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You might want to contact Gary Peek. He built a custom barograph to measure fallrates with different suit and flying style combinations. You can find his email in any issue of Parachutist, and you can check out his paper about the barograph here: http://www.pcprg.com/baro.htm My guess: A one-tone Dytter shouldn't be especially hard for somebody with some electronics experience, at least as far as building the hardware goes. Analog pressure sensor to an ADC to a microcontroller. The hardest part would probably be programming the microcontroller to filter out false positives. -- Brian

"So you were in the plane?" -- Brian

My thoughts as somebody who doesn't edit video a whole lot: A modern laptop (I would be eyeing an Apple Powerbook G4) and a firewire camera would probably work pretty well. RCA outs on the laptop aren't really required because you can dump the edited video back down to the camera then use it's RCA output to go to a VCR. PCMCIA card with video output are available, at least for Wintel hardware, if you chose to go that route. An externel Firewire hardrive would be nice to have as well but the Powerbooks only have one Firewire port so you would be stuck swapping back and forth. However, they do come with 60 gig hard drives standard, so you should have quite a bit of room to play. -- Brian

0:0:0 Craptacular at best. Learned to pack on Thursday, so that a plus, but it didn't happen on the weekend. Took my day off on Saturday and slept in till 4:00 pm. Oops. -- Brian

Negative. Mac OS X is based on the Mach micro kernel with a BSD compatibility layer. Most apps that are written to POSIX standards (i.e., a lot of Linux software) will compile and run just fine. Linux is available for PowerPC processors, but OS X worked just fine for me before the university canned my ass. In fact, the only big thing I don't like about OS X is that it is too damn pretty. Looking good gets in the way of usability. I don't want to wait for an app to "grow" when I maximize it from it's Dock icon. I want to click on the freaking icon and have it fill the whole screen, now. And there is no built in way to change it's behavior! I had to go download third-party hacks to make the GUI on my workstation behave the way that a power user would want it to. That said, I use Linux on both of my computers at home and it works fine for me. I might (big, huge, monstrous, might) use Windows XP if I didn't do tons of coding and screwing around with network stuff. I just haven't found a devel environment on Windows that I like as much as a couple of virtual terminals and Emacs (this coming from somebody who learned to code in Visual Studio). -- Brian

I dunno. Secretaries and grandmas are one area where I think Macs work better than PCs. Speaking as a (former, stupid budget crisis) tech for a moderately sized department at a major university the Macs gave me far, far less hassle than x86 hardware. Upgrades are a cinch, RAM takes less than 60 seconds from power down to power up, configuration is a cinch. The only thing I didn't like was setting up USB printers under OS9. That would have been easy if a certain department head hadn't lost all of the manuals. The only things that Macs are "fucking worthless" for is playing games, IMHO. Even then, the hardware is more than capable, the publishers haven't come around yet. Low end Macs ship GeForce2 MX's which isn't top of the line, but is still better than many new PCs. Different strokes for different folks, I guess. I've used both on a regular basis and prefer the Mac but I own a PC because it's cheap. My PC can do anything a Mac can do, but it's more work to fix when the shit hits the fan. If my PC melted down tommorrow, I would seriously consider a used G4 tower, or even dropping the $1400 for a low end iMac. -- Brian

Anybody up for some kiteboarding when the clouds are too low to jump? That post is way too short, so download this bonus video (safe for work, but you coworkers may look at you funny). -- Brian

That's a pretty good parody of a PD warning label (or maybe all warning labels? Are they all worded the same?). -- Brian

Ah, D&D. I'm not sure if I ever played a whole game. It usually fell apart right after the characters were made, which was fine with me because the DM was a serious bastard. "You come around the corner and 300 Orcs are waiting for you. Do you flee?" "We fight!" "Well, you all die. That was a stupid decision." -- Brian

This requires emulation which is for the most part unnacceptably slow with applications that are even remotely processor or memory intensive. That said, all of the software a graphic design major will ever need are available for the Mac and most productivity software is available as well. As some other posters have said, most colleges have deeply discounted software at the bookstore and even if they don't, you can usually go straight to publisher of the software for a list of dealers that give student discounts. I've been eyeing an older Mac just for Internet and productivity work. My Linux box is acceptable but Macs are just the best I've ever used for that sort of stuff. Not to mention the newer Macs use parts that are for the most part compatible with desktop PCs (unlike the old days, when you had to buy SCSI hard drives, etc.) and are soooo easy to maintain. One final word of advice: Don't get sucked in my the "Megahertz Myth." A 800Mhz Mac will perform far differently from an 800Mhz Pentium (quite a bit better, actually). An 800 Mhz G4 should be plenty fast for almost anything, I'm lusting for a 1 Ghz, and the dual processor model is overkill for 99% of Mac users. -- Brian

Yes! Emotion Eric is k-rad. I have my EE t-shirt around here somewhere.... -- Brian

I avoid energy drinks. It's all pretty much just speed and I don't need to do that to myself. -- Brian

The weather was great at Sky Knights today. Of course I got lost and missed getting on a load, but I learned how to pack. I'm just amazed that I managed to get lost going somewhere that I had already been to. Ended up missing a turnoff and just cruised for about 15 miles until I realized that I had no idea where the hell I was. -- Brian

Here's mine from the last time we did this. That whole "Semen Sales from Brian Martin" site is still creeping me out. -- Brian

Umm, that one about the bowling alley that was made by the same dudes that did Fargo. What the hell was it called? Oh yeah, The Big Lebowski.

I believe they prefer to be refered to as "Canadians." -- Brian

A couple of Falling Illini reported feeling the quake in Champaign, IL. Swaying lights and all that. -- Brian

...

I'm a simple person. No background image since it's always covered anyway. Simple blues because it's easy on the eyes. Technical crap: I'm running XFree86 4.1.something on a linux kernel that is getting a little bit dated (2.4.10pre-9). The window manager is Fluxbox, which is based on the now-defunct Blackbox window manager. It fits with the whole simple philosophy quite nicely. I usually run at 1024x768 on single monitor, but my graphics card will handle dualhead just fine. If anybody has a couple of matching LCDs that they want to send my way... -- Brian

7 Dr. Pepper cans on my desk:0:0. Such a crappy week I couldn't even think up something interesting for the first number. I will probably be at Sky Knights on Thursday afternoon to get one in before the packing class. Depends on the traffic on I-94. -- Brian

Doesn't ask me for a password, but using "anonymous" as the username and just making something up for the password should get you in (since it looks like the server is set up for anonymous access. Andy?). -- Brian

I answered no. Do I know what to do? I took the FJC, I listened to my instructors and JMs, I read the SIM, and I have been quizzed by the DZO while I was waiting to board the plane. I have the theory but I don't have the practice. I obviously can't go and give myself two canopies out just to practice, but I can do CRW to learn how two canopies will handle in a biplane, side-by-side, downplane, etc. This is being discussed right now in the Safety and Training forum. Check it out. -- Brian

I read about how to control a skid on icy roads on Driver's Education. I got an A in the class. 4 months later I put my car in the ditch driving in a snow storm. I had never experienced an actual skid before. After the next big snow I went to an empty parking lot and spent a half hour spinning the car out and practicing. The next time I started to skid on an icy road, I straightened it out and kept going. There is a fundamental difference between knowing the concept and having done something similar before. A 2-stack might not be a perfect simulation of a two-out situation, and a snowy parking lot at 15 mph certainly isn't the same as a highway at 45 mph, but it still made a difference when I skidded a second time. I also think that everybody has been perfectly clear in explaining that HP training does not mean hook turning a swoop machine. It is about learning how to fly your canopy to the max, whether it is an old Manta or a VX 49. It could save your life (or at least a few broken bones) some day when you have to make a low turn to avoid another canopy or you have a brake line snap during your flare. -- Brian

I'm assuming that you are referring to the letter in this months Parachutist. This person doesn't have any medical condition, he just doesn't want to do the night jumps and feels that he should be given a restricted license because of it. To me, this just doesn't make sense. If he was night blind I would wholeheartedly support him getting a -R. However, this person is perfectly capable of meeting the requirements, so if he wants the D he should just suck it up and do the night jumps. -- Brian

Around here I see 18 wheelers moving over and eating up the shoulder or narrowing lanes. Works great, except this one time I saw a guy go over the handlebars of a motorcycle trying to go around in the grass. He was fine and seemed more worried about the bike than himself. -- Brian