midtoad’s mess.ages
excellence in creative mediocrity

Since I work in software development with Python, it seems only natural that my blog software should run on Python. That way, when it breaks, I have half a chance of being able to fix it.

Wordpress, the toolkit for this blog, is a great piece of work, and there’s nothing wrong with it, other than it runs on PHP. I’m trying to rid my server of all PHP apps, so I’m moving my blog over to one run with the Frog toolkit.

All new posts can be found at this location: midtoad.org/blog/, which resolves to http://midtoad.homelinux.org:9080/frog/user/midtoad/

All posts on this old blog will remain here for some time, pending an attempt to extract all the posts from the database and convert them over to the Frog data format.

Here’s some advice I recently wrote for a friend looking for a camera. I’m looking too, since my Canon A70 crapped out again for the third time. Ever wonder why Canon came out with the nearly identical A75 soon after the release of the A70? It’s because the A70 had a defective CCD which they tried to cover up. Anyway, in the hope that these thoughts might be useful for someone else, here they are:
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Recently, I switched from Linux to Mac OS X with the purchase of a Mac Mini, and I’ve been busy getting some of my favourite Linux apps running on Mac OS X (for those that don’t know, Mac OS X is effectively a pretty face on top of a customized version of Linux; techies please excuse this simplification). One of the apps I wanted to get running is Skencil, a vector-based graphics program that can create and edit .svg images.
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Mt. Seven Ramp
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Last Friday, July 29th, while I was flying my hang glider cross-country along the range south of Golden, BC, another pilot was critically injured and died a couple of days later. His name was Charles Warren, and he was flying a paraglider. I’m sorry to see him go, and though we weren’t close, I’ll miss him. He took over from me as HPAC webmaster, and had made many improvements to the site.
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Afternoon rays on Port Phillip Bay at Frankston, Victoria, Australia, during a ride around the bay.
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I see that there are several requests for CompeGPS to export its waypoints to a format that other programs can use, but this feature has not been added. As a temporary solution, I’ve written a small utility to convert .WPT files to .gpx files.

I’m unable to determine what all of the fields in the CompeGPS waypoint record are for, but understand enough of them to be able to generate a valid .gpx file. You can then open that file with, for instance, G7ToWin.

To run my utility, grab this zip file containing the utility (CompeGPS2gpx.exe) and a sample .WPT file (CalgaryAreaAirspace.WPT). Unzip the file into a folder, open a command prompt in that folder, and type:

CompeGPS2gpx.exe CalgaryAreaAirspace.WPT

Naturally, replace the name of the sample file with your own waypoints file.

I tested the utility with Windows XP, Python 2.4.1. I was able to read the generated .gpx file with G7ToWin (and even found a bug in it that the author has already fixed in his latest version A.00.199f).

If you need to convert CompeGPS waypoints to some other obscure format, get a copy of GPSBabel, as it understands more than 40 formats, and can convert the generated .gpx file to just about any format you desire.

The utility in written in Python, and the source code is provided. If you make changes or improvements, please let me know, and provide a copy of your work.

On Saturday April 30th, friends and family gathered at the Cochrane Ranche for a celebration of the life of Chris Muller. Over 500 people jammed the hall to hear family and flying friends speak about what Chris meant to them. Several videos were shown, some made by Chris himself. Rob Kells from Wills Wing gave the closing remarks.

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Got a GPS? Want to see your tracklogs on a map? Don’t have money for a dedicated mapping program? You’re in luck - there’s GPS Visualizer. Simply record your trip, upload to your PC using an app like G7ToWin, and then upload to the GPS Visualiser site. Within a minute or so you’ll have a picture of your trip overlaid on a nice map background or on a satellite photo.
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I received a new iPod Mini for a birthday present. Thx bro’! Good little player, except for one thing - half my 100 GB music collection is in .ogg file format, and Apple iTunes doesn’t do .ogg files. But, I found a way around this problem.
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PHP is okay for whipping up something quick, but once I start getting into more complicated stuff, I start to feel lost. I’d rather work in Python. So I’ve begun the job of moving my BikeRoots site over to Python. There were a few things involved…
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The Bike Roots database is now in test. It only took the better part of an afternoon to modify the PHP code from the Flight Poetry website so that it could be used with my Bike Roots database. That’s the benefit of having used a MySQL database for both sections. I would have preferred to use Python instead of PHP, but it’s always easier to modify code than to write new code. Once I get up and running, though, I’ll have more time to make the switch at that time.

So far, I am only presenting a collection of routes, with no way (yet) for the user to submit new route information. I’m also not ready to present graphical images of the routes; that should come in the next few days. In the meanwhile you can check out the database here.

Visitors to this site may have noticed a curious phrase in the Quotes section (top-right of the page). The quote is by Nicanor Parra, and it says “Let’s not fool ourselves: the automobile is a wheelchair (No nos echemos tierra a los ojos: El automóvil es una silla de ruedas”.)

Nicanor Parra is one of Chile’s better known poets, in his 90s as of September 5, 2004. He’s survived socialism and military dictatorships, and so is well-equipped to comment on life in that country (or all countries).

The phrase in the quote comes from his book “Obra Gruesa”, released in the 50s. Interestingly, he recycled a number of his better-known phrases in a poem entitled Frases, in 2001. It appears here and is quoted below:

No nos echemos tierra a los ojos
El automóvil es una silla de ruedas
El león está hecho de corderos
Los poetas no tienen biografía
La muerte es un hábito colectivo
Los niños nacen para ser felices
La realidad tiende a desaparecer
Fornicar es un acto diabólico
Dios es un buen amigo de los pobres.

You can find more poems from the Obra Gruesa (and other works) at the Universidad de Chile’s Cultura website.

You might think that Nicanor was speaking strictly about the automobile as wheelchair, and conclude that he is dead right in his opinion. Millions and millions of able-bodied individuals are converted by the automobile from being active citizens to being slothful, overweight invalids who are apparently incapable of walking, running or cycling even a couple of blocks.

But it appears that Parra may have had a wider purpose in mind, with the automobile being only one symbol of a world of consumerism that turns us all into slavish addicts of the latest and greatest, thus crippling our ability to think for ourselves and determine what things are really necessary in life. More power to him!

First time I’ve written a post that has four categories!

I ran across a cool software project called Leonardoserver , hosted on Sourceforge. It’s a project licensed under the GPL that allows paragliding federations to easily offer on-line contests. You can find one example of such a contest at paraglidingforum.com.
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I’m in the process of kicking off a project called Calgary BikeRoots. It’s a website for and by Calgary-area cyclists and other non-motorised commuters such as walkers, runners and skaters.
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My apologies - too many late nights working on a new server set-up have addled my brain. I went to work today and didn’t notice that my server was off-line until someone asked me about later. Back up now, though (obviously), 12 hours later.

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If you haven’t heard of del.icio.us yet, take a look!

Del.icio.us has an interesting concept, one that I didn’t understand at first even though I was using its service. Each day I open up a browser and point it at del.icio.us/tag/python. I get a page with what looks like an RSS news feed: a listing of a number of links about the Python programming language, some of them with descriptions, but others not. I didn’t understand where these links were coming from, or who can post, and how, on the service. Then I read a post on woyp, and decided to take a closer look.
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It took several hours to get my WordPress blog running on my new webserver, but only a couple of minutes to get the Flight Poetry site back in action. That’s because both of those sections make use of a mySQL database. Solving the problems of setting up one of them gave me the keys to quickly setting up the second.

Enjoy the website!

If you can read this, that’s good, because it means I finally have my new webserver set-up and running.

Yesterday I began the process of replacing my SMEserver Linux distribution with Mandrake 10.1. I’ve moved to this distro to enjoy consistency with my desktop PCs, and to have more flexibility on software installations on my webserver itself.

First step was to back everything up to another PC. I had a bit of a scare when I couldn’t find the datafiles for this blog, but eventually I located them in another spot. Then came a litany of small problems, each of which I had to solve: I couldn’t get the webserver to be seen from inside the home network. I couldn’t get the webserver to understand any URLs, only IP addresses. I couldn’t get the webserver to read my USB flash key, or my external IDE drive. I couldn’t get root privileges straightened out on the webserver. I couldn’t get mySQL running; I couldn’t get a user account for this blog database created.

Now that I’m able to post, it’s time to go to bed. The rest of the set-up will have to wait until tomorrow.

From a recent study on Application Platform Strategies by the Burton Group :

The P-Languages: PHP, Perl, and Python for Enterprise Scripting:

“PHP, Perl, and Python (the P-Languages) are scripting languages suitable for web development, system administration, and integration. In the proper context, they can be five times more productive than general-purpose languages such as C++, Java, and C#. In this Application Platform Strategies overview, Burton Group Analyst Richard Monson-Haefel discusses the advantages and disadvantages of the P-Languages in enterprise application development.”

Did you know that the Google search engine is available in many different languages? Over 100 were available, at last count. Google has a sense of humour, too. Some of the languages available include the following:

• Bork, bork, bork!
• Elmer Fudd
• Hacker
• Klingon
• Pig Latin

Take a look on their language page.

Recently when I started up my PC, fsck checked my /home folder and found a number of errors, including bad blocks. When it was done, I had over 2000 files in my /home/lost+found folder. How to tell if any of them are worth keeping, or are merely duplicates of something else? Can I safely delete them?

Rather than go through all 2000 by hand, I wrote a little script in python to examine the first line of each file, then tell me what it had found. Naturally, as I went along, I made improvements to the file. In the end it was able to check whether any of the files were mail files, html, png, xml, c++ or other files. The ones that I could identify were moved into another folder for safe-keeping.

Here’s the script (.py file saved as .txt) that I used:
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The image below summarizes the new CIVL badge levels, which will become effective as of May 1st, 2005. Any questions?
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In parts 1-3 of this series, I described the overhaul of the CIVL Badge system. The definitive text and full details of the system are of course contained in the Sporting Code, Section 7D, which will become effective May 1st of this year. In this article, I want to describe some of the other changes that you will see in the new release of S7D. The full text will be available shortly on the CIVL website, after review by John Aldridge.

The badges and records subcommittee, under the leadership of CIVL V-P Scott Torkelsen from Denmark, undertook the review of the badge system, but also reviewed all of S7D itself, with a view to streamlining and simplifying GPS usage. In this task, a number of people were involved: Oyvind Ellefsen from Norway, �gúst Guðmundsson from Iceland, Martin Henry from Canada, and myself. (Hmm, all Nordic countries, what a coincidence!). Martin was awarded two FAI world records late last year in the rigid wing category, and as a result of his records chase he has gained intimate knowledge of some of the contradictions and confusions still remaining in S7D, as regards GPS usage. Here are the major changes developed by this subcommittee, and approved by the Plenary.

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In parts 1 and 2 of this series, we looked at the problems with the current badge levels, and what pilots around the world are telling us (through their flying) would make a fairer set of levels for these badges.

Thanks to OLC, we now have a much better undertanding of how far pilots fly day-to-day. How should we relate that to badge requirements? Well, we start with the principle that the badges should rise in difficulty from easy to moderate to challenging to difficult. That’s not what we have today, at least for hang gliders (easy - moderate - ridiculous - damn near impossible). The idea is, if we can agree in a general way on how hard the badges should be, and how accessible they should be, it will be easier to agree on specific values for the distances and other requirements.

The badge and records committee put forward to the CIVL Bureau, and then to the Plenary, the following set of principles to guide the development of the new badge levels:

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In part one of this series, we looked at how the existing CIVL badge system is broken. In this article, we look at what pilots say about fair badge levels. We do that by studying how far pilots actually fly, not how far some wishful thinkers would like them to fly. And for this information, we turn to the OLC (On Line Contest).

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At the CIVL meeting at Panajachel, Guatemala, delegates voted to revise the CIVL Badge system effective May 1st of this year. Why did they do this?

We’re been flying hang gliders for over 30 years, and paragliders for 20 (in round numbers). We have had a badge system in place for many years. There are (some estimates say) about 300,000 hang glider and paraglider pilots in the world today.

And the number of FAI gold badges issued?
Rigid wings: 0
Flex wings: 4
Paragliders: 24
Sailplanes: 6500 (including 3 diamonds on top of the gold badge).

Clearly, there’s something wrong with our program.

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Here’s the view the CIVL delegates got as they left Panajachel on Sunday afternoon:

CIVL Plenary Day Two

14. further discussion on safety director. Proposal by Dennis, Xavier, Klaus.

- a separate safety director (with no other respons) mut be nominated by the organiser and accepted by the CIVL Bureau. The suitability of the SD shall be reviewed by the Steward after the pre-meet. The bureau may require a replacement SD.
- the SD is responsible for monitoring all aspects of safety, including but not limited to wind speed, presence of thunderstorms, other potentially dangerous conditions. Further duties are to monitor in-air crowding at take-off, presence of dangerous air traffic. He may also prevent pilots with unsafe equipment.
- SD has responsibility to attend the task advisory committee , monitor setting of goals, routes. SD shall attend the safety committee and accept input from safety committee. SD shall collect accident reports and discuss accidents with the Steward and present conclusions at the pilot briefing. He is also responsible for checking that all pilots have reported back.
- SD may stop a task at any point for reasons of safety. Any decision taken by the SD will be reported to the Jury president.
- the SD must have knowledge and experience of the site being flown and ideally must have experience in appropriate competitions.
- bids for Cat. 1 must be approved by appropriate wrt safety. To be approved, the organiser must have experience at organising safe and successful international comps.
- these rules apply to Brazil PG world comp in a few weeks.

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CIVL Plenary Meeting
Day One, Feb. 18th

1. meeting opens.
2. 27 countries in attendance (including 5-6 proxies). introductions of all countries
4. Agenda approved.
5. Last year’s minutes approved.
6. Olivier read his president’s report commenting on his years as president
7. Max Bishop president report: new FAI president Pierre —-, a power pilot who is trying to strengthen links to ICAO through appointment of Mary-Anne Stevens (Aero Club of Canada pres.) as delegate to ICAO. The FAI Centenary will be in Paris in October: all pilots are welcome - register on the FAI website. Accident rate in our sport is unacceptable to Max: we are the only sport that has fatalities in its comps. Poland was proposing to hold an FAI Centenary Games, but it’s likely not to go ahead.

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HG Competition Sub committee minutes:
(As I only attended the initial portion of the meeting, these notes were kindly provided to me by Paula Howitt, and are unofficial until reviewed by the Bureau).

1 Full co-operation between the Steward and Jury president: Jury handbook
The only person who has authority to stop the competition is the Jury President. The steward should work closely with the JP to bring to their attention any points that may require action especially regarding safety.

2 Information of conditions in flight with 3 pilots in the safety committee: S7
Already in HG S7

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CIVL Hang Gliding Committee
Friday Feb 18, 9:00

- list of items to be discussed is per Annex 4.

- rules for next world championship proposed.

CIVL Aerobatics Committee
Friday Feb 18, 9:00
Chairman: Dennis Pagen

- presentation for 1st world aerobatic championship, to be held near Geneva. Aug 16-27th, 2006. Events: HG Solo, Paraglider solo, PG session. Team size 4 pilots + 2 women. up to 60,000 spectators expected. Landing rafts to be used for HG in finals (dry ground for preliminaries). Entry fee of 300 Euros, or 500 Euros for syncho as well. Includes lodging.
- pilots must be able to do spin, loop, and wingover.
- Aug. 17-21, 2005 for pre-meet. Fee is only 25 Euros per day.
- flying is done early in morning and in evening.
- website info: http://www.redbull-vertigo.com
- short video presented; event looks like fun and professionally organised.

- I left this committe in order to attend the PG committee. I will look for minutes from someone else. (Later: I got some unofficial notes from Paula Howitt. See separate article on this topic).

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(second draft here, since my original draft disappeared suddenly)… I’m here in Panajachel, Guatemala ( map ), for the CIVL Plenary meeting. This town of 11,000 is located a long 3-hour drive from the capital along the N shores of Lake Atitlán at an elevation of 1500m. On the other side of the 13 km wide lake are three volcanos, Atitlán (the tallest, at 3500m), Tolimán and the smaller San Pedro. The lake is surrounded by highlands about 2500m high.

There are lots of accomodation options, from camping, to $5/night pension-style rooms, to $80 resort-type hotels. I’m staying in the Tzan Juyu, dating back to the 1940s and clearly having seen better times. It’s great because it has no radio or TV, and a superb view of the lake. It also has a landing spot on the edge of the lake, adequate for PGs and smallish for HGs. You can glide across a small bay to this LZ from a ramp (for HGs) or slope (for PGs) 400m up the side of very steep mountains on the road out of town.

The picture below shows the view from the Tzan Juyu hotel. Not too shabby!

The main launch spot is 3 km W of town via an 18km winding paved road, thence onto private property via payment of a 10 Quetzales (about $2 Cdn.) fee. The takeoff spot is a steep clearing on a treed hillside large enough for one glider at a time to launch, though several could set up at once. It sits 500m AGL. You can’t see the LZ from launch, as it sits in a bowl, but you can easily glide to in a PG. The main LZ is where the dried San Francisco River meets the lake, and is easily large enough for both PG and HG. If you can’t get to it, there’s always the beach.

In the picture below, you can clearly see the horizontal slash of the river bed, and the Tzan Juyu is at the far end of town where the lake meets the cliffs.

I’ve been told that on the good days, you can get up to 4500m ASL, and possibly cross the lake, but the past few days have allowed only local soaring. The winds here are quite predictable. The sea breeze first enters around noon from the SW, through a low gap on the west side of the Atitlán volcano. This wind, which can be turbulent when it first arrives, is called the San Lucas, after the town in that low spot. Later in the afternoon, the wind enters from a low spot between Atitlán volcano and San Pedro volcano, and is called the Santiago wind. It blows from the south and allows consistent soaring until dark. The past few days, the wind has come in like clockwork each day, allowing for lots of good soaring. You could easily rack up 20 hours or more in a week here, if you set your mind to it.

Today the fun is coming to an end, as the CIVL Bureau met at 2 pm to plan out its objectives for the meeting. The other delegates had one more day of freedom before getting down to business in the working groups tomorrow. The full Plenary starts on Saturday and finishes Sunday. After the meeting is over, there will be a spot-landing contest put on by the host Hotel del Lago where the conference is being held.

Feeling the urge to be able to write or review Python code while out of the office, I’ve picked up a Toshiba e830 PocketPC, running Windows Mobile 2003 SE. I installed Python 2.3 on the unit, and am now able to code anywhere. Added bonus, there is Tkinter and wxPython also available for this platform.

I’ve just upgraded my blog software, WordPress, from version 1.2 to 1.2.1 “Mingus”. Naturally, this broke all of my special customisations that provided things like custom colours, links to sections, etc. It will take me a week or two to get around to putting it all back together again. In the meanwhile, if you are looking for something and can’t find it, please write me: stewart ‘at’ midwinter ‘dot’ ca.

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In mid-October Leslie Nicholls and I headed south for a belated honeymoon trip to New Zealand and Australia. Our trip had been delayed by a year, so we were anxious to get underway. Our story can be found here. It’s on its own page so I can include lots of photos along with the stories.

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