Since I am the webmaster of CUGC (Cambridge Univeristy Gliding Club) for the year 2007, I have used Drupal to create us a nice small CMS (Content Management System) that we can all use easily and keep the website up2date.

Although HTML or XML is straight forward for some people, it is not quite as accessible as it seems. My idea was to allow people the most simplistic environment to write articles, news or add events. Drupal has proven itself a very valuable CMS system and I believe it was a good choice (well, the others think that as well :)

I have used Typo 3 before which would have been overkill and I used Wordpress (this blog) before, which is not quite a CMS for a group of people. Learning Drupal was straight forward, a couple of evenings and the website was ready to replace our old HTML/XML system …

So, for all gliding students of the University of Cambrige and for all interested people: http://www.cugc.org.uk.

Great news – at least they are great for me: I am a solo pilot again :)

In the last 3 month I had something like 8 hours flight with instructors. I was not pushing things to become solo; sometimes we had a great soaring day so I simply improved my thermalling skills and enjoyed to see the world from a birds perspective (rather than training starts and landings in particular – which is the thing which stops you to solo at some point).

Resume of the last month: The Cambridge (University) Gliding Club is an excellent place! ALL instructors I flew with were absolutely amazing! A BIG thank you! I think I flew with 10 different instructors (out of 30 or 40) and they after every day I though: WOW ;) They have a lot of very very good people there. Many are top people on the BGA ladder or even world champions! The general atmosphere at the club is great, helpful and I always enjoy my time there.

After a 10 year gap, I went back to sit in a proper glider with an instructor to catch up what I forgot ;)

Amazing great feeling out there – I almost forgot how nice it feels, although I always dreamt of it *hehe*.

Now as a member of the Cambridge University I got the opportunity to fly ways cheaper than normally. Mutlu joined the club today as well, as he was so keen to fly, that he hardly slept during the night before (is this right Mutlu :)

Anyway, it was a great bank holiday!

Now my last rotation project needs actually my main focus for the rest of the week *g* and after that’s done, my real PhD project is starting off – great! I really look forward to it :)