Amazon just announced the release date for the entire "Prisoner" series on Blu-Ray DVD (scheduled for release at the end of October).
It has been over 2 years since Boeing rolled out their newest, revolutionary airliner - the 787 Dreamliner.
This plane is revolutionary in that instead of being constructed of aluminum - most of the plane is carbon fiber. This makes the plane lighter and means it can go farther on a load of fuel.
But the design and assembly of this plane has not been without its issues. Boeing has outsourced the major assemblies of this plane to other, foreign manufacturers - and just performs final assembly at the Boeing Everett plant (in an attempt to speed production, and lower Boeing's own labor costs).
They even retrofitted a set of 747's - the Dreamlifter - to shuttle Dreamliner pieces from manufacturer site to Everett.
The assembly issues seem to be behind them now - but everyone is still waiting for the plane's first flight (since that's what airplanes are supposed to do - FLY). But in late July - Boeing announced that the first flight was delayed again - this time for a structural/design issue where the wings join the fuselage/body and did not give a new estimated date for the first flight.
A week later - the Seattle Times published a story saying that this structural/design issue was worse than was being reported, and had occurred at an earlier point in the stress test.
There are normally challenges that face any new design - but more so in this case because of the new materials being used. And you know its bad - when the current poll on FlightGlobal asks which might fly first - the 787 - or a Pig.
One of the things I do each day as part of my Flickr addiction - is look to see which pictures are attracting peoples attention.
Considering the majority of my pictures are of airplanes - it isn't any surprise that the most viewed pictures are of them. But what is sometimes surprising - is when an 'ancient' picture - like the JSF prototype at the Smithsonian (UHC @ Dulles, VA) - from 5+ years ago - gets high views.
Even more surprising - is when something completely outside the aviation environment gets a lot of views. Like the Ringling Bros Circus clown. But I think that was due to the fact that the clown's father is on Flickr too - so I am pretty sure the picture has gotten back to her.
I took my daughter to see the Disney/Pixar movie "Up" yesterday and on the way out of the theater there was this green movie poster w/ a large QR code, a date (9-9-09) and a rating (PG-13) on it.
I took a picture of it w/ my Blackberry (obviously) to see what this movie was for. I wasn't able to find a QR decoder for my model of Blackberry - so it had to wait until I got on-line this morning. I uploaded the picture to ZXing's Decoder and got the following URL;
http://9.msite.tv/qr1
After making sure my security software was up to date - I went ahead and went to the URL. Turns out this goes to an exclusive trailer for Tim Burton's new animated movie "9".
Richard Branson's newest toy (complements of Burt Rutan & Scaled Composites) - is hiding in a hanger outside of Phoenix.
It diverted there after a warning light came on - while they were on the way to overfly the groundbreaking on the Spaceport in NM.
It is now scheduled to leave sometime tomorrow morning and the crew would prefer no one take pictures of it on the ground. Waaah!
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