The single most popular page on this site is my Autogyros essay. Consequently, I never want to mess around with it too much (if it ain't broke, don't fix it). However, I saw a few areas that I could definitely improve upon, so I made some changes. The biggest of those were expanding the explanation of autorotation, adding a German translation that a reader had sent to me, and creating an archive of previous versions (mainly to give a stable copy at a fixed url for citations). Numerous smaller changes were made throughout the text to improve readability, and a few typos were corrected.

Posted by Jeff on Friday, Oct 5 | Permalink | Comments (27) | TrackBacks (0)

I've made some slight modifications to my Photo Page Generator program, so it's now at version 2.2. I've uploaded the updated version to my Programming and Downloads sections. The main upgrade is the ability to use 3 different resolutions of the same image. This could be useful for an archive of images that are high enough resolution for printing. The way I've used it is to have 1.) low resolution thumbnails, 2.) intermediate resolution for previewing, and 3.) high resolution suitable for printing (specifically developed for this site: http://www.cartercopters.com/catma/, which is still unfinished at the time of writing this update). I've aslo improved the readme file. The full list of updates is available from the history in the readme file.

Posted by Jeff on Friday, Sep 21 | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

How's that saying go, "Never discuss work, politics, or religion?" Well, I break all three of those rules on this site. Considering the third one of those, since I have recently gone through some changes, and no longer have the same beliefs as what I stated in older essays, I thought it would be most honest for me to discuss my current beliefs. So, if that's the type of thing that interests you, I've added a new collection to my Writings section, Religious Essays. Since it is such a different theme than most of this site, and probably bound to ruffle a few feathers, I've decided that this is the only mention I'll give it here in my "Latest News & Updates" section [the previous sentence applies only to my main site, and the News & Updates section on my home page]. If I do make any changes to it, or add any new essays, it will be noted in the History section at the bottom of that page, and possibly on my blog.

Posted by Jeff on Friday, Sep 7 | Permalink | Comments (27) | TrackBacks (0)

Well, after nearly 3 months of dormancy for this site before the last update [the main site, not the blog], I've got another one ready to go already. I've added a new page to the Photos section, titled Galveston, Houston, & Natural Bridge Caverns Photos. It's from my family's recent road trip vacation to those areas. I mention this on the page, but it's worth repeating here. Our old digital camera had been stolen a few weeks before, so we went out and bought a new camera just for the trip. It was an 8.1 MP Sony DSC-W90. We were extremely disappointed with the image quality from the camera, and took it back it as soon as we returned from our trip. The images were very grainy, and not even as good as our old 5 MP Sony camera that we'd lost. In fact, they were so grainy (even in decent lighting conditions) that the employees were sure that we had the settings wrong (we didn't). I even tried taking pictures with another W90 to make sure we didn't just have a faulty one, but the other camera didn't work any better. In the end, we exchanged it for the 7.2 MP Sony DSC-W80, which we are much happier with. Who would've thought that 1 MP would make such a big difference?

Posted by Jeff on Monday, Aug 20 | Permalink | Comments (27) | TrackBacks (0)

Man, am I long overdue for some updates to this site. The last one was way back in April, so I completely missed my update per month goal in May, June, and July [on the main website, not on this blog]. I guess I'll try to make up for that with a lot of changes this time around.

Okay, for my biggest update today, I've done some work to the X-Plane, UDP, Visual Basic Tutorial for X-Plane version 8. Thanks to feedback, I've realized that some of the algorithms on that page weren't as good as they could have been, so I've added more efficient algorithms. I've also given the page a clickable table of contents. Also, on the X-Plane, UDP, Visual Basic Tutorial for X-Plane version 6, I already had a small note telling people of the Version 8 tutorial. I updated that note to include mention of the improved algorithms, and made the note bold so it would stand out more.

In the article, X-Plane as an Engineering Tool, I've added an additional paragraph explaining in more detail some of the shortcomings of X-Plane. I also fixed a typo, misidentifying one of the screenshots as from Plane-Maker, instead of from X-Plane.

Okay, now to get into the smaller changes. I get a lot of e-mails from people sending me links to interesting sites. I've received a few that I want to include links to on my site. (Note: This isn't a link exchange, and please don't send me an e-mail asking for a link exchange. If you have a cool site, I'll link to it, but only because the site is worth it, not so that I can get a link back to here.) So, here are the links I added, and the pages where I added them.

• Lake Atitlan Network - Added to Guatemala 2006 Photos & Links.
  
• gyroplanepassion.com - Added to Autogyros & Links.
  
• X-Entertainment - Added to Links
  

Posted by Jeff on Friday, Aug 17 | Permalink | Comments (26) | TrackBacks (0)