News Archive

June 16, 2007. Ruth completed her first marathon (Grandma's Marathon, Duluth, MN). 4 hours and 49 minutes?

Apr 18, 2007. Successfully maidened the Senior Electric Telemaster!

Sep 24, 2006. Ruth competed in the Iron Girl Duathlon this weekend.

August 20, 2006. The Wiseguys' season ended in the first round of the playoffs on penalty kicks after a 1-1 tie in regulation. MRSL Playoffs: Div 1, Div 2, Div 3.
Centennial Wiseguys 2006: Schedule & Scores, League Standings. Mothers of Invention 2006: Schedule & Scores, League Standings.

July 15, 2006. Ruth completed the Lifetime Fitness Triathlon in excessive heat and difficult conditions, but her hard work in training paid off and she was able to race and finish well and wasn't beat down by the heat like many of the other competitors.

May 20, 2006. Ruth ran the Fargo 1/2 marathon today. Click here for a picture. Click here for more Fargo marathon pictures.

April 5, 2006. FlightGear v0.9.10 (and SimGear v0.3.10) are released. This new release is a significant step forward in many areas: http://www.flightgear.org

February 7-14, 2006. I am out of town for Scale 4x. We will be demoing the LFS Technology's 747 Project

January 24, 2006. ATC Flight Simulators delivers a single engine flight trainer and research simulator to the Aerospace Engineering Department at the University of Minnesota.

January 18, 2006. I am the new ME5286 Robotics class TA for the 2006 spring semester. My main areas of assistance will be with the real time large vehicle control project and the computer vision project.

January 1, 2006. HAPPY NEW YEAR!

December 25, 2005. Merry Christmas from the Olsons.

November 24, 2005. Happy Thanksgiving! And one more.

October 2, 2005. Ruth runs the TC 10 mile (part of the Twin City Marathon weekend events) 3 minutes faster than she ran last year.

July 16, 2005. Curt and Ruth complete the Lifetime Fitness Triathlon. Temps were 90F+ and very humid at the time we competed so the conditions were pretty brutal. The goal on this day was to finish (which we did) but I suspect that very few people were happy about their times today due to the heat.

June 15, 2005. Amelia is learning how to hop/jump up and down as well as twirl around in a circle. She's getting better at going up and down stairs. She likes to try to copy the things she sees her big sister doing. :-)

June 15, 2005. Hannah learned how to play a scale on a piano in the key of "middle" C. :-)

June 10, 2005. Today is Ruth's "official" last day of work for the school year.

June 9, 2005. Citabria update: Successful maiden flight! ... maiden flight for me anyway. I purchased the plane used so this is my first time flying it.

May 23-26, 2005. Curt is traveling to LA for the MathWorks International Aerospace and Defense Conference 2005. We will be showing the interface between Simulink and FlightGear in conjunction with John Wojnaroski's 747 cockpit. We will show how FlightGear can be used in a variety of open and extensible ways in research and industry. The open-source architecture of FlightGear allows organizations to build and tailer their projects beyond what is available with commercial simulators.

May 19, 2005. Happy birthday to me ... :-)

May 3, 2005. Hannah and Amelia have their annual ice cream social and art fair tonight.

May 1-3, 2005. Ruth is at the Minnesota School Counselors Association Spring Conference in St. Cloud, MN.

April 25-29, 2005. Curt is traveling to Sacramento, CA for the grand opening of the US Forest Service flight training facility. I have participated in building three of their simulators for use in water bombing exercises as well as for us in more traditional pilot training roles.

April 21, 2005. Amelia is learning to go down stairs. She faces forward, and slides down one at a time on her butt. Hannah enjoys writing words and practicing her letters. She sticks mostly to upper case when writing, but she's getting much better at identifying all the lower case letters. She likes to look in books and copy down words in her "journal" and she is always asking how to spell some particular word.

March 14, 2005. Tonight, Ruth and I signed up for the Life Time Fitness triathlon (to be held this July in Minneapolis.) Ruth did well at it last year, but I'm not sure what I've got myself into!

March 7, 2005. Amelia can stand up from the middle of the floor now with out needing to grab onto anything. Hannah can draw a bat hanging upside down from the ceiling. She seems like she is capable of doing just about anything she wants to do these days.

February 24, 2005. Amelia is walking reliably now. This morning I saw her stoop and pick an object off the floor for the first time. With every passing day she seems less and less like an infant and more and more like a toddler. She has 4 teeth in on the top and 2 teeth on the bottom. This week she learned how to drink out of a straw.

February 24, 2005. ATC Flight Simulators is nearing completion of its light twin Advanced-ATD product. This will be a very nice, very clean, very capable advanced training device.

February 18, 2005. Amelia turns one year old today. Happy Birthday!

February 10-15, 2005. Curt traveled to Los Angeles for the Southern California Linux Expo at the LA convention center Feb 12-13. We demo'd John Wojnarowski's home built 747 simulator which is based on FlightGear, OpenGC and other pieces of open-source software. He designed some of his own hardware, interfaces, and device drivers for this project. It's all running on Linux. I'm biased but I think we were one of the most popular booths at the show, definitely attracting more attention than most of the commercial booths.

February 3, 2005. Hannah turns four years old today. Happy Birthday!

January 30, 2005. Happy Birthday Ruth!

January 29, 2005. Amelia takes her first real steps!

January 28, 2005. Hannah is progressing with her ability to write. She can write out words if someone tells her which letters to write. She can read back words letter by letter. It's not quite "real" reading and writing, but she is getting good at reading and writing individual letters..

January 28, 2005. Amelia continues to practice standing. As of a few days ago she started "free standing" without holding on to anything. She can cruise (walk along side objects like a couch as she hold onto them.) She is very close to taking her first unassisted steps. Amelia is also saying really simple words. She can say "Ba Ba Ba" when she wants her bottle. She is also doing a lot of babbling that sounds like words, but isn't quite.

January 25, 2005. One word: Tivo. :-)

January 18, 2005. FlightGear v0.9.8 is released!

January 1, 2005. Ruth has taken over co-leadership of the Lifetime Fitness running club in Roseville.

December 27, 2004. Amelia is now pulling herself up into a standing position. (She's a little more than 10 months old.)

December 24-25, 2004. Merry Christmas from the Olsons!

December 23, 2004. Hannah can write her own name. She doesn't always get it right and she has her N's backwards, but she does pretty good for a 3 year old. She can also now draw hearts, she can use words like "actually". She understands that gallons refers to the volume of water. She says things like, "I just saw 3 minivans in a row." She can count to 10 in spanish. She knows an amazing amount of sign language.

December 18, 2004. Amelia has learned to say "Uh-oh". She enjoys crawling around the house repeating "uh-oh" and exploring whatever she can find. She's 10 months old today.

December 3, 2004. I am working on a new world scenery build for FG. This new build will include SRTM terrain for Australia (as well as every other place covered by SRTM data.) In will include the most current airport data by Robin Peel (many updated airports, runways, taxiways, including contributions from FlightGear developers and users.) I have put a lot more effort into airport surfaces and they are generally looking very nice except for the most extreme cases. Airports generally blend very well with the surrounding scenery, do a nice job of following the overall "lay of the land", and have a nice gentle smooth continuous surface. There has been a bit of work on radio towers (eliminating many of the smaller ones which generally aren't red-lit anyway) and improving the tower models. As of today I have much of the USA and Europe built and am proceeding on to build the rest of the world. Scenery will be made available as it is generated on the FG ftp server.

November 25, 2004. Happy Thanksgiving from the Olsons!

November 18, 2004. Along with being able to crawl, Amelia has just figured out how to play a kazoo ... she's nine months old today.

November 8, 2004. Amelia crawled forward for her first time today! It was slow and deliberate, but consistant and sustainable. Now we will really have to watch her!

November 3, 2004. Amelia can clasp her hand and intertwine her fingers now. She is also getting a lot more mobile. She's not quite crawling, but she can go from a sitting position to laying full out on her tummy to reach something and then push herself back and up into a sitting position. She can also scoot around in a sitting position quite a bit now.

October 20-29, 2004. Curt is out of town working on ATC flight simulator projects. I expect minimal email access, but I will try to catch up with everyone when I return.

October 21-23, 2004. ATC Flight Simulators will have a booth at the AOPA Expo in Long Beach, CA.

October 16, 2004. Amelia claps her hands and smiles when she sees Daddy. She seems very close to being ready to crawl.

October 4, 2004. Hannah is getting much better at drawing and coloring. She can draw simple faces and stick figures and does a remarkable job at coloring in (filling) shapes for her age. Her abilities are growing in so many areas that we almost take many of the things she does for granted. She does great with climbing around on the play ground, climbing poles and ladders, hanging, reaching, etc. Her language, sentence, thought, logic, manipulation skills are all advancing well. :-)

October 3, 2004. Here is a new addition to my fleet. A Midwest Citabria built by Frank Monsoor of Onalaska, WI. More pictures here.

October 3, 2004. Ruth ran the Twin Cities 10 mile race (which is part of the the Twin Cities Marathon festivities.)

October 2, 2004. Amelia has started to "talk". Rather than just cries and squeals, she's really starting to make a lot of syllable sounds.

September 25, 2004. Ruth and I ran the Bolder Dash 10K today. Ruth is training for a 10 mile run so she turned around and ran the 5k race about a 1/2 hour after she finished the 10k and kept a good solid consistent pace for the entire 9.3 miles of running. I pushed myself pretty hard, so I was done after my 10k.

September 17, 2004. I flew my Lanier Mariner 40 today (my second outing with this aircraft.) It continues to be an awesome aircraft although I now have a couple beefs with the factory covering job. I have some updated pictures at my Mariner site.

September 8, 2004. Amelia can now scoot a little bit in a sitting position. She hasn't started crawling yet, but she's starting to figure out how to extend her reach. Scary times. :-)

August 24, 2004. Hannah gets her first "Easy Bake Oven", 1996 vintage. The mixes looked good, but were, uh, not in their full original glory. We will have to get new mixes or use our own recipes. She was very cute though baking her first cookies, even though I just about had to go to the emergency room after eating one. :-)

August 20-22, 2004. [We survived the cold/rainy] Green family camping trip, Big Woods State Park, Nerstrand, MN. :-)

August 15, 2004. The Xenos soccer club season [thankfully] :-) comes to a close.

August 14, 2004. Amelia is now sitting up on her own.

August 6-8, 2004. Olson family reunion, MN.

July 31, 2004. Amelia rolls over for the first time on her own. She can also pat Mommy on the back when Mommy pats her on the back.

July 21, 2004. I am finally fed up with the amount of spam I'm getting in my inbox, along with the fact that my address is widely used as a forged from address, often in conjunction with email viruses. So I am changing my email address. See my home page for my new email address.

July 17, 2004. Ruth competed in the Life Time Fitness triathlon in Minneapolis MN. We got to see some of the worlds top triathletes in action before Ruth competed. Amazing! Ruth did very well, turning in faster times than she expected, especially considering she gave birth only 5 months ago. Great Job!

July 1, 2004. (update) I am finished with this round of scenery building. I am waiting for the FG v0.9.5 release before so I can coordinate an official announcement and everyone can take advantage of the new features in this scenery.

I am working on a complete world rebuild for FlightGear. Airport improvements will include much new and updated data from Robin Peel, approach lighting will factor in displaced thresholds correctly, much improved airport surface smoothing code, other various bug fixes, and windsocks, towers, and rotating beacons. Terrain improvements will include SRTM data for Eurasia and Africa (in addition to North and South America), and fewer artifacts from long 2d polygon line segments. I also plan to include accurate radio towers for the USA (lacking any data for the rest of the world.)

June 27, 2004. The Xenos soccer club wins it's first game of the season. The score was 3-2 over the General Mills Cheerios. We've been steadily improving each game (which is easy considering how horribly we started out.) :-)

June 25, 2004. Today is our 10th wedding anniversary. Ruth, I love you now more than ever! Where's my green shirt with the collar?

June 24, 2004. Amelia (4.3 months old) graduates to the exer-saucer. This let's her sit up and spin around and play with a few toys. Hannah (3.4 years old) spreads jelly on bread all by herself.

June 23, 2004. ATC Flight Simulators delivers it's first ATC-710M (single engine/FAA certified) FTD.

May 28, 2004. I did a complete overhaul of the navaid db system to natively support Robin's nav data file format.

May 28, 2004. Last weekend in a moment of weakness I bought another R/C airplane off ebay (combining local pickup with a nice sunday drive with a good deal ... what are you going to do?) It is a Tiger Bipe 40 ARF and much of the assembly work was already done. I have polished off most of the remaining tasks including cowl installation. I still need to install the wheel pants, canopy, and a couple stickers but those are all minor cosmetic things. Today (fri) I went out over my lunch break and took it on it's maiden flight. (And it still is all in one piece.) :-)

May 19, 2004. Happy Birthday to me! Don't ask how old. I feel the same as I did yesterday. :-)

May 18, 2004. (update) I am nearly finished with my Mariner project. Remaining tasks include: (1) I may need to do some work sealing the nose hatch and the wing saddle. (2) I might take another stab at fiddling with the flaperon setting on my radio although that's more of a curiosity than any thing I would need for flight. (3) Fly.
I started up the engine in my front yard this evening to see if it would run (I bought it off ebay) and to try to get it adjusted a bit. The engine took a couple tries to get going, but once it fired, it ran very smooth and very strong. It should be a great performer for this airplane. I wouldn't be suprised if I could take off from dry grass, but I didn't want to try that tonight in my yard. :-) I may want to tweak things later (especially in terms of water proofing) but I think I'm about ready to go flying!

May 17, 2004. (update) The land cover issue has been traced to the tgvpf tool ... then further traced (I believe) to the lower level tgChopPolygon() routine which wasn't designed to handle multi-contoured polgyons or polygons with holes. The good news is that I believe the problem is fixed. The bad news is that I will need to completely reprocess the VMAP0 data for the entire world.

I am working on a complete world rebuild for FlightGear. Airport improvements will include much new and updated data from Robin Peel, approach lighting will factor in displaced thresholds correctly, much improved airport surface smoothing code, other various bug fixes, and windsocks, towers, and rotating beacons. Terrain improvements will include SRTM data for Eurasia and Africa (in addition to North and South America), and fewer artifacts from long 2d polygon line segments. I also plan to include accurate radio towers for the USA (lacking any data for the rest of the world.) Due to some extra debugging needed (Airport surface work, and there some missing land cover issues has developed that needs to be resolved) so I am setting the estimated date of completion to June 7, 2004.

May 13, 2004. (update) I am nearly finished with my Mariner project. Remaining tasks include: (1) A bit of work to make the wing fit better in the saddle. (2) I need to reinforce the wing bolt area. (3) I need to do some work sealing the nose hatch and the wing saddle. (4) I might take another stab at fiddling with the flaperon setting on my radio although that's more of a curiosity than any thing I would need for flight. (5) Don't forget to take lots of pictures. :-) (6) Fly.
This is a really nice looking aircraft! I'm hoping to do my first test flight this weekend up near my parents house (weather permitting, and assuming I don't forget some critical piece like the wing bolts or fuel or the battery charger...)

May 13, 2004. (update) I am working on a complete world rebuild for FlightGear. Airport improvements will include much new and updated data from Robin Peel, approach lighting will factor in displaced thresholds correctly, much improved airport surface smoothing code, other various bug fixes, and windsocks, towers, and rotating beacons. Terrain improvements will include SRTM data for Eurasia and Africa (in addition to North and South America), and fewer artifacts from long 2d polygon line segments. I also plan to include accurate radio towers for the USA (lacking any data for the rest of the world.) Due to some extra debugging needed (Airport surface work, and there some missing land cover issues has developed that needs to be resolved) so I am setting the estimated date of completion to May 30, 2004.

May 9, 2004. Major thunderstorms rolled through the area this evening so the Xenos vs. GM Cheerios soccer games was cancelled. You can find schedules and scores at the MRSL website. Xenos plays in the "3rd Red" division.

April 23, 2004. I am looking into adding OpenAL (http://www.openal.org) support to FlightGear. This will give us the ability to (a) handle 16 bit and stereo sounds, (b) hopefully support a larger subset of audio platforms and hardware, and (c) do spatial audio some time in the future.

April 8, 2004. The single engine flight sim project I am working on for ATC Flight Simulators has officially received FAA Level 3 FTD certification!

February 18, 2004 - 6:12AM. Welcome Amelia Esther, 8lb 1oz, 19 1/2" !!! Here is the official announcement with pictures.