open phones

[Tad Eareckson]

http://ozreport.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=63906
Hang Gliding and COVID-19

Brad Gryder - 2020/11/27 02:49:08 UTC

Hendersonville, North Carolina

This Thanksgiving, if you see 20 cars at your neighbor's house, and you're thinking about reporting them, go to the fridge and drink a big glass of milk.

Why? Milk is good for your teeth.
You know what else is good for your teeth?

Minding your own damn business.

You posted it minus direct comment so I'm gonna treat it as something with which you're on board. Along the lines of:

http://ozreport.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=31052
Poll on weaklinks

Brad Gryder - 2013/02/21 23:25:31 UTC

There's also a way to swing your body way outside the control frame so it stays up there while you reach out with one hand and release. Come on - do some pushups this winter. See if you can advance up to some one-arm pushups.

So first off... Go fuck yourself.

...you're thinking about reporting them...

Reporting them to WHOM? State law enforcement officials - right? So (in theory, anyway) your democratically installed government officials have enacted regulations in the interest of public safety.

And the superspreader assholes next door feel that they can keep on doing whatever the fuck they feel like doing - à la Sturgis - and then disperse back into the general population maskless and spray their potentially lethal microbes around amongst whomever the fuck they feel like exposing.

And if I'm a responsible citizen and report this situation - honestly and accurately - I can expect a violent physical attack by way of retaliation. Not to mention a probable good dose of aforementioned lethal microbes.

Yeah, this is most assuredly my own goddam business. I've been playing by the rules, laws, guidelines, individual business policies for most of this year to keep myself and the individuals with whom I come into close proximity reasonably safe and minimize the load on health care personnel and resources. And I've experienced both minor increase in cost and decrease in quality of health care as consequences of this bug.

And I resent the hell outta you and your pigfucker buddies dispensing with masks and exercising your God-given and unabridged Constitutional rights packing family gatherings, churches, MAGA rallies. Kinda the way I resented the hell outta all you pin bending Davis Linkers getting back in line in front of me for endless free relights while my soaring window is collapsing.

And I might've liked to have knocked some teeth out but eventually gravity did that job for me - although falling far short of the extent I'd have preferred.
---
P.S. Might wanna take a look at the last post on Page 10 of this topic. Did an update yesterday.

[<BS>]

1 20 2021

[Tad Eareckson]

And let's not forget the devastating 1917 influenza pandemic that claimed tens of millions of lives.

Tad Eareckson - 2016/11/09 11:18:31 UTC

[Tad Eareckson]

One extraordinary clip I just saw or noticed from the 2021/01/06 horror show...

Trump's nut cases are in the Senate Chamber looking for proof of the stolen election. One asshole is rifling through a notebook, pulls out a loose yellow sheet of paper, gives it a quick scan, drops it on the floor.

Another guy standing at his ten retrieves it, carefully inserts it top and face up within the left side pages.

WTF.

[Tad Eareckson]

Senate finds that it's OK for a (Republican) US President to incite violent, murderous insurrection against the Legislative branch of our government. So anybody have any thoughts on what WOULD be a valid impeachable offense?

Standing in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shooting somebody? That ship sailed over four years ago.

[Tad Eareckson]

Responding publicly to a PM from miguel who'd noticed my recent dearth of posts and was wondering if I were OK...

Thanks. I'm typing so I still have a pulse. And I often wonder and worry about other friends and allies and check to see when they were last active.

Allen was 2016/07/15 18:48:17 UTC here - 2018/06/21 11:39:19 UTC on The Jack Show. People fade out, disappear, nobody notices. Then years later ya think - WTF! What the hell happened to...?

Am I OK? Yes and No. I've been at low risk for getting The Virus and should be able to get the shots within the next couple months. But I've had this Staphylococcus aureus bug chewing away at me nonstop for a bit over two years now and - starting maybe a month and a half ago - things have gone into really ugly mode.

The 2019/02 right neck infection fizzled about early 2020/08. But on 2020/06/26 I'd gotten the Blacklegged (Deer) Tick site infection started. That one is still active and working its way down and back around my left calf but it seems to be fading a little and it hasn't been cramping my style much for the past month and a half or so.

The one that launched from my left ear crease early 2020/11... It's faded from that location and my jaw but is working around the base of my skull and down the back of my neck a bit. And maybe mid last month I scored two broad patches on my upper back left and right inboard shoulder areas. And these are SERIOUS.

They scab over; the infections start building up pressure; burning, agonizing, intolerable pain results; I have to rip the scabs open and off which causes dizzying pain; sometimes after hours of this self treatment things drain and dial down; maybe for the next day, day and half I do not bad. And things seem to cycle like this - somewhat like clockwork. It's nice to be able to be realistically optimistic that there will be relief from the low cycles not far around the corner - so far anyway.

But sleep depravation, exhaustion, fear, depression... Every time I've tried anything with professional health care I've come off the same or worse - usually the latter. After I get my shots I may go back and get appropriately aggressive with these assholes - see if there's ANYTHING that can be done towards a more positive result than I'm getting on my own.

2021/02/18 late morning, in the midst of the polar vortex nightmare, I need to make a trip to the mailbox. The front steps - brick - are sporting two or three inches of crusted-over snow. Strategy... Turn right sideways, extend left foot out over the step, drop on to punch through the crust and anchor on the packed snow. HOWEVER... The steps had gotten coated with a layer of ice prior to the snow. Totally frictionless, my foot and leg shoot out sideways, I go totally airborne.

WHILE I was totally airborne I was POSITIVE that life as I'd been knowing it was over. I was gonna get a broken arm and/or hip. Then I impacted on the concrete walkway - effectively the next step down. Bit o' snow cushioning I guess.

WHOA! I'm not seriously hurt! Right buttock bruised a bit, base of my right thumb scuffed and bleeding in several areas from the step on which I'd attempted to plant. My biggest fear then was getting the scrape infected.

Carefully kept that hand away from everything, sprayed it with a searing mist of 99.5 percent isopropyl, repeated every now and then for a few days, dodged that bullet.

I wonder how Zack fared in Houston.

Hang gliding... It's self destructed, we Baby Boomers are all dying off, it's Northern Hemisphere winter, pandemic, nothing going on, no fuel for commentary - and we've said everything that can be said a thousand times over...

Had been enjoying my little astronomy missions from earlyish December to the end of last month. Since then I've spent a lot of time working on scope stuff, rethinking things, revising my article, hoping for better days and nights ahead.

[Tad Eareckson]

Somewhere around 2021/03/02 18:30 UTC the forum experienced some sort of meltdown. I'd been revising my scope article and watched it happen realtime. And there'd been warning flickers starting a day or two prior I'd seen and brushed off. And I hadn't done a backup since 2020/07/24 14:14:28 UTC and was really kicking myself.

Immediately wired Zack - who hadn't logged in for a year or so - then got on the horn to HostGator. Didn't get very far with the latter - beyond assurance that they would have a backup from no more than a week prior. Zack got back to me pretty quick. I think - from what he told me - the problem was precipitated by a combination of our outdated phpBB version and an upgrade our host was doing. Zack didn't think the situation was as bad as it looked to me, was confident that what we had was still intact, provided evidence to that effect.

So he locked things down...

Information: This board is currently disabled.

...upgraded us from 3.0.11 to 3.3.3, undoubtedly jumped through another few hoops, got us properly lit up again maybe around 2021/03/05 07:30 UTC, and I stumbled upon the new and improved functionality very shortly thereafter.

A thousand thanks. It wasn't much fun seeing all that work and history suddenly out of commission and wondering whether or not it could be properly restored for that period.

Bad news...

Since previous report a couple Wednesdays ago my Staph situation went and stayed farther south than it's ever been - pain is crippling, gotta spend half my time and nearly all my energy dealing with the lesions, can't remember what sleeping is like... Guess I gotta be thankful that Emperor Bob's hero and role model no longer has any useable launch codes.

And a bit over two weeks since my crash landing on the concrete I'm doing OK on the recovery schedule. Dodged the infection bullet at least on that patch. Maybe another week or two.

[Tad Eareckson]

Subsequent to my previous post here (yesterday) I worked for about five days mostly on membership issues - making sure that things would work consistently for our moderators and legitimate members and wouldn't for the legions of spammers who've registered.

At the point we had a list of 2864 - and 22 activated individuals who've posted something not worthy of immediate deletion. And as far as the 'Twenties are concerned... We're down to eight for members who've logged in so far for the period and six who've posted.

But last night I scanned through the entire list of registrants looking for additional screen names with taints of legitimacy and came up with pretty much zilch. We have seven individuals on the banned list - at least one of whom is dead, probably nineteen aviation related individuals with the ability to post, same number of positively IDed hang gliding individuals with moderator access.

Issues...

We can no longer see our embedded YouTube videos.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KGMqFvBJftY
Couds, epic glories and a 360°hook landing

[ youtube ]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KGMqFvBJftY[ /youtube ]

(Again.) But I'm sure Zack would be able to deal with that issue relatively painlessly.

The full rez URL for the stills no longer displays in full.

22-03411
http://live.staticflickr.com/65535/50595345893_e145e3c77b_o.png


Used to look like:
hxxp://live.staticflickr.com/65535/50595345893_e145e3c77b_o.png
when you coded it like:
[ url }hxxp://live.staticflickr.com/65535/50595345893_e145e3c77b_o.png[ /url ]

So now somewhere between:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KGMqFvBJftY
and:
http://live.staticflickr.com/65535/50595345893_e145e3c77b_o.png
(42 and 63 characters) it decides to truncate and that you're gonna be happy with that decision. I'm totally not. And it really fucks one up when attempting to do searches.

2021/03/05 07:57:57 UTC I did a backup of Kite Strings and saved it to my hard drive. And earlier today after doing tons of membership work I thought it might be a good idea to give it another shot. And only well after I clicked Submit did I realize it wasn't downloading to my hard drive and that that option no longer existed.

I started on Mac with ClarisWorks 2.0 - word processing, database, and spreadsheet - a million years ago. I LOVED it. Could learn and understand it, gave me incredible power to do what I wanted to. I DESPISE the Apple Pages Numbers descendants with which I'm stuck now. They have all these amazing capabilities that I don't want and don't use and have taken away the capabilities that I do want, need, used to use. I have to run a copy of Microsoft Word for Mac 2011 to handle a lot of important stuff I could do a couple days after lighting up my first Mac decades ago. I think we've devolved from geeks developing products for other geeks to geeks developing products for the idiot masses to produce material for consumption by the idiot masses.

And yeah, I recognize, use, benefit from a lot of the amazing capabilities but it sure didn't have to be - and shouldn't have been - one or the other.
---
2021/03/07 22:50:00 UTC - Videos showing again. Thanks Zack?

[Tad Eareckson]

Responding publicly to some of a 2021/03/07 08:08:11 UTC email from Zack...

Again, thanks zillions for getting this boat refloated. I was devastated, scared, depressed after the collapse and massively relieved upon seeing things lit up again.

Regarding membership... I couldn't care much less about new members.

Zack C - 2010/11/23 05:23:34 UTC

The purpose of Kite Strings is to foster serious discussion regarding the practices and technologies of modern hang gliding. This is a forum ruled by science, truth, facts, reason, and logic. Anyone with a respect for these principles and a willingness to learn and engage in rational discussion is welcome to participate.

We've done it all - beaten it to death. Nobody's gonna have any new questions, bring any new perspectives or insights. And the national and global power structures - incompetent and corrupt beyond description - have made sure that nothing we've done will ever make any positive difference on any significant scale.

Jack - over at the worlds largest hang gliding community - is trying:

To provide a friendly and positive, approachable community for people interested in the sport of HG.

It's a ghost town - a few geriatric dinosaurs stumbling around watching their numbers steadily and irreversibly thin. And he's trying to optimize for popularity while we've always geared for the opposite.

We got through to everyone who could be gotten through to - and there's no twenty year old kid out there who's gonna come over here bubbling with questions so he can get things right. Anyone who really wanted to get things right has already read this stuff and gotten things right.

Steve Davy - 2011/07/18 11:04:14 UTC

Hello folks.
I'm new here, been reading post for hours, it's late and my eyes hurt now. Need to sleep.
Zack, thank you for starting this. Smart move!
Tad, I like you (no bullshit) we need more like you if we are going to survive.
Steve

Textbook. And it didn't take too long to exhaust the global supply.

And Dennis is still selling his excellent book.

http://ozreport.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=24846
Is this a joke ?

Cragin Shelton - 2011/09/03 23:57:33 UTC

Nice Reference Citation

Ridgerodent:
Manned Kiting
The Basic Handbook of Tow Launched Hang Gliding
Daniel F. Poynter
1974

"The greatest dangers are a rope break or a premature release."- Richard Johnson

Do you REALLY think that there has been no progress in knowledge about the practical applied physics and engineering of hang gliding in 37 years? OR that an early, 3+ decade old, information book written by a non-pilot is a solid reference when you have multiple high experience current instructors involved in the discussion?

Over 23 years now going strong on the first edition. (Any thoughts, Cragin? (Just kidding.))

Cragin on the Capitol rag - last:
- 2020/02/26 23:45:28 UTC - active
- 2019/01/31 17:31:06 UTC - post

Born and entered the sport perfect. Faded out of it the same way.

Backups...

Especially now with so little activity and the vast majority of it mine I don't think it's really worth spending an extra penny on a service. I do a fair job of maintaining a word processing archive of everything posted publicly and could manually reconstruct a couple weeks of recent activity in the event of a meltdown.

And if I know there's no good Plan B out there I'm probably gonna be WAY more conscientious about doing manual backups following significant activity. But - as noted in my previous post - I seem to have just lost the ability to download and have direct control over backups.

Had a really bad day yesterday on the health front - Staph plus I was otherwise sick and fevery with a sore throat. Feel like I'm coming out of it now so much less terrified. But thanks bigtime anyway you anti-masker assholes for going above and beyond the call of duty to keep these stray bullets in global circulation.

[Zack C]

Video embedding with [youtube] BBCode tags should be working again. The issue was that we're now forcing encrypted (HTTPS) connections to our site, which prevented unencrypted (HTTP) links from being embedded. I altered our [youtube] BBCode definition to always specify 'https' for the embed regardless of the original link's protocol.

I also installed an extension that automatically converts links to various media sites into embeds. The complete list of supported media sites is extensive but includes other video sites besides YouTube like Vimeo and TikTok along with other sites like Facebook, Twitter, and Flickr. YouTube is currently NOT included in this list because the extension conflicts with our existing YouTube BBCode tags. I can enable it within the extension, which will cause any lone YouTube links to convert to embeds (no tags required), but this will break embedding for any videos specified with the [youtube] tags. I've left the existing tags functioning for now to preserve the functionality of the board prior to the upgrade, but let me know if you want to change it, Tad.

As for the shortened URLs, you can display URLs in their entirety by using this format:

Code: Select all

[url=http://live.staticflickr.com/65535/50595345893_e145e3c77b_o.png]http://live.staticflickr.com/65535/50595345893_e145e3c77b_o.png[/url]

Which appears as:
http://live.staticflickr.com/65535/50595345893_e145e3c77b_o.png

The ability to download database backups from the ACP was removed at some point in version 3.2 as a security measure (so that a hacker that gained access to an admin account couldn't download the entire database).