Gizmodo
When he was a boy, Father de Carli had the same dream that most kids have: jump off the ground and reach for the sky. But when he grew up, instead of taking flight lessons, he literally did that. He jumped and flew with the help of a thousand party balloons. His first try was a success, traveling 68 miles for 4 hours and 15 minutes. His second, however, has probably ended in disaster—after he took off with a GPS that he didn't know how to use.
The first flight took him from the Brazilian town of Ampére to San Antonio, in Argentina, complete with tin foil pants and a DIY seat. He landed without any incident, getting rid of the balloons to lose altitude until he reached the ground.
The second flight isn't finished yet. Or at least, not officially. This time he had with him a GPS unit, which he planned to use to relay his coordinates to the ground.
There was only one problem: he didn't know how to use it correctly. Padre Adelir de Carli took off after a special mass last Sunday, at 1PM. The weather was bad, but he didn't care. He wanted to fly again, this time to beat the record of flight distance with party balloons. And besides, he was sure his new GPS was going to provide him with some safety, a way to ask for help with his precise location in the case anything went wrong.
The plan didn't work out. The strong winds took him 31 miles into the sea, and a little bit later, frustrated, he requested help from people on the ground:
I need to contact someone who can teach me how to operate this GPS, so I can give the latitude and longitude coordinates, which is the only way that people on the ground can know where I am.
Sadly, nobody was able to explain to him how to do it correctly and, around 9PM—the time of his last contact—he disappeared. After a two-day search using military police helicopters, and the cooperation of local fishing boats, it seems Father de Carli's flying dreams are not going to have a happy ending. The last thing that people found were fragments of balloons, next to the beaches of Santa Catarina.
I'm sure some people will call him an idiot for not learning how to use the GPS first, but what is more interesting in this story is asking how technology could still be so difficult to use. Is it really necessary to read an instruction manual or get directions to operate a gadget? The answer is simple: It doesn't have to be.
I'm supposed to be a "technology expert," dealing all day long with gadgets, but I still find plenty of devices that are a complete user interface nightmare. Things that require instruction manuals when there are no excuses anymore to design clear, straightforward interfaces that can be accessed by people with zero experience in technology.
I see this sad event, which has ended in the tragedy of a missing person—obviously he's a bit crazy and this is all his fault—as an example of all that is wrong with the design of machines today. Not because technology itself was the cause of him getting lost—it wasn't. It was more bad luck and bad planning than anything else. After all, his first flight was a success without GPS, and men have been wandering through Earth without any help for thousands of years.
The problem here is that I can imagine his frustration, trying to make sense of an infernal device so he could tell people his exact location, all the while knowing that he was going to get lost forever in the immensity of the sea.
And while we don't put ourselves in these crazy life or death situations every day, it wouldn't be bad if manufacturers actually invested some money and intelligence in making technology truly accessible. Not just a bunch of circuits and software tied together with extremely badly-designed UIs that merely alienate the user, but devices that can actually help people and make their experiences enjoyable.
Until then, I'm afraid we will have to live with thousands of useless gadgets that not men, and neither God will ever truly understand. [G1 and G1]
Comments
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Easy enough.
I sense a movie in the works....
"Deacon Deckchair"
Happy Tuesday folks.
"Do you know what this means? It Means, that this damn thing doesn't work at all!"
There are some unanswered questions here, such as: Was he in the least way prepared in any other fashion?
If not he was a fool, and God doesn't always protect fools, even if they're on the payroll.
Given a tank full of helium, as you empty it (fill balloons, suck helium, etc.) does it get heavier or lighter?
Whatever others might say, there's a goofy sweetness to this kind of thing. It was a joyous, hopeful leap into an uncontrollable adventure.
Foolish? Yes. Even stupid. But for a true man of faith, which I am most certainly not, this is a win-win situation. I doubt a just god would consider half-witted, fearless optimism to be suicide.
Do GPS units even work when you are above the earth? I know theoretically a GPS unit should determine your location in 3D space anywhere but I think some of these manufactures (of hand held units) take short cuts assuming you are actually on the planet.
Future headline:
Return to Sender: God Pops Balloons
And he's STILL not the most embarrassing priest in the US right now...
i don't get it. why didn't he just pray and ask God for help? God should know how that thing works, or at least have an instruction manual laying around somewhere.
Can't think of a better way to go than flying on a floating lawn chair attached to a thousand party balloons wearing a tin foil jumpsuit...
Must have been a Sprint/Next-hell GPS!
@strider_mt2k:
God loves fools.
He just realizes that they have to be supplied in large quantities.
Fly me to the moon. Let me sing among the stars. Let me see what spring is like and Jupiter and Mars....
@Geisrud: As you empty it, it gets lighter. Compressed helium is heavier than air. Its all a mass per unit volume equation.
@habib15: Yes they do work off the ground. The GPS satellites are in space. The GPS wouldn't know the difference whether you were floating in a balloon 10,000 feet in the air, or on the side of a mountain at 10,000 feet.
I hope he didn't suffer.
...On the bright side though, the party baloon flight record still holds!
I think maybe the problem is that developers are around gadgets and technology all the time. Maybe, what might seem simple to us, really isn't as simple and intuitive as we think. We've all just been trained to push the right buttons and look in the right spots untill we figure out how to use a gadget. Perhaps thats why developers keep pushing out unintuitive interfaces. Or perhaps they just can't do well thought out interfaces.
thats retarded... and he must have been REALLY stupid to have not known how to use a GPS.. i feel bad for the dude.. but seriously.. this has nothing to do with companies not designing their products efficiently, it has everything to do with random idiots... its kind of like that office epp, where they drive into a lake.. because the GPS said "go right" and he said that he HAD to listin to it..
retarded
This man was dumb and the first time he got lucky, luck doesn't strike you twice as he learned the hard way
What the Hell! He figured he'd have plenty of time to learn how to operate the GPS once he got airborn. Too bad some kid with a slingshot probably took him out!
There are a lot of bad GUI's , the lesson to learn from that is learn how to use the device before you launch yourself into orbit. You don't start complaining after it's already cost you your life.
How far are we supposed to dumb things down?e I'm not Magellan, but I've never seen a GPS unit that didn't give you location and bearing within a button press or two. Are even the worst interfaces for a dedicated location finding device that complicated? And why wasn't the thing on, and on the correct screen, before he left the ground? God looks out for fools, but I betcha he expects them to at least help out a little.
@delithic: Thank you. Me and chemistry didn't get along so well in the past. Mostly my chem teacher told us of his "True stories" and his uncontrolled physics and chemistry experiments having to do with his tractor rolling down a hill and the "rapid oxidation" that ensued.
BTW, when I said "I'm not Magellan..." I meant I'm not the world's greatest navigator, not that I wasn't a company that makes GPS units. Even though I'm not.
While device UI's can be unintuitive they usually can be figured out with a little tinkering and most importantly, deductive logic.
The real culprit isn't messy UI's. It's that technology needs to be demystified to the older generations. They just just look at things as confusing magic boxes when in the end they are nothing but slightly complicated file cabinets based off nothing more than logic.
So when an older person gets stumped they just figure they don't "get this crazy technology" rather than trying to actually figure it out.
ya, i would probably, maybe, just MAYBE learn how to use the d&mn thing that meant the difference between life and death for myself. maybe.
@habib15: GPS is used in planes.
the tank will get lighter as you empty it (since there is less stuff in it).@Geisrud:
@strider_mt2k: I agree. Did he have a life vest, or any other emergency equipment that didn't need an instruction manual? Hell, even a flare would have been useful!
after reading the article a second time, he was being very stubborn and dumb! every idiot knows (except Father de Carli) you cannot steer balloons once in the air. Once he was misguided 31 miles out to sea he should have taken a gander at what he was really trying to do. And then to go at it again at 9pm when it's dark and your GPS still doesn't work? Sounds like a death wish if I ever heard one.
@HoseHead: But perhaps not the model he way using. The original point was that some manufacturers take some shotcuts with the automapping, assuming that the user is on the ground.
Obviously the GPS system as a whole is perfectly capable of mapping you in 3D, you get a triangulated fix in all three dimensions. Does the particular unit the padre picked up at the best buy work in a balloon lawnchair, we may never know.
@Geisrud: Just to be pedantic, the helium expands in the balloon so that the balloon has a density less than the surrounding atmosphere and it then has lift as it is buoyant in the surrounding air.
The mass of the system does not change.
If you are in an airless environment, the weight will remain the same.
He was an idiot. I know he was a father, but don't blame the technology. It was HIS responsibility to pick a device he could understand. It was HIS responsibility to be safe and not fly in bad weather. Why didn't he try to do a fast decent as he saw the ocean coming at him? I would have done that and if I landed and hurt myself, I wouldn't be out in the sea and die. No gizmodo, technology wasn't at fault at all here, just human stupidity.
@Darrone: I agree with your point, but he was in the "Brazilian town of Ampére to San Antonio, in Argentina"
also ... Massive Fail.
Dumbass. Anybody need further proof that Darwin nailed his case shut years ago?
@Geisrud: If you empty the tank it will get lighter. Helium, though lighter than air, is heavier than nothing - or the vacuum formed as the tank depressurizes. However, if the tank were filled with "air" as it was emptied of helium, then it would get heavier. BTW the weight of the tank is so much greater than either gas and the difference between them that the effect is "unnoticeable".
@Kevin O: I'm aware, mis-phrased my attempt to make a pope joke.
Maybe he couldn't get a reading because he was moving too fast.
@Kevin O:
I think he was just in the "Brazilian town of Ampére" and his first flight took him "to San Antonio, in Argentina".
It's true that most modern technology isn't simple and intuitive enough, but he was kind of asking for it. Just ask the helicopter pilots and fishermen who risked their lives looking for him in bad weather--they know what can happen to them out there, and they probably don't make a habit of daring fate.
I know that all of you gadget geeks will just end up making fun of this guy and what he did, but come on. This is a tragedy.
To quote Mr. Diaz, "The problem here is that I can imagine his frustration, trying to make sense of an infernal device so he could tell people his exact location, all the while knowing that he was going to get lost forever in the immensity of the sea.."
Is anyone surprised at the intelligence level of someone who has a imaginary friend named "God"?
There was a good segment on Dateline a bit back that addressed the "usability of technology." Basically, they explained that the manufacturers are under so much pressure to be the first to release the latest and greatest gadgets and tech, that the development of the products basically skip over the UI design phase in the rush to get them on the shelves.
At one point the reporter was given the remote control of some brand new fancy HDTV and asked him to find how to turn up the volume. It took him 30-seconds of searching among the dozens of buttons, which were all the same size and color. Something as simple as making the channel and volume, the most frequently used buttons on a remote, bigger in size than the others was completely overlooked because the company was most concerned about being the first to release the latest HDTV technology.
His last conversation may have gone like this. "I'm looking at the GPS, the screen is blue." "That's because your over water." "I pressed the destination HOME key. It's telling me that I may have to use unmarked or private roads." "You are over the ocean, there are no roads." "What about this plus and minus key, I press minus a bunch of times and I see a little yellow area on the right of my screen." "Thats land, and your zoomed out. How far zoomed out are you?" "I don't know, I think all the way." "There should be a button to change your screen to longitude and latitude, can you find it?" "There's one that says POI, is that it?""No, that's points of interest, you know, like restaurants.""It didn't do anything." "Yeah, your'e over the ocean." "darn, I'm hungry." "You didn't bring any food with you?" " Yeah, I ate it all already." "We found someone that knows how to use your GPS device, we're putting him on the phone." "OK, great, uh oh, my phone is slipping out of my..........................splash"
Sorry, this seems like a farce to me. I saw an episode of Myth-Busters where they had to inflate more than 2500 balloons just to get a nine-year old girl off the ground.
A thousand balloons are simply not enough to lift up a grown man.
I can see what's coming next: Priest makes miraculous return from certain death journey thanks to his faith or some similar rubbish.
I'm betting in reality he's just hiding in his basement for a couple of days.
The most interesting thing about this story, everyone is talking about the GPS being faulty, and not about the crazy priest and 1000 balloons to meet g