Followed the explanation of the video enabling to the best of my meager abilities but I'm seeing:
- YouTube lit back up as it had been prior to the crisis
- Vimeo lit up as it had been prior to the Tapatalk disaster the better part of three and a half years ago
and am totally delighted with that much.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KGMqFvBJftY
https://vimeo.com/226578935
I actually don't give much of a rat's ass whether or not they play as embedded videos. Just having the title frame displaying is all we really need. We know what it is at a glance and pretty much always whether or not we've seen it already, should give it another spin.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KGMqFvBJftY
http://live.staticflickr.com/65535/50595345893_e145e3c77b_o.png
The cutoff point for most characters displayed is 55. The default "..." crap after that really bugs me for reasonable lengths - which is just about everything we have on the forum. What's the purpose? Make things more iPhone friendly? À la Tapatalk?
I reworked my massive scope article as per Zack's instructions - about 125 entries and it was a bit of a job even after I got myself wired and established a rhythm. But the thought of tackling the whole forum...
In my earliest ClarisWorks days I was able to create macros that would've made much shorter work of tasks such as these. If Zack or anybody can steer me towards some solution...
Gawd what a fortunate happenstance / accident of history it was that I got connected - as a spinoff of a contact from John Moody of the Houston club - with Zack. Minus his professional expertise...
open phones
Re: open phones
Yep.Tad Eareckson wrote:What's the purpose? Make things more iPhone friendly?
At any rate, I found an extension that should revert the link shortening, so all the existing links should display as they did before now, and you shouldn't have to use the new format I gave in my last post going forward. (Sorry I didn't find it before your rework!)
-
Tad Eareckson
- Posts: 9161
- Joined: 2010/11/25 03:48:55 UTC
Re: open phones
Gawd... Over yesterday and the first half of today I'd manually reformatted untold hundreds of entries - as you apparently noticed to some extent or other.
Warmed up on "Swarovski ATX/STX spotting scope system", did Andrea Ghidini's landings. Then "Brad Geary video" and "Pokhara Dragonfly". Got through 36 posts in "2015/03/27 Jean Lake crash" then "WTF? These are displaying fine." Then I saw your post.
I partially despise iPhone culture. Nobody's ever gonna produce a great work of literature typing on a little touchscreen with his thumbs. And Kite Strings is never gonna be of much value to anyone accessing it on a little touchscreen.
And I'll tell ya one thing that's giving iPhone culture some degree of boost... The QWERTY keyboard was deliberately designed - starting about a half hour after Lee surrendered at Appomattox - to be a total bitch to use so you wouldn't jam the machinery as quickly. So it's not much of a step down to have eighty percent of your digits curled around to the far side of the phone.
After going Dvorak maybe a dozen years ago I have ZERO motivation for becoming really proficient with my thumbs. God designed thumbs to be used on the three and a half inch wide space bar and the three and a half inch wide space bar to be used by the thumbs.
Thanks hugely for fixing that. I'm way too OCDed to have left that ugly truncated crap alone and the time and effort it would've taken to overhaul the whole forum is unimaginable.
Warmed up on "Swarovski ATX/STX spotting scope system", did Andrea Ghidini's landings. Then "Brad Geary video" and "Pokhara Dragonfly". Got through 36 posts in "2015/03/27 Jean Lake crash" then "WTF? These are displaying fine." Then I saw your post.
I partially despise iPhone culture. Nobody's ever gonna produce a great work of literature typing on a little touchscreen with his thumbs. And Kite Strings is never gonna be of much value to anyone accessing it on a little touchscreen.
And I'll tell ya one thing that's giving iPhone culture some degree of boost... The QWERTY keyboard was deliberately designed - starting about a half hour after Lee surrendered at Appomattox - to be a total bitch to use so you wouldn't jam the machinery as quickly. So it's not much of a step down to have eighty percent of your digits curled around to the far side of the phone.
After going Dvorak maybe a dozen years ago I have ZERO motivation for becoming really proficient with my thumbs. God designed thumbs to be used on the three and a half inch wide space bar and the three and a half inch wide space bar to be used by the thumbs.
Thanks hugely for fixing that. I'm way too OCDed to have left that ugly truncated crap alone and the time and effort it would've taken to overhaul the whole forum is unimaginable.
-
Tad Eareckson
- Posts: 9161
- Joined: 2010/11/25 03:48:55 UTC
Re: open phones
I've spent good chunks of the past couple days reworking the forum to get in in gear with the current protocols - not to mention other fixes and revisions to improve our presentation. With respect to images and our two flavors of videos... This is what you get:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/aerotowrelease/8306258400/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/aerotowrelease/8306258400/
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KGMqFvBJftY
http://vimeo.com/226578935
with this coding:
I think it was after Zack rescued us from Tapatalk that our coding for embedding video went from [ video ]...[ video ] to [ youtube ]...[ youtube ] and we lost Vimeo. And I thought I'd totally overhauled the forum to make the fix but apparently not - I'm finding scores of remnants.
Other observations to date...
For most of our history our hit counters have been spinning out of control 'cause they were doing bots. I think we've been stable since the overhaul. I think what we're seeing now are actual humans. (But don't hold your breath waiting for new legitimate actual humans to contact me for membership activation.)
Previously when one submitted a new or revision of an existing post one would get dropped at its beginning. Now we get dropped at the top of the page. (That's a bit of a pain. (Helps a lot if you remember to select a bit o' text for which to search after clicking the button.))
We now have a 496 pixel deep "Quick Reply" rectangle gracing the bottom of every page of every topic on the site. What a grotesque waste of screen real estate - 'specially considering that making a quick reply to any post on Kite Strings is little shy of a banning offense. Save that crap for what little is left of The Jack Show - make any useful information even more diluted.
But...
---
Got my first Moderna shot yesterday afternoon - 2021/03/12 17:58 UTC. It floored me pretty hard and it's still no fun trying to use my left arm. Good things though - the harder you get hit the better you know it's doing what it's supposed to. (And my microchip seems to be functioning flawlessly. Keep up the great work, Bill.) Second one will be 2021/04/10 14:10 UTC. So now I'm much less of a threat to myself and fellow mammals.
They give you a band-aid and lock you in an observation room for fifteen minutes before permitting you to return to the wild. Nurse Amy was our warden. So we sat around, asked questions, discussed COVID issues. And I muscled my way in during a momentary lull a fair bit after my time had expired and asked if I could divert her to another microbe issue for a bit. Pulled up my left pants leg and down my left compression stocking to reveal the 2020/06/26 Blacklegged Tick bite precipitated infection zone. Started bleeding a little. Got her undivided attention real good.
"How long?" "Eight and a half months. But that one's just a minor annoyance - very least of my concerns." Now when I'm out in public I wear my desert hat...
04-7114
http://c1.staticflickr.com/5/4341/35982955973_82e2a57f61_o.jpg
...'cause the back top of my neck is such a horror show and I'm afraid the peasants might come out with their pitchforks and torches. Also wear a shirt to take care of the upper back zone. Gave her a quick look at my neck, she got on the horn NOW and tried to get me started then and there. But that wasn't gonna happen with all the virus stuff going on. But she got me in for Tuesday afternoon with a dermatologist of whom she spoke very highly. Maybe at this point I've started the ball rolling with people who know what they're doing and will start taking this shit seriously.
The way things are trending now...
http://www.flickr.com/photos/aerotowrelease/8306258400/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/aerotowrelease/8306258400/
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KGMqFvBJftY
http://vimeo.com/226578935
with this coding:
Code: Select all
[url]http://www.flickr.com/photos/aerotowrelease/8306258400/[/url]
[img]http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8216/8306258400_43251e5dcb_c.jpg[/img]
[url]http://www.flickr.com/photos/aerotowrelease/8306258400/[/url]
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KGMqFvBJftY
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KGMqFvBJftY[/youtube]
[url]http://vimeo.com/226578935[/url]
http://vimeo.com/226578935Other observations to date...
For most of our history our hit counters have been spinning out of control 'cause they were doing bots. I think we've been stable since the overhaul. I think what we're seeing now are actual humans. (But don't hold your breath waiting for new legitimate actual humans to contact me for membership activation.)
Previously when one submitted a new or revision of an existing post one would get dropped at its beginning. Now we get dropped at the top of the page. (That's a bit of a pain. (Helps a lot if you remember to select a bit o' text for which to search after clicking the button.))
We now have a 496 pixel deep "Quick Reply" rectangle gracing the bottom of every page of every topic on the site. What a grotesque waste of screen real estate - 'specially considering that making a quick reply to any post on Kite Strings is little shy of a banning offense. Save that crap for what little is left of The Jack Show - make any useful information even more diluted.
But...
That's extremely nice to see - helps a fair bit with insomnia issues and I doubt we'll again suffer a hit anything like our 2021/03/02 18:30 UTC disaster.Administration Control Panel - SYSTEM - Version check - Checks to see if your phpBB installation is up to date. - Your phpBB installation is up to date. There are no updates available at this time.- Current version 3.3.3
---
Got my first Moderna shot yesterday afternoon - 2021/03/12 17:58 UTC. It floored me pretty hard and it's still no fun trying to use my left arm. Good things though - the harder you get hit the better you know it's doing what it's supposed to. (And my microchip seems to be functioning flawlessly. Keep up the great work, Bill.) Second one will be 2021/04/10 14:10 UTC. So now I'm much less of a threat to myself and fellow mammals.
They give you a band-aid and lock you in an observation room for fifteen minutes before permitting you to return to the wild. Nurse Amy was our warden. So we sat around, asked questions, discussed COVID issues. And I muscled my way in during a momentary lull a fair bit after my time had expired and asked if I could divert her to another microbe issue for a bit. Pulled up my left pants leg and down my left compression stocking to reveal the 2020/06/26 Blacklegged Tick bite precipitated infection zone. Started bleeding a little. Got her undivided attention real good.
"How long?" "Eight and a half months. But that one's just a minor annoyance - very least of my concerns." Now when I'm out in public I wear my desert hat...
04-7114
http://c1.staticflickr.com/5/4341/35982955973_82e2a57f61_o.jpg
...'cause the back top of my neck is such a horror show and I'm afraid the peasants might come out with their pitchforks and torches. Also wear a shirt to take care of the upper back zone. Gave her a quick look at my neck, she got on the horn NOW and tried to get me started then and there. But that wasn't gonna happen with all the virus stuff going on. But she got me in for Tuesday afternoon with a dermatologist of whom she spoke very highly. Maybe at this point I've started the ball rolling with people who know what they're doing and will start taking this shit seriously.
The way things are trending now...
-
Tad Eareckson
- Posts: 9161
- Joined: 2010/11/25 03:48:55 UTC
Re: open phones
Six days since Shot One. Spent maybe over half of that period feeling pretty floored but am fully back to my normal floored level now.
Had my dermatologist appointment Tuesday afternoon. Got shown zillions of photos of tens of zillions of lesions on zillions of patients - hers I'd guess. Boy did they (the lesions) look familiar. Said it was a very common disorder. And how many decades did it take for me to find out that much.
Industrialized health care, factory operation. They don't waste many seconds of the window allotted for your forty bucks worth.
She mentioned a psychological disorder amongst many hosts of this bug in which they obsessively pick away at scabs and compound the damage. Glad you brought that up. I don't obsessively pick away at scabs compounding damage. I spend about a third of my current excuse for a life prying them loose, ripping them off, soaking bloodstains out of my shirts before they set.
These are crust surfaces on pressurizing magma chambers. They're not indications of healing. When they start pressurizing searing pain starts ramping up. If you leave them alone awhile and endure the extra agony they start separating and dissolving. I'll spend hours in front of the television once a night, once every couple nights ripping things open and then I might get the next day, day and a half not crippled by pain, feeling and functioning pretty normally (which is the case as I'm writing). You didn't identify any issues this is supposed to be causing ('cause there aren't any) and there's no way in hell short of incarceration and a straitjacket anybody's gonna prevent me from continuing my SOPs.
Subdued, unmemorable response. There was something about my fingernails being short so shouldn't be able to do too much damage to myself. (Yeah, just the right amount.)
I'm looking for something that will help, some glimmer of hope. Clorox bath. Pour a half a cup of bleach into the tub and go for a swim three times a week. OK, maybe some hope there. Appointment's over, on the way out I ask, "How long should it be before we start seeing some improvement?" "Months. It's a very slow process."
I keep thinking through what's left of the day and into the evening.
If this bleach is actually doing anything then the improvement will be IMMEDIATE. If the bug's withstanding this three times a week for months it's doing NOTHING.
The base of operations for this bug is the nostrils. I'd found that out independently through a personal contact. At first I'd said rubbish but then realized... I'd had this big lump of petrified mucous in my right nostril since the beginning of time which I'd hafta be perpetually chiseling free. Substantial annoyance but nothing more at that location. "OH! You're right. That's a SCAB!" So somebody tell me how the Clorox baths are gonna be of any use at the source. And how come you didn't ask me about that? Along with rushing me out the door before I had a chance to think about and bring it up. (Along with scores of other issues.)
Now I have scabbing in both nostrils but no hardening and anchoring. Never was any associated pain before and isn't now - still just annoyance.
Months. It's a very slow process. Yeah, I've been healing on my own at that rate doing nothing you're telling me to do and everything you're telling me not to do. I've shown you the scar patterns which map the points of initiation, paths of migration, fizzle out lines. I'd wanted to ask you why that happens, why the bug seems to need to colonize new territory as it bails from the old, can't remain forever in one spot.
If this bug has colonized anyone then he's ripping scabs off just like I do for the exact same reasons I do. We've been taught since age two to leave scabs alone so we don't retard healing. If it's a mechanical issue - like my rather severe thumb scrape a month ago today... Yeah, everything's working like it's supposed to. We leave it alone, things heal underneath, maybe we lift it off a bit early when the healing is mostly done and things are getting a bit itchy. Couldn't be further off with respect to the situation here.
Nobody - other than Yours Truly - is gonna volunteer that he's ripping these things off. She didn't ask me if I did. But everyone's doing this and feeling guilty about it. Plays right into their hands.
They can't fix this bug - I didn't see any photos of things improving three months into treatment. And they're not gonna tell you that 'cause they're supposed to be all knowing and omnipotent. But over my long history with the bug it's run outbreak cycles between six and eighteen months with zero prescribed treatments which have had any detectable positive effects.
But if I'd bought into the Clorox scam... Good job, often takes a long time before things start kicking in, keep up the good work... See? You kept it up and it finally worked - just like we said it would. (Snake oil.)
Also... Are you sure you're not picking at these scabs? That could be causing substantial setbacks in our treatment regimen.
Anything positive that happens is due to our management program. And any lack of progress, setbacks, further deterioration is 'cause of your wanton disregard of our very clear instructions. (Now let's get back to that training hill and finish getting our flare timing perfected.) We always win, you always lose.
My hope now is that my - depending upon how one counts - three or four infection sites will burn themselves out in a few months and I can spend the rest of my life being very careful around any future little vulnerable skin sites. And plan on never being more than fifteen feet away from a little spray bottle of isopropyl.
Yesterday, today... Not bad. At the moment... Pretty good.
Had my dermatologist appointment Tuesday afternoon. Got shown zillions of photos of tens of zillions of lesions on zillions of patients - hers I'd guess. Boy did they (the lesions) look familiar. Said it was a very common disorder. And how many decades did it take for me to find out that much.
Industrialized health care, factory operation. They don't waste many seconds of the window allotted for your forty bucks worth.
She mentioned a psychological disorder amongst many hosts of this bug in which they obsessively pick away at scabs and compound the damage. Glad you brought that up. I don't obsessively pick away at scabs compounding damage. I spend about a third of my current excuse for a life prying them loose, ripping them off, soaking bloodstains out of my shirts before they set.
These are crust surfaces on pressurizing magma chambers. They're not indications of healing. When they start pressurizing searing pain starts ramping up. If you leave them alone awhile and endure the extra agony they start separating and dissolving. I'll spend hours in front of the television once a night, once every couple nights ripping things open and then I might get the next day, day and a half not crippled by pain, feeling and functioning pretty normally (which is the case as I'm writing). You didn't identify any issues this is supposed to be causing ('cause there aren't any) and there's no way in hell short of incarceration and a straitjacket anybody's gonna prevent me from continuing my SOPs.
Subdued, unmemorable response. There was something about my fingernails being short so shouldn't be able to do too much damage to myself. (Yeah, just the right amount.)
I'm looking for something that will help, some glimmer of hope. Clorox bath. Pour a half a cup of bleach into the tub and go for a swim three times a week. OK, maybe some hope there. Appointment's over, on the way out I ask, "How long should it be before we start seeing some improvement?" "Months. It's a very slow process."
I keep thinking through what's left of the day and into the evening.
If this bleach is actually doing anything then the improvement will be IMMEDIATE. If the bug's withstanding this three times a week for months it's doing NOTHING.
The base of operations for this bug is the nostrils. I'd found that out independently through a personal contact. At first I'd said rubbish but then realized... I'd had this big lump of petrified mucous in my right nostril since the beginning of time which I'd hafta be perpetually chiseling free. Substantial annoyance but nothing more at that location. "OH! You're right. That's a SCAB!" So somebody tell me how the Clorox baths are gonna be of any use at the source. And how come you didn't ask me about that? Along with rushing me out the door before I had a chance to think about and bring it up. (Along with scores of other issues.)
Now I have scabbing in both nostrils but no hardening and anchoring. Never was any associated pain before and isn't now - still just annoyance.
Months. It's a very slow process. Yeah, I've been healing on my own at that rate doing nothing you're telling me to do and everything you're telling me not to do. I've shown you the scar patterns which map the points of initiation, paths of migration, fizzle out lines. I'd wanted to ask you why that happens, why the bug seems to need to colonize new territory as it bails from the old, can't remain forever in one spot.
If this bug has colonized anyone then he's ripping scabs off just like I do for the exact same reasons I do. We've been taught since age two to leave scabs alone so we don't retard healing. If it's a mechanical issue - like my rather severe thumb scrape a month ago today... Yeah, everything's working like it's supposed to. We leave it alone, things heal underneath, maybe we lift it off a bit early when the healing is mostly done and things are getting a bit itchy. Couldn't be further off with respect to the situation here.
Nobody - other than Yours Truly - is gonna volunteer that he's ripping these things off. She didn't ask me if I did. But everyone's doing this and feeling guilty about it. Plays right into their hands.
They can't fix this bug - I didn't see any photos of things improving three months into treatment. And they're not gonna tell you that 'cause they're supposed to be all knowing and omnipotent. But over my long history with the bug it's run outbreak cycles between six and eighteen months with zero prescribed treatments which have had any detectable positive effects.
But if I'd bought into the Clorox scam... Good job, often takes a long time before things start kicking in, keep up the good work... See? You kept it up and it finally worked - just like we said it would. (Snake oil.)
Also... Are you sure you're not picking at these scabs? That could be causing substantial setbacks in our treatment regimen.
Anything positive that happens is due to our management program. And any lack of progress, setbacks, further deterioration is 'cause of your wanton disregard of our very clear instructions. (Now let's get back to that training hill and finish getting our flare timing perfected.) We always win, you always lose.
My hope now is that my - depending upon how one counts - three or four infection sites will burn themselves out in a few months and I can spend the rest of my life being very careful around any future little vulnerable skin sites. And plan on never being more than fifteen feet away from a little spray bottle of isopropyl.
Yesterday, today... Not bad. At the moment... Pretty good.
-
Tad Eareckson
- Posts: 9161
- Joined: 2010/11/25 03:48:55 UTC
Re: open phones
Long overdue update...
I'm probably still alive now 'cause of some massive efforts of my brother. Based upon the total crap I'd gotten from my dermatologist I'd written off the bleach treatments as just more snake oil they were using to keep me off their backs for another six months. He went out and looked at studies and papers and concluded that there was an least some degree of legitimacy with this approach.
And instead of using half cups of bleach in bathtubs three times a week there was a spray bottle option - involving several milliliters a month (if that) - no one had bothered to mention.
So 2021/04/23 I mixed up a quart of 50 parts per million solution, loaded up a bottle, hit the shower, hosed the crap outta the problem areas - and more - for twenty minutes, rinsed.
Long story shortened... The results were DRAMATIC and IMMEDIATE. The solution dissolved the scabbing and started knocking the crap outta the bug.
Over time I started realizing that instead of one session per day in the shower I could do four sessions a day in the kitchen in a chair with just my shirt off without dripping or rinsing. Also could up the hell outta the industry standard concentration minus any adverse consequences. (I'm now up to about 3100 ppm if I've done the arithmetic right.)
For quite some time now I've been down to the tick bite infection on my left leg and one on my upper back/shoulder - less than two dimes worth or surface area. They occasionally flare up a bit, I rip scabs and hose them down, hardly notice them for several days. Vast areas of real estate are healed and scarred over. Do a little generalized spraying now and then when I think about and feel like it.
Prior to initiating this treatment I thought the condition would probably be permanent and worsening. Now I'm down to minor annoyances now and then and not noticing anything wrong most of the time. I'd had the right idea with the isopropyl and peroxide. But they were doing zilch and the bleach was a magic bullet.
And thanks bigtime - mainstream medical community - for letting me stay in the dark for all those years while this outbreaks were cycling on less dramatic scales. Nobody even bothered to culture anything until I made the request after an off duty doc noticed I had a problem and suggested I do so 2019/06/20 - just over two mostly substantially unpleasant years ago.
I'm probably still alive now 'cause of some massive efforts of my brother. Based upon the total crap I'd gotten from my dermatologist I'd written off the bleach treatments as just more snake oil they were using to keep me off their backs for another six months. He went out and looked at studies and papers and concluded that there was an least some degree of legitimacy with this approach.
And instead of using half cups of bleach in bathtubs three times a week there was a spray bottle option - involving several milliliters a month (if that) - no one had bothered to mention.
So 2021/04/23 I mixed up a quart of 50 parts per million solution, loaded up a bottle, hit the shower, hosed the crap outta the problem areas - and more - for twenty minutes, rinsed.
Long story shortened... The results were DRAMATIC and IMMEDIATE. The solution dissolved the scabbing and started knocking the crap outta the bug.
Over time I started realizing that instead of one session per day in the shower I could do four sessions a day in the kitchen in a chair with just my shirt off without dripping or rinsing. Also could up the hell outta the industry standard concentration minus any adverse consequences. (I'm now up to about 3100 ppm if I've done the arithmetic right.)
For quite some time now I've been down to the tick bite infection on my left leg and one on my upper back/shoulder - less than two dimes worth or surface area. They occasionally flare up a bit, I rip scabs and hose them down, hardly notice them for several days. Vast areas of real estate are healed and scarred over. Do a little generalized spraying now and then when I think about and feel like it.
Prior to initiating this treatment I thought the condition would probably be permanent and worsening. Now I'm down to minor annoyances now and then and not noticing anything wrong most of the time. I'd had the right idea with the isopropyl and peroxide. But they were doing zilch and the bleach was a magic bullet.
And thanks bigtime - mainstream medical community - for letting me stay in the dark for all those years while this outbreaks were cycling on less dramatic scales. Nobody even bothered to culture anything until I made the request after an off duty doc noticed I had a problem and suggested I do so 2019/06/20 - just over two mostly substantially unpleasant years ago.
-
Tad Eareckson
- Posts: 9161
- Joined: 2010/11/25 03:48:55 UTC
Re: open phones
Responding publicly a bit late to a 2021/07/28 23:38:26 UTC PM from miguel...
I still have a pulse, thanks. And hope you and our other team members are doing as well as possible.
Why haven't I posted since 2021/07/02 04:30:13 UTC? Probably the same reasons nobody else has.
- The sport's way down in its death spiral. If we only have 4 percent of the activity happening then the interval required to have an incident resulting in information upon which we can get our hands increases by a factor of 25.
- Virtually everything that can be said about anything has been beaten to death fifty times over. And it's all publicly available in our archives.
- I'm kinda depressed and burnt out.
Not doing all that well physically either. When I got the bug beaten back pretty satisfactorily with the bleach treatments I still had a little stronghold area on my right shoulder / upper back. Reach your left hand across your chest, around the right side of your neck, down your back as far as you can go, plant your palm. That's the location.
Until some point earlier this month it was just an annoyance - if it ever started bothering me a bit all I had to do was remember how horrible things were before. But then a couple weeks ago it just EXPLODED. It's now a horrible lesion about 40 millimeters across any way you wanna measure. Lotsa searing pain, seems to be handling the bleach really well, takes a toll on whatever I'm trying to accomplish.
It DOES hold a candle to what was going on in the months before I started with the bleach but if it doesn't get any worse than it's been for the past couple weeks I can keep on ticking at a reasonable pace.
The tick bite site - which at one point was down to a SPECK - has also ramped back up pretty good.
While I haven't been posting I HAVE been working a lot on scope stuff and revising and amending my article (which is back on Page 2) - doing in that field what I did in hang gliding. I'm figuring out how max out performance and efficiency, modifying and re-engineering equipment, spotting and exposing industry lies and scams. The patterns of the latter are subtle, identical, totally identifiable.
Current example... Swarovski and Gitzo are the Lamborghini level names in the game. Swarovski does the glass and takes Gitzo tripods and heads and puts their finish and labels on them. I started using Swarovski's label of the Gitzo GT3542L shortly after one of my Swarovski label new and babied Velbon tripods literally came unglued in the field and seriously endangered the glass on top of it - relevant engineering, construction, quality was total crap.
No terribly serious complaints about the Swarovski PCT. Needed another solid and trustworthy tripod, decided to go for the original Gitzo label 'cause it had this clever little feature which allowed one to truncate the center column down to a Stub so's one can spread the legs out to near horizontal for a "Ground Level Set" - pretty much entirely a photography thing. But... A new toy to explore, play with. Got my hands on it 2021/05/20.
ALL serious heads screw onto the 3/8-16 mounting studs featured on ALL serious tripods. And they need to be torqued on HARD 'cause you're gonna need to be panning counterclockwise with high resistance settings and you'll be doing it with a handle that extends out from center farther than a Passat lug wrench extends out from its target.
I intuitively know - by feel - how much muscle to use torque the head on and had done it scores of time on my original setup - doesn't:
- ever back off during use
- take all that much effort to separate when that's the goal
Did a few installations with the Gitzo label over the course of about seven and a half weeks of ownership until a 3 millimeter diameter dowel pin abruptly sheared and crippled about three hundred dollars worth of assembly.
Way under-engineered. And good luck finding instructions from either of these labels on how to safely and properly install one of these heads on one of these tripods. And I've been waiting since 2021/07/28 15:23:01 UTC to hear back from B&H Photo for help in getting things airworthy again.
Reminds me a lot of Adam Parer's high tech pod comp harness which allows you to thermal comfortably at slow speed and go like greased lightning on final glide to goal but doesn't allow you to ball up and prevent a tumble, traps your parachute in its container when its frame deforms during a tumble, stabilizes you vertically in the freefall stage in bullet configuration such that you're going transonic at terminal.
Everything worked fine, what's your problem?
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2024/06/04 12:20:00 UTC
Regarding the tripod/head thing... No, a head absolutely DOESN'T need to be torqued on HARD - and NEVER should be. But the industry's moronic set screw scam traps the user into that mindset. The analogy in the hang gliding sewer is the backup loop. The assembly torque should be just a bit over normal panning torque/resistance. See the "Swarovski ATX/STX spotting scope system" post/article here for the full discussion
I still have a pulse, thanks. And hope you and our other team members are doing as well as possible.
Why haven't I posted since 2021/07/02 04:30:13 UTC? Probably the same reasons nobody else has.
- The sport's way down in its death spiral. If we only have 4 percent of the activity happening then the interval required to have an incident resulting in information upon which we can get our hands increases by a factor of 25.
- Virtually everything that can be said about anything has been beaten to death fifty times over. And it's all publicly available in our archives.
- I'm kinda depressed and burnt out.
Not doing all that well physically either. When I got the bug beaten back pretty satisfactorily with the bleach treatments I still had a little stronghold area on my right shoulder / upper back. Reach your left hand across your chest, around the right side of your neck, down your back as far as you can go, plant your palm. That's the location.
Until some point earlier this month it was just an annoyance - if it ever started bothering me a bit all I had to do was remember how horrible things were before. But then a couple weeks ago it just EXPLODED. It's now a horrible lesion about 40 millimeters across any way you wanna measure. Lotsa searing pain, seems to be handling the bleach really well, takes a toll on whatever I'm trying to accomplish.
It DOES hold a candle to what was going on in the months before I started with the bleach but if it doesn't get any worse than it's been for the past couple weeks I can keep on ticking at a reasonable pace.
The tick bite site - which at one point was down to a SPECK - has also ramped back up pretty good.
While I haven't been posting I HAVE been working a lot on scope stuff and revising and amending my article (which is back on Page 2) - doing in that field what I did in hang gliding. I'm figuring out how max out performance and efficiency, modifying and re-engineering equipment, spotting and exposing industry lies and scams. The patterns of the latter are subtle, identical, totally identifiable.
Current example... Swarovski and Gitzo are the Lamborghini level names in the game. Swarovski does the glass and takes Gitzo tripods and heads and puts their finish and labels on them. I started using Swarovski's label of the Gitzo GT3542L shortly after one of my Swarovski label new and babied Velbon tripods literally came unglued in the field and seriously endangered the glass on top of it - relevant engineering, construction, quality was total crap.
No terribly serious complaints about the Swarovski PCT. Needed another solid and trustworthy tripod, decided to go for the original Gitzo label 'cause it had this clever little feature which allowed one to truncate the center column down to a Stub so's one can spread the legs out to near horizontal for a "Ground Level Set" - pretty much entirely a photography thing. But... A new toy to explore, play with. Got my hands on it 2021/05/20.
ALL serious heads screw onto the 3/8-16 mounting studs featured on ALL serious tripods. And they need to be torqued on HARD 'cause you're gonna need to be panning counterclockwise with high resistance settings and you'll be doing it with a handle that extends out from center farther than a Passat lug wrench extends out from its target.
I intuitively know - by feel - how much muscle to use torque the head on and had done it scores of time on my original setup - doesn't:
- ever back off during use
- take all that much effort to separate when that's the goal
Did a few installations with the Gitzo label over the course of about seven and a half weeks of ownership until a 3 millimeter diameter dowel pin abruptly sheared and crippled about three hundred dollars worth of assembly.
Way under-engineered. And good luck finding instructions from either of these labels on how to safely and properly install one of these heads on one of these tripods. And I've been waiting since 2021/07/28 15:23:01 UTC to hear back from B&H Photo for help in getting things airworthy again.
Reminds me a lot of Adam Parer's high tech pod comp harness which allows you to thermal comfortably at slow speed and go like greased lightning on final glide to goal but doesn't allow you to ball up and prevent a tumble, traps your parachute in its container when its frame deforms during a tumble, stabilizes you vertically in the freefall stage in bullet configuration such that you're going transonic at terminal.
Everything worked fine, what's your problem?
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2024/06/04 12:20:00 UTC
Regarding the tripod/head thing... No, a head absolutely DOESN'T need to be torqued on HARD - and NEVER should be. But the industry's moronic set screw scam traps the user into that mindset. The analogy in the hang gliding sewer is the backup loop. The assembly torque should be just a bit over normal panning torque/resistance. See the "Swarovski ATX/STX spotting scope system" post/article here for the full discussion
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Tad Eareckson
- Posts: 9161
- Joined: 2010/11/25 03:48:55 UTC
Re: open phones
For what it's worth... Yippee.
Re: open phones
2024/06/10 14:15:00 UTC
This is Tad and this was originally a repeat of BS's attempt to post which now appears as his 2024/06/09 20:08:04 UTC above. The current version of the phpBB software running this forum (mostly archive of bygone phases of hang gliding history) behaves a bit differently from what we were dealing with back when we still had an easily detectable pulse.
I had a really scary moment 2023/12/22 when the forum totally vanished from the Web and wired Zack but it was up and looking normal before he checked and responded. Had another one of these within the past week or so. So if anyone's experiencing an issue maybe just find something else to do for a bit.
Also note that most / a lot our hit counters are spinning at blinding speeds. "The Bob Show" is currently leading the pack at five and two thirds million. These numbers pretty obviously aren't being generated by humans (or monkeys with keyboards).
This is Tad and this was originally a repeat of BS's attempt to post which now appears as his 2024/06/09 20:08:04 UTC above. The current version of the phpBB software running this forum (mostly archive of bygone phases of hang gliding history) behaves a bit differently from what we were dealing with back when we still had an easily detectable pulse.
I had a really scary moment 2023/12/22 when the forum totally vanished from the Web and wired Zack but it was up and looking normal before he checked and responded. Had another one of these within the past week or so. So if anyone's experiencing an issue maybe just find something else to do for a bit.
Also note that most / a lot our hit counters are spinning at blinding speeds. "The Bob Show" is currently leading the pack at five and two thirds million. These numbers pretty obviously aren't being generated by humans (or monkeys with keyboards).