Headworx

We had a number of updates coming from Boom (the maker of the Overture - the passenger supersonic jet) last week. Supposedly the news were to excite the public, but the skeptic in me got a feeling like Overture is a solution looking for a problem.  Of course I’d love to fly on Overture. At least once, to experience something new. But somehow I don’t think that cutting the end-to-end intercontinental journey time from the average of 15 hours to 10-12 hours makes a difference. An intercontinental flight (time in the air) is at most 50% of the total time, which includes commuting, checking in, boarding, taxing, deplaning, passing through border control, collecting luggage and commuting again. So flying on Overture will be more of a status symbol than real “savings”. Especially as they indicate $5000 range ticket prices, which is twice of what you pay today for a round trip lie-flat upper class experience. It also remains to be seen how they will handle luggage, as some here may still ...

A number of announcements related to satellite communications have popped up recently. United Airlines is implementing Starlink for free in-flight internet. This will replace the Viasat system which is in use today. Interestingly J.P. Morgan downgraded Viasat following the news. The key difference between the two systems is latency - Viasat is geostationary (~800ms) while Starlink is low-earth orbit (LEO), which translates to roughly 40ms. We don't know how many Starlink antennas / terminals will be installed on an aircraft, so potentially Starlink may achieve better throughput (per single antenna both systems are similar). Overall I'm not a big fan of in-flight Internet nor the entertainment systems in general. I prefer to watch the clouds through the window :) Also my go-to entertainment for flights is YouTube premium, which allows me to download videos for offline viewing. I almost never have time for watching videos, so I collect them in the "Watch Later" playlis...

There is one other interesting aspect of computers (and phones) trying to figure out the current location.  Last week I discussed what happens when an iPhone does not have the location information. This happens most likely when the phone is not connected to any network (an airplane mode) and has not managed to get a GPS fix. Then in some scenarios like tagging photos it seems to be using the last known location , which can be way off, e.g., when you're flying. The other situation occurs when the phone is connected to a mobile network which is not local. Or maybe to be more precise - to a mobile Access Point Name (APN), which routes data packets in a private tunnel which is then connected to the public internet in a completely different place. This typically happens when you use your carrier's default APN while roaming abroad. Things can be off by 1 hour (as it happened to me in China when the phone was thinking it was in Japan) or more. Interestingly applications and subsystems...

The beauty of photos taken with a phone is they are automatically geo-tagged. I love geo-tagging, as with every photo I can pull up the map location, search and organize photos by locations etc. Adding locations to DSLR photos was difficult. It typically required an awkward piece of equipment (a dedicated GPS receiver) attached. It was slow and drained batteries quickly. Then came the idea of the phone keeping a timestamped GPS log and synchronizing locations based on the camera clock (which I was often forgetting to adjust). Now with phones it is all built-in. But the issue with location stamping is the location data is not always available. It takes from a couple of seconds to couple of minutes to get a GPS "location fix". Which is the time the GPS receiver needs to collect the data from multiple satellites. Sometimes this is not possible at all. One example is flying a Boeing 787 "Dreamliner" which has electronic window shades which block the radio waves entirely...

I really like how over time I lug less gear with me . Be it on a business trip or a multi-day hike-through. Take less, do more say Gossamer Gear , one of my favorite ultralight brands. Could not agree more. Especially when the terrain is demanding and rough. But then there is the question of taking photos, and, in particular what I love, taking night photos. For that you need a good camera and a tripod. The camera part has been - to some extent - solved by the latest smartphone advancements - see what iPhones offer in the photography department . The results are not DSLR-class yet, but they are getting close. And some trips - like the New Zealand West Coast - really require the lightest gear possible. For the weight of a DSLR you can take 2 days of food (food is the challenge on remote hikes lasting 10 days). So an iPhone. Bt then you still need a tripod. In the past the FLM CP-10 carbon was my option, but that (while super steady and light) was very low, requiring to crawl and not a...