And Now For Something Completely Different...

The highest reward for a man's toil is not what he gets for it but what he becomes by it.

John Ruskin

The vertical motion simulator at NASA Ames is one of two flight simulators used to train the space shuttle pilots. And I got to try it out—landing the space shuttle. My first attempt at landing at Kennedy proved somewhat expensive but at least all of the parts were on the runway. They let me have another shuttle and this time the landing at Edwards was pretty good. Pretty good until one of the tires burst...

Peter's WWII Fighter Flight

For my 50th birthday I got to fly a WWII fighter. I managed three rolls and three loops without requiring assistance from the instructor. It was a wonderful experience, rather like having your brains sucked out during a particularly rough sea crossing. Here's a three minute MTV-style video of the experience. There's a nine minute "boring" video too featuring the dialog between me and the instructor.

Fractal Viewer

Explore the infinitely varying patterns of the Mandelbrot Set with Peter's fractal viewer. Left click on an interesting (highly detailed) feature to zoom in. Right click to zoom out.
Take a look at the fractal image gallery of images taken from the fractal applet.

Keyring for Android Secure Password Storage

Keyring for Android: A Simple Password Safe

Keyring for Android will read and write database files produced by the Keyring for Palm OS application. It lets you securely store secret information on your Android device. Use it to store passwords, online logins, account numbers or anything you want to store securely. Together with KeyringEditor and Dropbox, it offers secure storage and synchronization accessible from an Android device or any PC, mac or Linux machine.

Rdex: A Simple Personal Information Manager

Rdex is a free form, cardfile database designed for easy data storage and retrieval. Use it to store addresses, phone numbers, online logins, recipes, or anything you might need to find again. Searching is simple, just type a word into the search box to find every card containing that word. Designed for simplicity, Rdex requires no dialogs, no fancy fonts, no typing into multiple fields, just copy-and-paste or type into a new card and you are done.

Ghost Story

A personal account of an encounter with a ghostly night-time visitor at Dinham Hall, a hotel in rural England, by my sister -- a woman with both feet firmly planted on the ground.
After posting this story on the Web we were contacted by Emma House who lived in Dinham Hall before it was converted into a hotel. She gives the following details of Dinham Hall's ghostly residents.

Cricket Commentary

Cricket is a strange sport ... cricket commentary on the radio even stranger. American author Bill Bryson gives his interpretation of a cricket commentary he heard on the radio while traveling in Australia. (Extracted from, "In a Sunburned Country.")

Palo Alto High School Baccalaureate Speech, June 1995, by Guy Kawasaki.

Sniper at the Gates of Dawn

On the Quality of Software
"If the quality of software is not strained
It droppeth as the gentle hardware from heaven
Upon the earth beneath..."

Of the Definition of Standards...
An anonymous exposition of the standards process.

Sue Dally recounts how she survived a direct hit by hurricane Luis with husband Jack and sailboat Dalliance.


		Fractal Viewer Explore the infinitely varying patterns of the Mandelbrot Set with Peter's fractal viewer. Left click on an interesting (highly detailed) feature to zoom in. Right click to zoom out. Take a look at the fractal image gallery of images taken from the fractal applet.