BlindBrick

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Everything posted by BlindBrick

  1. Higher end workstation card or higher end consumer card? I'm the backup editor that catches the overflow when we get really slammed. That means I'm way slower than the primary editor and when I'm not being an FJC Instructor, I spend most of my time sitting idle playing PC games. Anything that boosts my output speed AND gives me an excuse to install a ultra-high end consumer vid card for my games would be A-OK with me! -Blind "If you end up in an alligator's jaws, naked, you probably did something to deserve it."
  2. Getting ready to bring up a new NLE rig, is Vegas 11 going to be worth it for us or will 10 be more than enough for tandem vids? -Blind "If you end up in an alligator's jaws, naked, you probably did something to deserve it."
  3. http://www.dropzone.com/cgi-bin/forum/gforum.cgi?post=2876306;search_string=bluebird%20of%20heaviness;#2876306 see what I mean? -Blind "If you end up in an alligator's jaws, naked, you probably did something to deserve it."
  4. lol, if it's blue and silver and has roughly the size, shape and speed of an F-16XL, it's probably yours truely. Blue and silver goes fasta! -Blind "If you end up in an alligator's jaws, naked, you probably did something to deserve it."
  5. It's not very out of date, its got my seal that was issued at the end of Dec '10. Been rigging almost a decade and I'm not on that list. -Blind "If you end up in an alligator's jaws, naked, you probably did something to deserve it."
  6. Yeah, I use it to illustrate the point that having a student canopy/wingloading isn't a "get out of jail free" card and that the canopy pilot has to be an active and heads-up part of the equation. -Blind "If you end up in an alligator's jaws, naked, you probably did something to deserve it."
  7. Having watched more students and low-time jumpers than I care to remember bust themselves up with low w/l student canopies, I began to paraphrase the old Cub addage in my FJC: "This is a student parachute, one of the safest canopies in the world. It just barely flies fast enough to kill you." -Blind "If you end up in an alligator's jaws, naked, you probably did something to deserve it."
  8. A too heavy instructor that holds on too long will actually stabilize you, just in the wrong orientation. -Blind "If you end up in an alligator's jaws, naked, you probably did something to deserve it."
  9. If you do go with strength training with an emphasis on joint protection, be sure to use primarily free weights rather than machines. With free weights, you have to provide the joint stability during the excercise that a machine would normally handle. This leads to development of the supporting muscles you want to target. On the flip side, you want to be sure to get some professional training at the start to make sure your technique is correct and you'll want a spotter for the heavier lifts. -Blind "If you end up in an alligator's jaws, naked, you probably did something to deserve it."
  10. Don't know if you remember it, but you were one of the dz.com girls that helped me polish my Match.com profile. I married a girl I met off there; we've been married 5 years now. -Blind "If you end up in an alligator's jaws, naked, you probably did something to deserve it."
  11. Unfortunately the vidiot "knew" he was right and that the files were irrecoverable. So, he wouldn't let me copy what was on the card and simply reformatted it. -Blind "If you end up in an alligator's jaws, naked, you probably did something to deserve it."
  12. Had a issue with a CF card this past weekend that I was hoping someone could help me with. Videographer got down from a jump and checked his camera and the pics were fine. He hands me the card and I pop it into the card reader on my PC. The card is recognized and I open up the card folder in Windows. I've got Windows set to large thumbnails so at first there's nothing but placeholder icons. After a couple of minutes I realize that there's still nothing but placeholder icons which should have been resolved in under 20 seconds so I click on the "safe eject" option and pull the card and then reinsert it. As soon as Windows sees the card it issues a warning about a possible file issue. Not wanting to risk wiping the contents of the card, I tell it to ignore it and proceed on. When the card's folder opened all the pics were gone and in their place was a single 250 meg file with what appeared to be a junk name. 1. Any idea what caused this so we can avoid the issue in the future? 2. Can the pics be salvaged from that single file? -Blind "If you end up in an alligator's jaws, naked, you probably did something to deserve it."
  13. For real? Who in the hell hasn't heard those accusations? It's part of the lore of the sport. And it's not like they are esoteric knowledge after all. I mean come on, when a TV network makes an hour-long show about one ofthose two, it's kind of f'ing obvious. -Blind "If you end up in an alligator's jaws, naked, you probably did something to deserve it."
  14. Sounds good to me. it's totally in keeping with our master strategy of winning our country back 25 cents at a time!
  15. I've really got no desire, at this time, to begin doing value added services for free as I can't justify it from a marketing standpoint because the dz is currently running tandems at capacity with no plans for adding additional capacity in the forseeable future. -Blind "If you end up in an alligator's jaws, naked, you probably did something to deserve it."
  16. I'm in an unusual situation I believe. I'm not the dzp/dzm, I'm just a guy who saw a bottleneck in the tandem flow and added a thrd party NLE service to address it. As such I'm not interested in throwing away the several thousands of dollars in gear/software/music to pay a third party to do my job. Also because I'm not the dzo, I can't get dsl (hangar is not in my name and dzo isn't interested) and cable is not an option where we are. I was looking at the cellular because the jumpers at the dz who use them are getting dsl level speeds and and the cellualr modem would give us more revenue potential when we take our gear to boogies. -Blind "If you end up in an alligator's jaws, naked, you probably did something to deserve it."
  17. We were figuring on taking advantage of peoples' desire for instant gratification. Last weekend we had people so eager to get thier stuff up on social media sites that they were literally taking pictures of thier stills displayed on our computer monitors. -Blind "If you end up in an alligator's jaws, naked, you probably did something to deserve it."
  18. We're looking at adding YouTube uploads at our dz. There is no telecom infrastructure at the dz, so we'd need to invest in a cellular modem and service plan. Given that it's value added service that costs us both time and money, we're looking at it as an upsell rather than free service. We're curious of what others were charging for this service. We are also curious about what size of videos you're uploading to Youtube. Given that we'd be using a cellular modem with limited bandwidth ($10 per gig), we're looking at reducign the fiel size since are normal vids are clockign in jsut udner 300 megs. Been experimenting with a custom render template that gets the file size under 50 megs, but it's only at 320x240 rez with 64K audio. -Blind "If you end up in an alligator's jaws, naked, you probably did something to deserve it."
  19. :SIGH: Why is it that the crusaders are almost always the most ignorant of their cause? The FAA can pretty much go after anyone involved in an aviation activity. Pulling FAA-issued tickets isn't the only tool in their box. -Blind "If you end up in an alligator's jaws, naked, you probably did something to deserve it."
  20. Good luck in your quest. When I leanred to skydive, I had a severe level of bilateral keratoconus that wasn't correctable with lenses or RGP's so iI've got at elast a partial idea of the road ahead. Based on that, you need to understand that you will be at an elevated risk as a jumper due to the fact that you will be lacking three core safety items as a skydiver: your sight being your primary altimeter and the ability to not have to rely on anyone but yourself when it comes to jumping safely after you leave student status, and finally your situational awareness in both freefall and canopy flight is very heavily dependant upon visual cues. What you're doing is varely similar to the elevated risk associated with BASE jumping and I'd suggest you PM Tom Aiello on here as an early part of his BASE first jump course is an honest risk/benefit assessment. For some the risk assessment shows that it's clearly not worth it, for others the benefits outweigh the risks. In my case, the benefits did outweigh the risk and I embarked on a journey that was long, hard, and frequently painful, ocassionally permenantly damaging and there was a time or two where dumb luck kept me alive despite everything I did wrong; however, I kept going down that road because the reward (sense of achievement and personal empowerment) was worth it. Best of luck in coming to your decision, -Blind "If you end up in an alligator's jaws, naked, you probably did something to deserve it."
  21. Good for the rebels, looks like they never forgot the lesson that Chad taught them about the use of technicals. Too bad the first world forgot that lesson until the remedial course in Somolia. -Blind "If you end up in an alligator's jaws, naked, you probably did something to deserve it."
  22. No, not PF or TS. It's a new company. -Blind "If you end up in an alligator's jaws, naked, you probably did something to deserve it."
  23. At this point in time, I'm not willing to name the guy/company on the chance that my friend is exaggerating. If this is a legit company, the last thing they need as a start-up is some wild story giving them an unfounded bad name. OTOH, if I find this is as bad as it sounds, I will gladly name names in the hope that it keeps someone from getting killed. -Blind "If you end up in an alligator's jaws, naked, you probably did something to deserve it."
  24. I've got a friend who is a little bit overeager. Made his first wingsuit jump a couple of weeks ago at around jump 275 without any training or supervision. Last weekend he came in and told me that he had made contact with a new ws manufactuer who's coming to the dz to give him a "head instructor" rating and a free copy of their most agressive ws in exchange for pimping them to new jumpers. My friend isn't known to exaggerate, but I'm having trouble believing any company would be so callous as to give a jumper with ~6 jumps on a GTI a company instructor rating and a large ws in order to just pimp their company. Does this sound like something you more experienced ws have seen in the past? More importantly, would you trust such a company to give a FJC to approxiamtely half a dozen relatively low jump number jumpers? -Blind "If you end up in an alligator's jaws, naked, you probably did something to deserve it."
  25. We're running: Phenom II X6 1090T Corsair H50 liquid CPU cooler 16 GB G-Skill Ripjaw Ram kit Two 1 Tera HDD's GTX 460 vid card (OEM OC'd) Sound Blaster X-Fi Titanium Professional sound card Biostar MCP6P mobo 3 DVD Burners Two 19" Monitors (we actually only use one because the preview window works fine for us as is) Xclio A380 Color case Originally intended to run the OS and Vegas on an SSD, but our SSD was DOA so we installed on a HDD. I always intended to migrate back to the SSD but we had so much teething trouble I didn't want to reinstall the OS on the SSD because I was an utter dumbass and forgot to write down the fixes to the teething trouble as I found them and it literally took me about 6 weeks to get them squared away. When I build our second NLE system early next year I'm going with a different mobo and case. I went with the mobo because at that time it was the only board on the market that had close to enough SATA slots, but it's only half compatible with the memory and vid card which caused major teething trouble. Next time I'll get a NVIDIA friendly mobo and then just buy an expansion card to add the extra SATA ports. I went with the A380 case for the massive fans it sports but once I had it in hand I saw that the front fan is basically neutered and the case is anvil-level heavy and poorly built. Next time I'll go with a ligther weight case and add my own 120 mm fans. I need to get with a true NLE guru like Chris because right now the system is not tweaked, but even without optimization, Rendering and burn time together are generally under two minutes unless we pile on the effects. -Blind "If you end up in an alligator's jaws, naked, you probably did something to deserve it."