murrays

This article points to ways to remove DRM and also to a file converter for converting OGG to MP3, etc. -- Murray "No tyranny is so irksome as petty tyranny: the officious demands of policemen, government clerks, and electromechanical gadgets." - Edward Abbey

I always just sync everything on my iPod but if you set iTunes iPod preferences so that only "checked songs are updated" you can just uncheck the songs you don't want and the next time you plug in your iPod they will be removed. -- Murray "No tyranny is so irksome as petty tyranny: the officious demands of policemen, government clerks, and electromechanical gadgets." - Edward Abbey

This past Sunday, my flocking partner Steve and I had the plane (C182) to ourselves after letting off 2 swoopers low and it occurred to me to get the pilot to give us a downwind jumprun so that we could fly straight back to the dz and get the benefit of tailwinds and forward throw for the entire skydive. It worked great! We got out too close... 1.5 miles away @ 9,500' .... and we flew about a 1/2 mile past the dz and then turned around to come back. I was under canopy at 4,000' and fly an old Classic I. This is likely something that people at big dzs won't be able to do but for those of you that can organize it, give it a try. Start your jumprun quite a bit further back as you will cover ground in a hurry coming in downwind, particularly if the uppers are strong. -- Murray "No tyranny is so irksome as petty tyranny: the officious demands of policemen, government clerks, and electromechanical gadgets." - Edward Abbey

I don't know much about snakes except they creep me out...but Aren't Coral snakes the ones with red and yellow bands together, red and black bands together are king snakes or something harmless? Red and black, friend of Jack, Red and yellow a nasty fellow....does that rhyme mean anything to you folks who live down in snake country? You remind me of the day I quit jumping bare foot in 1983 or so.....I was down in ZHills for a vacation and we landed a lo-o-ong way south of the old DZ. I was wading through ditches in my bare feet and absolutely shitting my pants, just waiting for something to wriggle under my foot and then bite me. -- Murray "No tyranny is so irksome as petty tyranny: the officious demands of policemen, government clerks, and electromechanical gadgets." - Edward Abbey

Then why do these new HD compatible disks hold 45 gb? If DVD projects are going to be that large I can see a lot of space filled up fast. A t-byte....seems incredibly large but I had 340gb (on 3 drives) nearly full this winter when I was doing our year end video...a lot of that was backups....but the video was only 40 minutes long. My guess is we'll find out sooner than we think. Cheers, -- Murray "No tyranny is so irksome as petty tyranny: the officious demands of policemen, government clerks, and electromechanical gadgets." - Edward Abbey

All the Apple software iMovie, Final Cut Express and Final Cut Pro will edit HD out of the box. What I wonder is how much more processor, video card, display, and hard drive space will a person need? I think it will be pretty significant. If these new HD compatible disks like Bluray hold 45 gb a person will need a ton of room for the raw footage and projects...I'm thinking terabyte disks will seem cramped pretty quickly. -- Murray "No tyranny is so irksome as petty tyranny: the officious demands of policemen, government clerks, and electromechanical gadgets." - Edward Abbey

I missed that.....let's see, $2,000 for the camera and how much more for the upgraded computer??? The iMovie HD software on my Mac will edit HD but I don't think that my 3 year old G4 iMac is capable of it. It would be very cool but I won't be an early adopter. -- Murray "No tyranny is so irksome as petty tyranny: the officious demands of policemen, government clerks, and electromechanical gadgets." - Edward Abbey

Sony just announced the HC-1 HD camcorder that weighs 1 1/2 lbs. No price yet. -- Murray "No tyranny is so irksome as petty tyranny: the officious demands of policemen, government clerks, and electromechanical gadgets." - Edward Abbey

I used VLC to play it on my Mac. Windows Media Player (Mac Version) wouldn't play it. VLC is a free download. -- Murray "No tyranny is so irksome as petty tyranny: the officious demands of policemen, government clerks, and electromechanical gadgets." - Edward Abbey

Dave, Always glad to see somebody considering a Mac....But if you want to do video I think you'd be better served getting an iMac G5... Larger hard drive, faster processor (G5 vs G4 in the Mini), great LCD screen on both the 17" and 20" models. Can put more RAM in it...and likely many other reasons. By the time you add a larger hd and RAM to the mini it's not all that much less expensive than an iMac. The G5s were also just updated and come with built-in Airport and Bluetooth. I'm thinking you're going to use your existing monitors which is why you're looking at the Mini so it's not straightforward but thought I'd give ya my .02 worth. -- Murray "No tyranny is so irksome as petty tyranny: the officious demands of policemen, government clerks, and electromechanical gadgets." - Edward Abbey

If I understand what you are getting on the screen correctly, I think that it is telling you the heads may be contaminated. If you would like, I can e-mail you a pdf of the PC-1 manual....take a look at page 101, item 7. -- Murray "No tyranny is so irksome as petty tyranny: the officious demands of policemen, government clerks, and electromechanical gadgets." - Edward Abbey

I'll give you that...I guess I'm just tired of folks stating "I use a Mac so I'm a unix user." I feel like telling them to fuck off, open up vi and see if they even know how to type in it. hehe..every once in a while I open a terminal window on my Mac...just to remember that the reason I bought a GUI is so I don't have to learn all that command line stuff. I do find it neat to be running Windows 98 in Virtual PC, OS X, an old program in OS 9 Classic mode, and a Terminal window open all at the same time on my Mac. I don't have X11 installed on my work laptop or I'd try running an X11 app also. I installed Tiger 10.4 a few days ago at home. I had to muck about with my Mail for a bit but otherwise the upgrade went well. The new Spotlight feature is awesome!! Spotlight spent about an hour indexing my hard drive and the external firewire drives and I was very impressed with its search capabilities. I often spend too much time looking for an Excel file or worksheet or e-mail and this feature is going to be a godsend. I'm firmly in the Mac camp. At work I spend my days in Excel and accounting programs on my Mac, tax programs on my PC or in Virtual PC on the Mac, at night I spend it in iMovie, iPhoto and iDVD. I switched in 1999 and have had no regrets. -- Murray "No tyranny is so irksome as petty tyranny: the officious demands of policemen, government clerks, and electromechanical gadgets." - Edward Abbey

Sorry, I wasn't clear...it has backups of video files for iMovie projects. It has no capabilities to play video. I use my iPod to backup projects and also to move material off my iMac when space is running short. I have 120gb in the iMac and 160 and 60 gb external Firewire drives...and I still run out of space -- Murray "No tyranny is so irksome as petty tyranny: the officious demands of policemen, government clerks, and electromechanical gadgets." - Edward Abbey

If you have the cash...get the 60 gb version...doubling your space for $100 is likely worth the extra cash. At some point in time you'll be glad you have the extra gbs available. My 20gb is always full with iPhoto backups, music, video. (And I paid $599 US or $799 Canadian for it 2 1/2 years ago....a bit more than you'll pay for three times the storage and a color screen) -- Murray "No tyranny is so irksome as petty tyranny: the officious demands of policemen, government clerks, and electromechanical gadgets." - Edward Abbey

Here's another vote for the Photo version...the color screen is sooooooo nice it's worth getting. Also, they have come out with an inexpensive connector to allow you to download photos from your digital camera to the Photo iPod which will then sync with your computer the next time you plug into your computer. For $50 more than the 20gb iPod you get 50% more gb's (30) and the color screen....if I was in the market that's what I'd go for. -- Murray "No tyranny is so irksome as petty tyranny: the officious demands of policemen, government clerks, and electromechanical gadgets." - Edward Abbey

The Sony digicams that have a plug in labeled "ACC" should have a remote available. The remote I bought for my old DSC S75 will zoom in and out as well as release the shutter. Don't know about other brands. Try looking through specs on the manufacturer's website. -- Murray "No tyranny is so irksome as petty tyranny: the officious demands of policemen, government clerks, and electromechanical gadgets." - Edward Abbey

I found the 8 x 10 and just took a picture of it as I don't have a scanner at home. On the last trashplane I had a similar thing happen as happened to "Space" only not nearly as bad. I was on the bottom, stalling the canopy out and the pilot's canopy really dove forward and then rebounded and I popped up into his canopy. At about 2,000' I really didn't like seeing nothing but nylon and lines in front of my face. It was pretty weird as by that time we had done a lot of them and they were quite often very stable. I was taking pictures with a 35mm camera duct taped to my running shoe and the release cable for the motor drive that ran down my leg to the camera was broken off so I was pretty lucky not to have this turn into something ugly.... oh well, they say God looks after fools and cripples...and I don't limp. -- Murray "No tyranny is so irksome as petty tyranny: the officious demands of policemen, government clerks, and electromechanical gadgets." - Edward Abbey

I never jumped with my canopy backwards but did a couple of crw jumps with a buddy of mine who had his on backwards. It took a couple of jumps for him to figure out the handling enough that we could get a biplane together. When we got the biplane together I handed him my camera and he took pictures as I stalled my canopy out and we did a trashplane. I'll see if I can scan the photo and post it...pretty neat picture. He was jumping a Pegasus and the landings were fine. We jumped with a bit of wind so that he wasn't going real fast over the ground. A few years later, after another friend and I did a double cutaway from a side by side, two other guys at the dz both put their canopies on backwards and did a downplane...which they both cutaway from! I've heard of cameramen hooking up their canopies backwards so they could video/photograph crw formations from in front of the formation. -- Murray "No tyranny is so irksome as petty tyranny: the officious demands of policemen, government clerks, and electromechanical gadgets." - Edward Abbey

With 32 pages of hits, how many were people talking about the same incident? Without reading a little more that could be about fewer than 5 incidents. It could be...or it could be more. I don't have the time to read all 32 pages. Well, I prefer to jump a system that eliminates the possibility of a PC in tow. I'd rather have a total with nothing out than bridle and p/c behind me and the chance of an entanglement. The pull-out deployment is noticeably faster...it's not a lot, but it is quicker. What I don't like is perhaps more accurately described as I prefer knowing that my main container is open when I release my pc on a pull-out versus having to wait that little bit longer to see if the pin will get pulled. Bird-man recommendation. When I bought my wingsuit only 2 other guys on the dz had jumped one when they were down south. There was no one here to get any advice from. When the suit manufacturer strongly recommends a throw-out, I'm not going to try my pull-out and find out why it wasn't recommended. After reading Diablopilot's posts on jumping a wingsuit with a pull-out I might go back at some point in time. They are good systems. I prefer the pull-out. Ah come on Sparky...it's true these days. People are afraid to jump without an AAD. The number of bounces from no-pull/low-pull is way down partly due to AADs on experienced people's rigs. I never had one as a student, got one in 2000 after 20 years of jumping. I've always known that it was up to me to save myself. I've changed my emergency procedures because of having it on my rig. The AAD introduces the 2-out possibility at low altitudes. If I ever get into a low/heavy ground rush situation I'm going straight to my reserve. I rehearse that on the airplane ride before every skydive. On the topic of wasting time trying to find a floater....that mindset can occur in virtually all malfunction scenarios: She tried to extract her main pilot chute to impact... He stayed with a malfunctioned main too long, cutaway too low and impacted on reserve linestretch... He searched for his floating handle until impact.... In all cases, the focus on trying to fix the problem with Plan A, loss of attention to altitude and either never getting to Plan B or getting there too late has killed a lot of people. My list of friends and acquaintances that have died jumping is 12 names long. You've been around a long time, I'm sure your list is lengthier than you'd like as well. Write them down and think about what happened. I think about these people often with sadness and fondness and determination to learn from them. 1 - No Pull. Unable to extract main pilot chute from bellyband. No reserve pull. 2 - No Pull. Investigation revealed that her reserve totalled and she was likely pulling the handle at impact. 3 - Main reserve entanglement resulting from pilot chute in tow caused by a misrouted bridle on a ROL throw-out. A pin check would likely have prevented this fatality. What a shame. 4 - Drowning. Exited over clouds near a large body of water. This incident could have resulted in 3 fatalities, it was by the grace of God that 2 other people survived. In the days before GPS. 5 - Main/camera helmet entanglement and reserve entanglement. My friend was videoing a 40-way from beneath while on his back. The breakoff was low, he pulled his main low, a poor throw resulted in an entanglement with his camera helmet, and then a reserve entanglement. 6 - No pull. Likely hypoxic as this happened on a high alttude jump and the other person she was jumping with opened at about 500'. 7 - Stunt jump for a movie from a helicopter at a fairly low altitude went bad. Impacted on reserve deployment. 8 - Low turn. 9 - Jumper induced line twists close to the ground and spiralled in before they could be kicked out of. Too low to cutaway.. 10 - BASE jump. 11 & 12 - Cameraman died trying to save a tandemmaster with a main reserve entanglement. 2 weren't "normal" skydives. better preparation and planning would likely have made a difference in both of them. 2 low turn fatalities were completely avoidable 2 were directly attributable to throw-out problems...one could have survived if she had pulled her reserve, the other did pull his reserve 3 had entanglements. 3 would likely have been saved by a Cypres...they hadn't been invented yet. 1 should have quit trying to be a hero and saved himself....actually, a Cypres would likely have saved him as well. So, 4 would likely have been saved by a Cypres. Three entanglements....that's why I don't ever want to be in the situation that can result in one and why my deployment system of choice is still a pull-out. Not for everybody, but I think it is ofttimes unfairly maligned. Cheers Sparky, -- Murray "No tyranny is so irksome as petty tyranny: the officious demands of policemen, government clerks, and electromechanical gadgets." - Edward Abbey

A search on "pilot chute in tow" on dz.com returns 32 pages of hits. That doesn't seem rare to me. What are the causes of pilot chutes in tow these days? What percentage of malfunctions on hand deploy are hard pulls on the pilot chute? I think you should add them together. They are both totals in that the main container doesn't open. As far as searching for your handle to impact goes.....the only person I've seen struggle with a handle to impact was trying to extract her pilot chute from her belly band mounted pouch.....if you struggle to extract a pilot chute or search for a floater until impact...well, we all know it's bad form to not pull all your handles. Before a person jumps any kind of system they should have a plan for what to do if they can't pull/find their handle..i.e. - 2 tries and I pull my reserve. These days, with most people jumping with a Cypres, the risk of searching to impact is pretty low...just like struggling with a hard pull to impact is pretty low. Bill, if you design out and eliminate the pilot chute in tow...and I know you have done your best .... I'll say everybody should jump a throwout. Until that day arrives, I will still prefer the pull-out....for experienced jumpers who understand and appreciate the differences and have taken the time to educate themselves on how both systems work. -- Murray "No tyranny is so irksome as petty tyranny: the officious demands of policemen, government clerks, and electromechanical gadgets." - Edward Abbey

I would far prefer a total than a pilot chute in tow. A reserve deployment into clean air is preferable to one that might result in a main-reserve entanglement. That's the reason I switched to pull-out in 1982. (I switched to BOC throw-out 2 years ago for wingsuit jumping. I still hate throwing my pilot chute and waiting for the main container to open. I far prefer knowing that my container is open when I release my pilot chute.) A search on here on "pilot chute in tow" will still bring up a ton of hits. I consider this to be a very dangerous situation...more dangerous than a closed main container with nothing out. Bill, you're the inventor of the throw-out (among many other things for which we all owe you our eternal gratitude) and its' best-known proponent. Why do so many people still get pilot chutes in tow? Why, even with the routing issues of Belly bands and rol pretty much eliminated by BOC, do people still get them? -- Murray "No tyranny is so irksome as petty tyranny: the officious demands of policemen, government clerks, and electromechanical gadgets." - Edward Abbey

You can have my x86 processor when you can pry it from my cold, dead hands. The exception to the rule. -- Murray "No tyranny is so irksome as petty tyranny: the officious demands of policemen, government clerks, and electromechanical gadgets." - Edward Abbey

Got one ... that's the same logbook I used for my first jumps. Looks like I'm darn near ready to go.... -- Murray "No tyranny is so irksome as petty tyranny: the officious demands of policemen, government clerks, and electromechanical gadgets." - Edward Abbey

Here's what you get when you Google "Define Asignine" -- Murray "No tyranny is so irksome as petty tyranny: the officious demands of policemen, government clerks, and electromechanical gadgets." - Edward Abbey

Hi Bill, I have a chest mount with a 24' reserve and a 70's era jumpsuit....there might be a pair of paraboots in the clubhouse attic, hopefully they'll fit. I'm going to wear my camera helmet for video under the 7TU. I'll practice my plfs again...I brushed up last summer before jumping a Dactyl for the first time. I'm not so worried about landing the thing as I am about spotting for it. It's been a long, long time. Thanks for your offers to help Bill. Much appreciated. -- Murray "No tyranny is so irksome as petty tyranny: the officious demands of policemen, government clerks, and electromechanical gadgets." - Edward Abbey