Zibi

I never understood the Australian fuel price fluctuations.

In Poland where I come from fuel prices change once a month at most and each time it's really big deal.

So instead of getting flustered and confused by them I decided to treat them as a continuous game of chicken...

Each time I need to fill up I play this little game - do I refuel now or do I wait one more day in hope for lower price.

Sometimes I win, sometimes I lose and pay the extra 20c per litre...just makes the life more positive and exciting :)

From the video it looks like the truck is about a meter away from the edge of bitumen, so about 70-80cm from the bike (bike seems to be going on the very edge of the road, so it's not like you can complain that he was hogging the road).

I'd like to see him pull the same defence speech when caught speeding - officer, it's right I was doing 80 in a 40 zone, but it's just technicality of the law...

Think I stay in the air no cyclists there

I see what you are trying to say, but I think that translates poorly. My main issue here is that often bicycle riders (I'm one too), While acting within the law, do deliberately provoke confrontation when they could have been considerate. Yes, it cuts both ways, and in Queensland, most driver and cyclists seem to want to take up whatever space is available just because they can. I think that it is a dreadful trait, but when you are in/ on a small unprotected vehicle being right won't help if you're dead. Unfortunately, that is the bottom line.

Or maybe you see a deliberate provocation where they are just trying to stay safe or there's some reason why it's not possible to do otherwise.

On topic of riding too far to the right - there's plenty of reasons to do so:

- if there is any grave or small debris at the edge of the road (that a car driver wouldn't even pay attention to, but can be deadly on a bike)

- if there are cars parked in the bike lane (you either risk dooring, or you need to duck in and out making it way more dangerous)

- or just to stop the driver from overtaking you, when there's oncoming traffic and you know that the 3 of you won't fit side by side, but the driver still insist on trying to overtake you as if you were stationary fixed object)

Just as you would prefer to be given some extra space in a plane when it's a rough day, and you may not be able to stick to the hemispherical levels, the bike rider may require extra room on a rough or dirty road. Even if for the car driver or RPT pilot the road / air is perfectly fine (or just with small bumps).

I won't say that all bike riders are flawless and follow the rules perfectly, but neither are drivers.

And I think the comparison between ultralights and bikes is very solid - both are perfectly valid users of their space (either road or airspace), both have some rules not apply to them or some restrictions lifted compared to other and both are very vulnerable next to bigger vehicles sharing the same space.

I am not sure how smart the new bike laws are, which are when driving a car you are required to not get too close to them.

Yesterday I was driving in Bundaberg on a fairly quiet and wide back street and I was going to pass a bike rider going in the same direction and there was a car coming from the opposite direction. There was plenty of room for things to be done safely as far as road width goes. The bike was much closer to the middle of the road than it needed to be but there was still enough room for me to get past safely. As I was about to pass the bike moved over to the right and forced me onto the wrong side of the road. I was then head to head with with the car coming from the opposite direction. Lucky for me the car swerved to the left and a head on collision was avoided.

 

Bicycles have no registration or ID so there is nothing you can do, I am about to ring the police about it but have no confidence that will do anything.

 

To me it is sign of the times, stupidity rules.

Well,

It's funny how you see everyone else's faults but not your own...

I see that nothing I would say about bike riders would change the mind of majority of you, so let me translate that post into language you would understand:

I am not sure how smart the new ultralight laws are, which are when flying a RPT you are required to not get too close to them.

 

Yesterday I was flying to Bundaberg on a fairly quiet and wide back route and I was going to pass a jabiru going in the same direction and there was a 737 coming from the opposite direction. There was plenty of room for things to be done safely as far as vertical separation goes. The jabiru was much closer to the IFR level than it needed to be but there was still enough room for me to get past safely. As I was about to pass the Jabiru climbed over and forced me onto the wrong side air corridor. I was then head to head with with the 737 coming from the opposite direction. Lucky for me the 737 swerved to the left and a head on collision was avoided.

 

Ultralights have no transponders so there is nothing you can do, I am about to ring CASA about it but have no confidence that will do anything.

I can do the same for any other of your (not just Teckair but all in this topic) complaints.

As far as I know there is no difference between analogue and digital antennas. It's still the same frequencies and it should work fine.

There may be problems if your analogue signal was weak, as with analogue transmissions you can still get a picture with weak signal, whereas with digital it's either great quality or nothing at all.

I think I've posted this once in here already, but seems appropriate for this thread:

The European Union commissioners have announced that agreement has been reached to adopt English as the preferred language for European communications, rather than German, which was the other possibility. As part of the negotiations, Her Majesty's Government conceded that English spelling had some room for improvement and has accepted a five-year phased plan for what will be known as EuroEnglish (Euro for short).

 

In the first year, "s" will be used instead of the soft "c." Sertainly, sivil servants will resieve this news with joy. Also, the hard "c" will be replaced with "k". Not only will this klear up konfusion, but typewriters kan have one less letter.

 

There will be growing publik emthusiasm in the sekond year, when the troublesome "ph" will be replaced by "f". This will make words like fotograf" 20 persent shorter.

 

In the third year, publik akseptanse of the new spelling kan be expekted to reach the stage where more komplikated changes are possible. Governments will enkorage the removal of double letters, which have always ben a deterent to akurate speling. Also, al wil agre that the horible mes of silent "e"s in the languag is disgrasful, and they would go.

 

By the fourth year, peopl wil be reseptiv to steps such as replasing "th" by "z" and "w" by " v".

 

During ze fifz year, ze unesesary "o" kan be dropd from vords kontaining "ou", and similar changes vud of kors be aplid to ozer kombinations of leters.

 

After zis fifz yer, ve vil hav a reli sensibl riten styl. Zer vil be no mor trubls or difikultis and evrivun vil find it ezi tu understand ech ozer.

 

Ze drem vil finali kum tru.

I hate hearing "do the math" or "math class" it was always maths when I was at school. Maybe we all become grumpy nit pickers as we get older!

*about 5 lifetimes ago.

I believe Facebook allows you to block search engines from finding your profile and you can limit what is shown for other people based on your relationships with them.

I think it will always allow you to search (from within facebook) for someones name and show at least their profile picture.

No idea about Flicker as I don't use it.

Obviously as with all social applications you should assume that whatever you put in there may become public.

Zibi

The idea is based on a APP..as stated before in this thread....they have used the app idea and combined it with some hardware and some nice protocol via the wifi.....I think these guys will sell a motza of them.....a lot of good money making ideas are just a reinvention or update of the original wheel...you just have to find the right type of wheel

It's possible that they'll make a lot of money, even if their project is completely useless 99% of time (the part that's different from a normal LED light), after all how often would you switch your light colour?

How often do you want your lights to behave like disco lights?

Controlling lights with mobile phone is about as useful as those hand clapper switches.

I'm sure there will be people that will buy it, but I don't expect them to make a fortune on this, on the other hand I've been known to underestimate peoples desire for gimmicky useless stuff and smatphones and tablets are the latest craze and everything that has a mobile phone app is now somehow "better" - next thing you'll have a mobile controlled toilet flush or something (that may be your next project Mark - I won't even charge you for it )

I wouldn't be too optimistic about that idea - they haven't made anything new, there are plenty of LED bulbs (for example http://www.amazon.com/b?ie=UTF8&node=2314207011)

All they've done is added wifi and mobile phone control to it.

Considering they're advertising it as energy saving device, adding useless gimmicks seems counterproductive (at least for me).

Also it looks like they're riding on the smartphone / tablet hype, which like all the previous tech related (.com, etc) hypes should pass pretty quickly.

I'm not saying Kickstarter is a bad idea, but it will get saturated pretty quickly with thousands of projects, most of which are pretty pointless or have no chance of success.

Other plan can be to make a mobile app that does nothing and sell it to rich people for outrageous amount of money - like this guy: http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/technology/2008/08/iphone-i-am-ric.html

A lot of development went into this bike seat.

 

What has his got to do with aviation? Absolutely nothing unless they design a/c seats the same way.

As for the seat development - I'm not surprised that there was a lot of effort to develop it.

You'd think, that at first glance, you'd want something that's wide and soft to seat comfortably, but a seat like that would be actually very uncomfortable - due to the need for your legs to move around and the fact that soft material tends to deform and go into places it wasn't supposed to go.

On the other hand if you go too hard you'll end up with sore bum.

Then there's the issue of that big hole in the middle - put there to allow blood flow to your important bits.

But after all this I'm still not sure what you wanted to tell us - maybe that seat shape looks sort of like it could fly?

• The Tax Dept would be better off with work loads
  

I think you have answered yourself there...

But to be serious - if you wanted to do that, you'd have to rack up the GST to something like 50-60%

You'd also have to put customs on everything you bring into the country, and I mean everything.

I tell them that we are fully Linux in our household ... That makes them squirm!

One of the guys at work has been getting those phone calls pretty often.

He was saying that they often make you run some command or check event log in Windows to confirm you have problems.

Usually they'll ask you to either provide them a remote desktop access to your computer or install some fully legit remote access software (like team viewer) and then let them log in to "fix" stuff.

I can only imagine what they do once the get access to your computer (but even if you didn't have viruses before you'll have some now, or at least a key logger of some kind).

The best thing to do if you have some spare time is to let them hang on the phone for as long as you can keep them wasting their time.