I made a minor discovery this morning before starting work in the studio. Something quite interesting, geeky and possibly useful too. It reminded me of some random time in my childhood, spent making codes with my school-friends that only we could read... Then trying to crack the ones that another group of friends had made. QR Codes. A QR Code is a two-dimensional bar code displayed in a square box. It was created...

Friday, July 26 - Time for another section of navigation exercises from Sherburn. This time I had some technical testing and questions in mind as well as the actual navigation exercise. My questions - Does the GPS system that is built into the iPad work well enough to be used for navigation? And if it does - Do the navigation apps stand up to the task? First, a little about the iPad. Basically a big iPhone....

MEAP - Multi Export Audio Pro - has been released to the public today. It has had a huge redesign and lots of extra features added, including a new streamlined dialog and many internal code tweaks and enhancements. What is MEAP? MEAP is a tool for automating the process of exporting (to audio) all individual MIDI instrument and Audio tracks from your musical project.  If you wanted to deliver all your parts ...

My navigation instruction continued on Friday with a trip to Hornsea (on the East coast of England). Instructor Jonathan gave me the OK to bring a passenger which was really neat. So I met my old friend Pete Neville in the morning and we finished off the flight plan and route calculations at home before heading to Sherburn. Pete took a few pictures with his phone which turned out quite nicely. Today's route...

The new web site is pretty much done now and I have pretty much settled on using the fantastic Mystique theme for WordPress. This is one the nicest and most useful themes I have seen. Built by the amazingly talented people at Digital Nature. Many people have been having trouble adding extra icons to the theme. There are a number of ways to do this found in various places around the web but none of them stand...

We were pleasantly surprised by some more good weather today. So I managed to get over to Sherburn for an hour of flying instruction. It was time for some more practise of precautionary procedures today. It's a lot to take in all in one go but very enjoyable stuff and as mentioned before, essential to a pilot's arsenal of skills. A precautionary landing is a simulation of being low on fuel or some other similar...

I had to cancel flying again today, due to having no transport to take me to the aero club. I suppose it was just as well, after what I had to pay out for the car service, MOT and parts. So I thought I'd make a blog entry with some pictures of the planes I have been flying. Some of the pictures are a little old but the actual planes haven't changed much in that time. What has changed, is my knowledge of them....

This post comes under the category of Technical / IT and is for Geeks only.... You know who you are... I've been off-line for a few days due to building up a new computer. Something we should never take lightly, as there always a certain amount of problems that crop up just when you think things are going smoothly. Anyway, I have now got everything back up and running, including installing all the hardware and...

Despite the fact that there is still patchy snow and ice on the ground, the skies were clear and wind relatively calm today. After checking out G-SACS it was time to leave. My instructor Jonathan Anderson (centre) took some pictures while I was flying. The view is lovely. Especially seeing the little bits of snow still thawing in some of the fields. There was an eight Knot crosswind at the...

Sawas dee khab! Riffs & Rays short tour of Thailand, September 2009. Any attempt to fit the whole trip into a blog like this would be futile. Also many of the really good parts are unpublishable or forgotten and the really really good parts are probably both. I have now calculated with the aid of 2 full passports plus my 3rd existing passport that this was my 28th trip to the land of smiles. Even so there...

Just a short post here regarding the past weekend of music: We played at Manchester Pride on the main stage Saturday afternoon to approximately 10,000 people (apparently). I have to admit it was somewhat a strange and of course great feeling. Why? Well, I've worked on stage now since I was 13 years old. But not since I was about 20 years old have I been performing my own material. In the middle east,...

Today I completed my first ever solo journey out of the local airfield vicinity. I have done a fair amount of solo flying but up until now, only in the circuit at Sherburn. This means plenty of take-offs and landings but not much radio and navigation work. Today was the day when instructor Jonathan felt confident enough to let me out of the circuit on my own. Incidentally it was my main instructor Jonathan...