Sukhoi mounts a Challenge

Sukhoi has unveiled the superjet 100, its contender for the regional jet market. With backing from a lot of heavyweights including boeing and snecma, this first all new post-soviet has notched up some orders already. I love russian jets, especially sukhois and migs. and like a little kid backing his team in a football match, i often close my eyes and pray.. that this plane makes it big, and as a long shot, that alliance air buys these so that i might fly on them on a day not too far away. So far all I've seen is its Sam146 engine at aero india 2007.

goodluck and godspeed, sukhoi.

Stark.Raving.Mad

In utter boredom, i bring to you people who are madder than i am, or can ever hope to be. We have with us mad stuntmen...




... mad pilots (god bless them)...




...mad russian pilots (as if there weren't enough)...




...mad transformers geeks... ok thats enough madness for now i guess. anti boredom campaigns rule.

Cold War Kids - We Used to Vacation

Continuing with the music video trip.. this is a band i've just started listening to, so can't really recommend them since i dont know too much. But i do like what i've heard so far, and am putting this up. I like the video as well, perhaps a tad more than the song..

Stop - Kopek

Animated video for a song named 'Stop' by a band called 'Kopek'. I know very little about them except the fact that they are an indie outfit, and they don't seem to have a website as yet, or even a wiki entry. But the song is good, as is the video. Got it from here, actually. There are some stills as well as the animatics there.

EDIT : they do have a site, and its pretty neat as well...

Just for Laffs..

Now i know why viral videos are, um, viral.. was just sittin around bored when i came across the above two videos, and nearly fell outta my chair laughing despite the fact that i've seen them before. I've come to the conclusion that there are too many bored people in the world, though the conclusion is not one that puts me in a Sherlock Holmes sorta league. Anwyay...

King Antonov the 2nd

I now have a roommate, and his name is Antonov the Second, King of Suburbia. I missed Antonov (the First, in picture) a lot the other day, and i suspect that this had something to do with the fact that both egress routes from my house lead via an aquarium. So i snapped, and stepped into one, and now A2 is here. Of course, i rather foolishly forgot that i am going away for two months, so now i have to arrange another royal quarters for his highness.

Edit: King Antonov the 2nd is with us no more, he passed away a few weeks back. R.I.P.

Kuznetsov Carrier Ops

Sukhoi SU-33

Some really cool footage of the Naval Sukhois in action off the deck of the Admiral Kuznetsov. If old soviet footage was great due to their furtive, archival nature, i think new Russian military footage is awesome in their ability to impress and showcase capabilities. And a great plane as well, though we'd be getting the sister MiG-29 Ks cos these are too big for the Gorshkov nee Vikramaditya.

More Fulcrum

Some pretty cool footage in this 15 min video about the MiG-29 fulcrum. Pretty exhaustive, covering a lot of variants and aspects like maintenance as well. I'm on the lookout for a good video of the OVT Fulcrum, i've seen it with my own eyes at aero india and i was amazed at what it could do. Hope we buy these for the airforce ;)

No Fokker Comes Close

Found these while looking up the spitfire. The spitfire, apart from the prolific WW2 aircraft, also is the name of a brand of british beer, who've used that in beating the germans (er, their beer that is) to a pulp. And the brand is not even old, it started only in the 90s according to their website. But the whole play on words regarding the war makes for some pretty cool advertisements. My personal favourite is "No Fokker Comes Close".

Please excuse all the red though.

Agent Venkatachalam

If the Matrix were made in south India, this is what the agents would look like. Meet agents sundarakantam, venkatachlam and balasubrahmanyam.

On Gifts...

A lot of people don't consider a book an imaginative gift to give. I beg to differ. A book is the only gift you can give that can match all the colors in the spectrum of human imagination. Those who think that gifting a book means you're short of imagination are perhaps stuck on the physical, the material. A food processor or a carpet for a housewarming gift might be deemed practical, a birthday gift based on a person's interests might be deemed imaginative on the giver's part, but me, I'd rather gift books any day. For, between those two covers could lie the answers someone is seeking, the questions that might set one off on new journeys, or the simple thrill of opening up to something you haven't known before. And for me that's more thrilling than a toaster or a pendant any day.

Yeah, music might come close, but books are still tops...

TED Videos - 3

Ze Frank is funny as hell :)

MAKS - 2007

Its that time again, when fans of Russian aviation get shivers of anticipation runnin on their spines.. it comes every two years, lasts a week and leaves us with stuff to talk about till the next time it comes around. It the Moscow airshow MAKS, a.k.a Moscow Air and Space Salon in the Russian. I've been planning a pilgrimage to this show which happens in the airbase at Zhukovsky in the Moscow region. I've invited all and sundry to go with me, and some fellow aviation lovers have agreed as well. The plan was to fly on one of those cheap Russian airlines out of mumbai or goa, reach moscow and backpack around to the old soviet airbases and aviation museums, watch MAKS, ensure one flight on a Tu-154, travel to Vladivostok on the trans siberian and then get back. But then, a trip is not possible before MAKS2009, as none of us had any money to make it there this year.
Which is kinda sad, cos this year we would have seen the Tu-144 restored to its former glory. That and the Tu-160 flying displays. Oh hell, they way the Russians are headed these days, I wouldn't put it past them to have the 144 back in flying condition by the next MAKS. That should make a lot of people proud.

Images from Airliners.net

Devotchka, The Love for.. etc

Small story based on a true incident that happened a few days ago. And also, my love for their music. Click on pic to read.

New meaning to pencil light?

Cool vid of how to turn a pencil into an emergency light source. Not all that practical, but quite cool nonetheless.

KTM Fanboy :)

Click on pic to see text in detail. Duh.
Also the result that occurs when you have a wacom and lots of time on your hands.

Bea.st

This guy at www.bea.st does some pretty cool techno sculpture and suchlike stuff. Check out this lightbulb for instance. It looks like a wireless floating lightbulb. It levitates between magnetic fields and uses magnetic hall effect sensors and a PD feedback system to stabilize the bulb while floating. LEDs inside the bulb turn AC power to DC and emit light. Check out the site for more.

бомба царя - Tsar Bomba

For those of you who were wondering about my gtalk status message for the last few days, here's the explanation.. it reads 'Tsar Bomba' of the king of all bombs. It was the name of the largest thermonuclear device ever exploded, dubious kudos to the USSR. It was so massive it could only partially fit into the bomb bay of the Tu-95 bear bomber, and its fallout still haunts the island of novaya zemlya. In fact, to reduce fallout its yield was reduced to 50 from 100 megatons. More on it at бомба царя

Volga V-12

This is one of my transfer posts.. as in, I've posted about this before on my stumbleblog. But hell, i bet you automobile freaks haven't seen this one in your rush to drool overs the latest lambos, ferraris and beemers. This, folks, is a Russian car by the name Volga V12. It is a coupe. I have not seen pictures of any colour but black. These were made by the same factory that made the venerable GAZ cars. And, imo, it is the most beautiful car ever. Its spinning off so many retro concepts in my head that i wish i could sketch better :D It is also the ultimate gangster car, sitting perfectly with the vision of the russian post-communism mafiosi and oligarchs. One cool car.

That first pic is a modded version btw.

Verdammt..

Just.. that last post was too wide. verdammt.

SXM

http://view.break.com/350055 - Watch more free videos

Princess Juliana Airport at St. Maarten Island in the Netherland Antilles. Absolute spotter heaven, i wanna go there someday before they install ILS and ruin the feeling of gettin blasted into the water by jumbojets flyin overhead.

Russian Traceur

Some of the best skills i've seen in parkour so far.. awesome. Restart the club anyone? ;)

Magazine Covers..

Some cool magazine covers i came across somewhere.. don't remember where though. Anyways, here they are, and my favourite is the national lampoon cover :) The first one is andy warhol drowning in a campbell soup can. meh.

TED Videos - 2

This is Al Gore's follow up presentation at TED. I know i should put the "inconvenient truth" presentation first, but i can't find a video of that as yet. Will change things when i do. Anyways, great stand up comic, mr Gore.

444 SSBJ

Sorry about the Tupolev trip, but a bit more digging brought up this new piece of info. There is another Russian supersonic business jet on the boards, the Tu-444 which i believe draws heavily from the Tu-144 experience. This is apart from the Sukhoi Gulfstream JV which sukhoi is rumoured to be taking forward alone. This in turn is apart from all the western studies and proposals including one presented as recently as the Paris airshow. It seems supersonic people movers might return after all, albeit moving fewer and richer people. Will post more on supersonic projects of the future once i do some more research, including on the Tu-244, an apparent second coming of the 144.

Tu-134 Cigarettes..

The soviet version of Mirage Paan masala? Perhaps.. but then we even have airlines named after beers these days, so i guess I'm not too surprised. But then I'm impressed by the fact that the 134 might have been a 'brand', that people might have thought of it as a cool airplane of that age..
This is the airplane in question..this particular airframe was in east german interflug service. i like it for the fact that it looks like a scaled down version of the 154 minus the number two engine, plus the glazed nose. The nose was changed for the B-3, and it coulda looked a pretty decent RJ, but there are too few of them around. A lot are in business configurations apparently.

Tu-144 - The First SST..

Tu 144 Landing Video

Awesome video of the Tupolev 144 landing.. it was an awesome but ill fated plane. I sure wish it had as good a run as the Concorde. One of the airframes in storage was brought back to flight condition as part of a multilateral effort to research SST technology, dubbed the Tu-144 LL. The landing sequence is just mindblowing.. looks more like a fighter...

Old Hat..

Old Hat yeah, but still one of my favourite Banksy works...saw it again today so thought i'd post it.

Gogol Bordello..

Start Wearing Purple

Yet another band i discovered on my band trawls on the net.. i kinda like their sound, eastern european and gypsy influence.. bit of russian or ukrainian in the lyrics, and the total madness of it.


Rating - Θ Θ Θ Θ Θ/2

TED Videos

I've decided to post all the TED videos i can here, i just recently discovered them despite their having been around on public domain for a while now. Anyone who is a designer should see this methinks. actually everyone should see this. anyway.. here goes the talk by Sagmeister.