Last week, we had to write a complete text in “Kana”. Kana – that means in Japanese signs which includes Hiragana & Katakana, which are the basic signs. There are also Kanji, which are basically Chinese signs who are used pretty often, but to start off, it’s a good idea to learn the Hiragana & Katakana ones first.

A few weeks ago, I’ve already mentioned a very geek way, which is not for everyone – and I really understand this. You need a Linux system (or a Linux VM) to run Kanatest on your client and this is for sure barrier for some people, who are not that deep in computer stuff.

moekana cards

However, it’s a way to learn Japanese signs and so far, I think it’s one of the best ways. But let’s start with something, that is pretty easy and does not require you to use any computer. Danny Choo, founder of Culture Japan and Good Smile Company have created some very nice looking cards to start with. The are called moekana もえかな and do cover the Hiragana signs. Unfortunately, I haven’t found ANY dealer here in Europe who has them on stock, so we ordered them last week in Japan from AmiAmi. They arrived yesterday

The cards contain the basic Hiragana signs, not the Yōon ones or the Dakuon (3 “letter” signs) & Handakuon (” & °), but I guess that is very ok. They will teach you the basics and once you’ve all them in mind, it’s not that hard to upgrade you knowledge to the Yōon, Dakuon and Handakuon ones. The cards came in a small orange box (I LOVE the color of orange!). There is one card which contains some text about what this cards are about as well as an overview about the basic Hiragana signs with Romaji letters (Latin letters).

Most cards contain a nice little Manga Mirai (or friends) manga drawing. On the top left you will find the Hiragana sign, on the top right you will see the fitting word.

You can find a lot additional information about the moekana cards at moekana.com

Kanatest

Another way to lean ALL signs (except Kanji) is Kanatest. I’ve posted a lot about this great and free tool previously, so check this post for additional information. Of course, instead of a Linux server, you can also use a Virtual Machine on your system. A free virtualizer is VirtualBox , which is available for nearly all systems.

iKana

On Friday morning, I was looking for a training tool for the iPad. I stumbled upon iKana nōto and also about iKana. This great software from Thinkmac is THE tool if you want to learn the Japanese signs on a Mac or iOS platform. The installation is pretty easy and it’s pretty affordable. I started the iKana for the Mac, because I was sitting in front of my MacBook Air. The software runs for 10 minutes in trial mode. I played with it and fall in love! Seriously, the combination of Hiragana, Katakana and Romaji signs in the speed test is something you will like a lot. The speed test puts some pressure to it, but you can increase the time you have to press the correct number.

But iKana is more than a tool to learn the signs – it will teach you whole words. If you have all important Kanas in your head, you can start and for example make a test for the family members. It’s a bit more complicated to sort them our in Japanese, because this language is VERY polite – you call your wife tsuma つま if you talk about her in front of others, but you would NEVER call her that way if you talk to her. This work okūsan (oksan spoken) おくさん is the way you call her. However, you will have to find the correct word – in Kana! That is fun and really proofs if you know the Kanas.

With iKana, you can always learn how to draw the signs. It’s pretty important to draw the signs in the correct stroke order and this tool shows how to.

Thinkmac has sponsored a free licence allow me, to test the tool and present it here. Thanks!

iKana nōto

As mentioned above, I was initially looking for an iPad tool that allows me to train without a computer, on the couch, in the bed – or so. iKana nōto is exactly what I wanted. You can really paint the signs onto the iPad – with your finger or with a Stylus Pen from Amazon. I’ve ordered this pen for 9€, because this will hopefully make my Kana look a bit better

Too bad – there is no training software included, but – for the iPhone – there is a tool who has this feature

iKana touch

iKana touch is also from Thinkmac and is for your iPhone. It allows you to draw the signs onto your iPad which is pretty nice and also to train in the same manner as with the Mac version. You simply “touch” the right (or wrong) answer.

Match Kana

The last pretty cool tool I would like to show here is Match Kana for the iPad. This is a memory game with Kana signs. It’s as simple as it sounds, but it’s a very good training!

When I bought it, I just changed the theme to one I like:

And not much more. Then I found http://alfredtips.com (PS. The custom search installation seem to work best with Safari) which is a great source for, well – different ways of searching. Instead of launching a new browser window or tab (does anyone seriously use windows instead of tabs “normally”?) and going to amazon and then type the product you want to buy/inform into their search field, I just press CMD+Space and type “ama apple cinema led display”. This fires up my standard browser (Chrome) and opens a new tab with the search results in it.

I also wanted this for dannychoo.com & figure.fm, these are two sites where I use the search frequently. If you have the Powerpack for Alfred, it’s pretty easy to implement:

The Search URL for dannychoo.com is:

https://www.google.com/search?q=site%3Awww.dannychoo.com+{query}

The title is the name for your custom search while the keyword is the shortcode that you’ll have to enter in front of your search. You can use the default Validation value “alfredapp”. Oh! Be sure to hit both, UTF-8 and “use + as spaces” on top.

For figure.fm it’s mostly the same, as both sites use Google for search.

https://www.google.com/search?q=site%3Awww.figure.fm+{query}

It works pretty well

For my german readers – this is the code to search on Amazon.de:

http://www.amazon.de/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?__mk_de_DE=%C5M%C5Z%D5%D1&url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords={query}

UPDATE

The figure.fm custom search is now available at alfredtips.com and installable with a single click! I recommend to use Safari to install the custom search – does not work in Chrome here on my Mac.

A nice message from amiami

もえかな cards! YEY! And – the Super Sonico Nendoroid Petit figures I was waiting for since January. I tracked it over on Archonia, but until today, they were not available – so, because the moekana cards were not available in Europe, too – be bought both in Japan.

These cards will help us to train Hiragana. One of a lot tools we use meanwhile I’ve already posted about Kanatest, which requires a Linux system to run the current version and I will post soon about iKana from Thinkmac. I’m looking forward for a Katakana version from GoodSmile and Culture Japan Unfortunately, I guess there will be no Kanji version – this would require a much bigger box!

I had reported that my SpeedLink USB Bluetooth stick didn’t worked as expected. Funny enought – the Magic Mouse was working fine, but it denied to work with the Apple Wireless Keyboard. For just 6€, I found the JABRA A320s Bluetooth USB stick on eBay. I’ve got some hints that it works out of the box perfectly with Hackintoshed. After a few days of waiting, it arrived – I plugged it in and: voilá! Everything Bluetooth related now works as great as on a real Mac I can even use the devices to log into the machine.

I also found a way (by changing the plist files inside the applications) to hardcode my Xeon CPU into the “About this Mac” screens.

Just after posting my last Hackintosh related article, and my wife read it – she said that she also wanted a fast Mac – especially for photo editing. Ok! So, while getting some breakfast, I surfed to the typical places – looking out for a good, not too expensive and “out of the box experience” board. We decided to get the Gigabyte Z68X-UD3H-B3 and a Intel Core i5 2380P CPU. I had to place an order at another PC in a store in Duisburg for pickup. We also ordered the board for pickup in the store in Essen. We already had a lot of nice and current hardware here: 8GB DDR3-RAM, a case, a 80GB Intel SSD, Intel PCIe NIC, a fitting power efficient PSU and of course a case that will work for some weeks until I will get a Chieftec case for her.

When we arrived the store in Essen, I had in mind to use the passive GeForce 7600GS that my wife had in her PC so far, but she wanted a fast and current card, knowing that especially Aperture takes care of OpenCL. Ok! So we got her a Sapphire AMD Radeon HD6850. An awesome card! Super quiet and powerful. I use the same model (but from another brand) in my flight simulator PC.

The installation was really pretty easy. I still had my prepared Hackintosh Lion stick and so the installation was done within less than 30 minutes. MultiBeast and updates were done in some rare additional minutes of time – READY! I should mention, that she currently uses the big USB Apple Keyboard and her Logitech USB mouse – of course, I also ordered the JABRA A320s USB Bluetooth stick for her and maybe it will arrive tomorrow or Saturday – then she will be able to use the Bluetooth devices

Here’s the hardware list of this build:

I’m very pleased to announce that also her Hackintosh is working 100% without ANY issues so far

Update

The 2nd Jabra A320s Bluetooth stick arrived and works great with wifeys HackMac She can now use the Apple Wireless Keyboard and the Apple Magic Mouse – makes the desktop look much more uncluttered. Hmm I think it’s time for a soon Home Office site update!

OF COURSE, THIS WAS AN APRIL FOOL

This all is really crap. Once I thought everything would work fine, I’ve got hundreds of Kernel Panics on my systems. Even the Sat Receiver is showing Kernel Panics as well as the microwave and the computer inside our car. There’s only one possible solution: Going back to Windows.

C’mon! If you guys see a documentation about ANYTHING you’ll see this great OS, no matter it’s a seaport, an airport, NASA, ESA or the local garbage company!

So – here is a screenshot of my old trusty Windows 3.11 that I’d bought back in 1993. Yeah! Luckily I had the 7x 3.5″ floppies laying around and also a FDD from a server – works fine! To make it really retro – I’ve thrown away my TFTs – all of them! All I need is my cool old IBM PS/2 keyboard, this cute Pentium with 32MB of RAM, the S3 Virge card and my good old 14″ CRT

Here’s the screenshot (excuse that this is in German – Windows 3.11 was not yet multilanguage):

This post is for educational use. I do not recommend to build a Hackintosh on your own…

…or at least you should check if this is legal in your country!

So I guess the answer would be: No! I just shut down the ESXi server a few days ago, because it was running 24/7 and consuming up to 180W – for just doing a bit fileserving – weird. I had planned to sell the SuperMicro mainboard and E3-1230 Xeon CPU – but… was not sure, because it’s an awesome CPU. Knowing what parts I have laying around here, Bryan recommended to get the Asus P8B WS mainboard to make a nice and smooth running Hackintosh out of it. This would allow me to reuse my stock parts, run a Mac and also use at least 2 of my HP screens.

Back in 2008/2009, I was running a Hackintosh very successful. It was based on a Gigabyte GA-P35-DS3 mainboard, a Core 2 Duo was fine for driving some decent performance to the system and a nVidia card was displaying on up to 4 displays as you can see on this old photo:

I was running Snow Leopard at the end of this “era”, before I invested in my first Mac Pro (Early 2008 series). Of course, I ran into the one or other Kernel Panic, much more often than on any real Mac these days, but it was a fine machine and even video editing was working pretty fine.

As this was my last “free” week, before I start the new job, I ordered the Asus board from Amazon just in that night. Being away over the weekend, luckily, my neighbors took the package and so I was able to start to setup this machine last Monday.

This is what I’ve used to build this Hackintosh machine (where I currently type these lines on).

The worst part of this build was to re-install the Intel box fan. I really don’t know what Intel had in mind when they designed these pins you have to put into the board, but it was a real mess to re-install it on the Asus board and took me ~1/2 an hour. The rest was easy: Grabbing my new USB3-able Hama 16GB stick, put it into the MacBook Air, downloading the Lion install from the Mac App Store and also downloading the UniBeast from tonymacx86. The preperation of the stick went as smooth as shown on that site.

Before I started to install Lion onto the Mac, I had to do a BIOS patch, put it onto another USB stick and patch the BIOS by using the internal EZ Flash tool. Pretty easy. I then booted my Clonezilla CD and did a HD to Image backup of my Windows FlightSim system onto an external HD, because I will reuse this install in my Phenom PC (more on this in another blog post). Once the data from the SSD was securly stored on the external HD, I inserted the USB3 stick to one of the two blue USB3-ports at the back of the computer. No success booting it. Sure! Me fool! Apple has no own USB3 drives, so I put into a USB2 port and the installation began. The installation process was easy and went throught without any issues.

I have to mention here, that I had my AMD Radeon 6850 GPU in the system this time as well as a Sil3132 eSATA PCIe x1 and the Intel Server PT Dual Port NIC PCIe x4. I used the DSDT.file when installing the MultiBeast following these instructions.

After the reboot – everything looked fine – I was quiet happy, because system felt much snappier than my Mac Pro that I sold a few days before. But the happiness was a short time one. I got a Kernel Panic after each other and noone understood why. I wanted to run 4 screens, which failed – in the end, the whole system was really unstable.

After working on this issue until 3am, the next morning I was ready to give up the plan, had installed Win 7 with all drivers – and hated it. Seriously – I’m not a Windows guy.

The same day, but later in the evening I thought: C’mon – do an image and retry it once more. Done. I reinstalled Lion, but this time, I had removed all PCI cards from the system and put in the “old” Mac Pro GT120 card that I had bought 1 year ago for – you thought so – for the Mac Pro to run more than 3 displays. This card has a DVI and a Mini DisplayPort connector and would be fine to drive my 2x 24″ screens. I gave up the idea to run more screens, the wish for a stable system was bigger

What I did after the installation was to compile my own DSDT.aml file – Bryan navigated me through this process luckily. Once my very own brand new DSDT.aml files was on the Desktop, I installed the rest of the software as before. A reboot later – and the system was there. I ran benchmarks; Geekbench, Cinebench – did remote connections to the system (which seemed to have crashed the system before) and launched ALL applications on once. Nothing. Everything was fine, snappy and me was happy. After 2h’s, I was so impressed and started to trust the system and began to install my bought software. Aperture, Creative Suite CS5 Design Standard, iWork, TextMate… you name it. A long process and everything went fine without any Kernel Panic Yey! That’s now a serious nice system which rocks. The software was legible bought in the Mac App Store and the used UniBeast & MultiBeast is freeware, so I guess it’s ok to run the system – at least here in Germany!

Today is Saturday, the Hackintosh is running since Tuesday night – also some days through the night to be sure that no Kernel Panic happens. Only one time, I’ve got one, when I shut down the PC and reconnected the a Harddisk the same time or so – not sure, but as I wanted to shut down, I do not worry. Yesterday, I was working all day long an photo editing in Photoshop and Aperture while watching some tutorials in fullscreen on the other display, using my Wacom tablet… it’s perfect!

Here are some screenshots – I just need to find a way to replace the “Core i7″ with Xeon E3-1230 any day (yes – it’s fully used and all tools see the Xeon as a real one, except the system information).

Of course – everything works – like the Dual Intel GBit/s cards onboard and the sound

I always had issues with the Autopilot on my PMDG 737-800NGX in the past. But before we program the FMC/CDU-II, here are a few important links.

Basic information search

To find the ICAO code of the airport we want to take off, we can the Airport code lookup site. Simply enter the name of the airport you want to take off and it will show you the ICAO code.

The airport I take off from is Düsseldorf, DUS or EDDL. I know this ICAO code, because it’s my home airport. But I want to fly to Bruxelles, Belgium. I didn’t know this ICAO code, so I enter the city name and voilá: EBBR is the code I need. Great!

Next, we need to route. Flying and airplance is not as free as some may think – in real life, a pilot would (or should) never fly directly from airport A to airport B – because of the other traffic. It’s a bit like driving a car on the highway. In the air, we have waypoints that we will reach.

Luckily, we have the free RouteFinder. This will guide us from airport A (DUS/EDDL) to airport B (BRU/EBBR).

Great! That is exactly what we need! Keep this window open (maybe on a laptop) or print this site. We need this data in the flight simulator to program the route.

At least, we need some more information about the runway we will land on. As we don’t fly an Airbus A380 and want to land on a small airport like Weeze, we don’t care so much about the length, but more about the frequency of the ILS. The ILS is an awesome system that makes landing a peace of cake! All you need is to bring your airplane into the front of the runway on a direct line, go to a specified height and hit the APP (approach) button on the MCP. Of course, you will have to lower your speed, increase the flaps to at least 15°, but more on that later.

There is a site for this! Copy & paste this URL to your browser http://www.ivao.aero/db/ss/airport.asp?Id= and enter the ICAO code to the end, so that the URL is http://www.ivao.aero/db/ss/airport.asp?Id=EBBR. This will show us detailed information about a lot of runways and the airport itself. If your airport is not here, well – use Google. I’m not kidding

I have marked the runway we will land on – 25R. The frequency of the ILS is 110.3 MHz and the direction in 251°.

Launching the flight simulator

Time to launch the Flight Simulator. I run the Microsoft Flight Simulator X Gold version and I fly a PMDG 737-800NGX which also costs a few bucks – but it’s worth it! This guide is based on this plane and requires it. There is no FMC/CDU-II in the airplanes that Microsoft deliveres with the Flight Simulator itself. I currently fly without a yoke, throttle quadrant or pedals – need to re-buy them ASAP But we DON’T NEED it – it’s just a lot loss of the realistic feeling.

I fly an AirBerlin branded Boing 737-800NGX, which you can also download from the PMDG website.

A quick note! Look for a download of the UIAutomationCore.dll! You will find it on the net easily. It’s buggy in the Flight Simulator version. Put it into (for example) C:\Programs\Microsoft Games\Micrsoft Flight Simulator X\ folder and you’re save of these annoying application crashes that often appear without that patch.

However – once you’ve launched the Flight Simulator, choose your airport, airplane, weather & time.

Launch!

I will put my FlightSimulator to windowed mode here to be able to take screenshots of the FMC – so don’t wonder why it may look different.

First, we do a right click somewhere on the runway and deselect “hide menubar” (or similar, I have the german version here). I now press Alt+Enter to leave the fullscreen mode.

Now I need the FMC/CDU-II, so I click on “Views” -> “Instruments” and select “CDU (Left)” which is the Captains one. Once it pops up, I do a right click on the FMC/CDU-II and say “release windows”. It pops out and I can resize it a bit to make it more readable.

First, we do some “FS Actions”. In a tutorial they have named the keys on the left and on the right and gave them numbers, starting from 1 at the top to 6 at the bottom (the keys on the left and right of the display). I call them “L1″ for “left, 1st button” to “L6″ and “R1″ to “R6″.

Fuel

Hit R5 to enter the “FS Actions”, then L1 to enter “FUEL”. Hit R5 to add 1/3rd fuel to the plane – that’s fine for our short trip. TOTAL KGS should be ~6894 now (next to the L1 key). Hit L6 to return to the previous menu.

Payload

Hit L2 “Payload” and then R4 to load the airplane to the max. This means: all seats are used by passengers and all cargo space is used. Hit L6 to return to the previous menu.

Hit L6 to return to the main menu.

FMC

Hit L1 to go to the FMC itself. This will take you to the IDENT page – this is for your information. You can’t change anything here.

INIT REF

Now we need to enter our position to the FMC. Remember? We are at DUS which is EDDL. Hit the “INIT REF” key, which is the first key below the display on the left. You see REF AIRPORT. PRESS AND HOLD the Tab key while typing “EDDL”. A green border will appear in the last line of the display and you will see the signs you’ve entered. That’s much more comfortable than clicking the codes This is a good practice until you are so crazy and spend between 700$ and 2000$ for a real CDU for your sim!

Now, with “EDDL” in the last line, hit the L2 key.

Should look like this

ROUTE

Next, hit R6 to enter the ROUTE mode. As we still have “EDDL” in the last line, all you need to do is to click on L1 (ORIGIN).

The next part is a bit tricky. We need to find out on which runway we were placed. A simple trick to do so is to change the view to bird perspective and zoom back a bit. The runway numbers are painted on the runways in huge letters. So go to “View” “View mode” “Outside” “bird view”.

We are on 05R here. R stands for “right” while 05 is the direction. You see the other runway on the left, which is marked with “05L”. If we were there, it would be 05L. Time to return back into the virtual cockpit. “View” “View mode” “Cockpit” “Virtual Cockpit”.

Go back to your FMC/CDU-II, press and hold the Tab key and type “05R”, then click L2. Maybe there will be a text “NAV DATA OUT OF DATE” in the last line now, we ignore this.

The destination is “EBBR”, so enter EBBR (hold the Tab key!) and hit R1. We also need a flight number – be creative. I use AB8578 mostly, because it’s AB = AirBerlin brand and 8578 is my birthday

That was page 1/2. Hit the “NEXT PAGE” key below the display. You will see VIA and TO there. It’s time to enter the waypoints here, so that the FMC can calculate the route. We gonna open up the “Zoomed Left Inboard DU”, which is by default the navigation display. Open it inside the FlightSim window and release the window. I’ve placed both windows next to each other – do it the same way.

Press and hold tab while you enter the first waypoint: MODRU and press R1. You will instantly see a blue dotted line of the navigation display. It’s a plan. Once we activate it, it will turn purple and solid.

We want to see the complete track, to do so, we need to change a setting at the EFIS. Go back to FlighSim main window, press and hold Shift while you press the cursor to right. Holding shift here is VERY important, because you would move the front wheel without holding the shift key which will end up in taking off maybe outside the runway

Press cursor right 3x and then 2x the plus sign.

The knob we need to rotate is this one:

Do a right click on the knob and repeat until you can read “80″ in the navigation display. This will show the half radius of 80 nm (nautic miles).

We continue to put in our waypoints as shown above. It sometimes happens, that the waypoint is used 2x or more, simple compare the position that is shown behind the name and you know which one is the right one.

? Do not enter the airport EBBR here! We will finish the track in another menu. Hit R6 to activate the route. The EXEC key is now activated (the white LED above the key turned on). We will NOT hit EXEC right now, because we have to enter some more data.

Click the DEP/ARR key below the display and then R2 – we need to select the runway for the approach. Before, we said “25L” is the runway we want to land (note that in real simulations and real life, this will be done while the flight and the air traffic controller will tell you on which runway you have to land).

Hit the “NEXT PAGE” button once and select “ILS 25L”. Now it get’s a bit complicated – unfortunately. We get the right tracks at the end of route, but there is a ROUTE DISCONTINUITY between LNO and FLO. We need to fix that. For a better view, press the button (don’t rotatate!) on the left next to the one we rotatated before to switch the navigation display. Press is 1x.

Also, rotate the other know we used before 1x by clicking it with the left key (hit the ring, not the knob).

The navigation display should now look like this:

On the FMC, hit the LEGS button and click “NEXT PAGE” 1x. Now Press and hold the tab key while you type “FLO”, click on L1. Select the topmost. You will see, that the gap is filled now on the navigation display.

You will have other entries between “ROUTE DISCONTINUITY”, hit the DEL key on the FMC on the bottom and then click the additional entry, repeat it until the FMC looks like this:

We now hit “EXEC” – the route is programmed, but still now perfect. No problem! Hit the DEP/APR key again, hit R2 and NEXT PAGE. Hit R1 and select FLO (R4), hit EXEC. We have a return to FLO now.

Hit the LEGS key and hit NEXT PAGE until you see the last FLO entry (right after 120° HDG (INTC)). Press DEL and hit the key next to FLO, hit EXEC and we should be good to go.

CLB

Hit the CLB (Climb) key and enter 6000 as CRZ ALT.

INIT REF

At least, we need to enter some data about the plane itself. Hit the “INIT REF” key and hit L3 2x. Some numbers will be filled in here automatically. Enter 5.0 to RESERVES and 25 to the COST INDEX field. Hit EXEC.

NI LIMIT

Hit the NI LIMIT key and then R6 (TAKEOFF) and enter 5 to FLAPS.

Your FMC/CDU-II is now ready!

MCP

The next (and fast quicker to configure) system is the MCP or “Autopilot”, which is part of the MCP. Open up a new instrument and release the window as before.

First, turn on both F/Ds on the Captains side (right) and the First Officers side (left). The switches are labled as F/D. The MA LED should lid up on the Captains side now. Next, arm the A/R ARM which is above the NI key.

Set the speed to 243 by clicking the button below the IAS/MACH display several times (you can also hold the right mouse button for a moment).

Set the heading to 256°.

Set the altitude to 6000ft.

Click the VNAV button.

Forward Overhead Panel

As one of the last steps before we are ready for takeoff is to set some keys into the right position on the Overhead Panel. Go to “View” “Instruments” and select “Forward Overhead”. Once again, I highly recommend to release this window. Otherwise, it’s maybe a bit hard to read.

On the left, set the AUTO to 25000 and the LAND ALT to 0.

Turn on all lights on the left, set BOTH Engines to CONT and turn on the Position Strobe & Anti Collision on the right.

I was told (thanks @Daemotron) that the Position Stobe could be turned off if you’re done with taxiing (I think that means – when you’re in the air). More important, turn on the navigation lights and, what he calls the “beacon” (I guess that’s a light at the end of the plane).

Rotate the Auto Brake switch to RTO (green) and press the ENG button (pink) 2x.

Cockpit

Holding the shift key, use the cursor to navigate to the center of the cockpit. Use the + key to zoom in (and – to zoom out).

READY FOR TAKEOFF

We’re now ready for takeoff Press CTRL+. to activate the break, move yourself back into the seat by pressing and holding shift+cursor keys. Press “-” several times. You should see the runway.

Press CTRL+Shift+G to increase the speed and wait a moment until the engines are about 80% (console in the center, below the ENG button). A MASTER CAUTION will turn on until you’ve released the brakes and/or you’ve left the runway.

Press . to release the break and prepare to rotate (move the yoke toward yourself if you have one or press carefully sometimes the cursor down key). It is save to rotate at ~125kt and save to takeoff if you’re at ~150kt.

Be sure position the angle at ~15° not much more!

Once you’ve reached ~200ft, move in the gear by pressing “G”.

If you’ve reached ~1000ft, you can try to turn on the Autopilot by pressing the CMD button on the right in the MCP. Hit the LNAV key and the ALT HD key on the MCP.

The plane will now automatically move along the programmed course.

Be sure that the MCP looks like this now:

To increase the height, select V/S and set it to +1000. The plane will increase the height until you’ve reached the height of 6000ft. If it’s near to this, you will hear a sound that me always reminds me of an old train

Navigation Display

Press the marked left button in the key again to change the navigation display look and left click the ring of the right knob to zoom in.

ILS

It’s a good moment to set the frequency of the runway in your navigation panel. Click on “View” “Instruments” “Aft Electronic Panel”. You will see a NAV signed module on the top left. Set the frequency to 110.30 and then press the button in the middle to activate.

Hint! Click to outer ring for the number before the ., and the middle one for the number behind the .

Flight

Enjoy the flight and get a cold Coke

Approach

WAYPOINT FLO: Speed & altitude – approach preparation

If you are reaching the waypoint “FLO”, it’s a good idea to decrease the speed to 220 knots and start lowering to altitude to 3000ft. We need to be at 3000ft to catch the ILS signal which will guide us to the runway.

Lower the flaps to 10°. (F7 increase, F6 decrease)

Final approach

In my case – the Autopilot went mad short before we landed – but no worries! Using the HEADING and the HDG SEL key, you can navigate “half automatic”.

If you are in this area, you should set the flaps to full (press several times F7). Don’t forget to move out your gears at least when the computer says “1000″ (ft). You should land with ~135kt.

Keep cool when the computer complaines “too low, terrain”. I had this 2x and I landed safely. This time, I reacted and the landing was not very well Better trust the ILS in this case.

Once you’re on the runway, push down the throttle by pressing and holding “Page down” to release the reverse thrust.

Welcome to Bruxelles!

Hope you enjoyed this tutorial! It was a hell of fun to write it!

PS. There are for sure some mistakes inside this tutorial, especially when it comes to the route planning, but I learned this from other tutorials and concluded it.

In the last few years, I was quiet happy with the “stock” Apple keyboard – flat keys, great pressure point – all I want. Now that I sold my Mac Pro and sit on a Windows PC, I want a good keyboard as well. The last PC keyboard I had bought was sometimes last year – a Microsoft one with a standard layout (something that I expect from a keyboard!). It has pretty high keys and so it slows me down :/

On Thursday, I ordered the Cherry STRAIT keyboard. Looks nice and 39€ is a good price. I ordered at Amazon and my credit card, prepared to return if I don’t like it.

The keyboard itself is AWESOME. I like the keys, the flatness and that they way they are designed (ok – they are a copy of the Apple keyboard). However – what I don’t like is the border. The frame is right angled and in no way rounded. After typing for a few hours, my heel of the hand hurts, because the very peakish frame is exactly where my hand lays. That’s a no-go. Unfortunately.

Today, we were in a mall in Essen to buy a new mouse for my wife. I played with the keyboards at the local store and honestly – I hate them all! They feel clumsy, are too soft to type on or the keys were too high. Nothing to buy there – at least my wife found a nice Logitech mouse (white M100)

On the way home, I stopped at another PC store who had just a few keyboards. I saw some Cherry ones and played with the STREAM XT. Woah! Jackpot! This is exactly the keyboard I wanted. Flat keys, great point pressure and no peaky borders

Oh by the way: It was just about 19€, which is the half of the price of the STRAIT keyboard.