craschworks

http://www.sailinganarchy.com/innerview/2003/daveculp.htm

After visiting your web site, www.kiteship.com you seem very focused on Commercial marine applications for kite use. How will kite use benefit the Commercial Marine Industry?

DC
In studying attempts to bring back commercial sailing ships in the 1980's, it struck me that they were doomed to fail for the same reasons commercial sail failed in the 19th century. The cost of the equipment, expressed as a rate of amortization, was far higher than powered vessels, even including their fuel. Second, the fundamental inability to schedule wind power plays havoc with effectively utilizing expensive ships. Motor sailing was and is possible to fix this, but requires parallel systems on the boat-wind plus diesel-at even higher total cost.

Kites, on the other hand, can be added to existing ships. They take up no deck space, require minimal retro-fitting, need no ballast, fit under bridges and can be taken in out of the weather when not in use. They can be taken off the boat for maintenance and even used on a second boat when/if adverse or no wind is expected aboard the first. These factors dramatically decrease the capital cost of the sailing rig, thus the amortization rate. If added to existing vessels, especially if the vessels are partially depreciated already, it becomes very cost effective to fit a single ship with both power (which it has) and kites (which are cheap). It can then pure sail, motor sail or straight motor, as conditions dictate. I wrote a paper on the subject, http://www.dcss.org/kitetugs.html in which I suggested such an arrangement might become cost effective when diesel fuel hits about $1/gal.

KiteShip has just signed a Letter of Intent with the cruise ship company Adventure Spa Cruises (www.adventurespacruise.com) to design and build an 8000 sq ft kite and to use it to pull a 200' commercial cruise ship. The intent is to showcase environmentally friendly fuel saving technology, further develop kites and control systems for ever larger applications, and to demonstrate to Adventure Spa Cruise customers a proactive stance regarding potential near-term fuel price spikes and shortages. We are excited about the prospects for this technology and look forward to a joint venture with Adventure Spa Cruises.

Educated at Stanford and UC Davis, Dave Culp began professionally designing kite powered boats in 1978 at the age of 24. Culp-designed kite boats were entered at the Johnny Walker Speed Weeks in 1978–1981 and the Schmirnoff Speed Weeks in 1986–1988 in Weymouth, England. Culp also co-designed and built a rigid winged 28 foot hydrofoil, a dozen kite powered craft between 14-30 feet and the OutLeader Brand rule-legal spinnaker replacement kites for America's Cup Class and other yachts.

Author/co-author of 7 monographs on kite sailing for yachts and commercial vessels published between 1989 and 2002 by AIAA, SNAME, AYRS, ASES and ISES. Since co-forming KiteShip in 1996, Culp has specialized in large vessel systems.

Culp has expertise in both inshore and blue water sailing, kite and vessel design, systems design, marine mechanics and project management, as well as boatbuilding in wood, steel and composites.

You've built a reputation for yourself in the speed sailing world. What aspect of this racing niche gets your blood moving? Is it the raw speed? The engineering development? The camaraderie? Can you see a day when there will be a kite boat class?

DC
Kite boats are already allowed in speed sailing. A world record was set and held for 7 years by a kite powered Tornado, back in the early 1980's (http://www.cobrakite.com/jaclad.html ) Last week (April 19-24) Pascal Maka hosted a kite board-only WSSRC-sanctioned 500 meter speed event during the Mondal duVent in Leucate.

Sailcraft design, and especially speed sailing design, is a wonderful mix of art and science. I can still say “my boat can clean yours' clock” and I just might be right. There is no convergence of design in the speed sailing field at all. 5' kite boards sail at an even pace with 125' super maxi cats-and also with hydrofoils, planning triscaths and simple windsurfers. It's an exciting design space to work in.

It seems that to break a soft water speed sailing record, one must either employ a hard wing sail, twin rigs, canting rig or a kite? What are the strengths and weaknesses of these approaches?

DC
There are 2 fundamental requirements for high speed sailing-really large amounts of power and low drag. Kite boats and boards-even more so than wind surfers or maxi cats-have an ability to generate and to harness enormous amounts of power relative to their weight and size-and the wind they can sail in. Solid wing boats, on the other hand, can have extremely high overall L/D, through drag reduction. One approach is brute power-often in very high winds; the other is finesse; Yellow Pages Endeavour set her current record while sailing at nearly three times the wind speed. Both approaches are valid; perhaps next week we will see a flip-flop of regimes.

In your opinion, what speeds are realistically obtainable in soft water speed sailing under the current rules? Does a one week format not provide enough opportunity for the proper conditions to develop? When is Speed Week?

DC
With suitable budget and current technology, 100-120 kph (55-65 kts) is achievable, in my opinion. Above that is also possible, but will require some fundamental advances in design philosophy. Changes that are already proposed, almost surely, but not yet tried. Kite power can likely achieve these speeds, though other approaches can as well.

A one-week fixed event is not the likeliest opportunity to set a world record, but it is an extremely cost effective way to have a good chance of doing so. In the past 5 years or so, the Weymouth event has delivered 4-6 world-class weather days for potential records; actually quite a good ratio. The best likelihood for records remains the custom event, where one or several boards or boats wait on the beach, sometimes for many weeks with all crew, timers and officials paid to do nothing while waiting for weather.

In the meantime, Speed Week remains useful and a great deal of fun. I'd say it is more the available budget of boats and boards that attend rather than the venue that has prevented a new record being set there, although revolutionary boats and concepts continue to try to prove me wrong. The organizers put on a very professional event and it is cheap to attend, considering. Weymouth Speed Week is 4-10 October, 2003. See http://www.speedsailing.com/

Kites seem to come in different designs. Flatter blade style kites, more common on boards, to larger rounded belly kites more along the lines of what you developed for Oracle/BMW racing. What are the primary differences and benefits between these configurations?

DC
There are 5 major kite types used for traction. Inflatable tube kitesurf kites, all of which are derivatives of a single kite, are powerful and readily relaunchable after a crash. However, ram air foils and rigid framed kites are faster (up to 70 kts) and can have a higher L/D although they are not as convenient to launch and recover. As kite boarding matures from the current focus on tricks and jumps towards serious racing, expect more and more innovation, as opposed to the current knock-off scene. There is a newer kite from New Zealand, which looks like a cross between inflatable tube and ram air foils which shows considerable promise. Very high L/D, relaunchability and a large range of depower make it a potentially hot ticket, for both boards and boats.

KiteShip's OutLeader kite is a new type of kite entirely. Because of the requirement to keep it legal as a spinnaker, and the need only to beat conventional spinnakers' performance, we developed a kite like no other. We know of no other controllable traction kite which simultaneously has only 3 lines, no bridles, no inflatable chambers, no battens or spars, no ram air or double surfaces, no stiffeners or padding and no discontinuous surfaces, which is why we have applied for a patent for it. The OutLeader has a high lift coefficient and a relatively low L/D-both similar to conventional spinnakers. In addition, it is as easy to fly as a spinnaker; another parameter we felt was needed to penetrate this market. (Remember, a kite is flying in 3 dimensions, with 3 axes of control to screw up.)

The OutLeader takes advantage of smoother, stronger winds aloft-I find many sailors are fundamentally unaware of the dirtiness and turbulence of the wind they sail in. We take it for granted. Flying your rig for the first time above the soup you've spent you life fighting is an epiphanic moment. Add to that the ability to “work” the kite, flying it faster than the boat-and your competition's spinnaker-is sailing and you have an unbeatable combination.

The world took notice when Oracle/BMW launched their kite in the Hauraki Gulf. Some thought it was Psychological warfare, others thought it had real potential. Why didn't Oracle/BMW Racing employ the technology in actual racing?

DC
It was a straight psy-ops stir-up in the end. The project was terminated several months earlier. Though we finally met every parameter Oracle set for the kite's performance, it was decided at a high level that there was not enough time left to build a stable of kites and to train the crew in flying and especially in tactics. It was too bad, really, since they had budgeted money for the ramp-up and we provided the technology, but time did us in. Time is the ultimate currency in America's Cup racing and even Oracle had a finite amount of it. In their press release, one of their head designers said, “If we'd had more time we would have been able to use the kite in the LV Cup.”

Via two-boat testing we demonstrated fairly conclusively that the combination of higher winds aloft and the power multiplying maneuvering of the kite-we coined the term “dynamic sheeting” a number of years ago-really does deliver more speed to the boat, even in highly restricted classes. With practice and quality crew work, it is likely to be much faster.

You had once mentioned to me that launching, jibing and retrieval were not complicated with a (kite) rig. Can you go through each exercise and explain the basics of how the boat is rigged along with techniques for each discipline??

DC
Launching and retrieval are straightforward. There is a video on our website which shows several views of a launch. See: www.KiteShip.com. We often use a fourth line-the spinnaker retrieval line-to both launch and retrieve the kite. It is attached near the leading edge of the kite and taken to the masthead. On hoisting-typically without yarning-the 3 sheets are trimmed and the kite fills, flying up and slackening the retrieval line. At this point, we keep that line slack and just fly from the 3 lines-the retrieval line is not allowed to carry any sailing load. The kite begins flying close to the boat-sheets perhaps half a boat length long. We then ease all 3 lines, moving the kite out to 3-5 boat lengths and go for it. Retrieval is similar; the retrieval line is trimmed smartly, which pulls the shape out of the kite, de-powering it, and slackens the 3 sheets. If the kite is close enough to the boat at the time, that's all that is done. The retrieval line takes the head of the kite up the mast and the crew bags the sail tail-first. If the kite is on long lines when retrieval is started, skillfully following with the sheets will keep the kite lifting slightly, allowing retrieval from unlimited long lines. In addition, we have an “abort” technique that deposers the kite 100%, allowing retrieval even under water. Knock on wood-we have yet to damage a kite trawling with it.

Since retrieval happens at minimal load and well outside the working sail, we believe there may be merit in dousing very late, even after the mark. We can also launch the kite without the mast or a halyard at all, but with more difficulty-we are happy to use the boat's equipment as long as it is there.

Gybing is a neat trick, as we need to leave both the stick and forestay in the boat. Frankly, I'd rather remove both-it makes life much easier. In the end, it is not too difficult to work with both, using either lazy sheets or tweakers to effectively move the kite's attachment points around the boat-and around the forestay.

Unlike a symmetric spin which is partially depowered during a gybe-or an asymmetric, which is fully depowered, a kite is powered up during the maneuver. You fly the kite through the gybe-it actually moves faster during the gybe than during sailing-meaning it is delivering more power at this time than it normally does. Gybing is a technique long used by kite powered vehicles to accelerate the craft. Gives a new meaning to “gybing duel” eh?

We use the same line tweaking method to balance the yacht-we can move the effective attachment point anywhere along the boat's length, balancing the helm under any condition of course or rig power. Since all lines run from the deck, not the masthead, roundups and spinouts are a thing of the past. When a kite powered boat gets really powered up, it just goes faster.

I can't see kites ever becoming mainstream in buoy course racing due to the amount of room needed between yachts and the area needed to get the full effect of the kite. On the other hand, it seems kites would produce a huge advantage in distance ocean racing such as the Transpac, Trans Atlantic crossings, Marblehead to Halifax, etc. Do kites comply with the rules in regards to sails being used in these races?

DC
We went to great lengths to build a legal spinnaker under both ISAF and IACC rules. Though the acid test-surviving a protest-was never taken, Oracle kept the AC measurers in close contact throughout the development-much like TNZ did with their hula-and received a final “go” from their offices. We assume that any class based on these regimens will find the kite allowable. However, it would be ridiculously easy to outlaw kites, either straight up or through subterfuge in rule writing. Classes are going to have to want to use them; they are not meant to be rule cheaters.

As to buoy racing-and match racing for that matter-I believe kites are a bit misunderstood. It is common in kite land sailing to enter dozens of kite buggies in a single race without significant mishaps -see http://home.tiscali.be/kitebuggy/hardelot.html . These buggies are sailing at 20-50 kts only a few feet from each other, yet mark roundings are no more hectic than similarly crowded roundings in sailboat races. All the kite lines are parallel to each other. The kites are very maneuverable; even high speed passes and crosses rarely result in trouble. There are a few three-dimensional right of way rules added, and racers do make mistakes, but it is nothing like the fustercluck many imagine it to be.

There are significant tactical advantages to flying kites instead of spinnakers. The obvious, relating to when a yacht has crossed a finish line or reached the two boat length circle at a mark, probably needs to be rethought. Think hull position, not rig. I've been asked what happens when the kite boat is burdened, must stay clear of her competition, and is “attacked” by the burdening yacht. First, the kite can be flown up to about 65 degrees, requiring a very close pass to foul it. Second, I mentioned that the kite attachment point can be tweaked to anywhere on the boat. I failed to point out that this could be back up the mast itself when needed. At the other end of things, when the kite boat is the burdening boat, it has the ability to fly its kite down very low, easily low enough to touch the burdened boat with kite or lines, forcing a foul. Also, the yacht can gybe the kite without gybing the hull or mainsail-in fact it is probably possible to barberhaul the main and sail far alee, extending the meaning of “starboard” to new realms. When the kite is taken across the wind window in a low pass it exhibits great power-and leaves a huge wake in its path; related to the wind energy extracted, not to the size of the kite. So, not only can an upwind kite boat shadow a downwind yacht far away from its “normal” shadow, the shadow can be hugely powerful and far reaching. Oh, and of course a downwind kite boat can't be shadowed at all-even if the upwind boat has a kite, it is not possible to keep the moving target in shadow.

After visiting your web site, www.kiteship.com you seem very focused on Commercial marine applications for kite use. How will kite use benefit the Commercial Marine Industry?

DC
In studying attempts to bring back commercial sailing ships in the 1980's, it struck me that they were doomed to fail for the same reasons commercial sail failed in the 19th century. The cost of the equipment, expressed as a rate of amortization, was far higher than powered vessels, even including their fuel. Second, the fundamental inability to schedule wind power plays havoc with effectively utilizing expensive ships. Motor sailing was and is possible to fix this, but requires parallel systems on the boat-wind plus diesel-at even higher total cost.

Kites, on the other hand, can be added to existing ships. They take up no deck space, require minimal retro-fitting, need no ballast, fit under bridges and can be taken in out of the weather when not in use. They can be taken off the boat for maintenance and even used on a second boat when/if adverse or no wind is expected aboard the first. These factors dramatically decrease the capital cost of the sailing rig, thus the amortization rate. If added to existing vessels, especially if the vessels are partially depreciated already, it becomes very cost effective to fit a single ship with both power (which it has) and kites (which are cheap). It can then pure sail, motor sail or straight motor, as conditions dictate. I wrote a paper on the subject, http://www.dcss.org/kitetugs.html in which I suggested such an arrangement might become cost effective when diesel fuel hits about $1/gal.

KiteShip has just signed a Letter of Intent with the cruise ship company Adventure Spa Cruises (www.adventurespacruise.com) to design and build an 8000 sq ft kite and to use it to pull a 200' commercial cruise ship. The intent is to showcase environmentally friendly fuel saving technology, further develop kites and control systems for ever larger applications, and to demonstrate to Adventure Spa Cruise customers a proactive stance regarding potential near-term fuel price spikes and shortages. We are excited about the prospects for this technology and look forward to a joint venture with Adventure Spa Cruises.

What does the future hold for kite technology?

DC
Thanks for the softball! The future holds huge potential. Kites might add significant advantage to both casual buoys and to match racing, offering both greater speed and more complex tactical duels for existing boats in existing classes. They are safer than spins and their gear is often cheaper, never more expensive. Without candor, I think they are as revolutionary as spinnakers themselves, and have the power to fundamentally alter yacht racing in a similar way.

Big kites are exciting to watch and highly photogenic, something the new America's Cup protocol seems to want. Kites on offshore yachts will very likely raise the bar on all ocean records-in my view kites are inevitable for this reason alone. Imagine a Maiden 2 or a PlayStation with a 15,000 sf kite in the Southern Ocean.

In the commercial vessel area, kites hold the potential to change the way we move goods across oceans. They are eco-friendly and sufficiently cost effective to herald a return to sail that the Earth's finite petroleum supplies mandate. They can-and will-be computer controlled and auto-piloted; it is KiteShip's core business to lead the world's shipping in this direction.

Thanks Dave!!

Thanks for the interview.

John Zisa

http://www.adventurespacruise.com/

“The Price

Prices starting at under $60,000 for outright ownership and rights to occupy and/or otherwise use your own cabin in any way you wish for the full life of the ship. Where else can you buy a home for less than $60,000? It sounds too good to be true, right? Well, it is true.
“

Maintenance fees:

http://adventurespacruise.com/site/maintenance_fees.asp

Take A Cruise Ship Vacation That Lasts A Lifetime

Cruise ship vacations are among the most popular in the world. And no wonder… you can book vacation packages that take you to exotic ports-of-call such as the Mediterranean, Black Sea, Caribbean, Gulf of Mexico, and Baltic Sea. When on vacation cruises, you’re lavished with exquisite cuisine and luxurious appointments. Many people wish they could stay a lifetime. And now you can!

The ship can be your full-time residence or with a “fractional” interest your home for 75%, 50%, 25%, 10% of the year or for 2 weeks a year.

While onboard, you’ll enjoy all the other services you would expect on a cruise ship. Your every need is attended to by a highly trained, professional staff whose goal is singular… to insure your comfort and enjoyment of life on a cruise ship traveling the world. You will dine on gourmet meals prepared and served by your own staff. You will live a life that most people only dream of.

“Ordinary” cruise ship vacations can't compare

… with ownership of your own home aboard a luxury cruise ship. Imagine having your own private yacht. The world is your playground. What do you want to do? Where do you want to go? How about strolling along the oceanfront in Athens, Greece and the Greek Islands? Discovering your own treasure in Alexandria, Egypt? Striking it rich in Monte Carlo, Monaco? Dancing the tango ‘til dawn in Barcelona, Spain? Or visiting countless other fascinating cities?

Each port-of-call on your lifetime vacation cruise offers ample opportunity for exploration and adventure! Just a few activities on this extensive list include snorkeling among coral gardens, scuba diving to shipwrecks inhabited by tropical fish, and skimming across the water on a 12-meter racing yacht.

Airborne excursions include helicopter and seaplane flights for panoramic views of island-dotted waters, boat trips to secluded beaches, and river rafting through mangrove forests.

We can arrange excursions for you to almost anywhere in the world.

Not A Vacation Cruise or Spa Vacation – It's Your Permanent Residence

We do not sell ships or cabins on ships. This is not a time share vacation or a time share cruise. It is your opportunity to purchase a “fraction” of a cruise ship. As a fractional owner, you and your fellow shipmates actually own the cruise ship. You’re the boss. Ownership of a fraction of the ship will entitle you to full-time, year-round use of your cabin. Adventure Spa Cruise provides the structure, the legal framework, the representation, and the ability for you to become a partial owner of a cruise ship. You will be the direct buyer, reaping substantial savings.

Active Retirement Living aboard A Luxury Cruise Ship

CRUISE SHIP CONDO'S LLC is the developer. They locate suitable vessels, calculate costs to upgrade, license, commission, staff and manage the vessel. After the purchase they will assist with ‘start-up’ activities and provide operating and financial oversight. WORLD YACHT CLUB Ltd, like a condominium association ashore, is an Association of Owners. All Owners will own shares in WYC and the ships, appurtances and reserves. It is your company. You will recommend the itinerary and the general operation of the ship through committees and a board of directors elected of and by the members. It is more like a private yacht than a cruise ship. We have a more leisurely pace spending more time at each port so you can learn more about the area, find the shops and local restaurants and where the great beaches are located. You will have time for water sports – sailing, snorkeling, scuba diving, jet skis, ocean kayaks and exploring.

Active retirement living is an exciting possibility! Imagine the postcards and photos you'll be sending home to your friends and relatives. You and your partner will be on a never-ending adventure that redefines the phrase 'retirement living’, as you fulfill your dream to travel the world!

Retirement homes and other forms of retirement housing can't compare to the extraordinary lifestyle you'll enjoy while venturing to exotic ports-of-call, and enjoying the luxury appointments your own, personal cabin offers. It's an exciting retirement living opportunity! Think it's out of your budget? You'll be surprised to find the cost to actually be much lower than many of the better quality retirement housing options available today. And the security of living aboard a cruise vessel is an added bonus.

The Price

Prices starting at under $60,000 for outright ownership and rights to occupy and/or otherwise use your own cabin in any way you wish for the full life of the ship. Where else can you buy a home for less than $60,000? It sounds too good to be true, right? Well, it is true.

Not Ready To Retire, Yet?

Young people do not have to wait for retirement to live a life of luxury. Many working people today can telecommute or work via computer while living the “cruise ship vacation” life. You can stay in contact with your business via the Internet from right aboard the cruise ship. Many are investing in a stateroom for future use, paying introductory prices and paying for it with rental income.

Contact Us

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Telephone: (801) 485-5273

Investors click here. See the amenities available. Look over the excursions a

http://www.wired.com/news/technology/0,1282,66872,00.html

Need a Building? Just Add Water

By Rowan Hooper Rowan Hooper | Also by this reporter
02:00 AM Mar, 15, 2005 EST

In a world with millions of refugees, numerous war zones and huge areas devastated by natural disaster, aid agencies and militaries have long needed a way to quickly erect shelters on demand.

Soon, there will be such a method. A pair of engineers in London have come up with a “building in a bag” — a sack of cement-impregnated fabric. To erect the structure, all you have to do is add water to the bag and inflate it with air. Twelve hours later the Nissen-shaped shelter is dried out and ready for use.

The structure is intended to improve upon two current methods of providing emergency shelter: tents, which provide only poor protection, or prefabricated, portable buildings that are expensive and difficult to transport. Dubbed the Concrete Canvas, the shelter incorporates the best aspects of both forms. It is almost as easy to transport as a tent, but is as durable and secure as a portable building.

The inventors are engineers pursuing a master's degree in industrial design engineering at the Royal College of Art in London. William Crawford and Peter Brewin came up with the idea when they were thinking of an entry for the annual British Cement Association competition for new and innovative uses of concrete.

They thought of an inflatable concrete tent after hearing about inflatable structures that are built around broken gas pipes to carry out repairs.

“This gave us the idea of making a giant concrete eggshell for a shelter, using inflation to optimize the structure for a compressive load,” said Brewin. “Eggs are entirely compressive structures with enormous strength for a very thin wall.”

The idea won second prize in the cement association competition in 2004. Crawford and Brewin, who are both engineers and have worked, respectively, for the Ministry of Defense and as an officer in the British Army, were also inspired by the plaster-of paris-impregnated bandages used to set broken bones.

Crawford said he and Brewin have been developing the concept for 16 months and made eight full prototypes at one-eighth scale.

The inventors filed a patent, which covers the concept of creating structures using a cement-impregnated cloth bonded to an inflatable inner surface. Full-scale production is planned and could take off soon, as Concrete Canvas is short-listed for the New Business Challenge run by Imperial College London and the Tanaka Business School. The winner of the £25,000 ($48,000) prize will be announced next week.

The idea has already garnered several other awards, including the British Standards Institute Sustainable Design Award. This funded a trip to Uganda last year.

The pair spent a month meeting U.N. agencies and nongovernmental organizations, visiting refugee camps and demonstrating the prototype shelter. The response has been positive.

“If this was available now, we would buy 10 today,” said Monica Castellarnau, program head for Medicins Sans Frontieres in Uganda.

Aid agency chiefs have been impressed by the simplicity and economy of the idea. A bag weighing 230 kilograms (approximately 500 pounds) inflates into a shelter with 16 square meters (172 square feet) of floor space. Cost is estimated at £1,100 ($2,100), while an equivalent-size Portakabin (a type of portable building widely used in the United Kingdom) costs about £4,000 ($7,700). The same-size tent costs about £600 ($1,150).

Concrete Canvas comes folded in a sealed plastic sack. The volume of the sack controls the water-to-cement ratio, eliminating the need for water measurement. You literally just add water.

“The shelter can also be delivered sterile,” said Crawford. “This allows previously impossible surgical procedures to be performed in situ from day one of a crisis.”

Markus Hohl, a lecturer on the Industrial Design Engineering course, praised the successful teamwork of Crawford and Brewin. “They've come up with a design that integrates plastic to inflate the structure and doubles as the inner skin; a wicking fabric that draws the water in and an external resin of concrete which holds the thing together: Concrete Canvas is triple clever.”

Gareth Jones, former product development director of the award-winning vacuum-cleaner maker Dyson, admires the design simplicity and functionality of Concrete Canvas.

“The Concrete Canvas product tackles the key issues of portability, ease of assembly, durability and cost,” he said. “The applications in the humanitarian field are immediate and obvious, but there are many other fields where this technology could successfully be deployed.”

[Women on Waves is early example of the kind of regulatory arbitrage that seasteads will be able to provide, once they're more widespread. ]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/1382412.stm

Monday, 11 June, 2001, 18:51 GMT 19:51 UK
Floating abortion clinic sets sail

The clinic has been set up in a shipping container
A ship carrying an on-board gynaecological clinic has left the Netherlands for Ireland, where it plans to offer abortions to Irish women.
The ship's departure was shrouded in secrecy to dodge demonstrators.

It left without the necessary authorisation from the Dutch authorities to carry out abortions.

The Dutch-registered ship has been paid for by a private Dutch voluntary organisation, Women on Waves.

The group says it wants to offer abortions to women who cannot travel to the UK, the most popular place for Irish women to terminate unwanted pregnancies.

The ship is due to arrive in Dublin on Thursday.

Family planning

While docked it will give out contraceptives and family planning advice.

Anyone wanting an abortion will be ferried outside Ireland's territorial waters.

The clinic's visit to Dublin will make waves
This should ensure that neither the organisers nor any women will be liable to prosecution.

Since 1992 Irish law has recognised the right of women to leave the country and have an abortion elsewhere.

Last year more than 6,000 women visited the UK to terminate pregnancies, according to the Irish Family Planning Association.

Women on Waves was established by Dr Rebecca Gomperts, previously a doctor on a Greenpeace ship, the Rainbow Warrior.

Dr Gomperts said the ship had been fitted with security equipment in case it encountered violent opposition. The clinic was built inside a shipping container so it could be easily moved.

Early abortions only

Ireland will be the ship's first stop. Visits to Brazil and the Philippines are also being considered.

Women on Waves says only pregnancies in their first three months will be terminated on the ship because the risks of any complications are negligible, as long as the operation is performed by an experienced doctor.

Pro-life critics in Ireland – where abortions remain illegal – have described the ship as “a gigantic publicity stunt”.

One pro-life campaigner said Dr Gomperts would be “run out of port” not only by anti-abortion activists, but by politicians too.

This is :

I've read 's journal for over a year. She's funny, smart, and a good writer.

And, for what I expect to be a very limited time, she's available for hire.

So if any of my Atlanta peeps are reading this, as your attorney, I advise you to hire her post haste.

With her support, you will have the power to crush your enemies like ants on a hot sidewalk. Legend suggests that her mere presence will incite a powerful desire to make love with your products.

For example, once bought an Apple iPod.

Apple now control 80% of the mp3 player market.

Coincidence? I think not.

Do you want happy customers? Profits? Then don't delay — hire now.

(P.S. She would also consider relocating to Fort Lauderdale or Chicago.)

Experience

May 2001 January 2006 Kids II, Inc. Alpharetta, GA
Help Desk Manager

• Account manager for outside vendors and customers using the company portal
• Project tracking and management
• Team leader on globally distributed remote office setups
• Responsible for troubleshooting support requests from internal users and international employees
• Set up and implement employee hardware
• Supervise Help Desk Assistants
• Quality assurance and performance testing
• Maintain company website
• IP and PBX phone system programming and equipment troubleshooting
• Provide follow-up training for new hires
• Creation and maintenance of training program using a variety of web and multimedia tools
• Create and manage company communications security policy

Oct. 2000 – May 2001 Bernadette's Salon Atlanta, GA
Front Desk

• Responsible for appointment scheduling and client relations
• Assist in daily inventory responsibilities
• Assist in network repair and installation and maintenance of phone system

Dec. 1999 – May 2000 Smartcasual.com New York, NY
Marketing Manager/Technical Liaison

• Responsible for design and content of over twenty web sites
• Manage team of direct-marketing associates
• Research and develop online marketing strategies
• Team leader of network administration

June 1999 – Dec. 1999 Money.net New York, NY
Technical Contact

• Author of my.money.net's original help and tutorial sections
• Basic web design and consultation
• Beta product testing and evaluation

Education
Kankakee Community College Kankakee, IL

General studies
Iroquois West H.S. Gilman, IL

General studies as well as courses in keyboarding, computer programming, WordPerfect, and MS Office

Technical Skills
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Damn.

http://www.braithwaite-lee.com/weblog/2005/01/what-ive-learned-from-failure.html

Friday, January 07, 2005
What I've learned from failure

I have been fired from more jobs than most people have had.
—Mark Cuban
Why does failure matter?

It's a funny thing. After almost twenty years of drawing a paycheque for creating software, people generally want to hire me because they want me to duplicate the successes I've had. The model seems to be “do the things you've done successfully before, and you'll be successful now.”

My experience is that this has never worked on its own. Success in software development is at least as much about avoiding failure modes as it is about “best practices.” I conjecture it's because software development on a commercial scale is so hard that almost any mistake will sink a project if left uncorrected or even worse, actively encouraged.
“We tend to seek easy, single-factor explanations of success. For most important things, though, success actually requires avoiding many separate causes of failure.
—Jared Diamond
With that in mind, I've taken a little time to jot down some thoughts about situations where I've personally failed. I'm not going to tell you about some theoretical anti-pattern, or relate some broken thing I've fixed, I'm going to share things that caused me to leap from the deck of a burning boat to avoid drowning.
If you decide to run with the ball, just count on fumbling and getting the shit knocked out of you, but never forget how much fun it is just to be able to run with the ball
—Jimmy Buffett
Some of them, in retrospect, would be comical if it wasn't for the human misery, damaged careers, and money wasted on failed projects. Or worse, in my opinion, the opportunity cost of putting good people to work on things that never end up delighting the world. I weep for what might have been.

The four most important causes of failure
Things which matter most must never be at the mercy of things which matter least.
—Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe (1749-1832)
The first thing I've learned from failure is that the four things which matter most are:
The quality of the people doing the development
The expected value of the product to its stakeholders
The fitness of the proposed solution
The quality of project management and expectations communication
In my experience, you need all four working to have a successful project. I've personally failed when even one of those four things was bad and not corrected immediately. If two, three, or all four were wrong, my discovery is that I've been unable to avert disaster. (This list obviously doesn't cover all of the factors needed for business success: I'm just talking about getting the software to ship).

Now that I've learned this, I have four new things to evaluate when placed in charge of a new project. And regardless of what I'm told, I'm going to investigate these four things every time, right away, without fail.

I've never seen a project where strength in one area made up for weaknesses in others. I've never personally seen a great technology platform, for example, that magically enabled low-quality developers to produce commercial-quality results.

And don't talk to me about XP being a magic bullet: all of the good XP teams I've seen happened to have quality developers, a valuable objective, decent technology, and yes, good project management.

People
I think the root of your mistake is saying that macros don't scale to larger groups. The real truth is that macros don't scale to stupider groups.
—Paul Graham on the Lightweight Languages mailing list
I've been involved with strong teams and weak teams, and the weak teams always failed. Weak teams have individuals whose performance is weak. The strongest indication of a weak team is the realization that if you were to quit and start your own business, you wouldn't try to poach any of your colleagues.

Painful experience has taught me some of the signs that a team doesn't have the chops to perform up to par. The first sign of a weak team is poor hiring practices.

Developing software is a difficult job. It requires a panoply of strengths. Hiring good people is never as simple as interviewing three people with “five years of J2EE” on their résumés and making an offer to the best of the three. Strong teams have almost impossibly high hiring standards. Strong teams will always leave a desk empty rather than settling for less than the best.

Another sign of a weak team is poor development hygiene. There are dozens of development practices that seem trivial to the inexperienced outsider or to the manager focusing on “big wins.” Examples of development hygiene include source code versioning, maintenance of an accurate bug or issue database, significant use of automated testing, continuous integration, and specifications that are kept current (whether incredibly detailed or high-level overviews).

One team I audited were not just unwilling, but were actually unable to build a product that was in sustaining development. In other words, the product was in the field, in use by customers, and the team were not able to rebuild it from source. They were issuing all of their bug fixes as patches on their existing binaries. This was not a good sign.

Does this mean that nothing can be done if the team is weak? Not exactly. Some of the time I've had the authority to replace members of the team. I've always had the ability to set an example and suggest practices. But sometimes I've thought that an organization would be unreceptive to calls for change. And for want of courage, projects have been lost.

The bottom line is that when I've failed to recognize weakness in the team and/or failed to take immediate and decisive action to bring the team up to world-class strength, I've failed.
Argue with idiots, and you become an idiot.
—Paul Graham
If you compete with slaves you become a slave.
—Norbert Weiner
I've mentioned that I've failed with weak teams. Would you believe I've compounded this failure by failing with weak stakeholders? Whenever I've had stakeholders who didn't have the horsepower or the will to recognize that a project was in trouble, I've wound up in the E.R. having the brick dust removed from my forehead.
A chicken and a pig decided to open a diner together. The pig asked the chicken what they should call their new restaurant. The chicken suggested “Ham and Eggs.” The pig thought about it for a while, then decided she didn't want any part of the venture. “You,” she told the chicken, “would only be interested in serving breakfast. I'd be committed.”
as told by Ken Schwaber
Getting away from weak teams, another source of failure is the omnipresent threat of “chickens.” A chicken is not necessarily a weak individual, but a sign of a weak management structure. A chicken is an individual who has significant authority over your project, but does not make a personal commitment to the success of the project. Significant authority includes the authority to impose constraints on the team.

Even a single chicken can take a project out. Chickens are a special case of “external dependencies.” Special, because they are often politically entrenched. I've worked with teams where the pay scale was determined by an edit from H.R. They were literally prevented from hiring top talent, and it wasn't a question of budget: they did not have the freedom to replace three mediocre programmers with a two good programmers for the same price.

Another situation involved a team that were continually pestered to incude functionality and architecture for “strategic” reasons by a Business Development person. Although senior management made the importance of the strategic functionality clear, they were unwilling to relax tactical requirements like the ship date or the target revenues. They had to constantly manage the “chicken” in order to succeed.

I've managed around chickens here and there, but I've failed to deliver a successful project whenever I've failed to limit the effect of chickens on the management of projects.

Action
Always dive down into a problem and get your hands on the deepest issue behind the problem. All other considerations are to dismissed as “engineering details”; they can be sorted out after the basic problem has been solved.
—Chris Crawford
The next thing I've learned from my failures is something familiar to the test-driven development crowd. It's mandatory to fail early. You need to know you're in trouble right away. That's essential when taking over an existing project or starting something new. You have to find out how you're doing within weeks. Not quarters, not months. The longer you wait, the more inertia the failure will have.

You have to come in, take over, and establish some incredibly short-term goals and be prepared to take action based on the project's performance. I've learned that there's no such thing as too little time between milestones. Looking back at projects where I've failed, many contained some uncertainty or risk that I didn't address immediately.

In one case there was a critical piece of functionality that was so important the entire architecture was designed around it. The CTO and every developer swore it was the greatest thing since sliced bread. I made a back-of-the-envelope risk calculation and scheduled testing of that functionality to begin three months before the project was to be delivered.

A week before the function was go go into test, the technical lead informed me that it didn't work, had never worked, and that no attempt to fix it would work, because there was a major, glaring flaw that had been overlooked. A rewrite would be required.

The stakeholders agreed and appointed a new team to handle the rewrite. Needless to say, the old team's job security suffered a major hit.

Today, older and wiser, I would demand immediate proof of feasibility of all critical pieces of the product, no matter how obvious things may be to everyone else. I should have said “Great! It's a slam dunk! Wonderful, let's schedule a demo next week.” At least we would have felt the pain early.

Details

Whenever I've allowed the details of a project to escape me, I've failed. On one project, the technical lead was a Ph.D. and refused to describe his work, saying that although I was the managing product development, he wasn't going to try to explain his rarified code or architecture to a layperson.
No, I'm not presponsible for what happened. I'm accountable for how we dealt with it, but I'm not responsible for it.
Julian Fantino
Needless to say, I was unable to ship a successful project. On another project the CEO would ask me the same question every few days: “draw on my whiteboard who's working on what.” I had no trouble with this on that particular project, but looking back there have been projects where I was not tracking people's work on a day to day basis.

And I can tell you, whenever the details of a project have slipped from my grasp, the project has started to drift into trouble. I make no apologies for now insisting on knowing exactly who, what, where, when, and why. There's a big difference between asked to explain your work in detail and being told how to do your job.

My personal experience is that attention to detail has always accompanied successful projects.; losing track of the details has always accompanied failing projects.

The Schedule
In most companies if a good quality project ships late then the managers will still get it in the neck whereas if poor quality project ships on time then the managers say “we did our best – obviously the dev team seem to be of a poor standard”.
—Daniel H Steinberg
Dates are sacred. I've learned this lesson in good times and bad. Stakeholders treasure good dates. Stakeholders despise bad dates and the people who make flawed promises. That would have been me, more than once.

Every time, the lesson has been clear. Don't get the dates wrong. I'll confess: I don't really think Scrum is an order of magnitude more effective than anything else at producing beautiful, world-changing software. It may be worse. But it does produce software every month, month after month.

And every time I've delivered software on schedule milestone after milestone, my influence and standing with stakeholders has grown. And every time I've missed a date, I've suffered, regardless of whether the late software was demonstrably better than what was originally planned for the missed date.
“If documents don't serve to avoid stupid things, mitigate risks or calculate budgets then what are they for?” They're to show you have a “process” and a “paper trail” so that you can get ISO certified. That's all they look for, they don't care if you read them or not.
—Skagg on http://discuss.fogcreek.com/joelonsoftware/
Back to the measurable processes. I've learned from failure that stakeholders like to know what's going on. I hate producing useless documentation. The net result is that I've tried to find the happy medium where I generate weekly management reports on projects.

A management report is something that is used to actually make a decision. Everything else is garbage. I've learned that when I haven't had management reports for a project, failure has resulted. Worse, sometimes I've had documents and metrics that were used to justify bad decisions that sank the ship.

So my lesson from these failures is that every project needs a set of regular reports that contain information you'll actually use to make decisions.

Software
Few projects are cancelled because their designs and implementation weren't complicated enough. Many are cancelled because they become so complicated that no one can understand them anymore; any attempt to change or extend the system results in so many unintended side effects that continuing to extend the system becomes practically impossible.
—Steve McConnell
One of the reasons people associate me with “Agile” development approaches is that I'm always trying to simplify, simplify, simplify. This is because almost every time I added something to a milestone, I've gotten burned. It seems like it's always better to say “just finish what we planned, get that 100% functional, and then we'll add foobars.”

I recently got burned twice in the same project adding functionality in between milestones. Both times I was sure that the changes were low risk. Both times I burned myself. Now I'm licking my wounds and swearing I'll never, ever break my agile principles of restricting scope changes to between increments.
It's important to remember that when you start from scratch there is absolutely no reason to believe that you are going to do a better job than you did the first time. First of all, you probably don't even have the same programming team that worked on version one, so you don't actually have “more experience”. You're just going to make most of the old mistakes again, and introduce some new problems that weren't in the original version.
—http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000069.html
Here's something that I've screwed up repeatedly. Sometimes I've bounced back, sometimes the project has paid the ultimate price. The grand “this time we'll get it right” mantra is absolute garbage.
It had taken 3 years of tuning to get code that could read the 60 different types of FTP servers, those 5000 lines of code may have looked ugly, but at least they worked.
—Lou Montulli, one of the founding engineers of Netscape
Don't talk to me about porting to Java, or new design patterns. If you must refactor, refactor here, and there, and there to solve this, and that, and the other specific problem that has a specific feature or bug attached to it. And show me that you had 100% unit testing coverage on the affected code and completed each refactoring in a day or so and then ran all the unit tests and got a green light.

If you can't do that, you're going to fail. I know it, because I've failed when I didn't do that. And when I cried on a friend's shoulder, he told me “I also made that mistake once, and I suffered the same horrible fate.”

Thinking that a major rewrite is going to solve all of your problems is just revisiting my four things that matter most and planning on having one, the fitness of the proposed solution, overpower defects in the people, expected value, and process. It won't happen.

A major rewrite should produce a major new product that offers an order of magnitude more expected value. And you'll need to be 100% sure your team has the horsepower to get the job done and is going to use a process that can handle the load. I say this because I've tried and failed to rewrite entire applications, and I've taken over other people's rewrite projects and failed there too.

Power
Some days you are the bug, some days you are the windshield.
I've learned a little about politics from failing. What I've learned is that if you stick your neck out and evangelize change, you will be blamed if you do not achieve results. You may or may not care about that. But be aware of the fact that making changes involves spending your personal credibility. If you don't want to lose it, don't ante up: get out of the project.
Don't have good ideas if you aren't willing to be responsible for them.
—Alan Perlis
And if you decide to make changes, have the courage to go 100% with your gut. I've failed more than once when I watered down my convictions in order to appease dissenters. The only thing worse than evangelizing change and failing is looking back and realized you might have succeeded if you'd held firm on your convictions. What a waste!
“Making an employee work and profiting from that work are two different things.”
—Eliyahu Goldratt
I've seen a number of “sweat shops,” and I've worked in several places where long hours and rhinoplastic intimacy with the grind stone were demanded of the team. I can honestly say that hard work makes no long-term difference to failing software development teams.

I disagree with those who say that long hours are 100% detrimental to software development: I''ve seen lots of situations where people worked around the clock, motivated by passion. But those were successful projects.

I've learned that redoubling effort when a project is in trouble has not fixed the project. The conclusion I draw is that although teams have worked long hours on many successful projects, there is no causal relationship between long hours and success (It's another example of the fallacy of “best practices”: copying a single element of a successful project does not guarantee that another project will be improved).

My experience with failing projects is that the exhortation “Ahh, I'm going to have to go ahead and ask you to come in on Sunday, too…” has always been interpreted as punishment, not a meaningful way to fix the project. It has had no effect on under-performing members of the team and tends to strongly demotivate the people who are pulling more than their fair share of the weight.
“It is impossible to sharpen a pencil with a blunt axe. It is equally vain to try to do it with ten blunt axes instead.”
—Edsger Dijkstra
Good luck convincing stakeholders of this. One of the reasons people love to hand out overtime like candy is that hours in the office are measurable. The team's behind? Make them stay until midnight every night. Even if it doesn't work, the executive handing out this order can be sure she can measure compliance.

The bottom line is, it's easy to measure how many axes you're using to sharpen a pencil. When you discover that a blunt axe isn't sharpening the pencil, how do you propose to measure “sharpness”? How do you measure “working smarter”?
If we wish to count lines of code, we should not regard them as lines produced but as lines spent.
—Edsger Dijkstra
So another thing I've learned about failure is that when things start to go wrong, stakeholders want two things:
New processes
A way to measure compliance with the new processes
Overtime meets both criteria nicely, as do other simple panaceas like generating reports with every build or compliance with coding standards.

Fixing failing projects demands lots of things that are easy to measure and some that aren't. I've learned that if you don't control your stakeholder's expectations around change, you'll find yourself fending off demands for things like overtime and reports.

History
Even when my proposals are seen as significant improvements, they are often rejected on the grounds that they are not intuitive. It is a classic Catch-22: The client wants something that is significantly superior to the competition. But if it is to be superior, it must be different. (Typically, the greater the improvement, the greater the difference.) Therefore, it cannot be intuitive, that is, familiar. What the client wants is an interface with at most marginal differences from current practice… that, somehow, makes a major improvement.
—Jef Raskin
When I've been brought in specifically to “work out” a failing project I've failed when I didn't have the authority and support to make major changes. This is saying the same thing I've said several times already, but it needs to be repeated.

Often, the stakeholders have just finished casting someone into the darkness and think that they've cast failure into the darkness with him. Take a moment and look up the definition of the word “scapegoat.” They may have symbolically cleansed the project of sin, but the sins remain, and I have inherited them whenever I've allowed the project to continue to do business as usual.
The most damaging phrase in the language is, “It's always been done that way.”
—Rear Admiral Grace Hopper
I've heard dozens of variations on the same line (yes, I've failed dozens of times!) The line is “Well, so-and-so failed because he didn't x. But now you're here, you'll get x cleaned up, and we'll start succeeding right away. We were hardly failing, really, a little behind, nothing serious.”

Every time I've been told that, things have ended up being seriously dire. No, it wasn't as simple as implementing monthly sprints or formalizing acceptance tests or nightly builds. The rot went right to the core and the stakeholders were usually (unwittingly) enabling it by not understanding or being in denial of the real problems. When people don't see the depth of the problem, they don't accept the importance of making changes.

It has boiled down to something so simple that you've probably heard it described in jest as the definition of insanity. If a project has been doing things a certain way, and the stakeholders are not 100% happy with the results, doing things substantially the same way will not produce substantial changes in the results.

Finishing
There are two kinds of people in the world: those who finish what they started.
Getting back to failing early, I've learned it's important to completely fail. Get fired. Shoot the project, then burn its corpse. Melt the CVS repository and microwave the backup CDs. When things go wrong, I've often tried to play the hero from start to finish. Guess what? Some projects are doomed no matter what. Some need skills I don't possess. And some need a fresh face.
The best way to fix a bad project is to not be part of it.
—Norman Nunley & Michael Schwern
I've ridden more than one project down in flames, and as painful as it is to 'fess up and admit defeat, it's important to know when to fold your cards and quit. Yes, that sounds defeatist. But most success stories are comebacks from personal failures, not wondrous turn-arounds.

Sometimes you shouldn't finish what you started. Sometimes you shouldn't finish what somebody else started.

Every essay ought to end with a summary. Since this isn't an essay, I'll end with an adaptation of a Taoist story instead of a summary:

“A musician performed a new piece he had written for his best friend. The friend sat in wonder and listened to the entire piece. When it was over, he nodded and told the musician that the music was wonderful. But what, he wondered, did the piece mean?

“The musician nodded at this question and bent over his instrument, then played the entire piece again from the beginning.”

Via BLDG BLOG: Beton als Marmor! Turning abandoned buildings into works of art.

Benford, J.R. & Husen, H. – “Practical Ferrocement Boatbuilding” 3rd edition 1972 Internationakl Marine Publishing Company, Camden, Maine 04843 USA

Bingham, B. – “Ferrocement: Design, Techniques, Application” 1974 Cornell Maritime Press Inc. Cambridge, Maryland 21613 USA;

Whitener, J.P. – “Ferrocement Boat Construction” – 1971 – publisher see above.

This is all very old stuff, techniques may have changed and I am certain that there are some people around who know how to set up a structural repair.
For a start, a more detailed damage report would be of interest.

Cairncross, C. “Ferrocement Yacht Construction”- 1973, Adlard Coles, London 1973

So, I've become an avid del.icio.us user. Nowadays, I post links to del.icio.us much more frequently than I post to LJ. So if you like my journal, you will probably like my del.icio.us feed.

Willing to share your del.icio.us usernames with me? If so, post to the comments, or email me: [email protected].