Noulakaz
The blog of Avinash, Christina, Anya and Kyan Meetoo.
Not half bad, is it?
An excellent goalkeeper. Talent and experience in defense. An excellent and explosive midfield. And deadly young attackers.
With Gerrard as captain, of course.
I was just having fun with the Telegraph Fantasy Football application and this is the team I came up with. Mind you, it was not easy as there is a limit of £50m to spend.
But, once more, it’s not half bad, is it?
Father Christmas will shortly give my son and myself a brand new Saitek Cyborg Evo joystick.
I am a flight simulator addict. And my three years old son too. I always wanted to be a pilot. How I became a computer scientist is a complete mystery to me.
When I have nothing to do (or, more precisely, when I really want to have fun), I boot my PC under Windows XP (I feel I have lost all credibility now…) and I load Flight Simulator 2002:
I know it’s old. But it runs perfectly on my (rather limited) GeForce FX5200 graphics card. Being a perfectionist, I only pilot two airplanes: the default Cessna 172SP Skyhawk and an Airbus A320 which I’ve obtained at Flightsim.
What my son and I really like is to fly from an airport, say, Toulouse Blagnac in France, and land at another airport not so far, say, Paris Orly. I like flying the A320 in IFR conditions with real weather and under the control of ATC.
But it does not work with Linux or Mac OS X
Yep. And this is crap as I routinely use an Apple MacBook and a lot of Linux boxes. So I’ve been looking at multiplatform flight simulators recently.
The first one is X-Plane:
According to the blurb, “X-Plane is the most thorough, flexible, and realistic flight simulator available for personal computers, and is available for Mac, Windows, and Linux platforms.” I’ve read numerous forums and people seem to agree that X-Plane is vastly superior to Flight Simulator.
Unfortunately, it seems very difficult to buy. It is not available on Amazon for instance. It’s only available at the X-Plane Store and shipping it to Mauritius is prohibitive.
I’ve downloaded the demo and used it a little but I really needs to get the Saitek first to appreciate it.
Another issue is the amount of disk space it requires: at least 4Gb! And, if you buy the complete version, you require 60Gb of hard disk space for the scenery! On my small laptop, I don’t have 60Gb, not even 4Gb free.
Perhaps I should try a previous version which had much more modest requirements…
Opensource?
Another contender is FlightGear which is an open source flight simulator. I tried it once. And I have to try it again.
Conclusion
2008 will be an interesting year. There will be a lot of transitions.
Will my son and I move to X-Plane or FlightGear after years and years of Flight Simulator? Only time will tell.
I am very angry with Mauritius Union.
I was involved in a (small) car accident on my way to a LUGM meeting a little more than one year ago.
And I am still waiting for the car to be repaired!
I was waiting at the traffic lights in Quatre-Bornes and a lady reversed her 4×2 from a perpendicular lane to the main road where I was and she hit the side of my stationary car with the rear of her vehicle.
I asked the lady to fill in the mutual consent form (constat à l’amiable) and we started doing that. But then when it came to signing the form, she changed her mind and became very nasty and, would you believe it, racist.
I kept my cool but I told her that I was going to the Quatre-Bornes police station to give a statement and that it was preferable for her to do the same.
We went there. The police assessed the situation and told the lady that she was wrong in her interpretation. We were asked a number of questions, asked to draw a sketch of the accident and we BOTH signed the statement. I was given a receipt to show to my insurance company.
The next day I went to Mauritius Union with the receipt which I dutifully gave to one employee after having filled some documents.
Then we waited. And waited. And waited. And waited. Until Christina wrote a post Mauritius Union: Peace of Mind? two weeks ago to describe the amateurish behavior of that company concerning our case.
The consequence
At first, nothing happened.
Then on the 28th, Christina received a call from one Mauritius Union employee telling her that everything would be settled by the end of the week. We were delighted.
Then, the next day, someone else called and asked whether a police statement had been given at that time! We were taken aback but the guy said he would check (and, anyway, there was that police receipt which could only originate from, guess where?, yes, a police station)
Symptoms of neurosis
Just now, at 21:00 on 30 November 2007, yet another Mauritius Union employee called (why can’t they choose only one to deal with us?).
He insinuated that Christina had purposely deleted two comments he posted on her blog. Of course, the only reason why the comments weren’t appearing was that they were still in the moderation queue. Now they are both visible. And you can read Christina’s answer to those two comments.
That guy talked rudely to my wife. And this is not something I can tolerate. I took the phone and told him verbatim:
Me: Ki sanela toi?
Him: He told me his name.
Me: To pé agace nou la.
I hung up with anger.