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]

According to the shepherd's sister, he's taking Roskosmos to court for compensation for the stress he's suffered. After all, the metal casing nearly crushed his outhouse. Roskosmos agrees that if it is a genuine case he will be paid "No question about it. We live in a civilized, law-abiding country." Hmmm.

If it is an unwanted, "normal" piece of rocket, sounds like Boris will be rich. The Roskosmos spokesman does hedge his bets a bit, though, noting that sometimes "somebody gets greedy, and it turns out the parts did not fall on his land, but that they were dragged there. Those moments are not good."

If bits of rocket do actually fall off regularly and make it to the ground, then remind me never to go live near Kazakhstan. [Reuters]

It sounds fairly dubious, but it seems that shortly after take-off, one 22-pound BDU-33 dummy bomb from a group of six just "fell off" one of the F16s that was heading for a practice bombing run in Kansas. The first indication that something was amiss was apparently at the bombing range itself, where only five impacts were recorded from that aircraft.

There I was thinking that flyers were heroic, intelligent keen-eyed guys. I mean, you'd think you'd notice bombing Tulsa wouldn't you? Mind you, I've never been there. [Danger room]

Its 135-degree field of view camera gets hung on your windscreen, with all the accelerometry going on inside the 4.5 x 3 x 0.8-inch black box itself. Honda hopes this system will turn you into a safer driver, though we imagine it might also make insurance claims a little more straightforward. You can also switch on recording just for the hell of it, and amuse your friends with a show later: "Hey, check out that braking after I missed the red light." Available in Japan for ¥54,600 (around $500), and, sadly, only if you have an Honda car or your name is Jenny or Debra.

Hey, it's Friday. [Honda via Gizmodo Japan]

"Appropriate government agencies are monitoring the situation. Numerous satellites over the years have come out of orbit and fallen harmlessly. We are looking at potential options to mitigate any possible damage this satellite may cause."

Joeseph McPhatter of Baltimore, MD, recently was cruising along when he was abruptly cut off and wrecked his motorcycle. Upon crashing, McPhatter was launched over 100 feet at a rate of 140MPH and instantly became the Impact Jacket's first "real world" motorcycle crash test. Medics claim that if McPhatter hadn't been wearing the Impact Jacket, his injuries, which amounted to a few sore ribs, would have been severely worse—if not fatal. Thanks, Impact Jacket! [Baltimore Sun via Core77]

Created to document unfortunate situations for the accident prone, this little device has a G-force sensor hooked up to a solid-state camera that's always recording, and if it senses a sudden stop, it saves the 15 seconds of video before and five seconds afterward, perfect to play back in court when you're trying to explain to the judge why it's not your fault.

Clarion has constructed the DriveEye out of tough magnesium alloy, hoping that it will be able to survive all but the most horrific accidents. We're thinking it might be bad luck is to tack one of these suckers on your windshield, as if you're expecting—or maybe even hoping—to get into a really bad wreck. Well, if you get overly eager to use the thing, it also has a manual recording function.

They must have a lot more accidents in Japan, because that's where this DriveEye will first be available for $412. Reminds us of a similar device marketed in Korea, the Black Eagle GPS that works the same way. Maybe these systems are coming soon to an accident scene near you. [Technabob]