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Checking if sb_chart works.
!!SPDV.OB@@
End.

This Saturday I experienced the most joyful ride in a glider so far, including the loop which supposedely involved about 3-4g of acceleration. Logbook:
Ove subote sam imao najljepÅ¡i let zraÄ?nom jedrilicom do sada, koji ukljuÄ?uje i petlju koja je vjerojatno proizvela izmedju 3-4g akceleracije. Log

1. Instructor Johm Voight. Doing circles. Applying rudder pedals during circles.
   Kruženje. Upotreba pedala kormila za vrijeme kruženja.
2. Instructor Andy. Demonstration and then performing the stall
   Demonstracija i izvodjenje gubitka uzgona.
3. Instructor Haken. Controlling rudder pedals during airtow after 1000 feet. Unsuccessfully banking the aircraft from side to side using flystick and rudder. Too much wobbling.
   Kontrola kormila za vrijeme vuÄ?e nakon 1000 stopa. NeuspjeÅ¡no primijenio kormilo i palicu za naginjanje s jedne na drugu stranu. PreviÅ¡e plesanja.
4. Instructor Duncan. I was given full control during airtow at 1500 feet, but immediately applied too much flystick to the left and almost broke the rope. Duncan took control and gave me control back only after completion of airtow at 2500 feet. I trimmed the K21 HLP at various speeds (45, 55 and 60 knots). I was demonstrated and later performed loop. I was demnostrated Chandelle. I applied airbrakes while controlling the glider all the way down to few feet of altitued.
   Bila mi je dana puna kontrola prilikom vuÅ¡e nakon 1500 stopa, ali odmah sam dao previÅ¡e palice u lijevo i skoro prekinuo konop. Duncan je preuzeo kontrolu i vratio mi je tek nakon prestanka vuÄ?e na oko 2500 stopa. Trimovao sam K21 HLP na nekoliko razliÄ?itih brzina (45, 55 i 60 cvorova). Demonstracija i izvodjenja petlje. Demonstracija Chandelle. KoriÅ¡tenje zraÄ?nih koÄ?nica i kontrola jedrilice sve do oko 10 stopa iznad tla.

Cockpit of K21 (model) HLP (registration). Instruments (it is visible that the photo was taken at 500 feet.)
Kokpit K21 (model) HLP (registracija). Instrumenti (vidljivo je da je visina bila 500 stopa kada je napravljena fotografija.)

Slight right turn during airtow, and a look outside the cockpit somewhat below 1500 feet.
Blago skretanje desno za vrijeme vuÄ?e i pogled izvan kokpita na neÅ¡to ispod 1500 stopa.

Today I visited again Southdown airfield, the biggest gliding club in UK (about 40 gliders). The weather was worse than predicted by Meteoblue, with very strong wing and fast moving clouds. There were 2 gliders being intermittently launched by catapult, enabling them about 3-4 minutes of flight before landings. Landings were quite spectacular, with very steep turning before landing itself. All landings seemed perfect to me, despite the wind. Nevertheless, I decided to fly when wind would be less strong (I am quite impressed that a South African guy I met last time, was landing gliders well after only 20 flights.)
Danas sam ponovo posjetio Southdown airfield, najveći klub zraÄ?nog jedrenja u Engleskoj (oko 40 zraÄ?nih jedrilica). Vrijeme je bilo loÅ¡ije nego prognozirano od strane Meteoblue , s vrlo jakim vjetrom i brzim oblacima. Dvije jedrilice su naizmjeniÄ?no bivale lansirane katapultom, Å¡to bi im omogućilo oko 3-4 minute leta prije sletanja. Slijetanja su bila priliÄ?no dojmljiva, s vrlo strmim okretom prije samog slijetanja. Sva slijetanja su mi se Ä?inila odliÄ?nim, usprkos vjetru. Medjutim, odluÄ?io sam letiti kada vjetar bude slabiji (PriliÄ?no me impresionira deÄ?ko iz JužnoafriÄ?ke republike kojeg sam sreo zadnji put, koji je dobro slijetao nakon samo 20 letova.)
今日ã?¯ã€€ã‚‚一度Southdown airfield è¡Œã??ã?¾ã?—ã?Ÿã€‚天気ã?®ã€€ã?»ã?†ã€€ã?Œã€€æ‚ªã?‹ã?£ã?Ÿã€€ã?§ã?™ã€‚　風や　雲ã?Œã€€é‡?ã?‹ã?£ã?Ÿã€€ã?§ã?™ã€‚

On 8th April, Saturday, Bloco do Sul played the usual reportoire of Samba in Epsom. We played in front of the Ebisham centre (library, and Saxon name for Epsom). It was first sunny and hot day in Spring, and a true herald of incoming Summer. Very nice weather brought out a fairly nice crowd, so it was enjoyable to play. Although, sun made a bit hard after a winter dream. Our playing started by our Mestre Mick calling the first song:
8. Travnja, subota, Bloco do Sul svirali su uobiÄ?ajen Samba repertoar u Epsomu. Svirali smo ispred Ebisham centra (biblioteka, a Ebishma je saksonski naziv za Epsom). Bio je vrlo sunÄ?an i topao dan u proljeću i pravi vjesnik nadolazećeg ljeta. Vrlo lijepo vrijeme privelo je lijepu gomilu, pa je bio užitak svirati. Iako, sunce je uÄ?inilo sviranje neÅ¡to težim nakon zimskog sna. NaÅ¡u svirku zapoÄ?eo je MeÅ¡tar Mick pozivom na prvu pjesmu.
4 月8 æ—¥ã?«ã€?土曜日ã€?Bloco do Sul ã‚’ã?—ã?ŸEpsom ã?«ã‚µãƒ³ãƒ?ã?®é€šå¸¸ã?®reportoire ã‚’ã?™ã‚‹ã€‚ç§?é?”ã?¯Ebisham ã?®ä¸­å¿ƒ(Epsom ã?®å›³æ›¸é¤¨ã?Šã‚ˆã?³Saxon ã?®å??å‰?) ã?®å‰?ã?«é?Šã‚“ã? 。ã??ã‚Œã?¯ã?°ã?­ã?®æœ€åˆ?ã?«æ˜Žã‚‹ã??ã€?熱ã?„æ—¥ã€?ã?Šã‚ˆã?³å…¥ã?£ã?¦æ?¥ã‚‹å¤?ã?®æœ¬å½“ã?®å¸ƒå‘Šè€…ã? ã?£ã?Ÿã€‚é?žå¸¸ã?«ç´ 晴らã?—ã?„天候ã?¯ã?‹ã?ªã‚Šè‰¯ã?„群集をæŒ?ã?¡å‡ºã?—ã?Ÿã€?従ã?£ã?¦é?Šã?¶ã?Ÿã‚?ã?«æ¥½ã?—ã?‹ã?£ã?Ÿã€‚ã€?太陽ã?Œãƒ“ットを冬ã?®å¤¢ã?®å¾Œã?§å …ã??ã?•ã?›ã?Ÿã?Œã€‚ç§?é?”ã?®é?Šã?¶ã?“ã?¨ã?¯ç§?é?”ã?®Mestre ミックã?«ã‚ˆã?£ã?¦æœ€åˆ?ã?®æ­Œã‚’呼ã?³å§‹ã‚?ã?Ÿ:

Bloco stand in the standard formation: Kitchen first, then drums, and finally surdos.
Bloco je stajao u standardnoj formaciji: prvo kuhinja, zatim doboši i na kraju surdui.
標準的ã?ªå½¢æˆ?ã?®Bloco ã?®ç«‹å ´: 最åˆ?ã?«ã€?ã??ã?—ã?¦å?°æ‰€ãƒ‰ãƒ©ãƒ ã?Šã‚ˆã?³æœ€çµ‚çš„ã?«surdos 。


We could not have brought a horse to dance (Epsom is known for horce races), but some old champ could not have resisted 🙂
Nismo mogli pokrenuti konja da pleše (Epsom je poznat po konjskim trkama), ali jedan starac nam nije mogao odoliti.
���(Epsom �馬 �競争����知られ��る) 馬を踊る������������������ャンピオン�抵抗��������。

Among the crowd was Antonella who kindly took the pictures.
Medju publikom bila je i Antonella koja je i snimila ove fotografije.
群集�中�親切�写真を���Antonella ����。

Joe was kind enough to invite me (using his flying points and hotel points) to Hannover and to spend Monday and Tuesday visiting CeBit. CeBit is Europe’s biggest Information Technology and Communication Technology Fair.

Impressions

• I’ve seen Joe after few months
• There were no big technological surprises (equally possible, I was not intelligent to notice them)
• Fair was bigger then I expected, and it was tiring
• We did not know anything about Hannover, so our night life was modest
• Overall I am very satisfied and grateful to Joe

I did hear about fog screens before (I don’t know who manufactured the one in the photo). Fog screens look more spectacular in reality though, when they are brighter as shown in photo, and one can walk through the screen.

The last thing we saw at CeBit was a really funny dance performance of 6 small robots of Robonova of Germany. These small robots were much more impressive than Robosapien robots available in toy stores. Robonova robots had much bigger number of degrees of freedom in joints, were much quicker and were very flexible (number of possible movements).

Mini-PCs

This site is powered by Fanless Mini-ITX PC which I assembled early Automn 2005. Joe shall assemble his kit in short time. Together with lower prices of motherboards and being silent, we thought about possibility of building (or as it would turn out later reselling) fanless Mini-ITX computers for web-servers or Media Centers. Below are the exhibitors having related products:

• Joe got quite interested in distributed client application using Citix protocol : Chip PC. The small socket-like initerface did cost about 300 euros. We wondered about high-price and tough graphics demand on server
• Yellow Sheep River had an extraordinary Mini-PC with price of 130 euros only (though they would not sell me one at the moment). I will contact Mr. Kim who is designer of Municator (and trying to help non-developed world). The microprocessor used is Godson, chinese own microprocessor. Municator is also using 40 GB hardisk and 256 MB RAM.
• Very interesting solution for hotels of thin clients is from Mr. of Acropolis of Netherland. Beside thin clients together with LCD monitors, Mr. Vries is also manufacturing fanless mini-PCs and Linux boot-USB sticks or PC Cards. I plan to contact Mr. Vries soon regarding possibility of selling thin clients to hotels
• Digital Logic of Germany had done excellently designed Multi-media centre. They are also doing mini PCs for military (hard waterproof casings) which could also be built in yachts. Very thorougly tested (I was watching very tough vibrations tests) could be very good thing for yacht installations (price 3.5-4.500 euros). They still don’t have representative in Croatia. I plan to contact them.
• Gentleman of VIA is supposedely delivering nano-itx motherboards for over a year now. In Car solution was provided by Tragant
• Very broad range of industrial and home mini-PCs (at least 25 models) from ipc2U of Germany. Many of them fanless, though I am not sure of form factors, and why almost all use Intel Processors. But interestingly they are also using nano-itx powered by VIA. Definitely something I would like to have and will check.
• AOpen from Taiwan has beautifully designed mini PCs, mainly based on Intel processors. It is not clear whether they are fanless, but they are advertised as silent. AOpen also sells components and barebone systems.
• Unfortunately, no Linux drivers for this nice indicator panel for Mini- from Korea.
• Very nice designed though not fanless xpc
• Mappit of Germany had very nice casings and solutions for fanless mini-PCs
• Thin clients, maybe fanless from Zettabyte of Taiwan.
• LexSystem embedded solutions
• Unimpressive thin clients of Neoware
• Just as unimpressive mini-PC of Synology.
• Cases
  • MetalWare
  • T mod from Taiwan

Wireless-telecoms

• t.com Mr. Mlynar gave some information on IPR in (W)CDMA. Supposedely, Mr. Mlynar paid early 90’s 5 million $ to Qualcomm to allow chipset production. Now… it is ‘astronomical’, and ‘half’ of Qualcomm emplyees are lawyers. The royalties per product are about 30% of product price, and license to use (W)CDMA is in the range of hundreds of thousand of dollars (this is different than chipset production). Mr. Mlynar sees chance in niche applications, and has kindly offered further contacts. Jonathan Gilmor is the main engineer.
• LinkSys which is Cisco’s company, has a lot wireless based product. I will have to check their UMTS routers, as in the end, I would like to build one.
• RedDot wireless is offering WiFi and WiMax chipsets
• I am not sure why the data transfer of power lines is not more widely spread. One thing might be lack of standardization, which is now corrected through Universal Power Line Association. Netgear already has some products.
• Some Czech multiplexers (E1/E3/Ethernet/ISDN/Fibre) are done by ath systems. Main interest here is just price range.
• Joe was briefly interested in RFID producats. In retrospect I am sorry we did not check better. Here is Promag of Taiwan.

Speech Engines & Dictionaries

• I was quite pleased with voice readers which are immensely better than Microsoft Sam reader. I will buy one from linguatec and will also check if they would be interested in building Croatian library for theis product. Which, by the way, is not expensive at all, and I have a special offer :). I only have to decide which languages do I want.

CMS (Content Management Systems)

• I was very interested in SemTalk where gentleman new about Tim Berners ideas of semantic web in details. Also he knew about SyCorp. Altough their software is only editor file for ontologies (OWL) and not very impresive (simple Visio script), I was referred to Ontoprise as a company that implemented semantic web protocol stack. I forgot the name of the second comapany. And we did not find a company that is trying to connect wiki and semantic web. To this connection, I predict a great great future.
• In Acolada I got interested as it appeared they implemented a bit of Java. Especially, they used JGantt. I was not impressed by their back-end database, which was supposed to be string based.

Power Units
I am planning to buy power source for electronic lab, so I was intrested in comapnies manufacturing related products (PSUs… though, distantly related).

• kebo

Other

• Carl Ziess from Germany had a wonderful glasses (mono-projector) stand. I spoke with Mr. Brodsky, who by mistake had forward me to Mobile Optics GmbH (which produce aide-products for visually impaired). My next contact is Bettina Egger whom, I hope, can made interested in glasses/ mobile mix.
• Global solutions seems to be able to deliver any electronics component
• Chi Mei Optoelectronics of Taiwan presented the LCD monitor with the highest resolution in the world. Its 54” diagonal and crisp picture drove my attention for good 10 minutes. The pictures viewed were some fractals and some Van Gogh’s pictures. I think Van Gogh would be extremly pleased.
• Surprisingly from Russia there is a great fashion collection for Mobiles (for girls). In catalog, the model looks fabulously. For man, coming from Turkey: Hakan Ersan. I will check if something similarly exists in Croatia.
• There has been a great number of Linux exhibitors, together with lectures from people like Jon Maddog Hall, Klaus Knopper… of all stands we took info from Linux Professional Institute that provides certificates.
• Creatoor is slovenian company. Joe and I had a good lough with Matjaz (young fella) who was explaining how their software judges team-like qualities and needs of a person. Matjaz, though, gave unsatisfactory answer on the criteria sofware uses (half their own investigation, half un-named reference literatur). But, I was pleased with them… The stand was nice, and they were entusiastic.
• Some good german books can be checked at emedia and franzis(which has an excellent coverage of themes. There was also a book with a thorough chapter how to setup web-server from home). Definitely worth of check.
• Vivicom presented on-line meeting tool. These tools are going to ‘explode’ once BBC puts open source of new video codecs. One can check Vivicom for free until 31st May 2006 with the codes
  • Moderator: CHYQ/7HC7N8
  • ISJA/8E5550, PHIV/G67VRQ, VVRZ/PV5JM0
• A beatufil German girl was a hostess for karaoke system… I panicked when she asked me to sing.
• I don’t remember why I collected Cowon korean business card. They have very nice MP3 players, but I am not interested in them, now.
• SuperMicro is server solution provider (producing motherboards and chasis separately). They also brag with the best price/ performance abilities.
• About the end of our visit, we talked to the LifeService helicopter pilot, who kindly explained (in German, as his English was poor, sic!) how LifeService are going to locate survivors if they use mobiles. The system is provided by Bjoern Steiger Stiftung
• It would be nice to find something similar for english tax laws, as it is done for german.
• From Sun’s stand I took free CD with netbeans
• From Mindjet stand free MindManager Pro 6 trial version. Their competitor from OpenMind were not very happy when I asked about open source products as FreeMind. OpenMind had small stand and I bet it will not grow.
• From Symantec’s stand free Internet Secuirty 30 days trial version

I spent the most of my Christmas holidays in Sibenik and later in Zagreb. To the coming of the New Year, I toasted with my parents. There was one fun thing during holidays, and that was small ice skating place constructed in Sibenik (near Jolly complex). It is the ice of about 20 X 20 metres, where I stood on the skates for the 1st time. Luca enjoyed as well… maybe in also non-spectacular falls (2 downs for me).

Last Friday, 12th December, company had organized a Christmas lunch at: Burford bridge hotel . The company already had a Christmas dinner there, three years ago. These photos were taken by Sharif:

Tokom vikenda s treceg na cetvrti Prosinca 2005, otisao sam u Porto, da se tamo nadjem sa Mariom (Mario Perry). S Mariom sam se upoznao u Zagrebu, kada sam poceo studirati fiziku. Nismo se culi i vidjeli vise od 10 godina. Mario je u medjuvremenu otisao na Palma de Mallorcu gdje i sada zivi. Bio je ispocetka kosarkaski trener, a kasnije se poceo baviti klimatizacijom u zgradama. Jedno od gradilista je bilo i hotel u Portu (tocnije Vila Nova de Gaia), tako da Mario dobro poznaje Porto i dogovorili smo se da se tamo i nadjemo.

Porto je veliki grad (metropolitansko podrucje = 1.5 milijun) ali sam centar je izlozen depopulaciji. Zgrade su bogato ukrasene i vrlo je vidljiva bogata kolonijalna proslost. No danas, zbog vlage i neodrzavanje grad izgleda pomalo zapusteno.

Dva dana provedena u Portu su provedena ‘turisticki’, sa izletom po rijeci Douro, posjeti vinarijama u kojima se proizvodi vino Porto, posjeti vinoteci i degustiranju porta, kao i setnji po glavnoj trgovackoj ulici (mislim da je Sveta Katarina ime ulice).

For those interested in menu:

Starters

Parsnip and Ginger Soup with Toasted Croutons
Flaked Tuna and Spring Onion Fish Cakes with a Cucumber and Dill Yoghurt
Poached Chicken Roulade with Brie and Cranberries
Roasted Tomato and Feta Salad with Black Olives and Rocket Pesto

Main

Seasonal Roast Turkey with Savoury Stuffing, Chipolata, Bacon Roll and Cranberry Sauce
Roast Topside of Beef, Yorkshire Pudding and Horseradish Sauce
Nut Roast with Yorkshire Pudding and Vegetarian Gravy
Grilled Salmon Supreme served with a Prawn and White Wine Sauce
Baby Leek, Red Pepper and Potato Terrine glazed with Cheddar cheese and Pesto Sauce

Dessert

Traditional Christmas Pudding with Cream
Dark Chocolate Cup filled with a Hazelnut and White Chocolate Mousse
American Style Baked Cheesecake with Blackcurrants
A selection of Cheese and Biscuits with Grapes, Celery and Apple

And photos can be found here: Christmas diner
As you can notice, I was playing guitar. (Members of the band seemed to be pleasantly surprised, but I was playing quite badly, by the usual standards of Croatian music schools. Actually, I did not plan to play at all, but I had a lesson from Brian that Friday, and guitar was left in the car).

Although not a best place in UK, we have spent a good time at Thai restaurant.
Ling took photos, so he is not on the pictures…

So, let’s have a dinner next week.