MikeJD

Yep. There's a random connection there. Didn't I read a while back that Peter Jackson was planning to remake The Dambusters? Whatever happened to that project? If he could produce a movie with that quality of script and cast again, but updated with convincing special effects - what a great film that could be.

Ah, thanks. I see it now. As for your avatar - ouchie!

That is a dog. A dog on a bed.

You'd definitely have made the list, but I thought I was probably the only person who didn't know what that was, and I didn't want to look stupid. Some kind of critter with a big hole through it(?) Dunno.

Nice pic. I wonder how many cats have been caught 'blowing a raspberry' over the years while innocently cleaning themselves. I know I've taken a few shots like that.

Thought for a moment you'd managed to get The Bonfire projected up at the front. Now that would be a nice oops!

Thank God so many criminals are also idiots. Otherwise we'd catch even fewer of them than we do already!

Not to hijack the thread, but I was browsing through the pictures of odd injuries (mostly x-rays) on that same web page, and came across this caption: "When a friend told 27-year-old Kong Lin of eastern China a joke, Lin laughed so forcefully that he swallowed a 4-inch long pair of scissors he was using as a toothpick." Sounds like he's ok, so I don't feel too bad about laughing out loud when I read that. Luckily I wasn't picking my teeth with scissors, or indeed anything else, at that moment.

No your pointing to that shaft that looks like its gonna go in the hole Yep, and that innocent cute face in the avatar looks more, well, mischievous in the bigger version.

Gravitysurfer = Molecular structure of adrenaline. Someone PM'd me back in 2001 and knew exactly what it was.

No, but I do now! See the stuff you can learn on these forums?

Yeah, I liked the idea. Just wondered why a doctor. I guess it's pretty random.

Just think, when the next big discipline comes along and freeflying is 'old hat', freeflying will be what all the old guys are doing! Nice picture. Beautiful location!

Agree that there's no point you trying to 'stay ahead' with stuff like this. Your instructor should give you an adequate briefing at the appropriate time. Also, it's probably worth mentioning that these maneouvres are often used with students to make them unstable and demonstrate how to recover from that instability. If your front/ backloop is perfect first time, you might miss out on a valuable lesson!

Ever wonder what the hell is going on in somebody's avatar? Those teensy images can be pretty mysterious: - Sometimes you have to guess which of two people in the picture is the poster. - Sometimes you can see it's a picture of the person, but what they're doing is obscure. - Sometimes the whole image is just totally abstract. Occasionally you can get a better view in that person's profile, but not always. So I'm hoping a few of the folks below might happen to stop by and tell us what's we're looking at: mrwrong - is that a head-down doctor? amstalder - obviously that's you, but what are you pointing at? normiss - looks like a Cyalume ring hanging on a pair of doors. But why? Rstanley031 - are either of those guys you? And if so, who's the other guy? ACMESkydiver - why, and where from, the rabbit? Conundrum - whose eye? jceman - is that a caricature of you, and if so who's the artist? fallfast69 - planets? happythoughts - I just have no idea what that is. gravitysurfer - likewise. Anybody have any other avatars they're curious about? Obviously as soon as people start changing their pictures, this thread will be (even more) pointless...

Congrats on your jump. Everybody's unique and the first one affects people in different ways. It's natural to be nervous, and that door opening at altitude gets nearly everyone - even those who've been looking cool as anything up to that point. You were nervous before the jump, and happy during it - I'd say that's the right way round if you're going to continue in the sport!

You mean ... like a religious experience? That is so deep. I've had skydives that caused profuse crying. Usually somebody's bought teas or beers to make amends though.

Yes, bad spots exist. The mystery is why they happen so much more often to people with no sense of canopy control.

Do you have arms and a head? If not, I'm thinking that's going to be your first stumbling block.

On my first ever jump (static line from the step of a C182) I distinctly remember that I felt quite detached from the experience. My perspective didn't change, but it was as though I were watching someone else's arms and legs as I was climbing out. I think that's a normal reaction to an 'extreme' situation, and it sounds as though yours was just an extension of it. We're encouraged to visualise in this sport - it helps us succeed. You were visualising (vividly and maybe involuntarily) a crucial action that you needed to complete, while you were doing it. Obviously your body did what it was supposed to do, so I don't see why this should ring any alarm bells. You may well find now you've done your first one that it never happens again.

It might help to know where you are - at least what country you're in! We don't seem to have too much trouble sourcing Europe-based Skyvans for UK boogies.

Case in point - I have an early memory of coming home from school to find my mother listening to Peyton Place on the TV when the picture tube was broken temporarily. She seemed quite happy, and I don't think she missed a thing!

Out of interest, have you read any of Eric Van Lustbader's Bourne books? If so, are they anything like the original Ludlum ones - or do they in turn seem to be influenced by the movies? Always strikes me as strange when another author picks up a series of novels, especially when they try to work in the same style as the original writer.

That's why I said 'to me, subjectively'. I know there are a lot of people who really rate the books, and I'm not questioning their judgement. I'm saying that I enjoyed watching the movies far more than reading what I did of The Bourne Identity, which I freely admit wasn't very much. It was the style of writing that put me off and kept me from persevering. I didn't get far enough in to see how closely the stories or the characters matched. Maybe I'll take a second look on your recommendation. As regards Matt Damon, I thought he was a great choice to play Bourne the movie character. Whether that's the same character that was portrayed in the books I couldn't say, but to me it's a different argument. I was trying to say in my earlier post that I think your best chance of enjoying both 'the book' and 'the movie of the book' is to approach each on its own terms. If you try to play them off against each other, one of them will generally disappoint you.

I'm surprised how people base their expectations of a film on the book they read - especially if it's a bestselling book, where the subsequent movie is likely to have been rushed out, with a big star in the lead role, to cash in on the same market. I also think it's a mistake to criticise a movie just because it's not faithful to the source novel. Some books already read like screenplays, which I guess makes them easy to adapt - but in my view they're often not the best books anyway. On the other hand, some very successful movies have been based on books that were considered 'unfilmable', by taking big liberties with the text. The English Patient is one example. I love the Jason Bourne movies, but when I tried to read one of the Robert Ludlum novels I didn't like it at all - so to me, subjectively, those films surpass the novels they're based on. And I gather that by the time they got to The Bourne Ultimatum the movie makers used the title of the novel and little else in any case. Then there's the 'novelisation' of a film that's already been made. Alan Dean Foster's virtually made a career out of it doing it for sci fi movies - Star Wars, Alien, The Thing, Star Trek, Terminator: Salvation and lots of others. Can't say I've read any of those, but much as I liked many of the movies the idea of those books doesn't appeal to me at all - even though presumably they're very similar to the films on which they're based.