They couldn't have picked a better day. It was some 25 degrees. Tina even wanted to get a sunbrella (my english word for a "parasol"). First we walked a bit around the stands. Most of them were food stands, with all kinds of Japanese food. Considering the weather I decided not to try the sushi. How can the fish be fresh when with this kinnd of weather?!?



We walked to the end of the field, where they had some demonstrations in Kyudo. Kyudo is the art of Japanese archery. there are multiple forms for it (horse back archery is one of them). The sport is a lot more traditional than modern archery. The participants use traditional Japanese long bows and wear traditional clothing. Unlike modern archery, where it is best to concentrate then pull the string, aim and let go in one breath, as you often can't hold the bow aimed for too long. Kyudo demands a lot more of the mind and body as you are expected to do all the handling in a slow and controlled manner, showing discipline and control.
Each time an archerer had to shoot the rest would sit down, with only the one selected standing and doing his thing. Below are some pictures of the Kyudo session.





Next we walked around a bit more and stopped by a huge party tent where they performed a tea ceremony. Before the ceremony an old lady explained the ritual in rough lines, basically telling us teh steps she would be performing. After that she performed the ceremony. They could have done that a bit better I think. I know the tea ceremony is a special ritual, and is commonly used to either entertain respected guests or to express someone's affection for the other participant.
However, here we could only see them perform the ceremony without any explanation of what was going on and why it was done that way. A bit of a shame, but I guess you can write many books about the ritual. I'm sure it isn't easy to explain.





Following that we went to a cooking demonstration. that was very entertaining, and the cook made it look so easy! I was really surprised with th eefficiency and the skill she performed the recipes. I asked her later where I could get some of the traditional equipment. She said I should be able to find a sushi rice bowl without much efford here in england. Though I did manage to get onen at one of the local asian supermarkets quite cheaply, it isn't particularly high quality. So I will kepe my eyes open for a better one. However, she told me that the omelet pan (japanese use a copper coated, square pan for the omelets) I would probably not be able to find in the UK. She got it from Japan directly. I still ahve some of her recipes, and shame on be for not having tried them yet. I wanted to watch the other cooking programs as well (I am a great fan of cooking asian dishes), but Tina had enough and wanted to see something else.
I have to say, the lady looked quite young. I would have guessed here around my age (as it happens she looks very much like one of the dutch girls working here at Airbus, and she is a few years younger than I am), so I was surprised to find that not only did she have a daughter, her daughter turned 13 that same day!



So we walked around a bit more. Watched some kimonos. At some point we watched some Taiko. Taiko is Japanese style drums. it is very rythmic and harmonous. It sounds very energetic and dynamic. They had 2 groups. One group was, what appeared to me as a group of beginners., mostly older women and one man. There can be quite a bit of shouting when Taiko is being played. It is part of the performance. The second group was a group of young ladies, and they were a lot more dynamic! They played with such enthusiasm! I made a couple of photographs but they didn't turn out well, so I left them off. At two of them you can see one of the girls looking straight at me, she cought me straight in the act!

After a while Tina had seen enough as she started making sarcastic "Domo, Arregatou, Gomen nasai" comments, so we called it a day.
All in all it was a great day, and it stimulated me more into going to Japan some day...