From NPR : French Families Adopt U.S. Graves in Normandy :

Eight years ago, a French couple founded an organization that adopts graves of American servicemen who died during the Normandy invasion of World War II. The volunteer group encourages French families to lay flowers on the graves when the Americans' own families can't do it.

src = xeno

If there is a more honorable overseas observance of the U.S. Memorial Day, I'm not aware of it.

Post title taken from this Wired article about bionic ears. I thought it appropriate, given our luck (and obsession) with The Red Planet.

xeno's already blogged #loc's live 'coverage' of the Phoenix lander descent here. One of the chief joys of the internet is that an event like this can be shared with interested parties around the globe - in this case Minnesota, Pennsylvania, and Germany. Four people in four different cities in two countries watching a lot of very bright people who did very well in math wait with baited breath for a chunk of metal the human race flung into space to hopefully land successfully on another planet.

Which it did.

At one point during a break in events, one of the media staff interviewed the head of JPL. I mentioned that he should have said something to the effect of "Mars landers keep failing because we keep trying different things instead of going with what we KNOW works." Seconds later the guy went on to say that Phoenix's descent/landing design is, in effect, an evolution of the Viking program. This makes perfect sense to me - until space reaches a point where it's become recreational, it's probably best to go forward by evolving what works.

It may have been seven minutes of terror for mission control, but I can state with certainty that it was a terror - and exultation - felt round the world.

Marsholduhr courtesy of _Lasar.

Highlights of Wings Over Pittsburgh 2008, presented chronologically by maiden flight and alphabetically after that. This being my second air show (see here for the 2007 highlights), event photography was of a more tactical nature - hence the filing in the main blog instead of the pittsburgh sub-blog. Filling in blanks, shooting things I hadn't seen before or trying for new angles on things I'd shot previously, etc. The big highlight this year was attending with Martin and my longtime friend xeno - while it's a hard call as to who's the more lecherous of the two, I'm happy that the three of us got along well. That more than anything made the show (which seemed pretty scaled down from last year) all the more awesome.

I have a ton of pics that Martin took during the flight he took last year in a B-17. Given that, the images I took were mainly of the "what caught my eye" variety - no small challenge, as the plane was crawling with crew (at least one of whom was dressed in vintage flight suit and gunner kit), and the usual gaggle of proles crowded so close that I just couldn't get some of the shots I wanted. All the more reason to come back next year! I took more pictures than I'm posting - I think these are definitely the best of the lot, especially the nose and the first "storm front" image. I love the design of this plane - it has an art deco meanness to it that modern bombers are lacking. Look at those fucking machine guns!

 
  

The iconic DC-3, lovingly restored, slightly upgraded, and repainted to a nifty Piedmont Airlines color scheme by the Carolinas Historic Aviation Commission. See here for a lot of nice information and what the software world would call a "changelog," detailing the history of this aircraft. I really wish I'd paid more attention to what the crew had to say, as they were all very enthusiastic and obviously had a love for the aircraft and its place in aviation history. As it was, my attention had been stolen by the nearby B-17 and B-25 displays. I only got a few pictures of the DC-3 (and none of the Mitchell, unfortunately). I think the positioning of the aircraft against the clearing weather front and the cockpit shot are the most interesting of the four.

   

By far the funniest bit of the B-52 walkaround was overhearing some idiot trying to convince a lesser idiot that the C-5 Galaxy was a "better plane" than the B-52 because it was "bigger" and "faster." The flight engineer was on hand at the cockpit - the kid had to be a good five years younger than me and seemed to be looking forward to the eventual engine upgrades to the B-52, if for no other reason than four engines had to have fewer parts than eight. Boilerplate bullet point : B-52 tires weigh over 700lbs. The primary focus of this shoot was the cockpit, as it's apparently rare for them to be open for a show; and the upper area of the rear landing gear bay. I'd acquired several images of the "business end" of it last year, but for some reason had forgotten to look up.

   
   
 

Images in order : Starboard aft at the start of the show, what pretty much has to be a bomb/missile hardpoint, two shots of the cockpit, starboard forward right behind the cockpit, uh huh huh huh, three shots of the aft landing well (which would make nice industrial desktops), and the tail section with the Fed-Ex freighter behind it.

Unlike the rest of these birds, the URL for the P-3 Orion refuses to cache in my browser history. I have no idea why - it's probably just another one of Safari's quirks. Regardless, this was by far the highlight of the show for me, and after the F-22 demo was also the highlight of the show for xeno. Not only is this a Navy ship (go sailors!), it's on duty and the entire crew was both on site and very enthusiastic about their mission - on Saturday, that mission was talking about the P-3 and what it does in a language that civvies can understand. Amongst a number of cool points: the Sonar technician (younger than me by five years) talking about running sonar kit that's older than Disco; a couple of insanely cute Navy ladies talking about some of the kit they're responsible; and a lengthy "lecture" / Q&A session from the bird's PPC (Patrol Plane Commander) about how the command structure works aboard the Orion. He gave specific details about command instruction flow between the pilots and the flight engineer (including who's allowed to touch what), and the differences between being a PPC and a "regular" pilot (ten naval airmen under your command versus being responsible only for yourself, etc), number of flight hours (~200 hours in an Orion and you're still a Nugget. This guy said he typically logs 1,500 hours a deployment - and that's On The Job, not everything it takes to actually Run The Bird) He'd run mechanical stuff on a cruiser previously - an Ensign responsible for every machine on the boat but the engines, and he talked about how that did and didn't prepare him for command of an Orion. I asked The Stupid Question (well, what I'd considered one, but didn't know so asked anyway) about wether or not a Navy Airman is a Sailor or an Airman, and his response was (along the lines of) "I'm technically an Airman, but I was a Sailor first. In the Navy, there's no higher honor than being a Sailor - some of these guys, they're all 'I'm not a Sailor, I'm an officer :P' and my response is 'Bullshit. You're a Sailor!"

Indeed.

One of the other cool points aboard the Orion - one of the people in our impromptu informal "tour group" was a Naval veteran who had manned an Orion sonar console in the late 1960s. The techs were talking about how outdated the kit they were using was compared to upgraded Orions, and here's this guy wanting the scoop on what he considered to be the "new and improved" equipment!

   
   
  

Images in order : Nose, forward bomb bay (don't argue, it's plainly labeled as such), sonobuoy tubes, two images of the sonar station, four images of the area between the sonar station and the cockpit (love those keyboards!), cockpit (pilot consoles) and cockpit (flight engineer console).

A few personal-use reference shots of one of the many F-15 Eagles that hasn't suffered a structural failure. There was no being polite here - it was either barge in front of a lingering photographer in order to get the shots I wanted or loop by the display throughout the day to see if the tail was clear. Love those engines.

  

There were two F-18s at the show, both with canopies up, both with pilots on station. I found out quickly that the main reason the aircraft is manned on display is that there are bits of the controls that are still classified, and the military isn't too keen on the idea of anyone taking pictures of those bits. It looked like a fairly typical cockpit to me, but I don't know what to look for.... of course, it could have been a Growler or a precursor, as the bird had a mean looking electronics pod mounted under it.

  
  

Images in order : It seems the WSO has seen Supertroopers, love the tail, the only pics the driver would allow of the cockpit (note the rear view mirrors on the canopy), and two images from the demonstration.

The EC-130 - which would look like a vanilla C-130 from a distance were it not for the four transmitter pods on the tail) is one of those things I'd love to have taken more photos of and learned much, much more about... but we were heading from one end of the flight line to the other, it was in the middle, the line was enormous and glacial, and to top it off, civvies were crawling all over the thing like it was made out of money and new episodes of American Idol. Of course, this thing's designed to broadcast AM, FM, HF, VHF and UHF... so for all I know, it is. Hopefully there'll be one at next year's show - if there is I'll hit it first thing and get my nerd on, bigtime.

   

Sure, on the ground, the F-22 looks stubby and ridiculously overpriced. In the air, it's a completely different story - you see the Raptor in action and after changing your pants you're ready to sign on with the Air Force brass who are insisting they buy more-more-more. I stuck a few clips up on youtube - a pass and loop, a pass with an F-16 on escort, and a pass and break with the F-16. They kept the Raptors well away from the crowds - heck, they may as well have thrown a tarp over them!

   

Portrait of the artist, taken an hour or so before the sun completely incinerated his face. Taken on the port aft optics pod of a Lockheed EC-130 Commando Solo, a PSYOP bird used by the 193d Special Operations Wing based out of Middletown, PA.

Check out the props reflecting off of the goggles.

Seagram's Apple Twisted Gin? Awesome. Awesome and cheap.

Eljay's Used Books? Awesome. Awesome and cheap. I snagged a hardcopy Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell for 12$, while xeno paid 15.95$ for the (brand new) trade paperback version at Joseph-Beth about forty minutes earlier.

Eljays++

Gin++

Commissioned by mdxi awhile back, finally finished this weekend. I love it.

What is Carrot, and how is the logo appropriate? See here!

I'm normally not one for covert candid photography, but (a) the fucking newspaper did it to me a few months ago, and (b) Josta!. See also.

I would have complemented the guy - but he immediately manifested all of the symptoms of a paper tiger right after I sat down, and paper tigers make my brain itch.

Advance Wars : Days Of Ruin (Nintendo) Better than AWDS in almost every possible way. One of the ways that it's better - for me, anyway - is that the story has less of the Pokemon flavor of the previous game and more of a Road Warrior feel to it. This is, in fact, the first strategy or RPG on the DS in which I didn't breeze through the story bits just to get back to the killin'. Which says a lot for the story, given that you can actually skip the story bits on the game board (!). This stacks together with a few other changes to the feel and flow to form a gameplay experience that feels blazingly fast compared to previous AW games or other turn-based DS games. I still haven't beaten it - I got distracted by AoE, then slogged through an enormous optional battle that took me over 100 turns to complete and realized I was burned out on the game and needed a break. Burnout doesn't effect my assessment, really - AW:DoR is a huge improvement over AWDS and is all around a very solid, enjoyable game. jcap needs to buy it already.

Age Of Empires : Age Of Kings (Majesco) Would have been a strong contender for Best Game On The DS if the bastard hadn't eaten my save data 2/3 into the very last battle. Fun as the game was, I'm not going through that again.

Riviera : The Promised Land (Atlus) A neat RPG that is ultimately undermined by the very things that make it unique. Long story short, some fat dude bumping my elbow on the bus should NOT determine rather or not I get an item. There are no retries at treasure chests and what equipment you do get is randomly determined - it's quite possible to end up with a dozen of the same item. Since your characters "level up" by practicing with new items and can only learn one ability from any item they can learn anything from, this ultimately means that raw chance - not patience, not skill - is the difference between your party being a bunch of badasses or a gaggle of wieners. Flaws aside, Riviera is certainly an atypical RPG and despite its flaws - and despite the fact that thanks to those flaws I'm incapable of completing the game - it was fun to play.

Squenix finally got its act together and posted NorAm release dates for everything I care about, so it'll be a summer of Tactics and FF IV, with The Worlds Ends With You thrown in for effect. I'm buying it almost entirely due to Tycho's orgiastic exposition. Outside of Amazon, he's the only gaming writer I read. The rest come across like a bunch of egotists who think having an opinion about the Atari Jaguar means they ought to be accorded the same degree of media presence as Howard fucking Stern, and I don't buy it. Tycho, conversely, wields his Word Horde with a passion and precision that, in subtext, quietly proclaims he'd be doing this anyway, even if it wasn't a source of income.

So, a Summer Of Squenix, with no other games presently on deck. Konami should give us a new Castlevania or something - I seem to have run out of GBA titles to consume and there's got to be more to the DS than the enormous piles of new and used Nintendogs cartridges on the shelves of Gamestop, Target, and The Record Exchange. Seriously. Forty of them on the shelf and they only ordered two copies of The World Ends With You, both of which were pre-orders. Lolwut.

While 30 Days of Night (7/10*) is far from a masterpiece, it blows the steaming pile of shit that is AvP2 (1/10**) clean out of the water and all in all is a fairly satisfying monster movie. Even if it does have nearly the same ending as Blade 2.

One of the things that endeared it to me was the audio design, and it looks like the sound designers weren't the only ones who seem to be fans of Einstuerzende Neubauten:

Spiffy.

* I'd rate it higher but I'm fucking sick of vampires, and while this was certainly a nice take on the myth, the vamps (except for the boss) all looked like Marilyn Manson rejects. Major points off. There's also a fair-but-tolerable amount of Exposition Masquerading As Dialogue, at least one bit of which is (arguably) extraneous. But it looks good, it sounds good, and the story and premise hang together quite well. Definitely the best vampire flick since Blade 2, which was in turn the best since Coppola's Dracula. I'd say it's the best since Coppola, but Blade 2 has a few things that severely bias me - namely, Ron Perlman.

** It's like they resurrected Ed Wood, fed him every single cliched line or character archetype that has appeared in more than three B movies over the last 20 years, paired him up with Uwe Boll and told them to shit all over the franchise. AvP2 makes the moderately tolerable AvP1 look like Citizen Fucking Kane. The best thing about it is that it ends. Honestly, I'm hard pressed to think of a worse film, let alone imagine one.