champu

It's remarkably difficult to stake a claim to something in the absence of matter. Just look at how otherwise questionable boundaries are written into language here on earth... airspace... international waters... In these cases there is, at the very least, stuff to which one may tie a small baggage tag, complete with a name and address, so when it comes around on the turnstile, one can proceed to shove everyone nearby aside to get to it, and feel completely justified in doing so. With space, things get more complicated. This is strange, as you'd think in the absence of everything, simplicity would prevail. "No, no, no! We don't wish to fly objects over your country in space! Don't be silly! We are going to fly them in a region corresponding roughly to an irregular helical tube curved into an ellipse, of which one focal point will be referenced to the center of the sun. If your pesky little chunk of earth gets in the way, that's certainly not our problem now is it?" What can be more easily defined and understood is access to space. Ensured access is something the US is very interested in maintaining for itself, and I believe she has every right to do so. As I said before, it's just a bunch of nothing. As for the desire of nations to limit the access of others, well, that's a whole other matter.

And if one stares at the single tree in a wide open field when trying to land a canopy, one will hit that tree. The factors at work in these two situations may be more similar than it first appears. I don't buy the idea of physical phenomena occuring purely due to thought, but I have no trouble observing (every single day) that thought can influence people's actions in ways they have trouble perceiving themselves. We're big sacks of meat and chemicals, people; don't expect too much.

...and then the helmet itself.

If I'm watching video [that I'm not in*] I'd say... - Bad belly-flying is funny. - Bad free-flying is scary. - Mediocre belly-flying is incredibly boring. - Mediocre free-flying is funny. - Good belly-flying and good free-flying are both sights to behold *Note: All videos that I'm in are awesome.

Quick! Initiate Wing Attack Plan R!

Damn it Tomas! You're ruining everything! No one is supposed to know about the secret moon bases we're building to protect us from the giant robots that destroyed Climate Orbiter and Global Surveyor. /edited to add: just watched the Transformers preview, haha. That's hilarious. [Singing...] "Why does Michael Bay... Get to keep on making movies?"

Okay, epilogue time... It's just as custom as anything else out there, but since I said I'd follow up, here's the finished bracket. It snaps directly into a stroboframe quick release...

Speaking of the factory team... Tagle and JC are going to be on Stunt Junkies tonight. (05/21/2007) There's a short article about it on the factory team site. Looks like it should be pretty cool.

Windows, a lot of times and for whatever reason, likes to treat 1394 controllers as network devices. My WAG is that in his particular configuration, when he installs the card, Windows is assigning it as his default connection to the internet. The solution probably lies somewhere in the network control panel, and might require some tinkering. I can't investigate any more specifically, however, as I don't have a Windows machine anymore.

That's the long sought secret of life... not to die.

It was always cool to have you guys around... see attached... I remember when I first met JP at the 2004 Holiday Boogie. I had rolled into town late and was setting up in the tent city and I could hear his cacophonous story-telling all the way from the fire pit. You could definitely tell where the party was.

That is correct. If you bought a stereo connector and are terminating it yourself, "red" above refers to the inner contact (the tip), "white" above refers to the middle contact, and the ground braid connects to the base of the connector. The white wire, which is safe to ignore here, performs the same action as holding the shutter half way down. The red wire is the same as pressing the shutter the entire way down. If you use a mono connector and wire it up to your blow switch, it will still allow you to shoot stills, but the connector will bridge the middle contact and the base inside the camera, which will make your camera constantly auto-focus the entire time the thing is plugged in and the camera is on. This is probably not ideal, but other than the extra wear on the AF drive in the lens (negligible?) and a shortened battery life, this shouldn't have any ill effects on your camera. /edited to add: the pinout I'm referring to is for the 2.5mm mini-plug style consumer canon cameras.

Which of your own responses to this thread do you believe? According to the study provided in your link, moving from Wyoming to California gets you about +4dB of "voting gain." This is at odds with the -13dB you stated earlier.

Until you're 963 years old, get sick of it all, and decide to, "buy your last lift ticket."

The will of those whose candidate lost is always set aside. I think you're missing the forest for the trees here. If 270 electoral votes worth of states institute this policy, then we will have a de facto popular voting system. After all the ballots are cast and the count is in, the mechanism by which the popular vote resulted in a candidate being elected is irrelevant. You do, however, raise an excellent point in asking whether this is the proper way for a coalition of states to enact such a change to the election process.

If it sticks around, seeing a doctor is advised. As Reggie said, could be nothing, could be something. Also, in general, I don't think people stretch enough before jumping, and not just the neck/back. Stretching goes a long way in making sure a full weekend of jumping, opening, landing, and packing doesn't get the better of you Monday morning. That, and if you have a landing you have to run out or fall down on, or an opening that's harder than usual, you can help prevent some types of injuries.

How very insightful.

A couple years ago, before Elsinore sacked their tetrahedron, I remember being the third person down after a jump. As I was coming off my left front riser, I saw, out of the corner of my eye, the tetrahedron spin 270 one direction, snap to a halt, then spin 180 the other direction and snap to a halt again. At the time I remember thinking, "hmm... that's odd..." and a few seconds later as I was just about at the end of my flare, my canopy lifted me about 15 feet back into the air, spun into a line twist and threw me to the ground 40 feet to the left of where I would have touched down. As it turns out, you can't see dust devils when they are over grass.

In all honesty though, a cigarette certainly does take the edge off of just having dismembered someone with a chainsaw.

I have some funny video somewhere of myself trying to hang from a two person base where one of them was falling much faster than the other, backsliding, and turning. I was underneath it, but I was bent about 30 degrees at the waist to one side, with that heel dug into the wind as hard as I could and the other leg all goofy trying to hold us on heading. From the outside it looked like I was standing on one leg, slowly and casually twirling two people over my head. Much as a superhero might do with a couple evil-doers shortly before depositing them in a dumpster.

That might be the heart of the (irrational?) fear I have regarding a lot of the flash quick releases I see. They can be as strong as an ox, but I look at the "double shoe" junction involved when you throw an off-shoe cord in the mix, combined with the flash construction and top-heaviness in general and it doesn't give me that warm fuzzy feeling I'm looking for. It looks like a setup that would work for 30 jumps? 40 jumps maybe? I feel like the repeated stress of the flying and openings would get the better of the flash. I made an "engineering model" of my desired bracket out of cardboard and asked my team mate who owns a machine shop to make it up out of 0.125" aluminum plate. I've got the rest of the setup ready to go, I'll take some photos of it when I get it set up, I think it should work well.

When shooting 4-way FS video, I deploy as soon as the first person turns to track. Break-off is usually in the 4K to 4.5K range, and my canopy doesn't open that quickly, so I generally don't make any special arrangements with the next group about exit separation time, if they leave enough time to not hit my team, they've left enough time to not hit me. When shooting 4-way VRW, break-off is a little more complicated so we do it at 5K, but I still take the center. Being both underneath the team and on my head is not very conducive to dumping as soon as they turn to leave. Instead it goes a bit like this... They all turn (on their heads) and face away from the center and drive forward out of the "circle of death," meanwhile I transition to my back in a high-speed ball and move towards the center (so I can confirm all four people have left the center area,) once they are out of the center they transition to a back track and take off, and I flip over to my belly, slow down for a couple seconds, and deploy. I know my teammates, we all know the plan, and this works well for us. When shooting video on freefly "fun jumps," I won't get off level to any significant degree with the rest of the group, so at break off I move out of the center, and then track away just like everyone else.

Irregardlessnessitudology n. The study of the degree to which unnecessary prefixes and suffixes on words makes the user appear foolish.

Paul, it's a well established fact that 4-way FS cameraflyers (which I am not this season) are nothing more than dime-a-dozen whores, whereas 4-way VRW cameraflyers (which I am this season) are valued and respected teammates*. *Although I should note my VRW team is, as I write this, in Eloy flying in the tunnel without me...

I generally don't like getting hung up on a point like this having bit by bit arguments, and I'm making this one particularly arduous now, so for that I apologize, however... The last statement in my previous post regarding the red left turn arrows only stopping you when you would be required to stop anyway or when you shouldn't have to stop applies to all instances of their use, not just to the common example I laid out. Still, perhaps I should revise my statement to be, "I find the vast majority of instances where they are used to be stupid, and the remainder to be condescending and unnecessary." Of course, "If everyone was as good a driver as I was..." (tm)