Here is an amazing clip of a small plane crash landing in California when one of it’s landing gears refused to function properly. Funny thing is, there wasn’t really any “crash” in the landing.

What makes this especially interesting is that someone apparently got another plane up in the air in time to film what was going on, and they did a really good job of capturing the entire event.

POINT MUGU, California
Monday Jul 30, 2007
A twin-engine turboprop aircraft with its left main landing gear stuck in the up position skidded to a safe landing at a Navy air station Monday.Twelve people were aboard.

The civilian Grumman G-159 was on a shuttle flight from the military’s San Nicolas Island to Point Mugu.

The Phoenix Air plane carrying nine passengers and three flight crew members circled for about an hour to burn off excess fuel.

The airplane came in with its left engine feathered — the propeller slowly turning — and it set down gently before settling onto its left wing, then skidded to its left off the runway and onto an unpaved area.

Everyone aboard jumped out of the aircraft as fire trucks sprayed the craft.
There was no fire and the plane appeared to be repairable.

San Nicolas is a Navy-owned island off Southern California. The plane is leased to shuttle military personnel and civilian workers between the mainland and the island.

Point Mugu Naval Air Station is part of the Navy base in Ventura County, northwest of Los Angeles.

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Folks, I went to Las Vegas last week for business meetings, but during the evening I did take a little break from working on Layered Technologies and Woopra stuff for a few hours to go have dinner at the Bellagio Buffet, and then do a little gambling after dinner.

Had such a great time that I thought I’d share it with you guys.
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This week I’ve been to Las Vegas, Iowa, and Chicago (where I currently sit writing this post). And of all the exciting things to happen, last night a near record breaking earthquake struck Illinois.

(CNN) — A magnitude-5.2 earthquake, centered 131 miles east of St. Louis, Missouri, shook southern Illinois early Friday, according to the U.S. Geological Survey.

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George Lawrence used aerial kites to photograph San Francisco after the devastating 1906 earthquake. His photographs appeared in newspapers around the world and generated more than $15,000 for the photographer.

Below is a high resolution GigaPixel scan from the original 4 foot wide photograph. Well, technically it’s only a measly 11,709 x 4,716 resolution - translating to only .55 gigapixels, but we’ll let it slide since this is for posterity’s sake and all that.

For those of you who are unaware, San Francisco experienced a devastating earthquake in 1906 which started fires that burned uncontrollably and essentially destroyed the entire city.
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Last week I was in San Francisco for just one day for a meeting, but I did have time to drive over to Fort Point and take a panorama of the Golden Gate Bridge with my GigaPan.

Now, I’m not really pleased with this Gigapan because I used the wrong camera to take the photo. I was using a Panasonic TZ3, which is a fine little point and shoot digicam, but it lacks some basic manual controls such as manual focus, and a few others, which caused this panorama to not work so well. In addition, I had some of the adjustments off a bit.

Still, having said all that, the image is decently cool. And if you’ve never had the opportunity to see the Golden Gate Bridge in person this is a good way to check it out.
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When I went to Hawaii one of the coolest things I did was check out the live volcano. To this day it was one of the most awesome sights I’ve ever witnessed. Seeing a mountainside with liquid hot magma pouring out of it was enough to make Dr. Evil proud.

Well, since none of us has all night to watch lava make it’s way down a mountain, someone was kind enough to film a lava flow throughout the night and then speed it up for us. So here is a time lapse video taken on the Big Island of Hawaii for your viewing pleasure.
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It’s been a little while since I’ve dished out my weekly links. Let’s see if I can get back in the habit from here on out…

• Threadless Wall Graphics Shop - Very cool! And Cheap!
• Spade High School’s Last Graduation
• Cool Cars We Miss - #1 My NSX!
• TripIt is a travel assistant that automatically organizes travel plans.
• Bubble Guru is totally cool. But way, way too expensive. Where is the free version?

Thanks to Peggy for sending me this video of a stunt pulled off by Improv Everywhere, whose slogan is “we cause scenes”. The setup is that 207 people all walking through Grand Central Station in New York all freeze in place at the exact same second, and hold still for a full 5 minutes.

Most interestingly, it’s inspired people in 28 other cities in 13 countries to stage their own freeze mission. Thousands people worldwide in places like Romania, Poland, Italy, Germany, Sweden, and New Zealand have come together to make time stop for five short minutes. Below is a roundup of all of the videos of the various global freeze events.
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I just had to give up my Sprint powered PPC8800 for a Blackberry Curve 8310 so I could be on the communal rate plan and also have real-time Exchange access for e-mail at work. After doing so it forced me to do a lot of research on applications and ways to better my Curve.

I figured some other people are going to go looking for this info as well, so I’ve compiled what I learned here. Its not my most organized post, but there is a lot of information and I didn’t want to spend forever getting the post out. Hopefully if anyone knows of other cool, free stuff for the BB you’ll drop a comment below and let me know.
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For anyone sensitive to plane crashes, you won’t find this funny… but for everyone else, the surprise ending on this commercial will make you laugh.

This one apparently comes from a European travel agency. Enjoy.
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We really take the little things for granted in the USA, like not having to share the road with mules, comically over-burdened bicycles and crazy pieced together vehicles. But in Vietnam all of these things coexist (not exactly in harmony either).

All of these photos were taken by our close friend Vi just a few weeks ago in Vietnam. In addition to the photos, you absolutely have to watch the completely insane videos she took of the traffic in downtown Saigon. It is truly, unbelievable. People pay zero attention to any sort of traffic signal, and as a result it is a complete free-for-all.
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Ok. This is truly unbelievable. When I say that 75 Trillion (with a T) crabs swarm Christmas Island, I am not exaggerating or kidding. You just have to watch this video, as creepy as it is, to believe this.

By the way, you can read all about the Christmas Island red crabs over on Wikipedia, or on the Christmas Island National Park site.
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