Weekly Photo Challenge: Curves | The Daily Post

Posted on 15 June 2013 by SJPONeill

Didn’t have to look too hard to find these curvy pics from our 2005 South Island tour…the Moeraki Boulders are a popular stop about half-way down the east coast of the island…

Even the reflection and seaweed are curvy…

…and some others in a similar vein…

This is in a shop in Manchester Street in Christchurch from the same holiday – all gone now – we thought that something along similar lines might make a nice entrance feature for the front door of the Lodge…

…and totally unrelated to anything Kiwi, except for the one that was wandering around Salisbury at sun-up, some street corner curves as pigeons do pigeon things first thing in the morning…we were in Salisbury for the first ABCA Coalition Lessons Analysis Workshop (CLAW) and most of use tried to get out in the morning for a run and some fresh air…I’m not sure if the blurriness of the image is down to me or the pigeons…

Weekly Photo Challenge: Curves | The Daily Post.

Weekly Photo Challenge: Fleeting | The Daily Post

Posted on 8 June 2013 by SJPONeill

My take on fleeting this week is of moments that you can never get back – they are there, then they are gone…fleeting…this week, just for a change I have used video instead of photos so I hope everyone is cool with this…

As you grow up, you can never quite replicate the thrill of being chased by a big blue ball…

In all fairness to the adults present, this was the chasee’s own idea…

That fleeting moment of victory…

Of course, it didn’t take Kirk the puppy long to grow up (currently weighs in at just over 50kg) whereas Pepe the spaniel stayed around 10kg…we had to sadly rehome Pepe in the end when he kept stealing toys from the big dogs…

And that fleeting moment of rapture when you realise that ISN’T an Airtrainer on approach…

Nothing quite like having a Merlin living nearby…

Weekly Photo Challenge: Fleeting | The Daily Post.

UAVs: hit or miss?

Posted on 4 June 2013 by SJPONeill

out-00061 Terrifying video captures moment German drone missed Afghan plane carrying 100 passengers by just two metre | Mail Online.

Pitiful attempts at contemporary journalism like this get right up my nose! Not only is it poor practice to take an incident that occurred nine years ago and portray it in such a manner that it appears to be a recent occurrence, it is even worse to do it on a topic that a. the ‘journalist’ in question clearly know nothing about; and b. in such a manner that all the ignorati out there that take the internet as gospel will break out their pitchforks and torches.

In all fairness, I may be just a little sensitive with regard to the time issue as I have just completed a university marking marathon in which I have been disappointed at the number of students that think that they can take an incident in one point in time and link it casually to another event some time later.

It’s also a beef I have with Max Boot’s latest book Invisible Armies where he takes a stance that a coercive approach to quelling irregularity, insurgency and other signs of unrest amongst ‘the people’ is counter-productive and ultimately leads to the downfall of the coercing regime. I take issue with this because

a. I think that historically, the coercive approach has actually been more successful than more populist forms of maintaining peace and order;

b. it is a big leap to link the downfall of a regime to the sacking of a city or decimation of a population some centuries (yes, centuries, not decades) before’ and

c. there are just as many indications that ‘peace, love and we’ll-build-you-a-schoolhouse’ approach to pacification is not that successful, regardless of its current contemporary favour.

The constructive advice I give to students in my markers comments is to to construct a timeline of events that MAY be relevant to their argument and then to examine that timeline to see if they can still draw a causal line between an event and the outcome that they wish to link it to e.g. did coalition application of Warden’s Rings theory, specifically to Iraqi leadership, in the 1991 Gulf War air campaign directly lead to the capture of Saddam Hussein in December 2004? It almost sounds plausible until out into the context of time…Ms Becky Evans of the Daily Mail – and Max Boot, if you’re reading this – might wish to take note…

UAS operations are no more or no less safe than manned aircraft operations so long as the EXISTING rules are followed. In the case cited above by the Daily Mail, a combination of procedural air traffic control and air crew issues lead to the situation of the near miss, an actual collision being avoided by the crew of the UAS. The involvement of a UAS in a flight safety event does not automatically mean that the UAS is at fault. In another popular example of the dangers of UAS, where an Air National Guard C-130 struck an RG-7 Shadow in Afghanistan, the C-130 was at fault.

The Daily Mail does nothing but stir up ignorance and conceal the issues that do need to be addressed i.e. those of operators, of manned or unmanned systems, that fail to apply the minimum standards for safe operation of aircraft in a specific airspace environment. UAS are small and often fly close to the ground, making them very difficult to detect with time to take evasive action. As a result, airspace management ‘bureaucracy’ like NOTAMs, SPINs, ATOs, etc becomes so much more important for providing the situational awareness required by the operators of manned aircraft: might is only right until it gets to(o) stoopid…

‘…with great power comes great responsibility…’ and thus the operators of (more powerful, bigger, faster) manned aircraft have the responsibility to ensure that they deconflict with UAS approved to operate in a given area of airspace. There is little to be done about the cowboys on either side of the manned/unmanned fence that do not play by the rules e.g. the jet jocks that think that flying in a combat zone means they can zoom and boom wherever they like, or the private contractor that just flips their undeclared Ebay UAS into the sky because everyone knows that ‘…it’s a big-ass sky…’ apart from breeding those elements out of the aviation culture and fostering a sense of air-mindedness amongst anyone that thinks they need to operate an aircraft (with or without seats).

Here is New Zealand, small UAS fly commercially almost every day with the permission and blessing of the Civil Aviation Authority. They fly in and over urban areas, and in controlled airspace. How do they get away with it? Because the operators reviewed the rules, assessed the risk and offered a mitigation philosophy to the CAA. When, and only when, that mitigation philosophy was accepted, they were in business – literally.

The genie of small UAS proliferation is already out of the bottle, and it is unlikely that it will ever get drawn back in – not when camera-equipped UAS can be purchased from any Toys’r’Us – like so many other genies, small UAS are something that we need to get to grips with and the time for that is now…

Weekly Photo Challenge: In the Background | The Daily Post

Posted on 3 June 2013 by SJPONeill

Weekly Photo Challenge: In the Background | The Daily Post.

I spent a number of hours (yes, really, but more as a part of concurrent activity as I waited for other things to occur e.g. keyboard buffer to clear so I could eke out a few more letters before it clogged up again; waiting for DVD Shrink to process a file so I could upload the next one etc) trawling through Picasa looking so an image that did the background thing for me.

It was a struggle because I don’t seem to have many pix where the background is even that clear let alone, has some potential meaning, message or other attraction. Finally, I managed to go firm on four examples, known from this point on as the ‘also rans’, that can be seen at the bottom of this post.

What happened was this. I export images from Picasa to a holding folder – this also adds a watermark and reduces the longest edge to 600 pixels, and also makes the image a nice web-friendly size – and from here, I drag and drop the images into my WordPress media library. As I opened up the holding folder just now, I was struck by the composition of this image of the Tupperware Terminator (my name for it, not theirs so don’t try ordering a Terminator from Tupperware – who knows what you might get!) where to me the background with our driveway and inferred different pathways left and right at top and bottom, just adds so much more (still working on more what) to the image…so here we go for ‘Background’…

The also rans

Thailand-Singapore Bike Ride 1988 250

1 RNZIR Thailand to Singapore Bike Ride august or September 1988 – the only thing that I rode, as tour photographer, was inside the van. I only just noticed today, almost a quarter of a century later, that I snapped myself in the foreground of the background of the foreground in this shot of the mighty Hi-Ace fording a flooded road during the monsoon… 1-23-2011_032

Redcastle nestled in the background of St Kevin’s College, Oamaru where I went to school. It’s all changed now from this fairly idyllic shot (mid-90s)…anyway, if you have any problems with me, blame these guys… (just kidding!) DSCF2176

USS New Jersey in the background of this shot taken from the USS Olympia on the other side of the river. My original shot was of the gun in the foreground but after noticing the New Jersey in the background, I recomposed it and shot it again for this specific effect… DSCF5906

Vancouver, around this time last year…the floatplane in the background is the icon of that trip. I arrived late one Saturday, to find that my hotel was overbooked and that they had rebooked me for just that night in another hotel – all the way back by the airport, a 30 min odd drive at midnight – in recompense, they put me in a flasher room with a balcony on the penthouse floor, As it turned out, this was the room original reserved by our hosts for my boss whop they rebooked before he arrived into a standard room a few floors down on the other side of the hotel. When he arrived a couple of days later, I said I’d swap rooms with him but these float-plane used to glide right by his window a dozen or so times a day and he said he much preferred that to yet another view over an urban landscape…top bloke!! So I got to keep my balcony and he got to keep his fly-bys – everyone happy…

Weekly Photo Challenge: Escape (from reality) | The Daily Post

Posted on 2 June 2013 by SJPONeill

1990s parties….

Tank, tank, tank

It was near the end of basic training and all the soldiers were getting ready for the war. A soldier came charging up to his corporal and said ” Corp, Corp, we don’t have enough rifles.,,what am I going to use for the war?”

The corporal grabbed a broom, sawed off the bottom, and handed it to the soldier. “Here, use this instead.” (yes, we all know that this bit is BS because any infantry corporal would already have at least one Handle, Broom, Soldiers, For the Instructing Of immediately to hand)

“How is this going to work?”

“When you see the bad guys coming at you, just point it at them and say ‘Bullets bullets bullets'”.

So the soldier ran out with his new “rifle”. But soon he came running back “Corp, we don’t have enough bayonets!”

The corporal tossed a piece of string at the private. “When you see the bad guys coming, throw this at them and say ‘Stab Stab Stab.‘”

The soldier was all ready for his war. He was sitting in his hole, hating being out there, when he saw an enemy creeping along the top of a nearby hill.

He grabbed his broom, pointed it at the bad guy and said “Bullets bullets bullets” and he fell down dead.

“Wow! this really works” he thought. He started going through the bush when another enemy jumped out so he threw his string at him and said, ‘Stab Stab Stab!‘. The enemy fell down, dead.

Pretty soon, he saw another guy rampaging through the woods. He pointed his broomstick at him and yelled, ‘Bullets bullets bullets!’ Nothing, so he did it again, ‘Bullets bullets bullets!’ The guy was running at him now. He threw the string, Stab Stab Stab!’ The enemy plowed him over, mortally wounding him.

Then he heard the big guy mumbling as he went past him “Tank Tank Tank.”

Trentham Round the World Party 1995 010

Trentham Round the World Party 1995 004

Trentham Round the World Party 1995 014

Trentham Round the World Party 1995 013

The Cabbage Heads

Weekly Photo Challenge: Escape | The Daily Post.

Weekly Photo Challenge: The Sign Says | The Daily Post

Posted on 1 June 2013 by SJPONeill

Random signs from travels…

Cash Convertors is a popular franchise here for trading second-hand goods – this is a clever take on its common nickname – a very cool shop in Palmerston (NOT the one that John Cleese described as the world’s most boring city!) that has (or did last time we drove through that way) an excellent section for pre-loved science-fiction toys and collectibles…

The Bookabach sign for the Chalet – not sure if it actually gets any attention as most traffic cranks down the hill by where the sign is…

Saw this in a mall near El Segundo in LA – I still think it’s quite cool how Americans so openly support their military, regardless of the background politics…

The Big Apple in Waitomo has finally been given a new coat of paint and these young ladies had to check it out before making an credible effort at the ‘Big-Az’ ice creams they sell next door…

A morale-raising site that I thought I’d never see again – best breakfasts in the world at Din’s Diner in Singapore…

I think this was in one of the opportunity shops I visited on my last day in Florida in 2011…

We had dinner here one night when we were in Salisbury in 2005 for the inaugural ABCA Coalition Lessons Analysis Workshop. Some many of the buildings have their date of origin on them…’1750 and we don’t mean the time…!’

Weekly Photo Challenge: The Sign Says | The Daily Post.

Brisk

Posted on 29 May 2013 by SJPONeill

If ‘Brisk’ was a photo challenge theme, my entry would be this morning because brisk begins with brrrrrrr….

We have uber-excellent thermal curtains over all the windows and multiple layers of insulation in all the external surfaces of the Lodge + double glazing on some of the windows (we’re running a rolling replacement programme). The curtains have a secondary effect of blocking out the light which is great for clear full moony nights and daylight saving when the sun comes up at uncivilised times. In winter, however, there is a risk that the lack of light will induce professionally unrewarding sleep-ins so we have a double-glazed skylight in the hallway by the rear bedrooms.

I thought that it seemed a bit dark this morning and here’s why…

DSCF6810

…a good 20cm of snow on the skylight, seen here as it started to thunk off the roof – no one questions this morning about the ‘why’ of a steep pitched roof…

…the earth moves…

Posted on 28 May 2013 by SJPONeill

I’ve been marking uni assignments the last couple of days and at times my head has been spinning but I was quite unprepared for another movement of the earth yesterday afternoon – enough to shake the house for a few seconds and one of the dogs even raised its head for a quick look around before going back to sleep. Pretty hohum, I guess, for Cantabs but it’s been a while since we felt one here…3.3 on the scale and ‘only’ 5 km deep… Quake 27 may 13

The little ‘I shot down a MiG’ star indicates the epicentre of yesterday’s rumble in relation to the Mountain (looking nicely white already), with reporting ‘feelings’ indicated by the baby blue boxes in (from bottom to top) National Park, Raurimu and Owhango…

Checking out the GeoNet site this morning, it looks like Mother Earth is ‘easing springs’ at the moment as there has been a string (at least two dozen) of minor shakes since then in an arc from New Plymouth to White Island…

Weekly Photo Challenge: Pattern | The Daily Post

Posted on 15 May 2013 by SJPONeill

1930s US Army aircraft markings

Sunrise over the Plateau

Reflections in a window, Alexandra, VA

Lighty things at LAX

Slates on the roof of the bell tower of the Flanders Museum in Ieper. An accidental shutter click…

Iron fencing outside St Patrick’s Basilica, Oamaru

Light show on the roof of Fremont Street, Las Vegas

Weekly Photo Challenge: Pattern | The Daily Post.

Throw the pin!!

Posted on 14 May 2013 by SJPONeill

Our morning routine during the week goes something like wake around 0610, jug on…shower, dress etc…breakfast and a cuppa in front of TV1’s Breakfast show – really the only morning show in town plus it has an onscreen clock for those that need to be out the door by a certain time each morning…

Some issues were discussion this morning that I thought worthy of further comment…

The Gilmore Grenade Aaron-Gilmore-national-6_w452

A couple of weeks back, lowest listed National Party MP, Aaron Gilmore, lipped off at the staff in a bar in Hamner Springs when they refused to serve him. Although he denies it, accounts from staff and others in his party (dobbed by your buds, Aaron!!) confirm that he threatened to get the Prime Minister to fire the staff member in question. Like, y’know, the PM just sits around like some sort of political Gargamel waiting to smite down any who dare to oppose his lowliest listed MP…

I’d never heard of this clown until the week before when he ‘starred” (not in the positive sense of the word) on Backbenchers, a local political talk-back session that screens every Wednesday night after Strike Back…which is not to say that I am a big fan of Strike Back or anything else derived from Chris Ryan but we have taken a bit of a shine to Elementary which screens just before it…A bit of a shine? Nah, let’s be honest about it – I prefer it over the overhyped pretension of Sherlock and the buffoonery of Robert Downey’s big screen Holmes AND it’s got not only a female Watson as a nice bit of contemporisation but it’s Lucy Liu who could also be described simply as a ‘nice bit’…

Anyway…back to clown boy…the topic for discussion that night was the passage of the same sex marriage act and the National Party representative aka clown boy was clearly unprepared and tried to bluster his way through the discussion – really he should just have had another pint and slid quietly under the table. So, it wasn’t really any surprise when news broken on his antics in Hamner Springs the following week. Since then we’ve all gotten to watch the Aaron Show as he has denied, apologised, denied again…I think it was a caller on Radio Live that suggested that the following night, Gilmore should have fronted at the bar, apologised (sincerely) to everyone and tossed a couple of grand on the bar…

Last night he announced his resignation from Parliament to a big sigh of relief from everyone – who says that the parties can not agree unanimously on anything? – but promising utu (revenge or payback) on ‘those responsible in his final speech today…while we all wait with baited breath to learn the contents of the Gilmore grenade today, my only advice to Clown Boy is “Throw the pin, Aaron!!”

Just get on with it now… 2727_auckland-convention-centre-bid-skycity

Before the 2011 election the Government announced its plans to create a national convention centre in central Auckland in partnership with Sky Casino – all the usual haters fired up at the time but now that Government has announced details of this project and the specifics of the relationship with the casino. Essentially, the casino will fund the construction of the convention centre – a projected cost around $420 million – in return for concessions to expand its number of pokie machines and gaming tables, and for some guarantee of protection from future anti-gaming legislation.

All the haters are in full cry again now, having squandered the last year and a half in which they could have sought to block the project. I’m not a big fan of gambling but I also don’t think that a few more pokie machines and gaming tables in the centre of Auckland is going to rip the fabric of the space-time continuum, certainly not when these and other forms of gambling continue to flourish across the country. If the Greens and Labour whiny-haters really wanted to do something about this, then instead of wasting the period from the flash of the initial announcements in 2011 to the bang of the confirmations this week, they could/should have:

Come up with their own plan for funding the construction of the convention centre – no-one really seems to think that this is a bad idea – noting the country is kinda broke due to the unforeseen need to rebuild a major city from scratch.

Developed their own comprehensive AND practical plan for reducing access to to gambling systems and machines across the country – including Lotto and the good old TAB.

Realised that there is more to be in opposition than just attacking everything that the Government does – the continual bleating from David Shearer, the ‘leader’ of the Opposition is just irritating – we might as well bring back Winston Peters: at least he’s entertaining and, funnily enough, was canny enough to include an anti-pokie stand in his manifesto for the 2011 election…

Nutty is as nutty does…
Nutty-Assault

Apparently, in a fit of rampant nannystatism, schools are Australia are banning nuts from school lunches to protect those with nut-based allergies…I kid you not!! Is this a clear case of schools abdicating themselves of even more responsibility when, if there ever was something that kids need some education on, it is dealing with potentially lethal conditions like this…wrapping them in nanny state cotton wool will only prepare them LESS for the real world…

And speaking of things in the real world…

Tossed

x-47B-inflight

An interesting hype piece X-47B UCAS Launches the Next Era of Naval Aviation popped up on the FB feed this morning – and that’s all it is, more X-47 hype.

You can launch a 40 foot container off the end of a US Nimitz-class aircraft carrier so tossing an X-47 off the pointy end of a carrier is not really an achievement in itself. The real achievement and major step ahead for naval aviation will come when an X-47 lands autonomously on the blunt end of an aircraft carrier, catching the ‘3’ wire and all that other good Maverick stuff (will be be equipped for the mandatory post-mission high fives?), as the business of carrier aviation goes on around it – so long as some dodgy Chinese fiend doesn’t pop an electromagnetic pulse just as the UAV commits to landing on the deck – maybe there should be an extra Phalanx under the ramp – just in case…?

Please, don’t get me wrong…I think that the technology going into the X-47 programme is way cool and probbaly heard the next full generational of unmanned aviation but…please…stop with the endless hype…

PS…if you want to have a credible blog site, Navy Live, grow a set and stop moderating your comments…

Lost?

How appropriate that the air port inside the Flight Test Center Airspace is Truth or Consequences Airport? Maybe we could have one called Put up of Shut Up?

Inside the drone economy discusses US plans to establish six UAS test flight areas within the continental UAS, and the current battle between the states to acquire one of these potentially lucrative areas. I just wonder, with our relatively clear and open airspace, domestically and over the big blue thing, whether we have lost an opportunity in attracting UAS-related technologies to New Zealand for test flight and other experimental activities…?

Survivor?

Fresh of the presses at Deep Diver Intel as I was typing this…for reasons unknown but bound to be scary, Global Hawk gets a US$555 million reincarnation to 2015…has anyone done any counter-UAS research on the effects of silver bullets, holy water and wooden stakes on aging technologies that just won’t die…?