I thought I would write a little bit on some of the hiking/travel gear I love, since it is part of year-end sales right now.

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Mountainsmith Ghost Pack – 3000ci (49L), full suspension, weighs 2 lbs. 1 oz (0.94KG). On sale at Backcountry Gear and Campmor.

I wanted a bag that could be used for travel (local and world, carry-on), as well as hiking. As long as you don’t over-stuff the bag, and have stuff hanging off it, you should have no trouble sticking it in overhead compartments or under a bus seat. But more importantly, it can also be stuffed into the metal baggage size tester at the airport. It is well shaped, and I don’t have to worry about bumping into anyone when I have it on. Side straps and a bungee on the back let you compact the pack even further when you have a smaller load. It has bottom bag straps and side pouches to easily fit tents/rolls/odd shaped items for camping. The panel loading is handy.

Unlike a lot of bags in the 2lb range, the Ghost has a great waist belt and strap system. My shoulders don’t fit very well in V strap systems (like the Granite Gear Vapor Trail), the minute I put a Ghost on, I knew it was for me. I usually try to go fairly light, but even water heavy loads were easy with the suspension system.

The bag is made out of a pretty tough sail material. I’ve smacked it around and there are no signs of wear on the bag. The material is also quite water repellant. We got rained on a few times on the Inka trail, but there was almost no moisture in the bag. The waterproof zipper is a bit sticky, but does the job. The waist and shoulder straps are made of a tough outer mesh, with a bunch of small foam tubes inside. They are comfortable and don’t hold moisture.

I love this pack. I tried a lot of other lightweight packs (most of the Golight brand, Granite Gear packs, MEC, REI brands, etc) before I settled on this one, and I have no regrets. Mountainsmith is also a great company, we managed to loose a sternum strap on our Wraith pack, and they sent us a new one, no charge.

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SmartWool/Icebreaker – I own shirts, long underwear, boxers, and lots of socks. Smartwool sale at Backcountry Gear

SmartWool and Icebreaker are made with Merino wool. The smaller, longer fibers of this wool are quite soft and stretchy (no itch). They are great in hot and cold environments (perfect for Peru, freezing nights 13k feet, and boiling in dry desert) and all the technical info on Merino can be found on the Icebreaker site.

Besides being sustainable, warm when wet, etc, they also have another huge advantage over synthetics. No smell. A couple hours in coolmax or polyprop and I stink, badly. Some of the newer synthetics will let me last a day or two before they have a funk. But I wore the same shirt, socks, and underwear for 4 days on the Inka trail with no funk. How? Merino fibers absorb water and are naturally antibacterial. Merino doesn’t dry as quickly as some of the synthetics, but that doesn’t bother me too much. I can wear wet merino if I have to, it will be dry quickly and I will still be warm. In short, I love this stuff for hiking and travel.

Today is INS day for us. Happy bureaucracy everyone!

I woke up at about 4am this morning. Picked up the cat off the bed, and put him outside. Anna said “What are you doing?” I replied, “He wants avocadoes”.

I have no idea what the hell my dream was about.

I was just thinking about Burning Man the other day. We have been the last three years, and enjoyed it every time. However, I was feeling like this year might be the year to take it off. It costs a lot of money and time. Tickets went on sale early this year, so we are already in the higher ticket price. Anna and I were feeling that maybe this year we spend that money and time on a different trip.

People go to Burning Man for different reasons. Some go to party. Some go to be freaky. Some go for the community. And some (myself included) go to be blown away by the art. I received an email that pointed me towards the bet. This year BORG2 will try to match BM’s art budget, and set up inside the event. Intriguing? Yes. Will we go? Dunno, but it gives me something to chew on.

Ah hah! Finally managed to get the Cuzco Xmas vids published. I had to upload them to an empty, accessible directory, then set Gallery loose on them via URL add photos method. I assume this doesn’t use the php max_post_size value, because it is a pull rather than a push to the server.

The 3 vids are not super high quality, and I’m a bit shaky on them. They were taken from this camera, so no complaints. The sounds add a lot to the atmosphere that I felt was missing from the pictures. Though it is always tough to tell if the video is actually translating a small part of that experience, or just triggering my own memories.

Thank you for contacting 1&1

Unfortunately that setting is not available for override or editing via the php.ini file.

If you have any further questions do not hesitate to contact us.

LOOK YOU JERK, I WANT THE SUPPORT I PAID FOR. Oh yeah, I’m not paying. In other words, no Cuzco Xmas vids until I figure out how to manually add a file to gallery.

Whaaa? You mean they were wrong? That’s sooo surprising: US gives up search for Iraq WMD

The iPod shuffle is tempting, but it is hard to say how much I would miss the screen. Custom programs are one of the things that makes the iPod desirable. 12h battey time is a bit lame as well. The iriver players crank out over 30, and they have screens and FM tuners built in.

For all you iTunes people, Apple also broke Hymm, the anti-DRM utility.

The city of San Diego will pay a $25,000 fine to the state government for waiting nearly a month to alert regulators to a potential health hazard in the city drinking water system. And that’s why I buy Pureflo water.

I won’t shed any tears about this: End Looming for San Diego’s Master-Planned Communities

San Diego drivers are some of the most zombie drivers I have seen, so learning that San Diego has the 3rd highest pedestrian fatality rate in the nation is hardly surprising. The bike rate can’t be much better.

I’ve never had it, but I suddenly want Paan after reading this.

I finally got around to upgrading gallery. They added some stuff which freaked a bit on my config, but I eventually got it all going. They added RSS feeds, but I’m not sure how useful that will be. I usually only update in big batches anyway.

I’ve been trying to upload some videos from my camera of the christmas day celebrations in Cuzco. I managed to get one up, but the others are 10 and 15 MB, and I have been learning that while the php upload_max_filesize is set to 20 MB, the post_max_size is only 8 MB. So I can’t upload them until 1&1 increases this for me. Will they? Probably not. But I can’t bad mouth 3 years of free service, can I?

I tried using Windows Movie Maker to edit the file sizes down a bit, but it is crap. Everything it re-encodes looks like crap. Considering that I am only dealing with camera movie files, I can’t imagine anyone using it to work with their home videos. I suspect I have to export it to a raw file, work with that, then re-encode and deal with the loss of quality.

Update: link to the full “hit-squads” article.