Aeronetworks sro - Airborne Linux

My little Dustbin suffered a parking garage bump from a much bigger SUV with a bumper above the level of mine - dunno who dunnit.  To pass the yearly road safety inspection, all crash damage must be repaired, but the law doesn't say anything about the quality of the repair... Since I didn't want to spend money on an old clunker, I yanked the dent out with hot glue and dowel rods.  This works, because modern paint adheres extremely well to the metal.  It really doesn't come off easily. There are many videos on Yootoob about no repaint hot glue dent pulling.  Everyone wants you to buy their fancy tools and special glue.  You don't really need any of that and prolly have everything you need in your tool box already.  I recommend watching a couple of those videos before you start, to give you some ideas. I know how to do serious body work, I can weld anything that will melt and spray paint whatever needs paint, but where I live now, I don't have the tool...

For a few years, it has been possible to launch tiny educational satellites - for free - to fill up some of the unused payload space on big rockets.  http://www.asc-csa.gc.ca/eng/satellites/cubesat/default.asp This opportunity has been used by many universities and radio amateur groups: http://www.asc-csa.gc.ca/eng/sciences/canadian-cubesat-project.asp A few months ago, the American University in Sharjah also launched a cubesat called NAYIF-1: http://www.arrl.org/news/nayif-1-cubesat-to-have-funcube-transponder .  It has been passing overhead many times and I was a bit miffed that I did not know about it before the launch, had no idea how to connect to it and to my knowledge, the radio amateur law in the UAE did not allow foreigners to operate.  The NAYIF-1 satellite is a CubeSat-5, which is a little different from the CubeSat-1.   Here is the AmSat data warehouse for the NAYIF-1 (EO-88), which shows all the pertinent information on the satellite in re...

Well, evidently good artists can play anything on any instrument.  Here is the Slovak folk dancing band Grajcar, playing Metallica on three violins, a double base, clarinet and cymbal. I recorded a minute or so of Nothing Else Matters , at Sheik Maktoum's Majles at the Emirates Golf Club in Dubai, during a Czech and Slovak party. (The horrid video quality is due to Google, not me!). Here is more of them in what looks like Bratislava: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=126IpgNmA48 

Everybody knows that palm trees don't make branches, right? Uhm, yeah, well, no fine? There are many such trees actually.  This one is close to our home. If a palm decides to make branches, then there is no stopping it.  The city workers have to keep cutting the branches off, but sometimes, when it is nice and symmetrical, they let them grow. If this tree was at my old university, then I'm sure we would have used it as a catapult to shoot water balloons at passing cars.  Fortunately here water is hard to come by and it is usually too hot for anyone to do mischief outside. Have fun! Herman

Latest Visa Renewal Process in Al Ain - 2020 Go to SEHA Immigrant Screening Centre opposite Al Ain Hospital. Hours: 7 am till 3 pm, Sun - Thu You have three choices: Go with the enormous crowd gathered under the palm trees... Take the Fast Track - limited numbers - be there early VIP service Hmm... VIP Medical Service Go in the main front entrance and go upstairs.  Walk through the Fast Track men's waiting room to the VIP waiting section.   There is a tiny little VIP sign above the door. There will be almost nobody, so the service is immediate. You'll be done in about 20 minutes. You need: Passport and passport copies (first 4 pages plus visa) Cost: Dh500 (that is why there is almost nobody, but it is worth it) In before 10h00, get results by 2 pm the same day (someone else may pick up with the receipt) You need to get a blood test (no fasting) and a chest X-ray They will send you a SMS when they are done around 1 pm - be there at 2 pm. More ...

A few notes on sugar free cooking. As my doctor put it, I am not diabetic, but I should eat as if I am. It appears that the most important dietary modification to diabetes and weight control, is to avoid any food that digests rapidly. At first the list looks daunting: Wheat, potato, rice, alcohol, glucose, sucrose... essentially all common carbohydrates must be avoided - which makes one wonder what is left, since that is about 90% of all the junk on the supermarket shelves! Oats and Rye I don't mind going on a caveman diet of meat, salad and nuts, since I'm a committed carnivore already, but wheat bread is curiously addictive and getting over it is not easy.  There are many different kinds of wheat: Spelt, Durham... so be careful that you don't buy an alternative that isn't an alternative at all. Rye bread is commonly available at bakeries, but it is a little chewy - an automatic consumption limiter. My wife is an engineer of economics, loves cooking and ...

Fortunately, it only hits 50 degrees Celsius a few days in the year. BTW, Lulu Hypermarket seems to be the only place that sells big black umbrellas in summer. Actually even hotter than John Fogerty rambled on about: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jYguNCDfnCY

I live in a desert oasis, right behind a huge radio tower, yet the only radio station that I can reliably pick up is Abu Dhabi Classic, which I guess comes from this stupid tower.  That gets rather trying after a while.  The internet connection at home is fibre - everything comes over that - TV and net.  Therefore, to get something to listen to in my car, I record internet radio streams onto a USB stick using streamripper . Streamripper works like magic.  It somehow avoids recording commercials (well, at least, the vast majority of them) and it will not save the same song multiple times.  The main problem with it is getting the stream descriptors into a working format.  I used to use streamtuner as my interface to the network radios and it includes streamripper , so the combination was perfect.  Lately however, streamtuner doesn't work and I am too lazy to fix it myself. (Update: I got streamtuner to work using a special RPM made by a kind soul o...

I have now caught two of these little guys in the house in one week - released back in the garden. Why don't their sticky feet get dirty? Apparently they stick to surfaces through Coulomb forces with the nanoscale hair on their feet, but while that explains how it works, it doesn't explain why their feet are not permanently covered in leaves and other detritus. Can they control their electric feet at will?  Can they reverse the charge and repel dirt? It is still one of life's little mysteries.

As an expat in the UAE, it doesn't make economic sense to buy a fancy new car if you have no idea how long you are going to be here.  My own vehicle is a young and sprightly 2004 Dodge Durango 5.7 litre V8, which does 0 to 100km/h in about 7s,  uses only 14 litres per 100km in fuel and cruises at 120km/h at slightly more than idle speed. The Al Ain Traffic Department has a large test centre, driving school and registry, which is always overcrowded and getting a vehicle processed there can take half a day if all the Dust Devils are smiling kindly upon you.  This year, I went to a small test centre in Al Foah, a village on the outskirts of the city instead. They open at 8am and I was first in line.  I had my car serviced at the dealer the week before, so I left the service papers on the front seat.  The test then took only a few minutes. For the exhaust test, the vehicle is put on a dynamometer, but since the big Dodge is all wheel drive it always just clim...