3 Feb 2008 (updated 3 Feb 2008 at 14:02 UTC)
»
Contributions to Rails
My humble contributions to Rails are small bits and pieces here and
there, but well they made 2nd in the past Rails Hackfest. That means a book for free from the entire O'Reilly
catalogue. I'll order the forthcoming The Ruby
Programming Language.
Perl classes are over
Yet another semester done at the UB. Time to
relax!
Pilates
Since I've finished the classes I've got some spare time in my spare time
:-), and I've decided to start doing some Pilates, I like what I've
heard about it. I've scheduled a class per week with reformer by now, in a
small group of three people.
Powered Paragliding
I spend most weekends in a town of the seaside near Barcelona, and
frequently you see people in paramotors pass
following the coast. There's a little voice in me that says that experience has
to be amazing, and enriching since it is so different to anything I do
regularly.
A couple of weeks ago I had the chance to talk with one of those guys.
He kindly responded to all my questions and recommended an instructor.
My impression is that they do not quite see themselves as paragliders with a
motor, they see powered
paragliders (PPG) as the smallest aircarfts on earth. The propeller helps you
getting
airbone and going up, and the wing does the rest. If the motor quits you
become an ordinary paraglider.
Point is, you don't need to get into a van, go up to a risky amphitheater
high in some mountain, wait if you have luck with the wind direction and
speed range (or else you practice parawaiting), and run into the void,
ready to abort if wing inflation goes wrong. And being a beginner you need
to add the sensory overload I've
read you feel. Depending on the conditions, if you
succeed you are done in the ground after say 10 minutes (although you can
be there for much
more time if there are thermals and you know to soar with them).
Nah, I don't like that. That's why I have never been interested in
practicing parachuting either, it is very expensive, you need an aircraft, and
the fall just lasts some minutes.
But with a PPG you just need some pasture or
whatever flat stretch of ground with enough space to run a bit and fly. That
guy I talked to left the car near the beach, got airbone, flew for a couple of
hours, came back to the origin point, and gently landed in a few meters. With
a PPG you can fly in two days what you can fly in two months with a
paraglider, and with much much less risk for a beginner. When he finished he
unmounted the PPG and packed it into the trunk of his car.
Well, I don't know whether I'll actually take any class in the future, but I
am reading Running into the Sky, which describes
the experience of a guy in the process of learning this stuff, and I am
completely
hooked!