Month: October 2016

“China To Build 66 New Airports Over The Next Five Years” describes the Chinese commitment to expanding commercial aviation infrastructure. “China Embraces General Aviation” talks about an additional 300 airports being built for business jets and piston-powered airplanes (this complements Chinese purchases of manufacturers of personal aircraft and components for those aircraft, e.g., Cirrus and Continental). Meanwhile, Californians are working to shut down the Santa Monica airport despite Federal government orders to keep it open (based on the fact that Federal tax dollars were used to pave the current runways and taxiways). The Airnav page for KSMO says that the to-be-closed airport handles 452 operations per day or 165,000 per year.

Related:

• High-speed Rail in California versus China
• U.S. versus German infrastructure spending and results

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Those of you who are approaching 100 may recall that I started photo.net back in 1993. It started out as a place for people to learn from tutorials (example: Making Photographs) and engage in a text-based discussion of technique- and gear-related issues (there was no Trump v. Hillary campaign at the time to consume 100 percent of Internet users’ attention). In the late 1990s we added a photo sharing system that let people show off their best work and/or get feedback on attempted great work. I spun off the site in late 1999 to some grad school friends who had a plan to surf the dotcom wave with photo.net as a base, but instead they were pounded into the sand when the market collapsed.

Continuing the occasional theme of this blog of “What is the point of the Internet if we have Facebook?” I am wondering if there is still a place for online communities for photographers and, if so, what the main purpose would be. Gearheads seem to post a lot of comments on the articles at dpreview.com. Is this sustainable, though? If you care about photo quality a little you would presumably buy either the latest iPhone or the latest Samsung, If you care a little more you buy a Sony mirrorless such as the A6300 and leave it on green idiot mode or maybe kick it into “sports” mode as the occasion requires. How many people are there for whom anything further is required these days?

How about showing off one’s best work? If the audience is on Facebook, why display photos anywhere else? Admittedly most people have only 500 or so Facebook friends, but isn’t it possible to mark a posting as available to the public and then a great photo can get more widely shared on Facebook?

Discovering the best work of other photographers? That seems like something that is hard to do on Facebook.

What do folks think? The things that people accomplished with photo.net in the 1990s… what’s the most popular way of accomplishing those things now? And is there a long-term place for niche online communities such as photo.net and, in particular, niche online communities for photography enthusiasts? (If the answer to the latter is “yes”, to what extent is it required to tie in with Facebook, e.g., for user authentication and maybe to users’ public content from Facebook?)

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Icon, whose amphibious seaplane has been the biggest news in the light aircraft world for about six years (during all of which the plane was 1-2 years away from first deliveries), is setting up a factory in Mexico (Avweb).

The FAA approval process for a factory is painful. However, given the labor-intensive production processes used to build airplanes (many unchanged since the 1930s), I continue to be surprised that more work isn’t done in Mexico. Stripping and repainting an airplane is particularly labor-intensive and painful yet most planes operated in the U.S. are repainted in the U.S. (cost range for a private plane: $20,000 to $200,000, depending on size).

One good thing: Airplanes can fly over Donald Trump’s proposed wall! (or the 580 miles of existing border “fence”)

Related:

• Cessna setting up airplane component production in Mexico (2010)
• Icon A5 limps into production surrounded by a phalanx of lawyers
• Icon A5 update from NBAA 2015
• Icon A5 Seaplane follow-up (2012)
• Icon A5 review with shopping video (2010)

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Photo nerds: Who is sick of having electronic flash units destroyed by leaking alkaline batteries? But who is also sick of paying big $$ for lithium AA batteries? You can buy 8 batteries on Amazon for $13.75. That’s $1.72 per battery, about half the price compared to 15 years ago? A 24-pack of same-brand alkaline batteries, however, is just $9.59, or 40 cents per battery.

I think that rechargeable lithium batteries have gotten cheaper much faster. If we can have a Tesla (3) in every driveway why haven’t leak-prone not-very-power-dense alkaline batteries disappeared in favor of sub-$1 lithium disposables?

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American politicians love to talk about deporting illegal aliens (e.g., Bill Clinton in 1995). Yet one of the things that foreigners like to do once in the U.S. is have children. The kids are entitled to U.S. citizenship and, once they turn 21, are entitled to bring their parents back to the U.S. as permanent residents (process explained).

Is the current election debate about immigrants therefore mostly irrelevant? A lot of the stories in the media seem to concern families in which the U.S. citizen children are pretty close to 21 and the parents are undocumented immigrants potentially subject to deportation.

[What about consuming welfare benefits? At least here in Massachusetts, once the parents have green cards they are entitled to free housing through various towns’ public housing programs. They are entitled to free healthcare through Obamacare. Once in the public housing system they can get an Obamaphone (eligibility requirements). So to the extent people are unhappy about paying higher taxes to provide welfare to undocumented immigrants they should be just as unhappy about paying the same higher tax rates to provide welfare to documented immigrants, no?]

Related:

• “US twice tried to deport man killed by police in California” — Maybe not too many people will actually be deported because their native countries will refuse to accept their return. (People who don’t want to be deported could simply ask officials in their original homeland not to cooperate and/or pay a non-cooperation fee.)

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