The making of a fireworks show

Fireworks have been a big passion of mine for a long time. In fact, while working as a summer-intern at Apple Computer in Cupertino between 1988 and 1991, I got invited by some friends to participate in the actual firing of the Fourth of July show at the Shoreline Amphitheatre in Mountain View. Being part of the crew, loading the shells into the mortars, and wiring up the fireworks was certainly a lifetime experience.

So when Mike Mentuck, Tony Sasso, and Judy Jacobi asked me if I would like to chair the Marblehead Fireworks Committee, I was easily convinced. A lot of work went into the preparations for the show this entire spring – especially into fund-raising – and I am very grateful to all the donors who have sent contributions to make this year’s fireworks display possible. And we truly couldn’t have put together this show without the countless hours spent by volunteers as well as the Marblehead Police, Fire, Harbormaster, and Park&Rec departments. I am also grateful to Atlas Pyro for not only putting together such a great show for us, but also for supporting us with a significant donation this year.

So what goes into the making of a fireworks show on the Fourth of July in Marblehead? It all starts before dawn, as we leave Beverly Port Marina on Electric Armadillo to drive her over to Marblehead harbor:

As we approach the mouth of Marblehead harbor, the barge is already waiting in position, having arrived from Swampscott/Lynn during the night:

As we enter Marblehead harbor we are rewarded with a beautiful view of the sun rising over the boats and over Salem Sound:

The Commercial Street landing in Marblehead is the designated meeting point for loading the fireworks and crew onto our boats. Mike Mentuck transports all explosives aboard Elizabeth M. and Tim Green takes the crew out to the barge on Reel Magic.

As we arrive at the barge and load the fireworks, the 500 ft security zone around the barge gets established. During the day this security zone is maintained by a group of volunteers, and Tim and I take the first shift.

After 9:00 am the group of volunteers led by Jock Danforth takes over and we get a little break on Electric Armadillo.

After 6:00 pm the Marblehead harbormaster and a US Coast Guard Auxiliary vessel take over the patrol of the security zone, and everything is going according to plan. Sunset at 8:25 brings renewed activity:

Marblehead light is decorated festively and the preparation for the harbor illumination begin, as residents around the harbor, yacht clubs, boy scouts, firefighters, and volunteers prepare to light the flares:

At 8:45 pm the flares are lit, and the Marblehead harbor illumination begins. You can view the following panorama image in larger scale by clicking on the image to open a higher resolution version:

At 9:00 pm the fireworks begin and the show is indeed as spectacular as we’ve all hoped it would be. What a great day on the water, and what a great day to be in Marblehead!

Once again a big thank you to all who made this fireworks display possible!

This article is being cross-posted on XML Aficionado and the Falk House blog. More photos and high-res versions of the above photos can be found on my photo website.

Wireless charging…

This is something I’ve really been waiting for: the ability to wirelessly charge my iPhone (or other phone/e-mail gadget of choice). WildCharge has announced that they will begin shipping their WildCharge Skin for the iPhone in July: the skin is a protective gel cover for the iPhone that also includes the contact module and charges the iPhone once it is placed on the WildCharger Charge Pad.

According to the WildCharge website the iPhone skin works with the iPhone 3G and 3GS. They also have a separate skin for the iPod touch and that one seems to already be shipping.

There is a short review in PC World about the WildCharge that also talks about the Palm Pre’s built-in wireless charging system and some more discussion can be found on Techmeme.

Now where is that pre-order button…?

Waiting for activation…

Interesting weekend. When I received shipping notices for the three iPhones 3GS last week and when those three phones arrived on Friday early afternoon, I fully expected to be writing a glowing review this weekend. I had already spent 3 days last week playing with the new iPhone OS 3.0 on my old iPhone 3G, and really liked all the new features (including Copy/Paste, Spotlight search, voice memo).

So I was greatly looking forward to all the new 3GS features and to getting my wife’s phone, my son’s phone, and my phone upgraded. However, where the upgrade to the 3GS phone worked flawlessly for my son and for me, my wife’s iPhone 3GS refused to activate – and we learned that many other users were plagued by the same issue. Despite Apple’s statement that this would be addressed within 48 hours, my wife’s 3GS still shows the same message today:

At least Apple realizes that they’ve got a problem, because I found this e-mail in my mailbox today in the early morning:

From: do_not_reply@apple.com [mailto:do_not_reply@apple.com]
Sent: Sunday, June 21, 2009 7:17 AM
To: Alexander Falk
Subject: Your Apple Store iPhone Order

Dear Apple Customer,
Thank you for your recent Apple Store order. We appreciate your patience and apologize for the inconvenience caused by the delay in your iPhone activation.
We are still resolving the issue that was encountered while activating your iPhone with AT&T. Unfortunately, due to system issues and continued high activation volumes, this could take us up to an additional 48 hours to complete.
On Monday, you'll receive an email from Apple with an iTunes Store credit in the amount of $30. We hope you will enjoy this gift and accept our sincere apologies for the inconvenience this delay has caused.
Thank you for choosing Apple.
Sincerely,
Apple Online Store Team

I’ve also done some testing with my iPhone 3GS this weekend, and must say that I am actually a bit disappointed. The new camera is certainly a great improvement, and the fact that I can now capture short video clips and directly upload them to YouTube is quite nice. But I could not detect any real improved speed in working with the 3GS, nor did I notice any faster data transfers.

And the compass application is an outright failure: not only does it deviate by almost 8-10 degrees from a real compass, it also fails to provide a way for the user to reset or trigger a new calibration run, which is essential for any fluxgate compass.

Last, but not least, I was greatly looking forward to voice control, and found it to be lacking in several areas:

• Voice control is only available for calling people and using the iPod functions – not for reading e-mail, or any other applications. I rarely use the iPod functionality, but I would have loved to be able to tell my iPhone “read new e-mail” and have it actually go to the e-mail app and then read those messages to me using text-to-speech functionality while I’m driving to the office.
• Using voice control to call people might actually be working for those who have just a few hundred contacts in their address book. But it is entirely useless if you are a networker and have 1,641 contacts in your database, like I do.

To sum it up, I really like the new iPhone OS 3 upgrade, and can highly recommend that to any previous iPhone owner (plus it is free!). However, when it comes to upgrading from an older iPhone, I would say that it only makes sense to upgrade from a 1st generation iPhone to the 3GS, but if you already own a 3G you probably are better served keeping that – unless the improved camera resolution or the ability to capture video clips alone are must-have features in your book and you consider them to be worth the upgrade price for you.

Watching baseball with Jim Rice

Yesterday we had the distinct honor and pleasure of watching the Red Sox vs. Texas Rangers game in the company of Jim Rice and talking baseball with a true legend of the game, who’s going to be inducted into the Cooperstown Baseball Hall of Fame this year.

  

Jim spoke frankly about the differences between baseball during his time and baseball today, including players’ salaries, team-spirit (or sometimes the lack thereof), and some of the current Red Sox players and their strengths and weaknesses. He was also cool about signing various Red Sox gear, baseballs, and posing for some photos (above with my wife and son). Thanks, Jimmy!

More photos of the game, batting practice, and Jim Rice are on my personal photo website…

Project Natal: the Wii is dead

Finally, the end of the Wii is near. Microsoft unveiled Project Natal at E3 today: full-body motion control for the XBox 360 that doesn’t require a controller of any kind.

I’ve always been unimpressed by the Wii’s technical capabilities and the only real advantage of the Wii has been the controller. With full-body motion control w/o any controller, gaming is going to be taken to a whole new level.

I can’t wait for this to evolve from just games to useful productivity tools for next-generation workstation UIs. Think Tom Cruise in Minority Report…

Here is a video demo that shows Natal in action in a variety of different gaming and entertainment scenarios. Pretty cool:

Bing: first impressions

Last Thursday, when Microsoft announced their new search engine, bing.com, they were being ridiculed by many, because the website wasn’t ready and Google stole a bit of the thunder with their own announcement of Google Wave.

Today, it appears that nobody is laughing (unless they are ready the Onion coverage) as the positive comments keep rolling in. It turns out that – like in so many other cases – Microsoft usually gets it right on the 2nd (or 3rd) attempt.

But I’m talking about the technology, not the name. Whatever were they thinking, when they called it “Bing”??

In any case, I’ve been testing bing.com today, and I must say that there are indeed a few new and innovative things in bing.com that could convince people (myself included) to start using it instead of Google:

1. Preview of search results
   For every page in the natural search result you get a short preview of the content of that page, or a short excerpt with other helpful links, for example when I hover over the entry for our XMLSpy XML Editor, a little window pops up to the right of it with some details:
   
   
2. Automatic categories and web groups
   If you are searching for a fairly generic term, or if you’ve entered a keyword phrase that can be interpreted in different ways, the result will include a list of categories or “web groups” on the left side and the overall result list will also be organized with a few entries per such group, for example a search for “xml” will yield separate groups for “Specifications”, “Tools”, etc.:
   
   
3. Preview of video results
   Finding videos in search results is nothing new, but a live preview of the video just by hovering the mouse over the still frame is really cool:
   
   
4. Integration of reference materials
   Whether you are searching for people or for treatment for medial issues, one of the interesting things that sets bing.com apart is the integration of reference materials. For example, searching for poison ivy and then clicking on “Articles” on the left side, produces a full article within the bing.com platform that has been imported from Wikipedia. Similarly, I just found that when I “bing myself” there is a photo and a link to another reference article at the bottom of the search results – the information again appears to be imported from Wikipedia:
   
   
5. Cashback when you buy items online
   OK, this one almost sounds like from a cheesy commercial, but when you think about it for a moment, it is really quite brilliant. When you register with bing.com you can set up a cashback account, which you can link to your bank account or PayPal, and then – whenever you search for items online and actually go to a vendor to purchase them – you get a percentage of the purchase price back. Especially in tough economic times, that can be a big incentive to start your next online shopping trip on bing.com instead of the “other” search-engine:
   

To find out more about all the new features, I recommend reading the Bing Reviewer’s Guide that is part of the official press kit or taking this tour of bing.

XBRL Training

The SEC mandate for XBRL filings is just a few days away, and many people are still struggling with learning XBRL, how to create an extension taxonomy, or how to prepare a filing.

I am pleased to announce that we’ve just published a new FREE course in our Altova Online Training series that teaches technical users all the necessary information. Introducing the Altova XBRL Training:

After an introduction to XBRL and the XBRL filing process, you will learn to create an extension taxonomy in the XMLSpy XML editor. Then you'll learn how to get your company's back-end data into compliant XBRL filing documents using MapForce's graphical data mapping interface, and explore how to automate this process by generating code in Java, C#, or C++. The final module completes the process and focuses on StyleVision and XBRL report generation. You'll see how easy it is to create a straightforward XBRL report with drag-and-drop functionality to render XBRL in human-readable formats: HTML, PDF, and MS Word.

More information on the new XBRL training is on the Altova Blog and in the Online Training section on the Altova website.

Electric Armadillo at the VOR start

It’s been a little over a week since the Volvo Ocean Race started their leg 7 in Boston, and the boats have already arrived in Galway, Ireland, this past Saturday. Amazing to see them cross the Atlantic in just 7 days.

Here is a nice shot of our boat, Electric Armadillo, as we were in Boston harbor taking pictures at the VOR start of leg 7 last weekend:

I received this photo from our friend Peter Nielsen, editor-in-chief of Sail Magazine. For more coverage on the VOR check out this story and these photos on their website.

Volvo Ocean Race – Start of Leg 7

Leg 7 of the Volvo Ocean Race started in Boston today, and we took our boat into Boston harbor to watch the start of the race. What started out as a beautiful and sunny day quickly turned into pea soup at noon when the fog started to rolled in.

The Volvo Open 70 racing boats are, of course, spectacular to watch – especially when you can get a few photos up close.  Here is Puma:

And here is Ericsson 3:

The harbor was as busy as ever with over one hundred spectator boats watching both the race of the fleet inside Boston harbor and the departure of the fleet.

As we left the harbor and were already on our way back to Salem Sound, we encountered the last boat in the fleet, Green Dragon, as she disappeared into the fog on her way to Galway, Ireland.

More photos as well as high-res versions of the above images can be found on my personal photo website.