Just a quick note.
Will Warburton has started an external JET discussion group on Yahoo Groups called JETJumpStart-AT-yahoogroups-DOT-com. To join, just go to: JETJumpStart joining url
There's already a discussion there about the use of FLASH as a restore mechanism.....
How to Kill a Burgee
I've spent the last half of the summer learning how to sail a Laser 2000. I used to sail a lot in my younger years, both on dinghys and on larger boats, but never with an asymmetric spinnaker.
Its hard....
Well, it takes a lot of getting used to. Basically, with a standard spinnaker (which has a pole that you can move a full 90 degrees between the forestay and the mast shrouds), you can sail with the wind pretty much anywhere from behind, all the way to kind of on the side. With an asymmetric spinnaker, your pole is NOT adjustable and sticks out the front. (i.e. kind of like a normal spinnaker with the pole against the forestay.)
This reduces the effective angles that you can efficiently sail with the asymmetric spinnaker. Then you need to add the complication of apparent wind (which windsurfers know ALL about), which means that once you start planing and moving faster, the apparent wind moves forward, which means you need to pull in more spinnaker, or bear off or both. (Normally you want to bear off because you are typically trying to get as downwind as possible on most legs when you are racing.)
If there's 2 of you on the boat, there's one person on the main and tiller, and one person on the spinnaker, and it requires an almost unspoken understanding of what to do to make this work well, especially if the winds are .... brisk.
If you're sailing with your 12 year old daughter who doesn't quite understand spinnakers yet, then its often easier to do the main, tiller and spinnaker yourself. (Advantages: no need for communication between the spinnaker guy and the tiller guy. Disadvantages: Its almost impossible to let out the spinnaker AND the main AND bear off when a gust hits you. Result: 
Yes. We capsized, and then because my daughter insisted on clinging onto the boat because she didn't want to get wet, the mast went under, the wind blew the hull and the mast sailed downward, and we spent a pleasant 10 minutes sitting on the centreboard with the top of the mast happily burying itself deeper and deeper into the mud. We eventually got pulled out by a rescue boat, and then spent the next 30 minutes sailing back to the clubhouse with globs of mud dripping from the mainsail onto our heads.
In the picture you can see the remnants of the mud sticking to the top of the sail, and a very limp burgee which is not in its normal position. 
(I've now got a purple one which matches the colour of the hull, the owner of the chandlery at the Sailing club does a very brisk trade in them as the water in the lake is pretty shallow)
Fun....
I'm happy to say I'm not at that point yet. i.e. my youngest had her first day at secondary school today, but I was talking to some colleagues about the recent A'level results in the UK, and they were discussing all the University options.
It's pretty confusing, and given that I've got 4 young children, maybe I need to start thinking about it now. Based on my limited experience... (I didn't grow up in the UK, but went to a UK university (Heriot-Watt in Edinburgh, Scotland)), its all a bit daunting....
There seem to be a few "classes" of University:
I'm probably grossly oversimplifying the class thing here, but even with that simplification, it still seems to be a pretty difficult thing to "choose" what university you want to go to. Each of them have different entrance criteria, geographic location, fees. There is no ONE obvious choice. You could go to a more "comfortable" university, which is closer to home and cheaper, and walk away with a good degree, but somehow it won't ever get the same respect as a degree from Oxford or Cambridge. All degrees are NOT equal!
Additionally, now that the grants have all but disappeared, and turned into loans, and that fees are now going up, prospective university students really need to think about whether or not 3-4 years of NOT working and accruing debt will be offest by the potentially higher degreed wages afterwards. The value of a university degree is now being measured purely on wage earning capability rather than the ability to free think and contribute to society in other ways.
The additional fees also raise the prospect of having to work through university to make ends meet. I know it might sound bad, but NEEDING to work during your university years detracts from the life experience that university is.
Other than getting a degree, university life teaches you how to party, get drunk, learn your limits, learn how to get on with other people, and do all the wild things that you won't ever have a chance to do again. I guess I support the idea of working while at university to get extra "fun" money, but to have to work while at university to simply support one's subsistence and fees is sure to make one miss out on all the other (important life experience) stuff.
Maybe there is something to be said for having LESS university places, that the government can afford to subsidise properly. There are so many jobs that DON'T require degrees, and I think we are doing many of our young people a disservice by fooling them into thinking that they MUST go to university to be complete. For instance, there are so many people in the computing industry who don't have degrees, but are substantially better than their degreed counterparts.
Unfortunately, I'm not sure I'll be able to afford to send all 4 of my kids to uni at the current rates. Maybe they won't all want to go. But as a parent I know that if they do, and they are good enough to get in, I'll need to sell a bunch of Sun shares to pay for it.
So please please please. Buy Sun stuff. Get the stock price up so my kids don't have to work their way through university!!!! (and if they DON'T want to go to university, I can retire early, buy a 60 foot Swan and go live in the Caribbean)
