FlyingRhenquest

So... don't fly wingsuit straight into tornado? Check... I'm trying to teach myself how to set things on fire with my mind. Hey... is it hot in here?

You ever try calling the company and tell them you'd be willing to do business with them if you didn't have to deal with that fuckwit? If you're bringing large briefcases full of cash to the table with you, that might work. I'm trying to teach myself how to set things on fire with my mind. Hey... is it hot in here?

Awesome! What's the recovery period before you can get back in the tunnel? I'm trying to teach myself how to set things on fire with my mind. Hey... is it hot in here?

Oh, that's awesome! I'm trying to teach myself how to set things on fire with my mind. Hey... is it hot in here?

It's still coming down here too, but the road's warm enough that it's just melting on contact there. Hopefully this will help with the water situation a bit. I think we're still below average for snowpack, though. I'm trying to teach myself how to set things on fire with my mind. Hey... is it hot in here?

Snow, and lots of it! I'd guess there are about 6 inches on my driveway now, and I'm down on the plains where the snow never comes. I never really got into skiing, though. If someone had told me this was an option about a decade ago, I'd have been more interested. I'm trying to teach myself how to set things on fire with my mind. Hey... is it hot in here?

I found a pristine one for sale at a hamfest in the mid 90s and was tempted to buy it, but I already had too much stuff laying around the house and I knew I'd never actually use it. I think you can find emulators online for the TI 99/4A, C64, Apple 2, and some of the old video game systems. My last manager actually remembered the poke you needed to do to make the C64 screen flash all different colors. The various scripting languages (Ruby, Python, Perl) are probably as close as you can get to the old BASIC development anymore. It's still pretty easy to develop an application in them. Javascript works reasonably well too. I'm kind of surprised Logo never took off though. With turtlegraphics it was very easy to modify your program and see what impact it'd have on the output. You could pick up some basic programming and some basic geometry at the same time. The hardest part of programming is learning proper design of a program. Most of the programmers I've met haven't really mastered it. I got pretty good at structural design from experience -- a decade or so of writing programs will do that for you! Object oriented gave me some trouble until one of my employers sent several of the developers (including me) to a week-long class on OO Design and Design Patterns. Most of the time I think those classes are useless, but this one really helped a lot. I find the biggest trap you can fall into is wanting to get it perfect the first time. Code never really is perfect, so I just prefer to understand the problem I'm tackling and get something on paper. Once I have a rough draft out, it's easier to see where various things belong. There's also usually an attitude that once code is down it's carved in stone and can't be changed, but really it should always be changing. As you work with it, maybe you realize you need another function somewhere or that several objects you have are similar enough that you could make a common parent and derive them all. I think this sort of maintenance is more important than writing the program originally. I'm trying to teach myself how to set things on fire with my mind. Hey... is it hot in here?

What are you talking about? That'd be a great vehicle to shoot a rapper out of! They're obviously just going for a different demographic! I'm trying to teach myself how to set things on fire with my mind. Hey... is it hot in here?

My parents bought me a TI 99/4A for Christmas in 1983. You could get the machine dirt cheap that year -- TI had just discontinued the brand because of its power supply's distressing tendency to occasionally catch on fire. I taught myself BASIC, started dabbling in assembly language and took every computer course I could get my hands on at school. It seems to have served me well -- those skills are funding my skydiving hobby today! I'm trying to teach myself how to set things on fire with my mind. Hey... is it hot in here?

Hmm. I'll check it out then! Programming is programming, more or less. Every language has the same structural components for the most part, so if you know the structures (Looping, branching, variables, pass-by semantics, etc,) the rules for good design under structural programming and how to design with objects (Design patterns and that sort of thing,) you can pick up any new language pretty easily. Except lisp. Lisp requires a moment of enlightenment. That being said, every language also has its quirks, and although any language can be picked up pretty easily, the more you use it the better your mastery of that one particular language will be. I think the hardest part of switching from Java to C++ would be learning the pass-by rules. In Java, all objects are passed by reference and primitive types are passed by copy. In C++ you can choose. By default everything is passed by copy and if you want to pass objects that way you must define a copy constructor so the language knows how to do it. But you can also choose to pass anything by reference (Which should feel very familiar to a Java program) or by pointer. So far I've found that it seems to be best to define objects on the stack and pass them around by copy if you need to. The language optimizer can often eliminate the unecessary copies, and then you don't have to worry about object lifetimes so much. So if you use dynamic allocation sparingly, you don't run into the memory management problems which is what everyone complains about with C and C++. If you're not going to change an object in a function, you can make it a const reference and help the optimizer out a bit. I really like the changes they made in the C++11 standard. I put those libraries together partially as an excuse to play with the updated language. I use in-class initialization of const variables a bit, but kind of wish they'd included the ability to do that with static variables too. I never use auto, because I like to know what every variable type is, even if it's just an iterator. The java style iteration over containers is kind of nice, but I was a bit surprised that it uses the contained element in the loop variable. I expected it to use an iterator for some reason. The big thing I've noticed is how fast C++ is. I've converted some code from perl to C++ at work, and the speed increase in the C++ code is significant (A few seconds for the C++ code versus 10 minutes or so for the perl code.) Perl and Ruby are notorious for being slow, though. I just didn't expect them to be THAT slow. I'm trying to teach myself how to set things on fire with my mind. Hey... is it hot in here?

Where's the fun in THAT? Heh heh heh. It's really more of an excuse to keep working on the library, but it's already is pretty useful for pushing coordinate data around. It seems like there are enough people around who would just want to plot raw data on google earth with relatively little fuss. Writing some data analysis code is also kind of fun and not too hard to do. Skydiving's a very recent hobby of mine, but bending computers to my will... well I've been doing that for decades! It still gets me going, too! I'm trying to teach myself how to set things on fire with my mind. Hey... is it hot in here?

If you'd bought it in April, you would also have discovered that purchasing a Porsche has the unusual ability to make it snow in April (I had the same thing happen in Colorado with my Z.) I'm trying to teach myself how to set things on fire with my mind. Hey... is it hot in here?

I've been working on some C++ libraries lately for coordinate handling and XML. I've been looking at some Android GPS trackers lately and all the ones I've looked at export to GPX format, so I've added a reader for it to my data library. This allows a C++ program to easily read such a file into a vector of lat/long coordinates. From there you could easily push your file out to a google earth object I already have in the library or whatever else you want to do with them. I'm curious to see if the GPS tracker I'm currently playing with has enough resolution to plot a skydive. I could start logging at the beginning of the day, put the phone in airplane mode (Which won't interfere with the GPS radio,) put it in my pocket and gather GPS data for an entire day of skydiving. Once I have the data, I can analyze it to see if I can find take-off events, aircraft exit events, canopy deploy events and landing events. I could then break the skydives out from all the other data, annotate them with times and those events and plot them on google earth. Seems like it'd be a fun little project! If you're curious about this library, you can find it at https://github.com/FlyingRhenquest/data. The file is gpx_factory.hpp. There's a test in the test directory that shows you how to use it to populate a vector of time/coordinate pairs. All my code is licensed under the Apache 2.0 license, which allows for free use of the code with very few restrictions. I'd love to hear about it if you do something cool with it! I'm trying to teach myself how to set things on fire with my mind. Hey... is it hot in here?

Pickled herring might actually work with black olives and feta cheese. Or maybe swap out the black olives for kalamata olives. Now I'm going to have to try that! I'm trying to teach myself how to set things on fire with my mind. Hey... is it hot in here?

If it's working, I'd stick with it. I DO have access to some pretty nice candy! I'm trying to teach myself how to set things on fire with my mind. Hey... is it hot in here?

You might find something off the shelf that'd fit you. I got one off the rack at my DZ for $125 and noticed that a lot of them seem to be made for tall, thin people. Hell, mine might actually fit you. It's a fair bit longer on my legs and arms than I really need. I did a few jumps without one in the summer and mostly liked it. All my coaches demanded that I wear a jumpsuit when jumping with them though, to try to increase my air resistance (It didn't work heh.) I kind of like the jumpsuit I got though. It has pockets, keeps the wind off me in these winter months, and it's pretty comfortable. My shirt managed to get untucked from my pants on one of the jumps I did without one, and that jump was kind of uncomfortable until I got under canopy. I'd suggest trying to find a generic XL off the shelf that would fit you. It's probably not worth dropping serious coin on one until you have a little more experience. I'm trying to teach myself how to set things on fire with my mind. Hey... is it hot in here?

I'm not in a relationship. I've heard too many "Boy meets girl, boy dates girl, girl says 'We need to talk about how much time you're spending at the dropzone,' boy dumps girl" stories. All the women at the dropzone are either far too young for me or married. If I were to date someone in her 20s, my friends would accuse me of finding her by luring her into the back of my van with candy. That wouldn't do at all! I'm trying to teach myself how to set things on fire with my mind. Hey... is it hot in here?

I know what escolar tastes like, and I can't stand the flavor. It's like eating a chunk of pork lard. Just one piece will give me heartburn. The chef at this place has been honest about his fish, which is another reason I like him so much. If you ask him for Omakase, he'll put together a fantastic spread. I got some giant clam and some seared salmon belly in my last one. I'm trying to teach myself how to set things on fire with my mind. Hey... is it hot in here?

If you guys ever get a chance to try this, don't pass it up! I just had my first one (with beer!) at a local sushi joint today. I got his last one, too. I'm already looking forward to my next one. I hope he orders some more soon! I don't usually go for cooked fish. Of all the fish I've eaten in the last 5 years or so, none of it has been cooked. I don't usually like bones in my fish, and the hamachi collar has a good number of them. It's completely worth picking through them for that. I've never felt the urge to go back through and gnaw on fish bones before today. I liked it, is what I'm trying to say here! I'm trying to teach myself how to set things on fire with my mind. Hey... is it hot in here?

We are the universe. We are a part of this system. There is no separate conscious looking down upon us or pitying us. We're here. We're making shit happen. We are progressing. We've always been progressing. We will never stop progressing. If we go extinct, progression will not suddenly stop. Yes. If humanity dies off, the universe will just try again. Maybe with raccoons or something. I sometimes wonder if it needs life in order to perceive itself, having no other way to do so. Of course, I sometimes wonder if it's all just some undergrad's semester final project to demonstrate in simulation how hydrogen might be turned into plutonium. So your mileage may vary, really. I feel like consciousness is largely an illusion. Continuity certainly is. If you think back to the person you were when you were six, you have basically nothing in common with that person other than your DNA. Your six-year-old self would probably not even recognize you. All your dreams, goals, desires and priorities are completely different between these two points in time. And yet you probably would feel that you were the same person if you thought back on it. Most of us are terrified of death, of ceasing to exist, but how much of that six-year-old past-you really remains? Was that transition to now-you all that frightening? Would you go back if you had the option? Bound by time as we are, we have to keep marching forward whether we want to or not. You can live in fear of the end of the journey for every step of the way, or you can move forward confidently and just accept whatever comes. I have enough pride that I would rather proceed without fear of the things I don't know. I used to be afraid of the dark, when I was a child. Before I realized that I was the most frightening thing in it. I grew out of it. A lot of people don't. That's why I can look out the door of a plane, knowing full well that the only thing between me and that unknown darkness is some gear I'm entrusting my life to and my ability to act to save my own life. If something happens, it happens, but damned if I won't put up a fight. If that's not enough, well, something else would have got me sooner or later anyway. But I'm proud to have not been just another herd animal with fear crazed eyes, jumping at every unknown shadow. I don't know what the universe is up to, but I'm happy with the meaning I've found in my existence. So, was that what you were after? I'm trying to teach myself how to set things on fire with my mind. Hey... is it hot in here?

I think an extinction level event is more likely to result in extinction. Humanity seems to think it has a god-given right to exist. The universe really doesn't care what happens to us, though. The species really has only been making progress for a few thousand years, though we'd been using tools for maybe a few tens of thousands. That's not even a blink of the universe's eye. If any humans are around in fifty thousand years or so, I'd be awfully surprised. I probably don't get to see the end of our story, but sooner or later it's going to end. Everything does, eventually. I'm trying to teach myself how to set things on fire with my mind. Hey... is it hot in here?

Bronies, represent! I'm trying to teach myself how to set things on fire with my mind. Hey... is it hot in here?

I keep seeing this subject and thinking it should be sung to the tune of "Ringo Buys a Rifle" by the Dead Milkmen. I'm trying to teach myself how to set things on fire with my mind. Hey... is it hot in here?

Well then I think you have a movie to check out! I'm trying to teach myself how to set things on fire with my mind. Hey... is it hot in here?

If you didn't like Book of Mormon, you'll probably hate Orgazmo by the same guys. I'm trying to teach myself how to set things on fire with my mind. Hey... is it hot in here?