Jimisola.com - keepin’ on

Back in Ljungbyhed after surgery this morning. It went well and I ended up will only four stitches. From here on it’s only for me to keep my fingers crossed that this actually works.

Time - and rehab - will tell…

Today was my first “real” day at LUSA with classes all day. We started out with Navigation and then continued with Operation Procedures (went through different air spaces, visibility requirements, altitude requirments etc). It did not seem that difficult to be honest, but I do believe that the amount of information, and also the number of classes, will cause a lot of headache.

Tomorrow morning I’ll have surgery on my abductor tendon. I keep my fingers crossed Dr Fredrik Nyqvist’s fingers will end this long injuery period…

Today was my and my 13 classmates first day of school. First a mandatory photo was taken and I assume that the pictures are used for our pilot identity cards. Some say that those ids showing that we are pilot students make it a lot easier to get a ride in the cockpit with the regular airlines - I can only hope The afternoon we received information about Lund University (most of which I already knew since I’ve been a student at the Computer Science Department). More interestingly we got information about our ab initio /integrated course (ab initio means that we start from scratch with no prior knowledge). The course of 80 credits (= 80 weeks) will be finished after 19 months (Oct 30 2008 is our deadline) since we only have three (3) weeks of during summer and Christmas.

The course consists of five (5) step: PPL, IR, CPL, ATPL and MCC; which will be completed during the following three major phases:

• Single Engine: theory + 90 flight hours
  • PPL (private pilot license)
  • Night
  • Low level
  • Up North (a trip to Northern Sweden where the landscape is totally different from here in Scania)
  • IFR (instrument flight rule)
• Multi Engine: theory + 60 flight hours, 45 hours in STD (STD stands for Synthetic Training Devices and NOT sexually transmitted diseases) + theory
  • Class rating (think that was class rating for multi engine but I might remember wrong here)
  • Multi Engine approach
  • Route training (no idea what this is)
  • Single Engine approach (we power down one of the two engine when practising)
• MCC: 15 hours
  • MCC (Multi Crew Cooperation): we learn to cowork two and two in cockpits (which is standard in commercial aviation

After the general information and introduction we got to see the airplanes. I’ve seen them before during Open House (sv “Öppet hus”), but it was totally different to see them know; knowing that I’ll actually be flying them quite soon.

Me trying out the left seat

Cirrus SR20, the one piston engined airplane I’ll start flying in about two weeks

Piper PA31 Navajo, twin-engined turbocharged piston aircraft

Cockpit of the Cirrus SR20

Cockpit of the Cirrus SR20

Mmmm… all leather (the left seat reminds me of my Saab 9-3 Aero )

… I’ve heard Next’s new song “Push It”.

And it’s soon time for us Maxwell fans to dwelve into a new album.. Even better! There will be three albums over just as many years! The highly anticipated trilogy is named “Black Summer’s Night”. The first song was suppose to have been released Feb 13th (day before Valentine’s) day, but still haven’t been released. Hopefully it’s out soon. I’ll continue to keep an eye on his myspace site for sure…

Oh, I almost forgot. A girl friend (sadly not girlfriend) introduced me to a few new artists/groups. One that really caught my attention and which I’ve been listening to quite a lot over the last week is Fertile Ground and their song “You”. My, my, my… She also tipped me on Vikter Duplaix which instantly made me think of Sade, a male version that is.

A new era is about to start.. I moved to Ljungbyhed and Aviation School during the weekend (all my stuff on Friday and myself on Sunday). I arrive a week prior to school starts and probably 5-6 days before most of my class mates will show up. The reason for me moving a bit early is that I planned to compete during the week (at GE Galan in Stockholm yesterday and the Swedish Indoor Championships in Gothenburg during the weekend) and therefore wanted to have the move over with before I competed, but since my groin started acted up again that did not happen. However, good news is that I’ll have a new and different surgery Wednesday next week. It will be an “open surgery” and not laparoscopic surgery where they will clean out the abductor tendon attachment in the pelvic area and also make incisions along the tendon in order for it to restart its healing process. I really hope that this surgery will fix it - its somewhat of a last chance for me….

The timing was not perfect - first week of school. But, it should not intervene too much and normal recovery is said to be quite fast. I will, however, need many months (most likely) before I can run all out on it again.

Back to the good news! After months of waiting since I got accepted Lund University School of Aviation is now up! I’ve done two tours to “down-town” Ljungbyhed already and my good what a tiny little place. I’m not used to these sort of places; I fit perfectly in LA, NY, Cape Town, Monaco etc though. Which reminds me of the IToG acronym we used when I started with track. I’m definitely an IToG - International Type of Guy

I will try to blog often about school and, better yet, provide pictures of the spectacle. I therefore added an Image Gallery with a dedicated album for images from Lund University School of Aviation. You might have to bear with me since I haven’t figured out the software completely yet (e.g. I am unable to center the image below). If you find any bugs please report them to me.

Entrance of F5 Ljungbyhed

PS. A link to the Image Gallery is available under Links in the sidebar as well. DS.

Hmmm.. I haven’t really had time to think about aviation school, leaving Malmö for Ljungbyhed, my leave of abscence from work etc. The last couple of months have been quite busy and I haven’t stopped for a minute to think really (not a good sign - I know). I recall thinking about it quickly one morning  and then having to pinch myself to check that it was in fact true; I’m gonna become a pilot.

I believe that this last week in Malmö will be quite hectic even though I’ve basically packed everything I can - even my cds and dvds. Thursday is what I’ve refered to as “Sentence Day” for the last couple of weeks since I’ll visit the doctor with my groin to get a final decision on what’s next…

I got a good laugh today when I got home. Who the h-ll is “Jinifola”?

It was the recipient on a package from one of our national DSL providers who seems to think that that is my name..  Perhaps I should name my first-born Jinifola - I wonder if it has a meaning in Yoruba? (I really need to learn Yoruba before it’s too late)

Having my name misspelt really isn’t new to me. There have been quite a few misspelling. The most common one, for sure, is “Jimmy Zola” (somewhat like the French novelist Émile Zola). It does not matter ifI say that “Jimisola is my lastname” and quickly there after start to spell it out “j-i-m-i-s-o-l-a, jimi like Jimi Hendrix”. I often then get an irritated response “Yes, I know how to spell Jimmy.”.

Perhaps I should think through whether to name my kids with “hard-spelled” names. It’s a hazzle.  The worst spelling I ever seen was “Mimmisola”

Some one once told me or I read it somewhere (can’t recall which) that statistics is the science that states that if you have one hand in the freezer and the other on the stove you actually feel quite fell - on an average.

Web visitor statistics. No tool reports the same numbers. I was curious on how many visitors the site has since I have no glue at the moment even though I believe that I had more visitors during the golden track days and therefore seasons are usually the most visited periods.
Visitor statistics for January 2007:

• Google Analytics: 1099 visits (doesn’t specify it uniqie visitors or what - I can’t find the information at least)
• AWStats: 2055 unique visit, 3759 total

The number of visits alone is not interesting alone. I believe that it in combination with the number of “returning visitors” gives a better view of your sites visitors. Google Analytics reports ~35% returning visitors for January 2007. Appearently, Google Analytics has different reports to even get more information (see blog post “Absolute Unique Visitors” versus “New and Returning”).

With that said, I always strive to improve so time will tell if I manage here as well

After far too many weeks I finally managed to find the time to package and make my Freshy WordPress theme mod, Freshy-JL available.

You can download it from here.

I was reading up on JBoss Portal and stumbled on the Optaros Compares Open Source Products and Projects in New Report at the Enter The JBoss Matrix blog. It goes through Optaros newly published Open Source Catalog 2007 U.S. Version 1.1 from a JBoss point-of-view.

The Open Source Catalog is not JBoss focused of course as it has over 260 ratings of open source projects and products. It can’t be fully complete either with such a changeable community as the open source community. Many/most of the known open source projects and products are included in the report however and - more importantly - also some (to me) previously unknown projects and products.

I recommend that you take a look at it - you mind find something new and better.