Jumping has been getting better and better. My first jump, I rolled out at 11k last night and watched the plane fall away. Then I did a hop and pop from 6k for my license.

Here are some pictures from jumps 14-15.

Blue Skies!

I finished AFF. It took about a month but I did it, and I am very happy about it.

I spent the entire weekend out at Lost Prairie this past weekend. I learned how to pack on Friday night, jumped once on Saturday, and twice on Sunday. The last jump was my 6th AFF and my graduation.

It took me about 15 minutes after my last jump to realize that the next jump I made would be cheap and easy. No more waiting around for an instructor, no more watching tandems fly up wishing I was on the plane, no more jumps filled with instructions and rushed moves. I can’t wait to get back up there.

I finally got to do my level 3 aff jump yesterday. It was way overdue and I would have lost my mind if I hadn’t jumped. It was pretty cloudy and only about 65F out. It was so cold out that when we hit about 10K I could see my breath. After exit the jump went really good. I learned that I need to arch WAY more than I was before and got that all sorted out as Fred and Mike let me go. I fell really straight and didn’t have a problem keeping a heading. I pulled at 5500 and had a snapper of an opening with a line twist. I figured out later that night that since I look over my shoulder on open that I turn which is giving me a twist. Next time I jump I am going to make sure I don’t turn my whole body on open, but just my head. Landing was right on and I only had to take one step forward.

I am heading back out tomorrow night to learn how to pack and get some more jumps in this weekend.

I see why there are so few skydivers. You almost have to take a loan out just to get under 10 jumps, you spend your remaining time and money getting to and from the dropzone. Getting through the AFF course is damn ridiculous.

This week was a dry skydiving week for me. I was going to make a jump on Tuesday, but weather got in the way once again. I talked with the guys at Lost Prairie throughout the week about the next possible time to make a jump. They were heading down to the Hamilton Boogie and thought they could round me up some instructors.

On Friday night I waited for a phone call from Fred that would be a yes or no for making a trip down. I got a call at 9:30 letting me know everything was good to go. The next morning I drove down to Hamilton and started waiting.

I was there at about 11:00 and didn’t do my dive flow until about 3:00. As the day wound on it became increasingly windy and at about 6:00 we pulled the plug on my AFF jump.

That night a storm rolled in and the next morning there were low clouds as far as you could see. I left for the 3 hour drive back. I wouldn’t say I have ever been a patient person, but even though I drove 300 miles for almost nothing I was strangely fine with it. I have really started to accept things that I can’t control, and they don’t bother me like they have.

The forecast for the next week looks great though so it is possible that there could be some more jumps (finish AFF?) over the course of the next couple of weeks.

Since there is little to no support for enhanced podcasting on Windows, I wanted to make a guide to show how I make my enhanced podcasts on a Windows XP machine. I am going to use my podcast (React House Music Podcast) for the example.

To start things off your going to need a program called Slideshow Assembler. This link has both files that you need. I say both files because I installed them both. I am not sure if you actually need the front end for audio podcasts, but I didn’t try without it.

Once you have this installed, your going to want to collect your audio file (in .mp4 format) and the images that are going to run throughout the podcast. It is easier if you collect all of these files inside the Slideshow Assembler directory (ie. C:/Program Files/Slideshow Assembler/Yourpodcast) Here is a shot of my collected files:

You will notice I have one extra file in this folder. This file is the .pod file, Its going to to direct Slideshow Assembler to do what we want it to. We are now going to edit this file to make it work for our podcast. The easiest way to start editing the pod file is to copy the example .pod file (most likely stored in C:/Program Files/Slideshow Assembler/Example 1) over to your project folder and rename it something you can remember. When you open the file the first section should be pretty self explanitory. This is how i filled mine out:

[Podcast]
altfolder1=rpe1
basename=React Podcast Episode 1
audiofile=React Podcast Episode 1.mp4
shownotes=shownotes
artwork=title.jpg
imgwidth=300
imgheight=300
editpointcount=9

You want to make sure that any file name is written out perfectly. I had an image that was .jpeg, I put .jpg in the podfile and it missed it the first time around. After this section there come the points, you want to make sure you have the correct amount of point entries depending on what you set ‘editpointcount=’ at. Editing each point is self explanitory. Mine look like the following:

…
[Editpoint_2]
start=00:00:10.00
chapter=Simi - Errore di Sistema (Original Mix)
image=1.jpg

[Editpoint_3]
start=00:06:28.00
chapter=Radio Slave - Grindhouse (Dubfire Terror Planet Remix)
image=2.jpg

[Editpoint_4]
start=00:14:33.00
chapter=Mark Knight and Funkagenda - Shogun (Jimpster Mix)
image=3.jpg
…

Things can get trickier if you want to add links to your points, but following the example file will lead you in the right direction. Filling in the information at the bottom is easy and I will leave that up to you. I deleted a few lines and ended up with this:

[metadata]
;;
;;
;; &  for data type 21
;; @  for data type 0
;; @” for data type 0 with character data - if you need at the start of the string include ” twice (e.g. @”"Some text )
;;
;; all other are strings (type 1) - only lyrics can exceed 255 bytes
;;
©cpy=2008 ReactPodcast.com

©nam=React Podcast Episode 1
©ART=React Podcast

©gen=Podcast
©day=2008-08-26

catg=podcasts
desc=React Podcast Episode 1

Once you have your .pod file finished navigate to Slideshow Assembler in the start menu and click on Command Prompt.

Since we created our directory inside the Slideshow Assembler directory it is easy to navigate to our folder. My folder is named rpe1 so I type ‘cd rpe1′ and it moves me into that folder.

Now we execute the command that makes our ‘enhanced’ file. You type the following: ’ssa -q4 yourpodfile.pod’ and hit enter. You can see how I did this below:

Slideshow Assembler will then process all the files and as long as nothing went wrong your command prompt should look similar to this:

When all is said and done you should have a new .m4a file inside your project folder. Open it in iTunes and make sure it works!

Thanks to Jr Learns Media for Slideshow Assembler

If you found this helpful, please digg it!

This Friday I did my second AFF jump at Skydive Lost Prairie. The entire weekend was extremely nice and I was expecting to get at least four jumps in. Unfortunately there were tandems lined up the entire weekend which cut me down to just one jump. It was about 5:30PM before I got to do my only jump on Friday. The jump went well although my nerves were much worse than the first jump. After exit it took me a little while to really sink into the sky, but I relaxed and everything came together. My turns went well and I had time to track forward a bit. I locked on just above 6000 and when 5500 came around I rushed and fumbled for the ripcord a bit before I got a solid grip on it. That was my biggest mistake, but overall I thought it was a good jump. I will be more relaxed for level three and if all goes well I should breeze on through the rest of my jumps.

Mike brings a tandem in for a landing

I spent the better part of tonight fighting with iTunes and my iPod Touch to get firmware 2.0.1 up and running. I had previously ran the jailbreak on the 1.1.1 firmware and never changed it because it always worked well and never gave me problems. Today I saw all the new toys that the new 2.0 firmware has access to and decided to upgrade.

For the past four hours I have been struggling to get a “pwned” version of the 2.0.1 firmware on the iTouch.

For those of you with an ipod touch or iphone, I suggest you take a look at this tutorial. This will work for the iPod Touch as well as the iPhone.

It uses a program called WinPwn which can be found here.

The only other thing you need is a fresh firmware version for your device. You can get previous versions here. These can also be found on many different sites and a quick google search can point you in the right direction.

Once you get your iPod/iPhone hacked you can crack the protection that Apple puts on thier pay applications. Information on that can be found here.