Flights to nowhere can be fun

I hadn’t planned on my brief visit to Vancouver for Web Summit’s second annual conference there to include any flying between my landing at Vancouver International Airport Monday and my departure from YVR Thursday morning. But sometimes, your event schedule has a gap just large enough for somebody to pilot a floatplane through.

That idea of taking an aerial tour of Vancouver got lodged in my head at Web Summit Vancouver last May–when I found myself distracted by aircraft departing from and arriving at Vancouver Harbour Flight Centre, next to the convention center and its bitmapped-orca Douglas Coupland sculpture.

And as I was nearing the end of my first five appointments on an overscheduled Tuesday, I realized that a) I had almost two hours before my next appointment and b) the weather looked ideal for flying, at least compared to Wednesday morning’s forecast of clouds and possibly rain. So I booked a 20-minute tour flight on Harbour Air’s site at what seemed a workable time before I had to walk a few blocks away for an offsite panel.

The flight on this 67-year-old de Havilland DHC-3T Turbine Otter was what I hoped and expected it to be, going from my experience taking a floatplane ride above Seattle out of Lake Union 13 years ago. Taking to the air and returning from it without solid ground below the wing feels like cheating at flying; being in a plane small enough where you can see the pilot adjust the controls and almost immediately see and feel the aircraft respond provides an extraordinary demonstration of aerodynamics at work; the views from a large and non-pressurized window maybe 1,000 feet above ground are magical.

(The timing of this particular flight was less than magical, in the sense that it seemed that Harbour consolidated its 3 and 3:15 p.m. tour flights into one that departed at 3:20 and then left me hustling to get to my panel. I’ll expand on my avoidable scheduling fail in this Sunday’s weekly recap.)

Avgeeks sometimes call out-and-back bookings like this “flights to nowhere,”1 and I’ve now taken enough of them to realize I may have a bit of a flying problem.

My introduction, as far as I can remember, took place at a 1997 air show at College Park’s airport–the oldest continuously-operated airfield in the world–at which I recall paying $20 in cash for a flight in what years-later searching suggests was a Stearman Model 75 Kaydet biplane.

I then went almost 16 years before the next such flight, my Lake Union joyride–and then followed that days later with a balloon excursion above Sonoma County, Calif., that remains my slowest-ever aviation experience.

2014 bought a work-related flight to nowhere, a hop out of Austin during SXSW on the inflight WiFi operator Gogo’s business jet. That company invited me to try out the ground-to-air connectivity on this Canadair CL-600 by texting people, so I taunted a friend on the ground with “I’m texting you from a private jet. How are you?” and got the reply I deserved.

I had another Gogo flight to AUS and back in 2016 on the 737-500 that Gogo had acquired in the meantime, on which I saw a travel journalist successfully ask the pilots for a chance to experience takeoff in the cockpit jumpseat. That led me to make the same request before another Gogo flight on that 737 in 2017, treating me to an EWR-departure experience unlike any other.

In 2019, a friend took my wife and I on a tour above Sonoma County in his Diamond Star DA40 single-engine, four-seat aircraft. That remains my smallest-plane experience, and the only one in which I got to touch the controls. Briefly.

In 2021, I had my loudest-plane experience when I spent $450 to fly on a 1945-vintage B-25 bomber out of Hagerstown, Md., my only flight to date to allow a view from a tail gunner’s seat.

And in 2023, JSX treated me and other invited journalists to a DAL-DAL hop to try out Starlink WiFi on an Embraer 145.

The last two years tacked on ORD-ORD and LAX-LAX flights courtesy of United Airlines to test their deployment of Starlink on an Embraer 175 and then a Boeing 737. And with this week’s joyride above British Columbia’s metropolis, I have to accept that I’ve developed a moderately expensive habit here.

Which is okay with me.

Sydney golang folks: a colleague of mine has put a ton of effort into organising the next #golang Sydney meetup. Please consider coming along to support!

It's on the 21 May 2026, 6 pm in North Sydney.

Free to attend, details on Golang-Syd's Meetup page: https://www.meetup.com/golang-syd/

#sydney #syd #aus #australia

Live More Ethical Beauty is looking for web developer!

“A few months ago we added feedback forms and consent to data collection forms to help us get better at what we do. We are zapping and recording more zapping-data than any single entity in the country. Its such a cool opportunity and I wanted to use that to make things better for everyone, I want to reinvent the gold standard for treatment.

Instead, I mostly got people commenting on how much of an eyesore the website is 😂😂. …and like hey, I don’t disagree 😂😂😂.

But rebuilding or relocating the website is a super expensive project, and I try to run things at just barely profitable in favour of keeping things as accessible as possible for the community and making sure the staff are paid well for their skill. Which unfortunately doesnt leave a huge amount of discretionary funds.

But it doesnt leave nothing either.

I would like to pay someone to redesign our website, to make it more user friendly. Mostly just the aesthetics, the underlying machinery will probably have to stay consistent. This would probably involve a bit of colaboration with me on what the site needs for technical and business reasons too.

But.. making it less ugly really would be great.

The builder we use is Wix, not because its the best, but because its cheap enough*, it worked well enough** for complex scheduling and its what I had access to when it was just lil ol me zapping on my own and I had no idea how to actualy make a website or run a business*.

If there is someone out there who would love to lend their skills and their time to helping us with this. Can you send me an email, maybe with a quick little mockup of what you had in mind and how much you’d like to be paid to [email protected].

I tried remaking one myself and, i am just not that gal 🙂‍↔️🙂‍↔️🙂‍↔️

Or! If you’re just way smarter than me at these things, and have an idea how to do a big overhaul on a relatively modest budget, I would love to hear your ideas.

[email protected]

its not the cheap anymore 🥲 * 98% of the time it works fine, 2% of the time its chaos * lmao, i still dont know how to do either of these things.”

Post source:

https://www.instagram.com/p/DYEH_EqEfX0/?igsh=MXJtd2sxbGpkbm55dw==

Nationals MP vows to bring in legislation to remove some protections for transgender people

Alison Penfold, who represents the New South Wales seat of Lyne, has announced she’ll put forward a private members bill next session to change the laws.

Penfold outlined her intentions to Sky News presenter Peta Credlin, who has also been a prominent campaigner against the current laws.

“This is an important issue in my community and across Australia.” Penfold said, but she admitted she had little hope of actually changing the laws while Labor was in government.

Ruling upheld after transgender woman excluded from female-only app

A court ruling that the exclusion of transgender woman Roxanne Tickle from a female-only app was discriminatory has been upheld.

Ms Tickle has been awarded $20,000 in damages in the case against the Giggle for Girls app and its CEO Sall Grover.

A judge previously ruled Ms Tickle was discriminated against due to her gender identity after her access to the social media platform was restricted in 2021.

Today on Lilith puts her blorbos through the AU machine again: (*readies the Lycanthropy beam*)

(also i figure doppio would mistake this as sleepwalking before he meets up with diavolo until he manages to transform while fully conscious and without any silver items on his person and has to deal with bouts of species confusion and feral confused shenanigans)

...forgive the quality of this, I drew it with a short 2mm pencil lead.

#aus #werewolfAU #jjba #doppio