Davids Jewish Traveler and Hacker
Last week I went Sailboat camping on an island in the Puget Sound. I went ultra-light and this is what I packed:
Tarp tent - Cord 6x9 ft nylon coated tarp, stake 3 corners and cord up last corner to a tree.
GoreTex bivy sack
15deg slumberjack sleeping bag
Self inflating mattress
Light jacket
Fleece vest
LED flashlight
Food
The place had plumbed bathrooms so no need for toilet paper.
My Yaesu FT411E 2meter handheld HAM radio failed during the trip, it turned out to be a solder joint inside the antenna which I fixed once I was home. This is a nice little radio which has both a Ni-Cad pack, a 6xAA battery pack, and a 12v car charge hi power pack. It transmits between 1 and 3 watts except with the 12v pack then at 5 watts. This radio passes the drop test better than my old Alinco DJ-580T although I miss having the 440 band. I think the Yaesu is a better radio. The Alinco has a very easy out of band Tx mod and a 900mhz and aircraft receive mod by cutting the mod wires inside the case.
I have finallyreceived the MFJ-902 tiny travel tuner. It covers 10-80 meters but misses 160 meters :^( this gadget is smaller than my hand and tunes nicely in its designed bands. See it at www.mfjenterprises.com
The new tuner has coax out the back but you can also attach a random wire with the provided banana plug.
TO conclude I bought a cheap code key while at Ham Radio Outlet along with the Gordon West WB6NOA Morse code trainer CD's, I hope this will get me past the general code exam so I don't need a babysitter to use HF frequencies.
This is the edited list and thoughts from a friend who will be visiting/hitchhiking through Europe. She has hitchhiked biked and train jumped (hobo in an open boxcar) around the United States. She typed this on my Zaurus 5500 while riding up to Seattle for her departure.
The list:
backpack
mouth to mouth resuscitator
cheap light
REI first aid kit
small compressible 20 deg sleeping bag
cheap small old camera
light 6$ bike pump
extra bike inertubes
extra brake cables-gear cables
cheap sewing kit consisting of a lighter a pack of sewing needles and extra pack of dental floss
old double tent rain-fly folded tight
extra medium sized stuff sack...it can be us as a light day pack just add a belt or bike inertube for shoulder strap
one light weight Schwin bike
old bike inertube to strap the pack to the bike
basic hygiene stuff
emergency bivy sack...very light weight good for sleeping mat and for extreme weather for when your sleeping bag can handle extra insulation
LED head lamp, very light weight
keep your pack very light as light as possible make sure that nothing you have is non-replaceable
An overly heavy pack hurts your back. Your back is very precious once it goes out your basically f---ed, same thing with your knees an feet.
make sure you have a decent pair of shoes. Only bring one pair of shoes, multiple pairs of shoes means more wt. which means more weight to you back.
another way I figure out if my pack if correctly fitted is jog with your pack make sure your pack moves with you. if you need to run for any reason you are not slowed down by your pack, this is very important!
Bring proper bike tools, don't bring too many just the bare essentials same goes for everything you bring. Make sure you bring your passport, this is pretty important, when doing European or any travel.
Always make sure you have enough water on you and in you. Hydration is the key to staying aware of your surroundings. If you are starving, sleep deprived, delirious, or dehydrated you are not going to make good judgment calls.
I like the commentary about dehydration, about saving your back I recomend having a good hip belt on your pack.
Communication good stuff
First I am going to talk about VOIP telephony. I have been using a Grandstream 100 phone for a few months as an extra phone line. The telephone plugs directly into Ethernet and allows you to plug in anywhere there is an outside accessible internet connection and make calls as if you were at home. I am planning to take this phone to Israel but have tested it in Portland quite a bit. At home I am running a wireless link which allows fast data transfer but lots of packet loss and long ping times. SIP telephones use UDP packets which have no loss correction, this leads to some voice quality issues on lossy connections. The PersonalTelco Project is running a test server which runs Asterisk on a Linux machine. This server acts as a telephone switch and connects to Free World Dialup http://www.fwd.pulver.com/ and Vonage www.vonage.com as well as a local line in Portland Or. Anywhere this phone connects to the internet it will access this server and make the phone active with a Portland number. I wish the GS100 had the ability to store several profiles because I also have a freeworld dialup account and there are times when I would like to dial out from this connection.
FRS Radios
Several years ago the US FCC opened up the FRS radio band in the US it is around 450mhz, a good band for line of sight and local communications. Range is advertised around 1 mile which seems to be accurate even in dense urban areas. Much longer ranges are possible if line of sight is available. In 1999 a climber was hurt on Mt. Hood here in Oregon, by using a standard FRS radio he made a 60 mile radio contact to some boys playing with their radios (they asked their dad to speak to the hurt man on the mountain and he was rescued)
Check the local laws in the nation you visit to see if FRS is recognized as an unlicensed band, it is a great way to save cellular $ but can also land you a stiff fine.
The Calm Before the Storm
Three things have really bothered me this week while parsing the news. I must preface I believe in fighting terrorism but not by loosing my liberties in the process.
1: Warnings of delayed elections from terrorism, the US has NEVER delayed an election. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/talking_point/3887049.stm
2: In Florida cable guys, exterminators and apartment managers will now spy on us to "fight terrorism"http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,125598,00.html
3: The continuing talk of military drafts and tech draft, the US signed an agreement with Canada to repatriate draft dodgers.
http://www.snopes.com/politics/military/draft.asp
Number 3 looks to be a partial hoax but definitely something to think about.
I must say I am not in principle against the military or the draft. I am more fearful of what action soldiers are being drafted for. Iraq was an evil nation and had to be stopped, OTOH the actions of the US toward Israel put some fear into me. When we are forced to take unilateral action and surrender pieces of our land to further US interests. I feel that a US force in Israel may be in our future, removing Israel's right to defend itself and rather relying on the whims of the US peacekeepers.
In trying to figure out ext2 mounting my SD card on the zaurus looks like I have a solution, I will test it tomorrow.
http://openembedded.org/oe_wiki/index.php/SDCardAndWireless
If the link ever dies I will archive his fix for mounting the card.
OpenZaurus doesn't come with fdisk, and YOU DO NOT NEED IT. I blew away two Lexar SD cards and spent an extra $20 to upgrade to a PNY in the end. I left the VFAT filesystem in tact, but instead created a large file, formatted the file ext2 and mounted it as a loopback! THIS is the correct solution for stability. Assuming a new SD card or one with a good VFAT filesystem on it, the following should work and should also leave your card's blocks alone:
(This trick, now obvious to me, was donated by zaurus@undertow.2y.org)
(a) Eject the SD card with the Eject feature, or umount /dev/mmcda1. Remove
the SD card.
(b) Modify the /etc/sdcontrol file and change the mount point to /mnt/sd (c) Mkdir /mnt/sd (d) Update your /etc/fstab to reflect the change (e) Insert the SD card. It should automatically mount on /mnt/sd. Alternatively,
you can use mount /mnt/mmcda1 /mnt/sd.
(f) Create a big file which will become your ext2 filesystem
dd if=/dev/zero of=/mnt/sd/120MBfile bs=1M count=120
(wait a little while until the prompt comes back. Mine took several minutes)
(g) Make a filesystem. mkfs -text2 /mnt/sd/120MBfile
("This is not a block device, proceed anyway? y")
(h) Mount your new filesystem on /mnt/card: mount -o loop /mnt/sd/120MBfile /mnt/card
cd /mnt/card df . Filesystem 1k-blocks Used Available Use% Mounted on /dev/loop0 118997 2586 110267 2% /mnt/card
You will have to modify your startup scripts to automatically mount this. I haven't done this yet myself.
Note that ejecting the card will be a little more difficult, as you can't umount a busy filesystem. If you are running anything that uses /mnt/card, /mnt/sd will inherantly be busy. This shouldn't ever be a problem anyway.
The nice thing about this method is that you can make multiple filesystems by adjusting the size of the file you create. You can then, for example, create a seperate partition to be mounted on /home or /var/data as you wish.
This is going to be a more philosophical post.
Question: Why is the traditional musical instrument of the ashkenazic Jew the fiddle, not the piano?
Answer: The fiddle is portable and we have never lived in a place for more than 3 generations without being driven out or slaughtered.
I write this as I read an article about the arson in the Aish shule in the UK an allegedly safe place for Jews.
Every time you pack for a trip think about what you are packing and why. Consider what you would pack for a 6 month trip, this is what you would likely need if you were never coming back. It is always a good idea to have important pictures copied and documents handy (ketuba, letters from rabbi proving Jewish, birth certificate, stock and bank account info). Try to keep important things packed in a lightweight waterproof container, place this in a fire safe. When you are outside the USA on vacation open a foreign bank account (beware fees and interest rates, do research before trip)
The United States is the only nation in 3000 years with a sizeable Jewish population not to drive us out, this is not necessarily a permanent condition. Always be watching the signs don't become too attached to your things and properties.
I must close with a story from the time of the shoah (holocaust)
In the 1930's the father of a family in Germany was aware of the danger approaching from the Nazis (may their names be erased). He obtained a forged exit visa for emigration to what was then known as British Mandate Palestine (Israel) and safety. He told his wife that it was time to leave. Tragically she was so attached to her piano which could not be transported that she insisted on to staying until they were able to get the funds to ship her piano. The story ends unhappily, our family never was able to ship the piano. The window of exit closed and they were trapped inside Germany. The "New Jerusalem" of Berlin became the headquarters of the killing machine and the family was martyred like 6 million others..... because of the fear of loss of a piano.
This blog is getting to look like a gear review site.
I swapped a used couch for a used Sharp Zaurus 5500 good deal eh'?
Being a linux geek I love this Zaurus handheld computer. I reflashed the stock os with openzaurus, now I have full linux consoke and package options. I purchased a 256MB SD card and a new battery to supliment the CF Symbol low power wifi card I received in the swap.
The zaurus at the same size has a shorter battery life than my handsprings 2 AA's (recently brought back from the dead) and uses a lithium battery of unknown life as the current battery is quite worn (rated at 10 hours no backlight).
I may end up keeping the zaurus in my pack and my visor on my belt and using it when I need a keyboard and better linux support and memory.
