murrays

Resistance is Futile? I think not! -- Murray "No tyranny is so irksome as petty tyranny: the officious demands of policemen, government clerks, and electromechanical gadgets." - Edward Abbey

I just picked up the Gypsy Moths DVD a few days ago. You might be able to rent it. Phone around to some of the local video shops. The DVD includes a little documentary called "The Skydivers" about the jumpers and photographers. A very young Carl Boenish was the only one whose name I can recall without pulling out the DVD and watching it again. I haven't watched the movie yet but they did some pretty neat jumps that were shown in the documentary. For a rigger like you that has a good knowledge of the history of gear it will be like visiting a museum. They show them packing rounds into sleeves...it's been over 20 years since I did that...and I can't believe how much work they were. I'd totally forgotten. -- Murray "No tyranny is so irksome as petty tyranny: the officious demands of policemen, government clerks, and electromechanical gadgets." - Edward Abbey

Rob, When I moved to Vancouver in 1990, Pacific Skydivers was actually taking off from the ultra-light strip. I loved jumping there. The rides to altitude were wonderful...usually followed one ridge of mountains to the north and another south before turning onto jumprun. When they had to stop taking off and landing there and started using the Pitt Meadows airport but landing back at the old dz I quit jumping there as I hated the car ferrying back to the dz. Flannie had an old house trailer that they used for manifest that they burned in a dz closing party...I missed it due to exams but it sounded like a ton of fun! I think that for a while they also operated out of the Municipal airport at Blaine, WA. I jumped down there once when I was out in Vancouver for some reason or another. -- Murray "No tyranny is so irksome as petty tyranny: the officious demands of policemen, government clerks, and electromechanical gadgets." - Edward Abbey

Just out of curiousity, what was the temperature that you were jumping in? Is it possible the batteries were too cold to provide enough power? If you tested them after they warmed up, they may seem ok but not have the juice when you need it. As a Canuck you should know about batteries and cold weather ... unless you're originally from Lotusland. Last night it was -30 up in my part of the Great White North!! -- Murray "No tyranny is so irksome as petty tyranny: the officious demands of policemen, government clerks, and electromechanical gadgets." - Edward Abbey

A helmet that I've heard good things about is called the RAWA. here's a link to a previous post with pictures. Very interesting chin cup that hides the ends of the straps. -- Murray "No tyranny is so irksome as petty tyranny: the officious demands of policemen, government clerks, and electromechanical gadgets." - Edward Abbey

I have put a smaller version of Bill Von's 300-way video on my website. It's 5 mb Quicktime and streams so it won't take quite so long to see. http://homepage.mac.com/murrays/iMovieTheater16.html -- Murray "No tyranny is so irksome as petty tyranny: the officious demands of policemen, government clerks, and electromechanical gadgets." - Edward Abbey

I just spoke to a woman at Ikea Canada mail order and was told that they have posters with that number in some of the stores but she couldn't get a picture of the print from their system so couldn't say for certainty that it was the Base print. I think that the product number and a phone call to your local Ikea may help anybody track down that print's availability. I'm 350 miles from the nearest Ikea so I have my oldest son going to have a look when he has a chance. Go to Ikea.com and you can go to your country's website from there. -- Murray "No tyranny is so irksome as petty tyranny: the officious demands of policemen, government clerks, and electromechanical gadgets." - Edward Abbey

Thanks for that info, Im going to call Ikea Canada and see if it is available here. -- Murray "No tyranny is so irksome as petty tyranny: the officious demands of policemen, government clerks, and electromechanical gadgets." - Edward Abbey

Hi Z, The Rule of Thumb is a reminder of how to calculate exposures if you are ever left with a meter less camera that you could still operate manually. These days, a pretty small chance that would ever happen as everything is all electronic. I used a manual camera for my stills back in the dark ages when I jumped camera so I was always doing these calculations in my head after I trashed the meter on my OM-1 by leaving it mounted on the strut of a jump plane for about 3 weeks. A bit too much vibration for the old girl Still a handy thing to know if you want to lock in your depth of field and use aperture priority as you can then figure what the shutter speed will be for an aperture/ASA combination. This always used to be on the little info sheets inside boxes of film. These sheets always gave you the adjustment for cloudy bright overcast, dark overcast, etc. Speaking of slow shutter speeds, something I tried to do a couple of times but always had equipment problems was to shoot at very slow shutter speeds like 1/8th or maybe even slower at dusk while using fill flash. I think you could get some cool effects filming a person or group that is turning/rotating very quickly...when the first shutter curtain comes across, the flash goes off, lighting up the person and "freezing" them, their continued movement leaves blurs off this image. I think it would capture some of the movement in a still image. I've seen some stills using fill at dusk but only with fast flash sync shutter speeds which freezes everything. They're nice too but I wish my attempts had worked - my flash always failed. -- Murray "No tyranny is so irksome as petty tyranny: the officious demands of policemen, government clerks, and electromechanical gadgets." - Edward Abbey

Does anybody know the name or product number? -- Murray "No tyranny is so irksome as petty tyranny: the officious demands of policemen, government clerks, and electromechanical gadgets." - Edward Abbey

I finally got this downloaded today. I loved it! Awesome stuff Bill, thanks so much. I am totally buzzed!! -- Murray "No tyranny is so irksome as petty tyranny: the officious demands of policemen, government clerks, and electromechanical gadgets." - Edward Abbey

Thanks, I'll try skydivingmovies.com when I get home from work. Bill, out of curiousity, what codec, frame rate, key frame rate did you use to encode it? -- Murray "No tyranny is so irksome as petty tyranny: the officious demands of policemen, government clerks, and electromechanical gadgets." - Edward Abbey

Quicktime Pro - $29. Qt does all sorts of file conversions. I find it very useful for many video and sound "transactions". -- Murray "No tyranny is so irksome as petty tyranny: the officious demands of policemen, government clerks, and electromechanical gadgets." - Edward Abbey

As I type this I am downloading Bill's 300-way video at about 3.8 kb/s...it should be ready by suppertime! Speaking of quality, I downloaded several of the QT videos available on the Swedish www.headdown.net site and tried converting them to DV streams and then transferring them onto a DVD to watch on my TV...the quality is surprisingly good! My favourites are "Base Forever" and "Castles in the Sky". Watching them at their normal resolutions on a computer screen is a treat! -- Murray "No tyranny is so irksome as petty tyranny: the officious demands of policemen, government clerks, and electromechanical gadgets." - Edward Abbey

Rule of thumb for bright daylight exposures: f16 @ 1/Film ASA or f16@ 1/25 ...use closest i.e. 30 f11@ 1/60 f8@ 1/125 f5.6@ 1/250 -- Murray "No tyranny is so irksome as petty tyranny: the officious demands of policemen, government clerks, and electromechanical gadgets." - Edward Abbey

I've been trying to get this video for a couple of hours now and keep getting messages that my attempt to connect failed or that the server has been reset due to being busy. Sigh... I guess I'll go to bed and try again tomorrow. I'm really looking forward to seeing this Bill, thanks for taking the time to make it available. -- Murray "No tyranny is so irksome as petty tyranny: the officious demands of policemen, government clerks, and electromechanical gadgets." - Edward Abbey

How many jumps did this jumper have? If he got into the aircraft with his pin turned around like in Skybytch's photo I have to say there's no excuse for that. Is it conceivable that it got moved around in the aircraft? I'm assuming it was a Cessna jump because it was a 4-way from 9.5. I think that it could have happened while getting ready or on exit, depending on exit position and formation being launched. Makes me appreciate Wendy Faulkner's recent comments in the CRW forum about using Racers for CRW. She still uses Racers because she feels her pins are better protected despite the snag potential of a Racer while banging canopies. Her reasons are that she has seen one pins get bent or have premature launches. There's always grey area when it comes to our gear choices isn't there? Glad your friend is ok. -- Murray "No tyranny is so irksome as petty tyranny: the officious demands of policemen, government clerks, and electromechanical gadgets." - Edward Abbey

Yep, cost of software is a big barrier to changing no matter what the platform. I only use my machine for video, photos, music, web-surfing and e-mail and the only application I've paid to upgrade to an OS X version is Photoshop Elements. Everything else I've needed for my core needs is included. (iMovie, etc, etc.) I find OS X - especially Jaguar to be a great OS and way better than OS 8-9. I think it's been well worth the cost of the upgrade(s). So, how come you managed to find a "need" for your Mac in your department?

That's right, and before that a 7TU round was considered hot enough to preclude all but the most experienced jumpers from using one. I made my first square jump on my 27th jump (1981)...at that time the soonest anyone in our club had been allowed to jump a square. It's very much about knowledge and training....once we have the knowledge, we can do a better job training. Unfortunately, as you point out, some of this knowledge comes with a very high price. -- Murray "No tyranny is so irksome as petty tyranny: the officious demands of policemen, government clerks, and electromechanical gadgets." - Edward Abbey

Just out of curiousity, how many Mac users are on OS X? What is keeping you from converting if you aren't using X? I'm on Jaguar and really like it. -- Murray "No tyranny is so irksome as petty tyranny: the officious demands of policemen, government clerks, and electromechanical gadgets." - Edward Abbey

It fits in with the iBooks pricewise at $1,799 and a Superdrive equipped one for $1,999 seems pretty reasonable...only $200 more than with Combo drive. I'm really anxious to get the updated iApps as I'm not in the market for a new computer anytime soon, having bought a flatpanel iMac in June. -- Murray "No tyranny is so irksome as petty tyranny: the officious demands of policemen, government clerks, and electromechanical gadgets." - Edward Abbey

Thanks Quade for setting straight my faulty numbers...the new Airport stuff is way faster than the current Wi-Fi and backwards compatible. -- Murray "No tyranny is so irksome as petty tyranny: the officious demands of policemen, government clerks, and electromechanical gadgets." - Edward Abbey

Apple announced a bunch of new upgrades to existing "i-apps" at MacWorld San Francisco. iDVD3, iMovie3, iPhoto3 all enhanced and really have a lot of handy integration features making it very easy to use material from one app in another. They also announced a version of Final Cut Pro called Final Cut Express that is optimized for dv editing. Looks like it has pretty much all the capabilities of FCP except off-line RT editing and handling all the formats FCP can handle. At $299 US a pretty reasonable price for what appears to be a professional level program. New Powerbooks, including a top-end model with a 17" diagonal screen...yep, 17 inches! The same screen as the 17" flatpanel iMac. Comes with a Superdrive for burning DVDs. Also announced a very small Powerbook with a 12" screen that can also be ordered with a Superdrive. Firewire800 on the 17" model (twice as fast as Firewire). 802.11g Airport stuff for wireless networking at 1.54 mps. Anyway, you can check it all out at Apple's web site. I'll be getting the iApp upgrades as soon as they are available and maybe even Final Cut Express. The iMovie/iDVD improvements are well worth the cost of $49 US. -- Murray "No tyranny is so irksome as petty tyranny: the officious demands of policemen, government clerks, and electromechanical gadgets." - Edward Abbey

Bill, I vote for Quicktime or Mpeg2. -- Murray "No tyranny is so irksome as petty tyranny: the officious demands of policemen, government clerks, and electromechanical gadgets." - Edward Abbey

Yep, Sometimes life really sucks...and losing to the Russians does it for me. Weird game, I thought Canada had a lot of the play but didn't really get a lot of good shots on goal. The Russians had lots of good chances...remember the empty net that was missed early in the game? We didn't play well enough in our own zone. We'll get 'em next year. -- Murray "No tyranny is so irksome as petty tyranny: the officious demands of policemen, government clerks, and electromechanical gadgets." - Edward Abbey