Leaderboard

I'm not a gear guy when it comes to camping (not even doing any backcountry camping now that I have little kids), but I like fire. I've found a good way to make firestarters at home is to fill a cardboard egg carton with wood shavings, then pour in paraffin wax. Wait for it to set and cut the whole thing up so you have 12 little easily-combustible paper cups full of paraffin and wood. It's a cheap and easy way to get a fire going when the wood is a bit damp.

Hello Head-case. I would like to build my own website to put on my Resume and show off my fotos and skeematics better than Flickr, and a stack of loose papers on the edge of my desk. I'm not really sure where to start. What I'm looking for: I want the website to be pretty simple No horizontal scrolling, simple/easy to read fonts with high contrasts, basically paper on the internet. A few pages for photography (street, sports) A page for DIY stuff MAYBE a blog I have a domain name in mind, that is not owned yet, so that is good. I know I need to buy it and 1and1.com looks like a good place to do this, but I'm not really sure where to go from there. 1and1 could also be terrible. I am biased towards filling out templates to get the website running, but am fearless (stupid) enough to code from scratch if necessary. HELP!!!!1

"Швелера и бетона" means "metal beams and concrete" in Russian.

Man, I've missed this thread. If paying, pick for antivirus is Eset NOD32 all the way. Free tools like Malwarebytes I also recommend. Immunization with spybot search and destroy is really helpful as well. Free DVD ripper for closest to original burning is DVD shrink (It rips and resizes perfectly to largest quality to fit on disc and it lets you select which streams not to include like languages and extras). AnyDVD HD is something I've purchased however for blu-ray playback and ripping. EAC is the best CD ripper for quality I know of. Foobar2000 is a great free listening, organizing and converting tool I also recommend. I use mp3tag to manage tags as well. Google drive is my favorite free office alternative. Don't forget to make your own backups, because window's own solution is not reliable. I use the free Macrium reflect. CCleaner is useful to clean temporary internet files. Must have browser extensions for Chrome and Firefox are adblock plus, ghostery, and https everywhere. Recommend using CCCP (combined community codec pack) for codecs and video playback over VLC lan. If you are security and virus conscious, try secunia PSI to alert you when a program needs to be updated for security, it is free and will even auto update most things.

No intention of camping but like gear. Please send me your newsletter.

The stoves themselves are very light, the fuel can be bought at just about any hardware store, alcohol is a renewable resource which keeps the hippies happy, they have no (essential*) moving parts, and there is VERY little residue/smell. They are also easy to build with a soda can**, which fuels a lot of "look at what I built" posts & videos. The downsides are that the stoves just aren't as hot as pressurized fuel stoves, alcohol burns with a "clear" flame in daylight which is a bit of a safety concern, and the energy density of alcohol is lower than fossil fuels. I'm on the fence. For shorter trips in warmer weather alcohol makes sense. Although alcohol will almost always light, I get tired of waiting for it to heat water in the cold. If you need more than a few days-worth of fuel, or are cooking for more than 2 people what you save in the stove gets offset by the worse energy density of alcohols compared to isobutane or fossil fuel. * Some commercial alcohol stoves have a little damper-paddle-thingy to control the flame. If it gets lost the stove still works. **Soda can stoves are prone to getting squashed if you pack them wrong, so be careful there.

If its any help, I am more a fan of MSR stoves - the ability to cook with a standard pot (without buying an adapter thingy) is pretty sweet. I like isobutane stoves when possible - they are simple to use, pretty much zero-maintenance, and usually a touch (or more) lighter than liquid fuel. The downsides are that liquid fuel is more readily available, and works better in the cold. If you plan to fly with the stove things get kind of iffy. Liquid fuel is easier to find when you land, but TSA loves to "confiscate" liquid fuel stoves. I like tents for starting out because of simpler set up. But tarps are SOOOOOO much lighter and better ventilated. Do not skip the sleeping-pad when you start looking at sleeping stuff. This is very important for warmth in addition to comfort.

Yeah, it still puts a bit of extra pressure on your head, but no where nears as bad as the X1.

Had a little fun shooting SFO by the bay this evening on my way to the hotel. First time using the 85 1.8G in "the wild", and this little lens sure looks like a keeper. (Part of a program I'm on to transition my DSLR system to only primes, and set my mirrorless kit up with the zoom for convenience/casual pics).