Eric M.’s Blog

So as you have probably heard, there was a 777 crash at London Heathrow Airport on Thursday.

The short of it right now is that on late final approach the auto-throttles, and then the pilots, requested more power from the engines to maintain the glide slope, and the engines didn’t respond. Thanks to the quick thinking of the First Officer (who was PIC at the time) and the Captain, the F.O. was able to bring the aircraft down in one-ish piece with no fatalities and only one serious injury. They ended up landing a few hundred meters shy of the runway. One set of main landing gear was sheared off, and the other was actually pushed up through the wing. The craft came to rest just on the apron of runway 27L. It’s likely if they had not disconnected the autopilot, the aircraft would have tried to hold altitude by pitching up, and stalled, creating a much more serious incident.

Now Sara and I stayed at a hotel at Heathrow while in London. The first day there I requested an approach facing room to take some pictures. This one if very appropriate:

This is a picture of British Airways G-YMMB on late final on runway 27R at Heathrow. This aircraft is very similar to the accident aircraft (G-YMMM). They are both British Airways 777-236ERs, and in fact the accident aircraft rolled off the assembly line only 11 aircraft after this one.

Below is a map showing our hotel and the resting place of the crash aircraft. Total distance between, approximately 1 mile.

View Larger Map

Just thought it was some interesting food for thought.

Well, first off, some new reports from MacWorld contradict earlier reports about what you can and can’t do with Time Capsule, so for now I have no problem with it, but time will tell.

As for the MacBook Air, I have conflicted feeling. I think the machine has market, but I’m not sure how big that market is, or if I’m in it. Jobs talked about the compromises that other companies took when making their ultra-slim laptops, like smaller screens, keyboards, and slower processor, but didn’t at all mention the compromises that Apple made. For example, the 2GB of RAM is soldered to the motherboard, so you can’t upgrade or replace it in any way. Also, the battery is not user-accessible, meaning that you can’t carry a second battery when on the road, or replace the battery on your own when it gets old. Apple has said that a replacement battery will be $129 (same price as other Apple laptop batteries), and they will install it for free, but this likely means you will be without it for a few days.

Also, there is a huge premium you pay to get that super-thin laptop. You pay around $850 more than you do for a comparably equipped MacBook, even thought the MacBook is faster, includes all the normal ports (unlike the Air which just has 1 USB port, 1 headphone jack, 1 monitor out and nothing else…) and has an optical drive, which you have to pay an extra $100 to get with the MacBook Air (and you have to carry separately).

Overall I just don’t know what I think yet. It’s sexy, but I think it has so many drawbacks. It makes me think of the G4 Cube, although I don’t think it will be quite the failure that the Cube was. Time will tell.

So Mr. Jobs to the Moscone Center stage today for his annual show and tell.

There were 4 main sets of announcements. New iPhone/iPod Touch features, iTunes Movie Rentals and a massive update to the Apple TV, Time Capsule, and the new MacBook Air.

For the iPhone they added a number of new features and bug fixes. Probably the one that I like the most is the new pseudo-GPS. They use cells towers and WiFi spots to caclulate your approximate location. So far, in all of my tests at work, home, and commuting, it has been successful at locating me. It gives you a circle on the map that you should be in, and every time my real position has been within that circle.

They also added a bunch of new features to the iPod Touch, but are charging $20 for existing customers, which i think it very weak.

Apple also announced a new movie rental service. Under the new system, you purchase a movie rental for $2.99-3.99. You can start watching the movie anytime within 30 days, and the rental expires 24hrs after you start watching it. They did major updates to the Apple TV as a free update for existing users. It allows you to rent movies, buy music and TV shows, browser flickr photos, and more all strait from your TV, without a computer. They also dropped the price $70. I want one of these.

The final two announcements were Time Capsule and the MacBook Air. The former is essentially (but not quite) a Airport Extreme router with a built in harddrive that allows you to backup all macs on a network automatically. The latter is a new class of laptop from Apple. It is an ultra light (3lbs) and ultra thin (.16-.76in) machine with a 13.3in screen.

I have some mixed feelings about those last two announcements that I’ll cover more in a post tomorrow.

I went with some guys from work to go see this. Good movie.

It’s dark, and has a ‘not happy’ ending, which is just what I like in a movie. Something I would recommend to most guys, and some women.

There Will Be Blood has finally come out in the Detroit area, so I’m definitely going to see that. It has already won many awards and is on many lists as the best movie of 2007. No Country for Old Men and Juno have also been in the top 10 on most lists, and I liked both of those. I’m really looking forward to There Will Be Blood.

So it’s been a while since I posted an update, so here we go.

My teeth are mostly better. I had dry socket in one socket, but they treated that and I had my last follow up today. Now I just have to wait for that socket to close up.

I did an upgrade of Moodle from 1.5 to 1.9 at work over break. It was a major undertaking and took about 3 days. We’ve been busy at work helping people with the new version, as it is significantly different.

I have a new contract programming job that I’m working on.

Sara and I saw Juno on the 27th (just a few hours after having my teeth out). It was very good, and I highly recommend it to pretty much anyone.

I think that’s about it for now. Ill try to post more later this week.