cat /proc/claus | java

1. Where did you go Sky Diving?

I went skydiving in Fujioka, Tochigi prefecture, by Advanced Air Sports Inc. At their webpage, you can get all information needed about how to make a reservation, payment, how to get there, testimonials from other clients etc.

2. Is it expensive?

It costed around 25.000 yenes (250 dollars), 38000 yenes with the recording. Seems expensive, but a quick search will show that the prices are pretty much the same worldwide.

3. Weren’t you scared? Isn’t it scary?

Actually, I am quite afraid of heights. I feel kind of funny when standing near windows in tall buildings. In the helicopter, while it was going up in the air I was quite afraid.

That said, the jump itself was surprisingly non-scary. After you jump out of the helicopter, you completely lose the sensation of “fall”. The ground is so far away that it doesn’t move, so you feel you are floating in the air.

So no, it is not scary at all.

4. Isn’t it dangerous?

Not really. In your first time, you have to jump together with an instructor (Tandem jump). You are linked to the instructor in 7 different points in your uniform, so there is no danger of falling from him.

Also the instructors themselves have more than a thousand jumps in experience. So no, not dangerous at all.

5. Was it worth it?

Hell yes!

6. How does it feel?


Like I said before, you don’t actually feel you are falling. It seems like if you were still in the air. You feel a very strong wind current all over your body, similar to what you feel when you stick our arm out a window of a fast moving car.

The most impressive thing is the sound of wind rushing past your ears. It feels great.

7. Are you going to do it again?

I hope so! I don’t want to do just another “experimental” jump, so if/when I do it again, I want to actually go for the 7 jump course which is needed to take the certificate for solo jumps. However, that is too expensive to do right now.

… and a very old laptop.

Today’s mission: I got this DVD with the video recording of my most recent adventure in Japan. I want to take the video itself away from the menu fluff, and put it here for everyone to see.

Step one: Getting the DVD to work on my laptop

First fail: I insert the DVD in my ubuntu laptop, and it begins to auto-play, loading the movie player. Apparently, the ubuntu packager’s mothers never told them not to auto-play any strange media that connects to their computers :-(.

At least, no problems recognizing the DVD.

Step two: Installing the DVD ripping software

Drebes suggested Handbrake. `Apt-cache search dvd rip` suggests acidrip. Let’s try acidrip first.

Step three, part a: trying to rip the video out using acidrip

Downloaded Acidrip, and ran it. The man file does not explain a lot about the command line parameters. Theoretically, the defaults are sane. I can press the “RIP” button and generate and
avi file, but I can’t get mplayer or xine to successfully read it. Not really into reading manuals and manuals describing codecs, so let’s try handbrake.

Funnily enough, the “preview” button from acidrip shows me a nice video, with nice sound - is it reading straight from the DVD?

Step three, part b: trying out handbrake

download the binary. Run the binary: Handbrake -c 1 -i /dev/hdc -o file.mp4

There it goes. A nice, small video. Now I just need to find a place to put this binary in.

Here is the result:

Recently I saw in a forum this very neat flash based game. It is a geography quiz, where you have to try and get right the position of many cities in the world.

Try it!

http://xkcd.com/chesscoaster/

I’m SO doing this. Who wants to join me?

A tabletop RPG game.

So yesterday was my weekly TRPG session (I play with this group every Thursday’s night for a year now). We were playing SLA Industries, a sci-fi/horror game which looks a bit like Paranoia taken seriously.

Anyway, our group was moving through Cannibal Sector, a very mean place full of mutated beasts and worse, after a group of traitors. It was almost the end of the session, and the GM decided to throw a few monster dogs at us, just to finish the night on a high note, I guess.

Two of the beasts were dispatched by the two heavy fighters in the group, while two other members were battling the third beast. The combat was dragging on a bit due to a series of misses, but since the dog could do little against our armor, we were in no real danger.

The player who was playing one of the characters who was battling the beast, however, was having quite a bit of fun describing all the furious hits and misses of his combat. Until when he was about to give the final blow, he decided to take off his helmet to “finish it with style”.

…

And, at that EXACT turn, the creature, half-dead, rolled the first hit on the head of the entire session, instantly killing the character.

The table went silent for a whole minute. I love the RNG <3