@egid see, there's your problem. You can't use a Mac as a server :P

heh

@PatoSáinz

i think i want to self nominate but it feels kinda weird :|

...and that makes me not want to

@egid I sucked it up and self-nominated for Astronomy and that went pretty well (I'm now a mod).

haha

i'll think it over for a bit

It's a volunteer position for doing work.

yeah, that's actually part of why i'm not 100% sure

It helps to not think of moderators as overlords but rather volunteer workers.

Then self-nomination doesn't feel as weird.

i've been involved in some other online communities where picking moderators is a much less public process

i think i've got that in my head now

Really, a team consisting of you, Inafziger, and voretaq7 would be pretty cool, IMO.

@egid feel the same way, but I think I'll wait til the next round

Hey guys, how's it going?

@lnafziger Hey, you've been nominated.

@lnafziger hey, how's it going? if you have 15-30 mins I can get you started on the bot? the !!far idea sounds great

(By me)

I still think we should have an autopilot for a mod :p

Cool, thanks! Except you spelled my name wrong. ;-)

Where?

I keep thinking it's a capitol I

me too

now you mentioned it's "l" as in "louis" I remember

Tell me about this bot?

Ah, I see.

And yeah, I'm sitting at the airport for a couple of hours waiting for my flight out of this cold frigid place back to my cool frigid home. :)

!!help

@abelenky Information on interacting with me can be found at this page

@abelenky I set it up the other day. Currently writing commands for it. At the moment, there's just !!weather and !!metar

@lnafziger fixed

LNafziger... Maybe I should change it to be capital. People make that mistake a lot.

I should change the !!help message from the default actually

!!weather jfk

@DannyBeckett JFK/KJFK: John F Kennedy International Airport • Observed: 27 mins ago • Wind: 280°/W @ 19kts • Visibility: 10.0mi/16.09km • Sky (AGL): Few clouds @ 5,000ft • Temperature: -12.2°C/10°F • Dewpoint: -24.4°C/-12°F • Pressure: 30.27" Hg/1,025mb • Conditions: VFR

!!metar lpl

@DannyBeckett LPL/EGGP: Liverpool John Lennon Airport • 072150Z 21011KT 9999 FEW028 SCT040 09/05 Q1001

@egid meta.aviation.stackexchange.com/a/154/6

@DannyBeckett Did you teach him !!info yet? :)

@lnafziger I blame sans serif.

!!info

@DannyBeckett I awoke on Mon, 06 Jan 2014 22:31:49 GMT (that's about 23 hours ago), got invoked 10 times, learned 1 commands

lol :p you mean like !!airport?

oh, right info is a core command

for aerodrome data.. no not yet

we'll have to make ours !!airport I guess

!!weather is a core command too actually. I deleted it first

(I can delete !!info if we wanted)

!!airport KJFK

@voretaq7 That didn't make much sense. Use the !!/help command to learn more.

@called2voyage: I think that you're right. I just changed my display name to LNafziger though, lol.

<waits for otto to pop>

it did, but there's no command yet

if someone wants to help me, you're more than welcome

@called2voyage Stack Exchange hates serifs. Bastards :P

I know @lnafziger expressed interest

Yup, I'll help

I still have some stuff to do on !!weather, e.g. make gusts work / add AUTO flags

adding IATA support was more work than I thought it'd be

more work/more PHP (most of the other code is JS)

@voretaq7 At least the chat has a "real" I.

I was going to look to see if Airnav has an XML feed, but it appears to be b0rken

@BretCopeland /me blushes

@voretaq7 why not skyvector?

Be right back.. Going to see if I can get on an earlier flight, lol. (doubtful)

It'd be cool to be able to generate some quasi-flight-plan image

@lnafziger lol good luck!

@lnafziger good luck. we're all counting on you.

@egid no particular reason not to use skyvector, airnav is what I usually use for airport info, skyvector for "I need a sectional I can show other people" :)

yeah, makes sense. skyvector just seems to be much more actively developed

which maybe to my semi-designer brain translates from "looks better"

the other suggestion was worldaerodata.com

@DannyBeckett IDK how good airnav is with international stuff, so worldaerodata may be better

I thought that actually

it seems good for Liverpool at least worldaerodata.com/wad.cgi?id=UK84007&sch=eggp

Nasty gate agents....

lol

all right, I'm out guys.

@DannyBeckett: What do I need to access the bot?

Cya @called2voyage

seeya!

@lnafziger SSH and FTP

i.e. Putty (SSH not the other programs in the suite) and Filezilla (client, not server)

On a mac (got those covered)

you want to take a look at it now?

sure

cool, come to the other room please

:)

What's the general policy on answers that more or less restate others but with slightly different details or resources?

maybe not policy per se but how does it typically pan out on other stack sites?

@egid if it's a legitimate answer (which would stand on its own), it's generally handled by that whole "voting" thing. If all it does is add one little thing to someone else's answer, it should be converted to a comment.

makes sense

yeah, a lot of times answers are going to have restatements/different angles/different sources - generally the votes sort it out :)

my favorites are when two answers use the exact same resources, but one has lots of detail and explanation & the other is just "{Yes,No}, go read this resource." -- clearly the well-explained answers are the kind we prefer :-)

@egid I see it all the time on SO. As Bret and vortaq say, the votes usually sort it out

in cases of simple questions with a short 1-line bit of code as the answer, and a few people post an answer with the exact same thing, usually the person who posted first gets the votes

does anyone know when the next round of mod elections might be? @BretCopeland

as egid said, I'd also like to be a mod, but I understand that I only have 5k rep X 2 sites, so I'll probably wait for the next round (when the site launches?)

@DannyBeckett normally the pro-tem mods stand through the public beta (unless they step down for personal reasons in which case another mod might be appointed)

then after launch there are "normal" mod elections

yeah that's what I wanted to clarify, thanks!

i'm lazyweb-ing this... what should i search for / look at for average hours to earn an instrument rating

or any rating, really

that is a resource we should keep on hand for 'how much does it cost to get x' questions

@egid good question... AOPA constantly quotes stats but idunno where they get 'em from

yeah, exactly. i mean, i guess the FAA should have that data

via 8710s

but it won't necessarily show the delta between private and instrument, for example

(I also think it's a crock - "50 hours to earn your private"? Not learning around here bucko :P)

i just checked my logbook

51.7 hours over almost exactly 12 months

170 landings :)

I'm pretty sure the "averages" for how long it takes to earn x rating/license are simply made up on the spot.

I did my private in about 44

screw it, I nominated

yeah, i wonder where in the 'lies, damned lies, and statistics' array it falls

I think less than 43 if you don't count the 1.3 hours I got two years before starting for real.

@BretCopeland Not counting my false-start before a couple of years of real life interrupting training... about 65

according to LogTen i have flown 50,541 miles point-to-point

that's a fun number

how many earths is that

counting that, just shy of 100 (I was basically at the point of "we're going to sign you off to solo" and then I went and changed jobs, bought an apartment, got a new car....)

I soloed at about 15. Definitely could have earlier, but that's when it worked out, and it wasn't a race.

yeah, i was around 17 hours to solo

i think in most cases it averages to around 15-25 hours to solo, 45-60 hours to private

based on what i saw around the flight school

My instructor said I was the easiest student he's had, which I attribute mostly to years of flight sim.

i have no idea for instrument, though

@BretCopeland around here most people are ready to solo (just bouncing around in the pattern) somewhere between 15 and 20 - and everyone I've talked to has had the exact same experience I did ("You're ready to solo, but the winds are 18G23 and we're not sending you up in that")

@BretCopeland same - about the only thing I really had to work at was learning to judge the landing flare in an actual plane. Airwork and navigation always came naturally

@voretaq7 oh yeah, the flare was one of the tougher parts for sure.

I also misspent a good portion of my youth on boats, so being able to use parallel rulers and a plotter before they try to teach you flight planning helps :P

@BretCopeland To this day I still cannot explain to you how I land a plane - which bothers me to no end.