mr2mk1g

Just heard at the moment there are 20 confirmed dead.

Donn yer tin hat dude... stiff upper lip and all that. Best go make a cup of tea.

Looks like the London transport net is currently under a terrorist attack... possibly... conflicting reports are still comming in though. http://www.nbr.co.nz/home/column_article.asp?id=12352&cid=8&cname=News

One main reason for that is that condom use is easier for circumcised men. Thus men are more prone to simply ditching the condom if it's a pain in the arse... this is tendancy is emphasised in countries with poorer education. On a personal note - I've never had a problem with smegma, cleanliness or any other of the problems supposedly suffered by uncut men. Nor with obtaining blow jobs... although I should note women over here are used to it as uncut is by far the norm… Essex girls are especially used to it I'm told. It's like any other part of your body - if you don't wash it you start to have problems, just like your armpits, arse hole, feet, balls, whatever. Condom use I can see being slightly easier if you're cut... but then again if you can't work out how to get around the minor issue of a flap of skin which needs to be moved slightly first, you really have no business waving your willy round in the first place. Personally I'm happy with my flap of skin. It protects the glans... and to be honest I wouldn't want that thing rubbing round my under crackers without a little protection - it's far too sensitive. The only conclusion I've been able to come to is that cut men must be less sensitive as I simply wouldn't be able to put up with that sensation... although I realize that conclusion is personal and not bourn out by scientific studies. The only real advantage with which I sadly have personal experience is that if you're cut it's not possible to nearly tear the fucker off during a perhaps in hindsight rather over-vigorous sex session. Don't worry - I healed fast.

I think it's got a lot to do with how lazy we are. You're right next door - we'd have to put more effort in if we wanted to take the piss out'a someone further away. Look at how bad we take the piss out of the Welsh the Scotts and the Irish - we share boarders with them.

I'll refrain from commenting on the specific auction, but I can confirm that the PC1000E has both DV in and out and is in PAL format. I've just noticed you're in Oz so ignore my comments re PAL/NTSC as you guys use PAL thus theres no issue. I personally wouldn't have any concerns about the use of a PC1000E that came from HK... it's just up to you whether you take the risks involved in buying from abroad. The only other issue I know of re grey imports like this is that if you have a break down your warrantee is generally from the source country... thus you have to ship your camera off back to HK to get it fixed. That's a simple gamble, (although I note the auction promises local warrantee support within the first 12 months... that would be normally be unusual).

yeah, ever hear the phrase "London never sleeps".

haha - that's pretty much what I said when I heard the report. I said it was probably just a BASE jumper who got caught and managed to talk herself out of it.

I'm a prominant photographer from the American Civil War so the images link is swamped with my early work. I think this one's cool though - this used to be the first link from Google... it's now slipped to the second page but my fav. bit is the by-line which reads: "Australia's first sex symbol". http://www.convictcreations.com/history/brady.htm Oddly enough he was only 3 years younger than my photographer incarnation. I think I'm also a current NFL player too.

really? cool! To be honest the thing I'm happiest about is that this means we fucked the French over for it.

If this thing's on tribal lands... is the tribe able to ensure that BASE is entirely legal from their bridge in the same way that some tribes have made gambling legal? I mean... so long as they give permission right... and there's no one arround like the NPS... and if they're after tourism just show them Bridge Day stats... you could have yourself a nice place to start your bargaining for a cool legal S. Would be really cool to be able to look down through the glass at the jumpers below.

I'll be there just for shits and giggles and maybe a few camera jumps.

that's an idea... although we've been drilling a kinda transient reverse totem where I fly through his burble and just pause momentarily to get the point before continuing on for the next... I suppose you'd have to be wary of getting docked for grip switching if you simply took the foot dock straight out of the totem and make the separation a bit obvious too.

I'm currently watching e-bay for a bargain old battered Sony DV camera (think one missing something crucial - like the lens) so I can plug a bullet cam into the S-video port. Seems to me to be the best and indeed cheapest way to do things. So long as the tape drive works and I can still control it who cares what else is missing. Who the hell's gonna want a beat up camera, even if it does only cost $50? ME! The other bonus is all my shit will be interchangeable with my main camera on my head too.

We have airbags in steering wheels. Now they're in B pillars, doors and in roofs too. There's talk of putting them in bonnets to protect pedestrians. I've even seen an invention that puts them inside NFL helmets so that when they get a bad tackle to the head a neck brace inflates to prevent a neck injury... Maybe one day we'll see top swoopers with airbag swoop pants, triggered by a radar device which senses them going into the corner. Maybe "femur" will cease to be a verb in our sport? On one hand that seems pretty extreme... but then most whuffos are shocked as hell to learn we have £1000 worth of computer in our rigs which fires an explosively propelled razor blade to deploy our reserve if we're passing through 750ft faster than 78mph. Another one, which is already on the way in, is in air comms. I've just found myself an FF coach who is starting to use in air comms to train people. He said it's amazing and as clear as two people speaking on the ground. I understand some schools have just started trialing it for AFF students as well as some pro 4 way teams using it for training. This is going to be a huge advance and it's on its way in fast. On more (although rather more frivolous) will be air to ground live video feed (by that I mean reliable and commonplace as I realize it's already been done).

Your first issue is PAL/NTSC. You'll still be able to fire wire footage between different format cameras but you'll not be able to view it on anything but the camera. Likelihood is that out there your TV or VCR won’t even play PAL footage either (not always true). The other issue is the precise model number. Basically the EU has passed a regulation a couple of years back that anything that can record from a data cable input is in the same tax bracket as a VCR and therefore costs a lot more to buy inside the EU as Sony has to pay large taxes on it as the units enter the EU. If the camera can't do that then it isn't taxable as a VCR and is therefore cheaper and more competitive with other brands. However Sony knows some users really want this feature so they still make models that do have it and these are usually far more popular anyway despite the price difference. Therefore the model is important: eg the 103 and 105 are identical but for the "DV in" feature. I think the same is true of the 108 and 109... or 107 or something... maybe one doesn't have a memory card??... sony has too many damn models. Anyway, without DV in you'll be at a disadvantage when it comes to copying people's footage from them... although so long as one of you has the feature you can always swap tapes around. Basically find out what model it is and then look on the web to see if it has “DV in”.

That was pretty much my take on the question. Maybe I'll get round to e-mailing airtec about it. For me it's a point of academic curiosity... for others who make use of these fantastic jump ships regularly it might actually be worth knowing about.

Here's a question for you to ponder. Ya' know how the cypres manual states it's a big no-no to descend in the plane below the altitude of your landing field... Well I recently had the pleasure of doing a whole load of helicopter jumps and during take-off my Suunto usually read about -75ft due to the ground effect of a really big helicopter getting its ass and 20 odd people airborne. Do you think this will have an effect on the cypres?

On the other hand instead of 1 big comet thing coming to hit us we could end up with 1 big radioactive comet thing coming to hit us... still... anythings worth a shot under the circumstances.

Had a tip at the weekend that Endsleigh were covering skydiving again. The guy I was speaking to said he got world wide annual for £65 with no limits on number or type of jumps... which would be too good to be true assuming he's right. As I said it's second hand info though so you'll have to check it out.

Cool! When are we invading North Korea, China, Iran, Syria, Pakistan, Russia, Nigeria, Sudan, and half the Indonesian subcontinent?

cheers guys - that's good advice, and cheers breadhead for the pm, great stuff. This is the only head up dock we're not getting... the rest have come easily, I guess we just hit some kind of mental block when it came to using both hands in front of us... sounds like we were doing it wrong.

My buddy and I were trying these out at the weekend. We were getting the docks but we weren’t really able to fly the position... the low guy (who was taking the dock) always ended up going unstable and falling away. We both had the same problem in that we would fly in for the dock and just kinda sit there for a second unsure of how in the hell we were going to bet both hands in front of us without falling out of the sit. It just didn't "feel" right... it was odd that we both described the same sensation. Any tips?

I've seen loads in military surplus shops. You get old round parachutes with their lines cut off and I've even found a few old squares (think they were Pegasus') that had been slashed to stop anyone jumping them. Pick up a copy of Guns Mart or something and try some of the bigger military surplus dealers or hit e-bay. I see the odd surplus parachute on there, mostly advertised for kids to play with or as large basic tents (eg for a living area in good weather).

I can't reconcile your friend’s observations with what I get from my Observer. As far as I was aware there was no such thing as an MSL setting. They don't have it set to barometer mode do they? I simply zero my watch before getting on the plane so it calls the altitude at which I will be landing "0". It doesn't know or care how high I am relative to the sea... it just knows to call that pressure reading "0". I was not aware of any other settings for the alti mode other than having it set to barometer instead. I set mine by going into the alti screen by pressing "mode" once. Then press and hold select until the half moon shape under "alti" flashes. (Pressing "quick" or "on/off" now will switch between alti and barometer mode). If you don't want to change between alti and baro mode press "select" once more and the altimeter readout itself will flash. Now use the "quick" and "on/off" buttons to adjust the altitude to "0" (or I set it to "3ft" as I'm generally holding the watch a couple of feet up... as if that actually matters). Then press "Mode" again. You might have to do all that twice to get it to read "0", especially if you've made a big adjustment. This is the manual I use:http://www.tramsoft.ch/downloads/suunto/manual_observer_en.pdf I wouldn't use this in FF though... I make use of it under canopy a bit and use a regular analogue alti in freefall... the watch is simply too sensitive to pressure changes so you get an instant thousand foot change with a mere roll of the wrist... plus it's too small to read and I've more than once found it telling me what compass direction I was flying in as opposed to how high I was simply because I caught a button at some point. Under canopy though it can be useful.