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moved from the US to the Netherlands and am anxious to go jumping soon, but I'm not sure about my reserve, because it's out of date according to US rules.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

If anyone's interested, here are some more or less technical details about the locator: Firstly, doing searches and drawing maps of DZs requires us to have their latitude and longitude coordinates stored in a database. Similarly, when you enter an address into the locator, we must first convert your address to a latitude/longitude coordiate. The process of turning an address into a latitude/longitude coordinate (geocoding) is explained here: http://www.mapquest.com/features/main.adp?page=geocode. Also, our geographic data service provider only offers geocoding in certain countries. For the time being, we are limited to only allowing searches in the countries Sangiro listed above. Aside from being able to geocode in a country, we also need to have each DZs latitude/longitude stored in our database. The best way to accomplish this is to have your DZO update their DZ listing, as explained here: http://www.dropzone.com/cgi-bin/forum/gforum.cgi?post=1204271 For those of you in countries not currently covered, we are looking into other solutions that will let us find DZs in your countries as well. Enjoy!

Well, due to the lack of cuteness, I'll explain what they are, but not offer you one See here: http://gmail.google.com/gmail/help/about.html Basically, a for-free email account that stores a lot more mail than your typical free email accounts. The 'catch' is that you see google sponsored links on one side of the screen. The privacy paranoiacs bitch about it, but it doesn't invade anyone's privacy -- just looks for keywords in your email and matches them up with keywords on ads people have paid for, and shows those ads to you. Anyhow, it's nice to have a large email box for free. They're in a beta test period, and they keep giving everyone who's currently signed up invitations for other people to join. It's like, the coolest club! You should totally join!

There was apparently something in the contract with Fox that precluded anybody doing more Firefly TV shows until 5 years after the original episode, or something like that. Here's a good site, if you like the show: http://www.fireflyfans.net The movie is scheduled to be out April 22, 2005

Hola, I also have 6 invites. If anyone is interested, PM me your name and email address. Gmail is cool

Being in Nebraska to see relatives, I went to check out Crete Skydiving to get a jump in. The landing area was nice, they had a big hangar with couches, vending machines, etc. But by far the best part was the jumpers -- I'd never been there before, and my first (and unfortunately only) jump was a 3-way. I'm used to a King Air, so the ride to altitude in a 182 seemed a little slow, but probably normal :) I had a great time, and I plan on going back every time I visit Nebraska. Check it out!

I'm thinking about getting some new risers, and have a couple of questions: First of all, I want new risers for a few reasons: - current risers are the wide ones (type 8?) and my slider won't come down over them - toggles are attached with velcro, and I keep hearing that you don't want that - no dive loops From looking around the forums, it sounds like it's personal preference on whether or not to get the wide or narrow risers. I have looked around, and don't see much -- paragear only sells 2 kinds, wide and narrow :) Can someone tell me where to look for risers like I described above? Maybe a brand recommendation too? * this is for a vector II rig Also, I'm looking for a new slider (the one I've got doesn't really collapse very well). Do you get sliders from the container or canopy manufacturer? Someone else? thanks for the help! Ross

dammit! I keep forgetting not to use the f word

At least we stayed in a _bit_ longer than the dead (er, red) wings

Hey all.. Just wanted to make my first post (a ways from being off 'newbie' status