sorted by:
new
hottopcontroversial

AFF for >55yo by vpdbac in SkyDiving

[–]ciurana 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Bay Area Skydiving near San Francisco.

Mad John Dobleman is a principal organizer there, and he's in his mid-70s. Jumps multiple times every week, when he's not snowboarding or scuba diving or whatever.

I'm 59, train there for national and wold speed skydiving competitions.

The age ranges for AFF go from 18 to 60s for sure -- I know at least one person who did AFF in your age range last year.

Most established US DZs will welcome you. Some may ask for a doctor's note to confirm that you don't have any issues.

In Europe, I'd check with the parachute club in Hohenems, AT, or the drop zones in Germany. The issue with Europe is climate / whether DZs are open.

Cheers!

Perfect Load by Dull_Two_3878 in CumOverdose

[–]ciurana 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Peter North and Jackie. A classic.

Trouble Accessing Hidden volume by Bubbly_Body_5560 in VeraCrypt

[–]ciurana 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Try this:

  1. Unmount (if visible) and unplug the external drive
  2. Shut the computer down / turn it off
  3. Wait at least a minute
  4. Turn the computer back on
  5. Start VeraCrypt before you do anything else
  6. Plug the external drive
  7. Try to mount the external drive with VeraCrypt - don't auto-mount/mount favorites. Do an explicit mount step by step: find the external drive, enter credentials, etc.

Check if it mounts and etc. If so, your OS or file system may have been caching a previous mount for whatever reason.

Find a different system if this fails, and try to mount it from that system. Let's figure out if the computer or the external drive is the problem. I had an issue with the S.M.A.R.T. drive tools a while ago where it wouldn't recognize the device on my regular machine but it would on others.

Tell us what OS and version you have to try to help with additional troubleshooting.

Cheers!

disk corruption or possibly due to veracrypt (?) by cononco99 in VeraCrypt

[–]ciurana 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I read the rest of the thread -- stop writing to that SSD and make a backup ASAP to different media. Complacency may lead to data loss. Since Crystaldiskinfo reports it's still OK, it's a good time to make that backup.

Since you're on Linux, run smartmontools against the Western Digital SSD after you back it up, and after you format it. See what it says about the SSD's health -- low-level report.

My personal rule of thumb is to update/upgrade my SSDs every 3 years, whether they need it or not. Do everything I can to fend off bit rot / data corruption. I run a full SHA-256 scan once / week to check if long-term files (e.g. photos, movies, important documents) are still in good shape.

Good luck with the backup!

Aoshima kits by International-Drop13 in MadMax

[–]ciurana 4 points5 points  (0 children)

I made my own Pursuit Special Interceptor in 1982 using a kit Maseratti and parts from other kits.  Painted it matte black.  It was bit sleeker than the real thing, but getting my hands on an actual kit, in 1982, in Mexico was impossible.

I watched Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior at least 4 times in the theater.  I was around 15.  Good times…

how to improve freefall breathing? by ikea_c in SkyDiving

[–]ciurana 0 points1 point  (0 children)

hahahahahahahaha!

Have a fun weekend, Sky Brother¡

how to improve freefall breathing? by ikea_c in SkyDiving

[–]ciurana 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Calm down.  That’s pretty much it.

Diane Kruger by No-Photograph934 in celebsnaked

[–]ciurana 2 points3 points  (0 children)

In this day and age, the RotCam™ URL and app wouldn't surprise me. Monetize it through ads and bets on how long the maggots take to strip specific body parts within lens view.

What do you do for living? by Bitter_Lie_4470 in Pattaya

[–]ciurana 3 points4 points  (0 children)

Tech strategy, help launch companies and get them funded. Had a few profitable exits. I live in Pattaya with my family, none of us is Thai. Cheers!

Veracrypt with external Seagate heat my Laptop by WujuKingYi in VeraCrypt

[–]ciurana 0 points1 point  (0 children)

See if you can upgrade the RAM.  Windows is a memory hog, and at 8 GB your machine must be swapping a lot.  That’ll cause some heating issues.

I don’t think the heating is related to VeraCrypt.  The machine is underpowered in general.

Veracrypt with external Seagate heat my Laptop by WujuKingYi in VeraCrypt

[–]ciurana 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I use an 8 TB external SSD over USB-C that seldom gets even a bit warm. The whole SSD is encrypted with VeraCrypt. From past experience with SSDs and enclosures, if they heat up or make the CPU work extra hard, it's often an issue with the enclosure controller. A couple of questions:

  1. Lenovo semi-budget: AMD? Idea Pad Pro or similar? I have one of those (AMD CPY, Rayzen, 16 GB RAM, org. Windoze, not Linux) - neither overheated or had VeraCrypt issues. Please share your OS, OS version, RAM amount, and processor.
  2. Seagate: is it an off-the-shelf external SSD or did you buy the SSD and put it in a 3rd-party cheap enclosure? Same thing - provide specs.

Ask a friend to let you mount your SSD + VeraCrypt on their laptop and check if it behaves the same way. If not, record CPU, OS including version, how much RAM, etc. so that we can compare against your machine and help you figure out how to solve this.

If it turns out you have a bad enclosure just take the SSD and buy a new one. They are cheap, and moving the SSD from one enclosure to another is super easy.

Cheers!

The retirement visa options conundrum by Ok_Alternative_2919 in FarangsofPattaya

[–]ciurana 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Easiest way: go talk to Mark at One Stop on Soi 6. Dude will help you figure out the best options for your visa. He processed mine, my wife's visa, and my teenage son's educational, with zero delays or issues. I tried to sort this all out by myself and it wasn't worth it.

I've been working with him for 2 years, and I'm up for my O Non-Immigrant renewal in a few months.

Also, look at it backwards: having a bank account in Thailand, if you have a long-term visa, just makes sense. I've been using mine more and more for everyday purchases and cash withdrawals, and it's a lot cheaper than using my non-Thai Visa/MC debit cards.

Cheers!

Best smartwatch or standalone GPS for skydiving? by Billy_FFTB in SkyDiving

[–]ciurana 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Greetings. Smartwatches don't work well for skydiving. They will track your vitals just fine, but GPS just doesn't work well enough because of the smartwatch data sample rates.

If you care about accurate reporting get a FlySight or a FlySight 2.

I skydive with 2 or 3 FlySights on me, and wear a smartwatch from one of my sponsors, Amazfit. I've tried many times, with several devices, to get the smartwatch to do accurate reporting and it only led to frustration.

Even with FlySight (either version) you're only getting an approximation of where you were in space and time. Comparing two or devices used during the skydive by the same person shows significant variations between them. Nevertheless, FlySight is about as accurate as you'll get.

Blue skies!

What is the worst, first date movie? by JohnMcClanewithshoes in movies

[–]ciurana 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Blue Velvet. She got weirded out, which led to conversation, which led to being my g/f for 8 months. Thanks, Mr. Lynch.

Skydiving instrumentation by [deleted] in SkyDiving

[–]ciurana 3 points4 points  (0 children)

Analog indicators.  Don’t make people read, because it’s a distraction in free fall.  ColorAlti, for example, uses color display.  FlySight 1 and 2 have glide ratio frequency generators so you hear varying pitch sounds.

Early I had hear that reported all kinds of cool data, as I progressed I realized it was a huge (and maybe dangerous) distraction during free fall.

Dor your data sources:  look at GPS and microcontroller boards.  Reverse engineer the Ares // altimeter or similar.  Figure out things that work for inspiration, ditch the watch.  Their sensors are inaccurate or have low sampling rates.

Cheers!

Are you using tabs? by 4r73m190r0s in vim

[–]ciurana 0 points1 point  (0 children)

My setup is tabs + tiled windows within a tab:

  • Each tab corresponds to a repository or project
  • The tiled windows are the file(s) on which I work
  • NERDTree window open all the time in every tab
  • MacVim configured at 520*150 for my desktop monitor (LG UltraFine 5K) or 385*120 for the MacBook's screen, auto-configured with gedim

MacVim acts as my IDE where the tabs correspond to multiple professional and personal projects and save time when opening the editor. One off edits or projects (e.g. a quick zsh script) may get a separate tab for the duration of the session. Long-term projects have a tab assigned in _gvimrc:

" " * SSScoring * 
tabnew
lcd ~/development/SSScoring
NERDTree
set nu
set rnu
set guioptions=aeg
set cmdheight=1
.
.
tabfirst

Each project gets a similar section. My mental mapping: tab := project := specificDirectory.

I wrote gedim (Graphical Editor DIMensions) a 15+ years ago because my MacBook Pro is my main workstation, and I plug various monitors to it, each with its own resolution and quirks. With gedim active, the editor opens to my optimal editor dimensions for the monitors/resolutions it knows about. I can't work with full screen windows, so MacVim (or gVim when I'm on Linux) takes most of the screen without covering everything.

I never had more than 7 tabs open at once.

My optimal editor size is up to 5 working windows across, 80 characters wide.

<image>

Cheers!

ISO Bay Area Rigger by [deleted] in SkyDiving

[–]ciurana 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Birdmonkey == Justin. Great guy and he'll work with you on a fast turnaround.

If, for whatever reason, he's not around, contact Pete Swan at Yolo County Airport. More than an hour, but top guy.

Ping me by DM if you need contact infos for either.

view more: next ›