Jason's Notes About Stuff

On Monday, July 26th there was a terrible tragedy. Two small planes collided with each other in mid-air. One of the planes landed safely, but the other crashed, killing two people. This accident is very near and dear to me, as it happened at the flight school I've been training at the past 8 months. In fact, Mel and I flew in  TOD -- the plane that crashed -- just one day earlier. It's difficult to fathom how this accident happened. It was a clear, mostly sunny day with not much wind. Excellent flying conditions. The planes were all very well maintained, and the school has a superb safety culture. Students are well-trained. The official accident investigation is underway, and will probably take 6-8 months to complete. In the meantime, my heart goes out to the families involved, and all of the staff and students at the school. Related Articles: http://tvnz.co.nz/national-news/flight-school-closes-collision-probed-3675483 http://www.stuff.co.nz/manawatu-stand

Lots of milestones lately. Almost missed this one! It's been about a year since I unveiled my georeferenced online classified site, BuyMyStuff.com . It's funny. The first thing people always say to me when I explain the site is, "Looks nice, but doesn't Craigslist already own that space?" Despite what some may think, I did perform a bit of research on my competition prior to launch -- although not a whole lot :) What I found was actually quite interesting. Although Craigslist dominates online classifieds in the United States, a site called Kijiji has most of the Canadian market. Since then, I've learned that the international classifieds site market is extremely fragmented . It's difficult to get exact numbers, but using Google and Compete, you can get a rough idea of market leaders. For example, here's the top classifieds sites in Australia:  http://siteanalytics.compete.com/tradingpost.com.au+gumtree.com.au+ozfreeonline.com/ After lo

First flight: November 5, 2009 Obtained PPL: July 10, 2010 Total Duration: 8 months Flying hours: 70.7 total Learning to fly. What an amazing adventure. I have to admit, I originally thought it would just be a fun little hobby, but rest assured, it takes a good bit of time, money, and determination. My initial estimate was to complete my training in 5 months, finishing in March. This was extended due to two major holidays and a nasty flu bug near the end. A very important consideration in flying is the concept of "currency" or "recency". In fact, for your flying license to be valid, you must have flown a certain number of hours within a certain amount of time. This varies from country to country. It's amazing how quickly you can forget things. Even taking a week off from flying can set you back a lesson or two. If you want to learn to fly in the least amount of time possible, it's important that you don't have large breaks between y