simpsora

a wee bit late to the party, but D.S. #8080 joining in!

Hi, I moved from the US to the Netherlands and am anxious to go jumping soon, but I'm not sure about my reserve, because it's out of date according to US rules. Does anyone know, when I'm here do have to follow the US rules, or Dutch rules? If it's Dutch rules, is their repack cycle every 6 months? I read that in a post, but can't find any other information than that. Thanks

i was out at perris a couple of years ago, and in the shop there they had a spandex vest with a fleece neckwarmer sewn into it (i know there are rules about who gets to wear spandex, but still...). i called square one to ask about it a few months later, and the person i talked to didn't know what i was talking about. does anyone else know what i'm talking about? perhaps know who makes them or where to get one? thanks!

Hi Andy, I did some of the work on the current DZ locator. I'm interested in understanding the things you think the locator is missing -- the needs it doesn't fulfill. I can't speak for Sangiro on whether or not they'd be implemented, but I would like to know. Thanks, Ross

They're created using JavaScript. A popup blocker won't see them, because they're not popups. If you really can't stand them, disable JavaScript in your browser and you'll never see them again. Of course, some sites require the use of JavaScript. They shouldn't, but that's another story :) btw, they're browser independent -- they'll appear in Firefox, Opera, and even (shudder) IE.

That error is from AOL. Unfortunately, the embedded AOL browser sometimes has trouble accessing certain websites. With AOL open, minimize it and open up a standalone browser (Firefox, IE, Safari, etc.). and try it that way. You shouldn't see the problem any longer.

Assuming your bank encrypts communications between you and them (check for "https://..." in the address bar when logged in, or a little padlock icon at the bottom of your browser window), nobody but your browser and the bank's server should be able to read the traffic between you. That said, I wouldn't login to my banking site while using the web accelerator. Google collects all kinds of statistics on the users of their systems, and my banking information is private

Definitely http://www.mrunix.net/webalizer/.. You also need access to the logs for this, but its an excellent tool. Gives you counts on visitors/hits/urls/filesize/etc, referrers, client domains, per day / hour stats, response codes, etc. And, pretty graphs

For those who are fans of the Firefly tv show and are eagerly awating the movie (Serenity) coming out in September... There will be a limited advance screening in 20 US cities on May 26th! There was one on May 5th in 10 cities that sold out within a couple hours of the announcement. Check here for the announcement (it should get updated sometime Monday or Tuesday), and links to purchase tickets when they become available: http://www.cantstopthesignal.com/ For those who haven't heard of it, it was a short-lived show on Fox that is partly scifi and partly western. Even though it was cancelled, its been very popular on DVD. Awesome show

Probably, at some point. The problem is finding a reliable and reasonably-priced source for the data required (geocoding / mapping / routing), which also works with the mapping provider the locator currently uses. Honestly, finding what we need is hit and miss outside North America. There's some coverage in Europe, and South America data is starting to be decent, but other countries are currently out of luck, until a major data vendor (e.g. Navteq or TeleAtlas) decides to cover them. More info than you probably wanted

Everything you ever wanted to know about the subject can be found here: http://www.google.com/search?q=meta%20keywords Long story short, add meta keywords to the head of your html document, but add them intelligently -- use words that also appear in the body of your pages. Also, make sure your html validates, otherwise some spiders will give you a lower score. And while they may not keep people at your site, boobies will at least get them in the door

heh.. reminds me of a "funny" Chuck Palahniuk story.. http://www.seizureandy.com/stuff/guts.html However, don't read it if you're _at all_ squeamish, and reading at work might also be a bad idea

An excellent idea (for all web developers) is to periodically run your site through a validator during development, to make sure that your code is valid according to the doctype you're using (html 4 transitional, in your case): http://validator.w3.org/check?verbose=1&uri=http%3A//www.bouda.moonfruit.com/ From the look of your code and the output of the validator, it seems like you may have used an HTML editor (a la Dreamweaver) to write the HTML. Nothing wrong with that, but beware that many of them don't output valid HTML. This might seem like a minor point, but when you get a report that 'your site doesn't work in my browser!', you'll know where to go Also, you might consider shrinking the size of the background image / flash. I have to scroll to see it all in 1280x1024 resolution, and a lot of people use a lower res than that. Otherwise, looks cool

I suggested that very thing to HH once.. However, making the site content available via RSS means less traffic to the site, less views on the ad banners, ad revenue goes down, etc., etc., etc. Since not everyone's a premier member, ad revenue plays a part in paying for the site, and since the forums are such a high-traffic part of this site, prolly ain't gonna happen

I can guarantee you that there is no human prejudice involved in whether a DZ is listed in the locator or not. The locator uses the same database of DZ information that the 'Dropzones' feature of this site uses. The only thing that would prevent a DZ from appearing in the locator is inaccurate or missing geographical data for that DZ. In this case, that was indeed the problem -- somehow the latitude, longitude, and ICAO identifier were set to a 'Polk County Airport' (4A4), near Des Moines, IA. If you'd searched there, you'd have seen the Atlanta Skydiving Center I've changed the lat/lng over to that of the Cornelius/Moore Airport in Cedartown, GA. Doing a search on Cedartown, GA, yields ASC as the second dropzone in the search. Your sneaking suspicion is unfounded and uninformed. Aside from being a free service to the users of this site, the locator is only as good as the data that powers it. Having simply posted the correct latitude and longitude for your airfield would have resulted in a fixand would not have been accompanied by the flame war here. One last point -- the locator is not a comprehensive list of all DZs in existence. It's meant as a tool to help people find places to jump, but just because a DZ isn't listed doesn't mean we're implying the DZ doesn't exist -- we're implying nothing. Sit back and enjoy your brand-new working DZ listing. Ross