disjoint thoughts

I bought this strap to use with my 40D. I was shooting a lot of bouldering competitions and was playing with holding a remote flash in one hand and the camera with the other. I got some great shots, but the trouble was, I couldn’t really operate the camera with one hand. For example, after shooting a couple of frames, I would want to switch to playback mode and review the images. I found I couldn’t press the “play” button with the hand holding the camera. So I was left juggling the camera and the flash.

I thought that with this strap, I would be able to completely hold and operate the camera with one hand. Unfortunately when you have your hand in the strap and the camera is completely hanging off one hand, you CANNOT reach any of the buttons. You can BARELY reach the shutter release button. The problem is the camera hangs down, leaving your thumb way above any of the buttons. If you want to press any of the buttons on the camera, you need to hold it with your other hand.

As you can see, none of my fingers are anywhere close to the buttons they need to reach! The only way to use the camera, is the same way you would with any other strap: hold the grip, and use both hands.

Once I came to the realization that this strap was nothing special, I immediately removed it and went back to using the stock strap that came with the camera

Here’s some more pictures for anyone who’s interested:

A month or so ago I was at PRG and came across a flier asking for people to participate in a survey of nutrition for climbers. It sounded interesting and I’m always up for helping fellow climbers in endeavors like this.

When I went to the url on the flier I found not only the survey, but a whole blog dedicated to “Sport nutrition for rock climbing”! Sweet sauce! This is the first online resource that I’ve found for climbing nutrition outside of various informal forum posts. There aren’t may blog posts yet, but what’s there is gold. I’ve learned about oxidative stress, good practices for hydration, and recipes for great climbing meals.

The blog’s author, Krystal Merrells, does a great job at explaining everything. Often times I find that when experts in the nutrition field start seriously talking about nutritional concepts, everything quickly goes over my head. This is not the case here. While Krystal does have a recently publish research paper titled “Following 2 diet-restricted male outdoor rock climbers: impact on oxidative stress and improvements in markers of cardiovascular risk” that goes into these crazy details of nutrition and climbing, her blog makes everything understandable to even noobs like me.

Check out her blog, and if you find the information useful at least take her survey. Keep up the good work Krystal!

Last Sunday Erin, Jason, Sav and I took a trip out to Queen Creek. It was cold as shit and with a 40% chance of rain; we just prayed we wouldn’t end up heading home wet and cold without getting any climbing in.

We decided to try a new place in Upper Devil’s Canyon called The Beach. Marty’s little guide to Upper Devil’s did a good job of leading us there without too much trouble. The Beach itself is a relatively small area with climbs ranging from 5.9 to 5.13. The crag is approached from the top, so it makes it easy to setup top ropes on some of these stiff routes.

We ended up climbing a couple of 10s, a couple of 11s (one which was uber classic dihedral/face/arete that I want to go back and send), and a 12 (overhanging arete with a crap start but decent climbing the rest of the way).

Despite being super cold and actually getting snowed on a little, it was a good time. The Beach has a couple of good climbs, and is great if you just want to top rope climbs in the 10+ to 12 range.

Check out the rest of the pics from the trip here. Pictures taken by Erin and Sav… yeh, I lugged my big camera all the way down there and didn’t take any pictures myself!

After getting rained out at Red Rocks, Erin and I decided to get at least one day of climbing in. We picked a Superstition multipitch route that neither of us had done: Rink-Kudo.

So for people who don’t like to read, here’s how this blog post ends: don’t do this route.

The approach isn’t too bad, it’s pretty hard to get lost and the hike isn’t too hard.

Pitch 1 is decent. The crux is down low where you need to traverse between two cracks. I’m not very flexible and found myself crying out in pain as I tried to do a stem move. Other than that it was a good pitch. Not much lose rock. Good pro. Fun movements.

Pitch 2 is adventurous, at least if you climb it the way I did. I started up a crack that had at least 2 big bushes growing out of it. I guess I should have scoped out the pitch a little better before heading up. The rock was good, climbing was ok, pro was good. There’s a little tunnel at the end of the pitch that’s really kind of a disappointment. It’s more of a hole you step through.

Pitch 3 is where the shit starts to hit the fan. You start off by traversing left to reach the base of a chimney. You can place the shitty pro at the bottom of the chimney in mud cracks and lose flakes, but why bother. Once you’re tired of fiddling with pro, you fire up into the unknown of the chimney above. That unknown chimney is crappy. This chimney makes Ancient Art seem like granite. Lose, SHARP, rock is everywhere. Luckily your belayer is mostly out of harms way since the start of the pitch is a traverse, otherwise I’d rate this pitch an X for your second. The pro is ok, you just have to find it.

Pitch 4 is only for suckers who didn’t have enough of this route on pitch 3. If there were fixed anchors at the top of pitch 3, I would have considered bailing. This pitch is pretty much face climbing. It would be great if the rock wasn’t deceivingly crappy and the pro almost non-existent and equally crappy. In the 180 feet of climbing on this pitch, there were maybe two pieces of pro that I thought would would have held a fall. I had several hold break off on me, making the climbing extremely insecure. I was unable to trust my pro, and unable to trust the holds that I was climbing on. This was the worst pitch of climbing I’ve done. To add insult to injury, the summit has only one spinning bolt. You can back it up for your second with a suspect #3 tricam placement and a #1 bd nut.

The decent isn’t bad, but bring some extra webbing as you’ll probably need to replace some old shit… I don’t think this route sees many ascents.

I can’t recommend this climb to anyone. If you do it, just be careful and be ready for some insecure climbing. As for me, I’ve had my share of Superstition choss for awhile.

I attended a showing of the Reel Rock Film Tour this weekend at Climbmax Gym. They showcased clips from various climbing movies as well as some amateur shorts, but the star of the show was a full length showing of Sender Films’ new climbing dvd: The Sharp End.

The film follows various climbers around the world who are, in their opinion, pushing the limits of climbing. Climbing is a very demanding sport, and requires the climber to excel in three areas in order to succeed: technical, physical, and mental. The Sharp End focuses on climbers who are pushing their mental limits. How do you make climbing harder, mentally? By making it more dangerous!

Dangerous, scary and committed climbing is the name of the game here. The film showcases climbers doing dangerous R/X routes, free soloing thousands of feet off the deck, sending insane high-ball boulder problems, taking nasty whippers into the wall, ripping through piece after piece of gear, and free soloing with a base rig (AND falling). This is the kind of shit that makes my palms sweaty just watching.

The Sharp End is a well filmed movie, as we’ve come to expect from Sender Films. The commentary is great, and ties into the visuals perfectly. The overall quality is amazing, making you feel like you’re there.

The thing I really hate about this movie, and ultimately the reason why I will pass on buying this dvd, is the fact that they make it feel like the way to push climbing as a sport is to do things that are more dangerous. There was no real focus on doing things that are pushing the number grade limits of climbing. Making climbing harder, mentally, is one way of pushing the sport but not the only.

This film is probably the biggest climbing film of the year, and I hate the fact that new climbers will watch it and love it. I dread the thought of some climber getting hurt because she tries to be cool like Lisa Rands and send some super high-ball problem. The climbers in this film are going to be role models for future climbers. Why focus on making dangerous climbing seem cool and so badass when the sport is progressing in so many other ways and can be awesome without being dangerous?

Don’t get me wrong, I LOVE scary climbing that pushes you mentally, but I’m not a fan of dangerous climbing. All of this is of course just my opinion. Climbing Narc did a review of the movie as well, definitely check it out as well for a different perspective.

Want a CHEAP ipod touch case? Too lazy to order a real case online? Are you just plain crazy? Well follow these easy steps to create a great ghetto ipod touch case…

1. Buy a pack of Dentyne ice gum.
2. Chew the gum, all of it.

3. Remove plastic.
4. Slide ipod into your brand new Dentyne ice iPod Touch case.

5. (OPTIONAL) Cut hole into case so you can control music without removing touch from its case.

6. …
7. Profit?

Pretty sweet case, huh? Huh? I rate it a solid 2 out of 10.

The iPod Touch is a sexy piece of technology. Hell, it better be sexy after I sold my left nut to buy one. By far the best aspect of this iPod is the fact that it has an amazing screen.

From the moment I got my iTouch, I worried about scratching up that pretty little screen. I even rearranged the contents of my pockets so I wouldn’t have to worry about keys putting nasty little marks into the glass. The next logical step was getting some sort of case or screen protector. I choose to go with just the simple screen protector over the case. Full cases are too bulky for my taste, and take away from the form factor that the iPod offers.

After a little googling around, I picked up the “Apple Ipod Touch Premium Ultra- Clear Reusable LCD Screen & Body Protector with Lint Cleaning Cloth” off Amazon for a grand total of $8.97. The shipping was actually more than the protector itself, so I wasn’t expecting anything of great quality.

When I receiving the product, I wasn’t surprised or impressed. “100% Japan MATERIAL” was plastered across the front of the packaging. That’s… great… I’m sure this Japanese plastic is much better than regular plastic. Maybe I should make a shirt for myself that says “50% Japan MATERIAL”. Yeh… that’ll get me chicks like crazy.

Despite the funky packaging. I went ahead and applied the screen protector on my Touch. The installation was pretty much cake. Remove the plastic backing (like you would from a sticker) and plop the thing onto the screen. The fit was almost perfect. So perfect in fact that it was a little difficult to get it to sit directly on the screen without pushing up against the black molding. I ended up not being able to get the protector to sit completely flat at the bottom of the screen, which resulted in a little air bubble which wouldn’t go away.

So how well does it work? Surprisingly well. The protector itself is super thin, clear, hard plastic. It is actually hard to tell that it’s there. The screen looked no different before/after, no lost in color or brightness. The touch sensitivity didn’t even seem to degrade at all. The feel of the screen wasn’t quite as smooth. This is only really noticed while dragging your finger across the screen (such as unlocking).

This thin plastic shield does its advertised job. It does keep the Touch’s screen from being scratch directly. However, after six weeks of use the plastic itself has become way more scratched than the unprotected screen would have. This makes me question the purpose of such a product. If the result is I’m still starring at a screen that’s scratched, then is it really worth the trouble?

The only other issue I had, is the plastic seemed to slowly slide toward the bottom of the ipod. After a month, it had migrated maybe a millimeter. It might have something to do with the way I use the Touch or maybe the way I put it into my pocket head first, I’m not sure. But the result of this one millimeter of travel was the small bubble on the bottom edge of the screen growing much larger to the point where I decided to try to remove the plastic and reapply it. Not a good idea. The adhesive works so well that I had difficulties removing the protector. Once I did get it off and repositioned, it didn’t really sit right in a few places. I think I might have bent/creased the plastic on removal.

Overall I’m satisfied with what I got. For the cost, I was expecting much less. I would give this particular iPod Touch screen protector a 7 out of 10. The only places it loses points is in the ease of scratching the plastic, and the fact that the protector slowly moved off center over time.

I picked up a Wii yesterday and got in a few good hours of playing Wii Sports and Zelda. I have to say that I am very impressed. The controller works very well, although takes some getting used to. The graphics might not feel “next-gen”, but they get the job done.

Wii Sports is a great showcase of the controller’s abilities. As a single player game I think it’s a tad shallow and would get boring quickly. As a multiplayer game I think it would be worth hours and hours of fun. I was able to pick up a couple of extra controllers this morning, so I’ll be able to try some multi this evening.

My roommate who is neither a gamer nor a geek was able to pick up and play Wii Sports in moments. All the controls were so intuitive that the learning curve was practically non-existant. There is no explaining “hold the x button to increase the power and release it when you want to swing the bat”, it’s just “swing the controller like it’s a bat”. Everyone knows how to do that.

Prior to the Wii, game controls were the major limiting factor when trying to get the general public into games. Everyone can watch someone ELSE play a game and understand what going on, but when you place the controller in the hands of the non-gamer they have a hard time interacting with the game. The Wii solves half the problem by providing the controller that can be used in an “ohh, that makes sense” manner. The other half of the problem is left up to the game developers who need to program the games take full advantage of the controller. Wii Sports does this almost perfectly.

I haven’t played enough Zelda yet to form a solid opinion of the game.

So far, I give the Wii and 8.5/10.

A few weeks ago my trusty Nokia 6235i started acting up. The headphone and mic started being flakey forcing me to use the speaker-phone all the time. After a week of this, I got completely fed up and went to find a new phone.

Unfortunately Verizon has a completely crap lineup of phones in my opinion. They do have some decent phones, but nothing really sparks my interest or catches my eye. I don’t get excited about all the cool features that everyone is trying to cram into new phones these days. MP3 players, 3MP cameras, Internet access… none of it makes me want a phone. I feel that all these features are currently better left to their Ipod, Cannon, or laptop rivals.

So since all the new features don’t give me boners, I’m left looking for a phone that is just a phone. I just want a phone that works and looks good. So I ended up with the LG Chocolate. It’s a nice simple yet cool looking slider phone. While closed the face is almost completely black and smooth. Once it slides open (which it does in a very nice fashion) the face lights up with a nice large screen and touch sensitive buttons. It is a VERY nice looking and feeling phone.

Not only does it look nice, but it also functions well as a phone. Good reception, decent battery life, and comfortable to use.

It’s not all good though, there are several areas that make this phone far from perfect. The first problem lies in the touch sensitive buttons on the face of the phone. The fact that they are touch sensitive means there is no mechanical feedback while using them. There’s no *click* noise that you usually get from normal buttons. This doesn’t immediately present a problem, but when you combine it with a sometimes slow interface you end up wondering if you really hit a button or if the interface is just lagging.

The dark clean face of the phone looks great, and allows the screen and face buttons to disappear when you close the slider. But when you’re trying to use the phone in the direct sunlight, the dark tinted face makes the screen almost impossible to read.

The phone also lacks a speaker phone… WTF were they thinking?

The slow interface and lack of feedback on the touch button is what bothers me the most. I would completely love this phone if they had done something as simple as changing the color of the buttons as they are touched. For a Verizon phone, I’m happy with the Chocolate for now. Hopefully this is a sign that Verizon will start releasing more cool looking phones in the future.