The Hangar

Danny Beckett

00:53

NY Times: Radar signals recorded by the Malaysian military appear to show the missing airliner climbing to 45,000 feet, above the approved altitude limit for a Boeing 777

ratchet freak

01:06

but primary radar is unreliable for height

and most of the erratic-ness could be attributed to noise from that

casey

@ratchetfreak depends on the radar

and while it may not be good enough for separating airplanes, it can certainly be estimated

Lnafziger

02:54

You know something good? This question is the first question that I have seen that was closed without the help of a moderator:

-2

Q: Why did Malaysian government wait

Disclaimer : Not sure if this is a too broad question/ no one can answer question / not to be asked question. When the planes transponders get switched off, why would malasiyan government/ any government for that reason not start deploying their military force to check in. I am sure if a boeing ...

Good work all!

flyingfisch

was it closed with close votes?

Danny Beckett

yeah... put on hold as primarily opinion-based by Jay Carr, casey, Danny Beckett, Qantas 94 Heavy, Manfred 1 hour ago

it'd have a diamond next to someones name there, if they were a mod

flyingfisch

nice

how many rep points is the moderator status?

Danny Beckett

they're elected

but you get mod privs at 10k (2k whilst in beta)

flyingfisch

gotcha

Danny Beckett

02:58

take a look at aviation.stackexchange.com/help/privileges if you haven't seen it already :)

flyingfisch

yeah, I have mod privs with 2k

yeah i saw that

Danny Beckett

I'm yet to reach 2k... by the time I do, it'll be past 90 days :p

voretaq7

@DannyBeckett we'll be in beta for a while after that

Danny Beckett

this is true

voretaq7

at least until someone whose name isn't @Lnafziger gets to 10k :-P

Danny Beckett

03:00

lol!

brb

flyingfisch

@voretaq7 do we stay in beta until everything on area51 gets into Excellent?

voretaq7

@flyingfisch we stay in beta as long as it takes to have a strong community & good traffic volume - year+ betas aren't uncommon these days

flyingfisch

or can we leave beta with only oks

@voretaq7 ok

voretaq7

The Workplace recently left beta - area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/30887/the-workplace <-- those are their stats

Lnafziger

I keep hearing that it's more of a "gut feeling" thing from the powers-that-be at SE.

voretaq7

03:03

@Lnafziger basically yeah

the community team folks have a decent handle on what a site needs for good long-term survival, but like most community-management stuff it's a very "squishy" thing

Lnafziger

@flyingfisch And yeah, it takes five non-moderator votes to put a question on hold (or any number of "normal" votes + 1 moderator vote).

I think that we need lots more people in the "Avid Users" group before we get out of Beta... I don't think that we will have a problem at all, it's just a matter of time.

Area 51 shows us at over 4,000 visitors/day now!

voretaq7

@Lnafziger that's gonna drop after about 5-6 more days when the A-10 spike smooths out :)

Lnafziger

@voretaq7 Not really, we have had 4,000+ visits every day since then except for one.

That spike generated a lot of attention and extra users.

voretaq7

@Lnafziger it's coming down, but it was definitely a big boost in visits/day

we're still about 4x what we were before that :)

Lnafziger

Not to mention that we are now getting about 1/3 of our traffic from search engines... It's definitely on an upward trend. :)

What's coming down?

@DannyBeckett Hey! Long time no see!

casey

03:09

the traffic now I'd bet is being driven by "that missing 777"

voretaq7

@Lnafziger visits/day (the one we can see but can't give the numbers on :)

@casey a lot of it yeah

Lnafziger

Of course, a fair amount of the traffic is coming from... Yeah, what @casey said.

ratchet freak

money.SE stayed in beta for 3 years

casey

@Lnafziger it was funny when I was searching for info on 135 jumpseats, your Q was clogging my search for information!

Lnafziger

@voretaq7 I don't see it going down.... After the spike we never returned to old traffic levels and it went back up.

@casey Haha, yeah I've had that happen a couple of times now too!

voretaq7

03:10

@ratchetfreak they were too frugal to bribe the community team to let them out.

2

@Lnafziger oh it's stayed way above what it was before that to be sure :)

Lnafziger

I think the thing that has helped the most lately is that we have gotten more active users and questions are getting multiple answers. This puts us on the hot network questions more often and drives a lot of extra traffic from the rest of the network.

I saw 4 Aviation questions on there at the same time earlier.

voretaq7

yeah, and the search engines are definitely picking us up which is nice

Lnafziger

That's because we have a lot of good questions and answers. :-)

voretaq7

(except when our own questions show up in Google research :-P)

Danny Beckett

@Lnafziger Hey Louis, how's it going man?

Lnafziger

03:16

@DannyBeckett Great! You?

Jay Carr

I still can't help but think we're just getting a big boast from 370, which is kind of morbidly fortunate. I do hope people stick around though after this has all been worked out.

ratchet freak

or that there is another high profile crash

Danny Beckett

good thanks! busy, but good!

Lnafziger

@ratchetfreak lol

voretaq7

@ratchetfreak well we had that nose gear collapse :-P

Lnafziger

03:18

@DannyBeckett I know the feeling. :)

Danny Beckett

I don't suppose anyone here has made little flight controls to attach to your PC? I guess not...

Anonymous

@DannyBeckett remind me to code a perl clone of otto

Danny Beckett

bought some shit to make little A/P on/off switches, and speed/heading dials etc...

voretaq7

@DannyBeckett I had rudder pedals and a stick back when I had a desktop PC

Danny Beckett

pretty much got everything I need now, except my new soldering iron which aint arrived yet... lol

ratchet freak

03:20

use a hot plate and a piece of iron

Danny Beckett

@voretaq7 ah ok. I'm gonna make do with the PS3 controller for that for now... kinda want some buttons to play with, heh..

ratchet freak

or a blow torch

flyingfisch

@voretaq7 i'm building some rudder pedals with an arduino leonardo...

Danny Beckett

nah, just wait for the old Weller to arrive, as well as some relays...

Jay Carr

@Danny Just get one of these:

redbirdflightsimulations.com/mdn

Danny Beckett

03:21

hahaha I wish!

Jay Carr

Considering you could buy a decent actual plane for that kind of money...

2

Danny Beckett

yeah that's true

ratchet freak

but you can't crash a flight sim

well you can still use it after

Jay Carr

lol

voretaq7

@ratchetfreak oh yes you can :-)

Jay Carr

03:23

The view isn't quite as good from a flight sim though.

And it's really hard to get from A to B in...

...unless you mount it on a flatbed I suppose.

flyingfisch

@JayCarr ikr

Danny Beckett

Jan 26 at 3:46, by voretaq7

@DannyBeckett . . . so you're telling me the autopilot has "issues"? like the one in the simulator that TRIED TO FUCKING KILL ME?

Jay Carr

Do autopilots do that often?

Danny Beckett

oh no, this is... eh... an autopilot of different kinds

Jay Carr

I am feeling so lost suddenly... per usual, actually :)

Danny Beckett

03:25

!!will Voretaq7 be killed by a simulator today?

kittens are crying now..

nobody looks after poor otto :(

!!tell Jay lesson

Otto the Autopilot

@DannyBeckett Don't be annoying, drop the @, nobody likes a double-ping.

@Jay Lesson #4: Push forward: buildings get bigger. Pull back: buildings get smaller. Pull back harder: buildings get bigger again.

Danny Beckett

Gizmodo: The World's Largest Solar Plant Is Blinding Pilots

ratchet freak

then stay out of our sun damnit

Jay Carr

Ooooh Otto

How does that guy work exactly?

egid

@Lnafziger jinx

ratchet freak

03:34

!!commands

Otto the Autopilot

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

Danny Beckett

@JayCarr you can send commands like !!weather LAX or !!metar MIA or !!teachmetofly or probably some other stuff

Jay Carr

!!teachmetofly

Otto the Autopilot

Lesson #19: You've never been lost until you've been lost at Mach 3.

Danny Beckett

been too busy lately to work on him.. I saw something on Git from @voretaq7 recently though :)

Jay Carr

03:35

That's good to know, I was going to go up in an SR-71 this weekend.

What is he written in?

Danny Beckett

JS and PHP

Lnafziger

@egid Yeah, no kidding, lol.

Danny Beckett

@JayCarr the source is at github.com/dannybeckett/SO-ChatBot and github.com/dannybeckett/so-chatbot-php-helper

Jay Carr

Ick, scripting languages...

Lnafziger

@DannyBeckett Cool on the solar array!

Anonymous

03:36

@JayCarr ick, JS and PHP

Anonymous

We all know Perl is better :), ain't it @DannyBeckett?

Jay Carr

@PatoSáinz ICK!

lol, if it was Groovy or Java...

Heck, if it was Python I'd do it out of curiosity...

Still might do it out of curiosity, but not in PHP. Why? Because I'm soooo jaded, lemme tell ya.

Danny Beckett

you could use .NET

Jay Carr

><

Danny Beckett

if you contribute a Windows server ;)

Jay Carr

03:38

Actually C# isn' so bad.

lol

Danny Beckett

C# is awesome sauce

Jay Carr

How about we just go Objective-C/Cocoa and I give you a mac server?

ratchet freak

or use brainf**k

Jay Carr

I say we use Haskell.

Bret Copeland

use HAL/S, like the Space Shuttle

Danny Beckett

03:39

room topic changed to The Hangar: The white zone is for immediate loading and unloading of passengers only. There is no stopping in the red zone. [general-aviation] [mas370]

Jay Carr

Can we run it on GladOS?

Danny Beckett

oh you burninated it... I forgot

Jay Carr

No idea what language that would use, probably LISP.

?

Anonymous

GlaDOS uses Java

Anonymous

because she's evil

Jay Carr

03:40

lol

Bret Copeland

@DannyBeckett please don't encourage mas370

Jay Carr

Java isn't ev--! Oh wait, yeah it is.

Danny Beckett

room topic changed to The Hangar: The white zone is for immediate loading and unloading of passengers only. There is no stopping in the red zone. [general-aviation]

ratchet freak

depends on who you ask

Jay Carr

Well, I work with it all day every day, and it's derivative, Groovy.

I don't hate it though...so...

Danny Beckett

03:41

@voretaq7 Otto was on TV the other day

Jay Carr

I just like making fun of it.

Danny Beckett

Anonymous

@DannyBeckett that's just... cute

Danny Beckett

it was to win a holiday or something :p

ratchet freak

I'm gonna need my sleep now

Danny Beckett

03:46

night mate!

Lnafziger

Otto in Objective-C... Then I could make some real contributions. :)

Jay Carr

@Lnafziger You program in Objective-C?

Danny Beckett

fanboys ;)

Jay Carr

@DannyBeckett Abso-freaking-lutely.

Lnafziger

@JayCarr Yeah, lots of iOS programming. :)

flyingfisch

03:50

@DannyBeckett you keep a web browser open 24/7? or is it on a vps?

Jay Carr

lol, if Objective-C were really practical for IS concerns...at my company...I'd be all over it.

Sadly don't have the time. Just wish I did.

Danny Beckett

@flyingfisch It's on a VPS

flyingfisch

gotcha

Danny Beckett

CentOS

flyingfisch

ok nigh all

*night

Danny Beckett

03:50

night

Jay Carr

Why CentOS?

I missed something...

Looks like something I could put on my computer at work just to make people look at me even funnier.

Most still can't figure out why I use linux instead of Windows...

To be fair, they're all experience programmers so...perhaps I'm the one who's wrong...

Anyway, why CentOS?

Danny Beckett

@JayCarr because it's essentially RedHat but free

Lnafziger

@flyingfisch Good night!

Danny Beckett

(sorry, I was watching a video...)

Lnafziger

!!charts jfk

Otto the Autopilot

04:00

JFK - FAA Approach Plates

voretaq7

@Lnafziger Objectionable C? :)

Lnafziger

@voretaq7 Somewhat. :-)

voretaq7

@Lnafziger Entirely :)

Lnafziger

@voretaq7 I actually like it now that I have gotten used to the syntax.

voretaq7

@Lnafziger I shouldn't have to get used to the bloody syntax - it should be C! :)

@JayCarr I think everyone jumped on your "We flew the plane into a mountain" question :)

(and as your penance you now have to read that NTSB report. It's only 212 pages :P )

Lnafziger

04:04

Which question?

voretaq7

@Lnafziger the one about KAL801

oh that was @flyingfisch

Lnafziger

Ahh, didn't realize that there was a mountain involved.

voretaq7

@JayCarr you don't have to read the NTSB report - @flyingfisch see above for your penance :)

@Lnafziger they apparently crashed into Nimitz Hill (which IIRC is right around where the VOR is....)

Lnafziger

eek

voretaq7

"This is why we pay attention to the step-down altitudes and glideslope NOTAMs, boys and girls"

you know I've not flown any approaches with Foreflight on - I wonder if they show your altitude on the profile view....

<watches foreflight videos.....> apparently not. Sad panda.

though I guess since it's geometric (GPS) altitudes not showing it is probably The Right Thing

voretaq7

04:22

@Lnafziger think we should do a circling-approach tag? :)

Lnafziger

@voretaq7 There already is one.

Although there are only two questions tagged and no tag wiki yet... I'm not sure that it's actually needed though.

voretaq7

@Lnafziger really? I didn't check :P

Lnafziger

We already have approach-procedures, approaches (should probably be merged into approach-procedures) and non-precision-approaches.... any of those would really cover it.

voretaq7

now we have 3 :) and yeah I think we should merge approaches into approach procedures at some point

Lnafziger

:)

AsheeshR