Demon's Souls, by From Software, rings so many good references from my gaming experience that I have no choice but to love this game. It is a punishing game, in an "old school" way --- it will force you to redo good bits of a level when you die; there are no hand-rails or barriers in high-hanging places, allowing you to fall (or be thrown) off cliffs or stairwells if you're not paying attention; you restart a level, all enemies are back there where you found them the first time; and when you die, you leave all your game currency ("Souls") right there at the spot where it happened --- i.e., right where you'll find the baddie that killed you when you come back for it, and marked by a pool of your own blood. Any one "level" of the game has areas, easily accessible from the start, where wading into as a beginner will expose your character to high-level enemies who will kill you within seconds of contact. Careful exploration is key.
Anyone can make a difficult game, but this isn't the only quality of Demon's Souls. The maps I have explored are interesting and sections integrate together very well. The first world you have access to, a large, battle scarred keep, constantly impressed by the spacial integration of the many areas; looking through a window and seeing a walled pathway in the distance probably means you can get there. Details like these are great contributors to the feeling of immersion I get out of this game. Ghosts of other players walking around also add to the immersion.
Yes, there are ghosts. In fact, you'll start the game proper as a ghost. The game kills you early on (really minor spoiler), so you'll walk the early levels as a phantom. When you die, you get transported to a place called the Nexus. Frankly, the story doesn't really make that much sense to me. As a ghost you can still be killed by the foes you encounter through the level, and leave a blood stain when you die. And you're able to physically interact with the world around you. Really the only side effect that I can see is that in ghost form your hit points are halved. Its logic aside, this ghost premise allows for some very interesting game mechanics.
As you walk around you will frequently notice white specters, which are other players moving through the same area in their own ghost forms --- you can't interact with those forms. You'll also see other player's blood stains, where they have been slain. You can activate those stains, and observe a reenactment of the last seconds of that player's life, allowing you perhaps to prepare for what's ahead. Another interesting aspect of the game is the ability for players to scribe messages on the floor (that appear as ghostly looking characters to you as you walk by). Those messages may warn you about what's ahead, give hints, or just be idle chatter. They may also be downright misleading. Messages are left by selecting phrases or combinations of phrases from a menu, so you won't be encountering immersion breaking graffiti (neither high-quality in-character chatter).
The mechanism to reacquire one's physical form is to perform an heroic deed, like helping a hero to slay a monster. If you die while fighting a monster, you'll be able to leave a message to other players indicating that you're "haunting" that place, waiting for another chance at the foe. Another player in possession of their own physical body is then able to summon you to help them in their own fight. Up to three players are able to cooperate in this manner. Success makes the specters corporeal again, and sends them back to their own worlds.
Alternatively, instead of offering to help other living players, you may choose to follow a darker path, and infiltrate a living player's world to hunt them down and cause their demise, which also returns you to life. This can be initiated by a ghost player and it is completely outside your control as long as you choose to enable on-line interactions. While it may be easier to kill another player this way than to fight against a demon (especially because it gives you the element of surprise against the other player), for the spirits that follow this path there is an inconvenient side-effect: they become more vulnerable to other dark foes, including demons, that they will need to fight in their progress through the game.
Demon's Souls is an original, beautiful game, with a sense of immersion that is difficult to match by other RPGs. Its form of uncommitted on-line mechanics takes what's essentially a single-player game and adds to it a richness of interaction that only on-line games can provide. The result is one of the most unique games I've played in years.
Sunday, October 18, 2009
Sunday, October 11, 2009
Random "new phone" notes
This morning I was greeted with a software update dialog when I turned on my new G1.
- The update completed in just shy of five minutes.
- Firmware version 1.1 to 1.6.
- Kernel version: from 2.6.25-* to 2.6.29-*.
- Build number: from "kila-user 1.1 PLAT-RC33 126986 ota-rel-keys,release-keys" to "DRC33".
- Noticed a few new entries to the settings menus: System tutorial (which covers how to use the newly added soft keyboard), Speech synthesis (which requires the installation of voice data before becoming fully functional), Search, Accessibility.
- Refinements to market interface.
- Some improvements to the Contacts and Calendar apps.
Got an Android phone today
Today Ellen and I went to the T-Mobile store nearby and got out of there with a T-Mobile service contract and two HTC G1 Android phones. These are a few disorganized notes as I explore the device. My previous phone has been a first gen 8GB iPhone.
Why the G1?
The contenders were the HTC G1 and the T-Mobile MyTouch (HTC Magic). Besides the physical keyboard, the hardware on the G1 and on the newer MyTouch are very close to identical. I was set on getting the MyTouch due to the fact that it comes with a larger Micro SD memory card (4GB vs. 1GB in the G1), it can record videos, and the G1 would never show a software keyboard -- the physical keyboard is nice, but it would have been better to be able to use an on-screen keyboard for short text input without having to slide the thing open.
Well, all of the above disadvantages disappear when the G1 receives the latest Android OS version (1.6, "Donut"). The device becomes video recording capable and gets a soft keyboard, which appears when the screen has not been slid open to review the physical one. The memory card on the G1 still only holds 1GB, compared to the 4GB one that comes with the MyTouch, but since I would have updated that to 16GB anyway, it's not much of an advantage (in any case, the G1 is $30 [make that $20] cheaper than the MyTouch, which is more than enough to buy an 8GB memory card).
Odds and ends
Why the G1?
The contenders were the HTC G1 and the T-Mobile MyTouch (HTC Magic). Besides the physical keyboard, the hardware on the G1 and on the newer MyTouch are very close to identical. I was set on getting the MyTouch due to the fact that it comes with a larger Micro SD memory card (4GB vs. 1GB in the G1), it can record videos, and the G1 would never show a software keyboard -- the physical keyboard is nice, but it would have been better to be able to use an on-screen keyboard for short text input without having to slide the thing open.
Well, all of the above disadvantages disappear when the G1 receives the latest Android OS version (1.6, "Donut"). The device becomes video recording capable and gets a soft keyboard, which appears when the screen has not been slid open to review the physical one. The memory card on the G1 still only holds 1GB, compared to the 4GB one that comes with the MyTouch, but since I would have updated that to 16GB anyway, it's not much of an advantage (in any case, the G1 is $30 [make that $20] cheaper than the MyTouch, which is more than enough to buy an 8GB memory card).
Odds and ends
- Even though the store display unit had Android 1.6, our purchased units are still on 1.5 [correction: they were still 1.1 units]; we should be receiving the 1.6 update push soon (otherwise T-Mobile support will be receiving a phone call tomorrow). Manual update of the OS is also possible of course (one of the key features of this platform is unrestricted OS modification/upgrade).
- Google Voice integration: I can set up the phone to use my GV number automatically for outgoing calls, transparently, after downloading the GV app.
- It has three types of call forwarding modes supported by T-Mobile: Always forward, forward when busy, when unanswered, and when unreachable. I actually use forwarding on a day-to-day basis, as I receive no cell signal in my (soon to be old) office. The only forwarding option on my iPhone was the always forward. Now I can simply set the "when unreachable" forwarding to my Google Voice number (which will ring my office phone) and don't have to worry about setting call forwarding as I arrive at work. Of course, my new job's location will have good cell reception, making this point moot...
- It has out-of-the-box integration with my GMail account (contacts, calendar, email). It does not come with any sort of desktop sync software, or any desktop software at all. And it doesn't require it, provided you don't mind using the Google software stack (which I obviously don't).
- There is an entry in the phone settings menu for application development (which I thought was pretty cool), and it contains two options: USB debugging ("Debug mode when USB is connected") and Stay awake ("Screen will never sleep while charging").
- When connected to a computer it will simply show as external storage, allowing me to copy files to and from it without any sort of gate keeper software. I find this extremely positive.
Sunday, July 12, 2009
OS experimentation on the mini 10
Since Dell is sending me a new mini 10 sometime next week, I decided to get a bit adventurous with this one. I'm currently reinstalling the OS, using the newest Ubuntu install of its UNR (Ubuntu Netbook Remix) distro variation. I can't quite figure out every way in which this differs from the regular desktop version of Ubuntu 9.04 ("Jaunty Jackalope" [props to the little monkeys in the Ubuntu naming dept.]); it is supposed to be optimized for netbooks, including a "smart phone style" desktop manager, but apart of the USB stick based install it seems to be a standard x386 based distro.
The installation image is a little less than 1GB in size, and it can be placed in a thumb drive and made bootable. It allows you to first try out the new install, without actually making any changes to the installed OS, which I did. The results were net positive but with a few issues, wich I put down to the fact that I was running from a generic trial mode:
The installed UNR 9.04
A few problems off the starting line:
Troubleshooting
Soon after rebooting into the newly installed system, I received an update warning indicating there were software updates to download. I decided to this first, in the off-chance that the update would correct some of the issues. This step took about 10-15 minutes, and required a reboot. And it didn't resolve anything (I didn't really expect it to).
Time to start searching. It seems that Ubuntu has issues with the chipset used by the mini 10 (Intel Poulsbo [clearly Intel must have outsourced their product naming duties to Canonical]). Without the correct drivers for this chipset, the system uses the generic VESA drivers, which use the 800x576 resolution, which is basically the 4:3 aspect ratio version of the display's native widescreen of 1024x576. So the trick is to add the new drivers to the system by adding the Ubuntu Mobile Team's development repository (here) to the software sources list of the apt-get system, as such:
At this point I should probably state that I got tired of the little screen (made even worse because of the incorrect resolution) and decided to go back to my desktop, and ssh into the mini. As a side-note, Ubuntu is the first distro I've every put my hands on that didn't think of installing the ssh daemon in by default! I actually had to run 'apt-get install openssh-server' to get it; I cannot even begin to imagine the thought process by which someone (presumably the same group of individuals that comes up with the Ubuntu release names) decides sshd is not that important, and let's leave it out of the default install. WTF?
Anyway, reboot and, voila, the mini 10 in all its native resolution glory! The default UNR desktop interface is still sluggish as ever, a well known defect it seems, so I switched back to the classic Gnome desktop. That, fortunately, works fine.
The mic still isn't working. More searching reveals that this might be a regression on the ALSA drivers since Ubuntu 8.04. I guess it's a matter of waiting until that gets solved on the Ubuntu repositories, as my attempts at resolving the issue via settings all failed.
Conclusions
At first glance Ubuntu UNR 9.04 seems to work fine, but it might not offer any advantages for the usage I have in mind. The mic issue should not interfere with line-in recording, which is all I need for my ham digital mode transmission project. But this kind of minor defect (together with the fact that the default UNR 9.04 packages may not have been compiled specifically to take advantage of the Atom's architecture, according to this post on the Ubuntu forums) suggests that this version of UNR may not be mature enough. I'll choose to wait and see if further developments make it more mini 10 friendly in the future, and will stick to the Dell installed 8.04 LTS instead. For the record, this install exercise, together with the troubleshooting, took roughly 3 to 3.5 hours.
The installation image is a little less than 1GB in size, and it can be placed in a thumb drive and made bootable. It allows you to first try out the new install, without actually making any changes to the installed OS, which I did. The results were net positive but with a few issues, wich I put down to the fact that I was running from a generic trial mode:
- All hardware seemed to work fine (bluetooth, wifi, webcam, sound), except
- voice capture (the mic) didn't work (trial mode or settings?);
- the resolution was incorrect (another artifact of the trial mode?);
- screen drawing and refresh was very sluggish, with screen buffers doubling on each other (again, hopefully an artifact of the trail mode);
The installed UNR 9.04
A few problems off the starting line:
- Wrong resolution (turns out my hypothesis regarding trial mode artifacts was incorrect);
- the screen draw/refresh is very sluggish (idem);
- the mic doesn't work (idem).
Troubleshooting
Soon after rebooting into the newly installed system, I received an update warning indicating there were software updates to download. I decided to this first, in the off-chance that the update would correct some of the issues. This step took about 10-15 minutes, and required a reboot. And it didn't resolve anything (I didn't really expect it to).
Time to start searching. It seems that Ubuntu has issues with the chipset used by the mini 10 (Intel Poulsbo [clearly Intel must have outsourced their product naming duties to Canonical]). Without the correct drivers for this chipset, the system uses the generic VESA drivers, which use the 800x576 resolution, which is basically the 4:3 aspect ratio version of the display's native widescreen of 1024x576. So the trick is to add the new drivers to the system by adding the Ubuntu Mobile Team's development repository (here) to the software sources list of the apt-get system, as such:
# first add the new source keys, so apt can verify repos authenticity:The steps above came mostly from here.
% sudo apt-key adv --keyserver keyserver.ubuntu.com --recv-keys C6598A30
# then create a new sources list file in /etc/apt/sources.list.d with the contents:
% cat /etc/apt/sources.list.d/ubuntu-mobile.list
deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/ubuntu-mobile/ppa/ubuntu jaunty main
deb-src http://ppa.launchpad.net/ubuntu-mobile/ppa/ubuntu jaunty main
# finally, update the system and install the new drivers:
% sudo apt-get update
% sudo apt-get install xserver-xorg-video-ps
At this point I should probably state that I got tired of the little screen (made even worse because of the incorrect resolution) and decided to go back to my desktop, and ssh into the mini. As a side-note, Ubuntu is the first distro I've every put my hands on that didn't think of installing the ssh daemon in by default! I actually had to run 'apt-get install openssh-server' to get it; I cannot even begin to imagine the thought process by which someone (presumably the same group of individuals that comes up with the Ubuntu release names) decides sshd is not that important, and let's leave it out of the default install. WTF?
Anyway, reboot and, voila, the mini 10 in all its native resolution glory! The default UNR desktop interface is still sluggish as ever, a well known defect it seems, so I switched back to the classic Gnome desktop. That, fortunately, works fine.
The mic still isn't working. More searching reveals that this might be a regression on the ALSA drivers since Ubuntu 8.04. I guess it's a matter of waiting until that gets solved on the Ubuntu repositories, as my attempts at resolving the issue via settings all failed.
Conclusions
At first glance Ubuntu UNR 9.04 seems to work fine, but it might not offer any advantages for the usage I have in mind. The mic issue should not interfere with line-in recording, which is all I need for my ham digital mode transmission project. But this kind of minor defect (together with the fact that the default UNR 9.04 packages may not have been compiled specifically to take advantage of the Atom's architecture, according to this post on the Ubuntu forums) suggests that this version of UNR may not be mature enough. I'll choose to wait and see if further developments make it more mini 10 friendly in the future, and will stick to the Dell installed 8.04 LTS instead. For the record, this install exercise, together with the troubleshooting, took roughly 3 to 3.5 hours.
Saturday, July 11, 2009
Dell Mini 10 Review
I have recently acquired a Dell Inspiron Mini 10, a small, stripped-down laptop (a.k.a. netbook, sub-notebook) with limited performance -- at least when compared to modern full-sized laptops or desktops -- but excellent mobility characteristics. What follows is a review.Firstly, some details on what I actually got:
- Inspiron 1010, Intel Atom Processor Z530, 1.6GHz, 533MHzFSB, 512K L2 Cache, Intel Graphics Media Accelerator 500, 1GB RAM.
- 10.1 Inch High Definition Widescreen Display (1366x768)*
- Connectivity: ethernet, 802.11 g/n, Bluetooth.
- 160GB, 2.5inch, 5400RPM SATA Hard Drive.
- 56WHr Lithium-Ion Battery (6-cell).
- OS: Linux Ubuntu 8.04
- Price tag (including shipping and after a 10% discount coupon): $420.26
The processor
I stopped following processor technology roughly around 2002, a little after I left academia for a software development job. I still find the technology interesting, and am amused by how processor clock speeds have basically stagnated since then, and SMP became the rule, kinda (under the guise of multicore chips). I can't help but think this a cheat to keep up with Moore's law: each single processor or core hasn't really doubled in speed in the last every few 18-month cycles, but we throw more of them in a die so the number of cycles available should make up for it, right? I don't know. It used to be friggin' hard to get any piece of multi-threaded code doing anything remotely useful to scale linearly back in 2001, and I suspect it can't have gotten that much easier today. A quick search on Atom reveals that this is a 64bit x86 with power efficiency front and center. So my 1.6 GHz x86 64bit portable should be roughly equivalent in performance to whatever I was running sometime in 2001-2, except I'll be using less than 200 A of current and won't need a giant fan blasting noisily on top of an equally large heat sink, and the rig shouldn't heat up a small room.
[Edit: Actually, the Atom Z530 (Silverthorne) in this mini is a 32bit architecture. Atom's next iteration (Diamondville) will reportedly be a 64bit instruction set.]
The OS
The mini 10 can be acquired with a Dell-installed Linux, which saves you $50 on the MS Windows XP version. Given the likely usage pattern on a device such as this (internet browsing, email reading, maybe some multimedia handling), going the Linux route is a no-brainer, and it's what I chose.
As its Linux distribution, Dell opted to use Canonical's Ubuntu "Hardy Heron" (following that company's tradition of having their releases christened by bubbly "artistic-creative" wii-playing twentysomethings that probably think they're hard-core hackers because they can run apt-get on the command line and can use vi without crying too much (but they call it vim)). Published in April 2008 it isn't the latest Ubuntu, but it is their current LTS (Long Term Support) release, and it's guaranteed to be maintained and updated through 2011. Their release-naming department not-withstanding, this seems to be a rock-solid OS platform (Ubuntu is a Debian Linux derivative, so this isn't a surprise), and Dell did a very good job adapting Ubuntu to its product: Everything works as it would on Win XP, including the keyboard special keys, the screen-embedded webcam, proprietary sound/video codecs, etc.
On the usability front, Dell chose to ship a custom desktop interface that's actually not bad, and hides the Gnome desktop that long-time Linux users will be familiar with and is standard with Ubuntu. If you don't like the "smart phone style" interface, you can easily revert back to the standard Gnome desktop from one of the main menus.
Battery life, ergonomics
I ordered the largest battery offered by Dell for this model, and which is claimed to last for as long as 8 hours. I've had it on and off throughout the day today, disconnected from its power supply, and my battery indicator still seems to think I have about 30 minutes of power left. This kind of performance is entirely satisfactory to me, so I'll leave it at that.
Ergonomics on the mini 10 sucks, no other way to put it. The finger pad is at the very edge of the keyboard area, so my hand hangs at a higher angle than is really comfortable. The battery shape, jutting out on the bottom, turns it into a rear stand (as part of the design), giving the keyboard a forward slant that I personally dislike (I'd prefer a flat-laying keyboard). The keyboard feel, on the other hand, is great, and it makes it quite pleasurable to type on. For a machine this size, the keys are actually quite large, and no smaller than on my other two keyboards within line-of-sight as I type this.
So, does it cut it?
In short, yes, it does. It plays streaming media (although online videos skip frames like crazy). It can run firefox with a dozen tabs open (which is more than you'll probably run on a screen this size). Google Earth 5 ran competently (it was choppy when the maps move, but otherwise very usable). I don't expect it will play any half-modern games (I didn't even try), but other than that, everything else just runs. OpenOffice starts up reasonably fast (I don't perceive it to be any slower than on my desktop). All of the system utilities (kismet, wireshark, gpg, the Ubuntu package manager software) I experimented with are handled as well as they would anywhere else.
The use I have in mind for this system is as part of a mobile amateur radio digital transmission platform, and I doubt any of the software I'll use would pose a computational challenge to any processors released after 1998 -- though I have yet to try running the software modem layer I'll need, and am not quite sure as to what to expect there; given that software modem drivers have been around for more than a decade, I have reason to believe the mini 10 will handle them fine. So the final verdict is that, yes, it should cut it for what I intend to use it, and I'm very happy with what I've seen of the mini 10 so far.
Thursday, June 25, 2009
Death, Michael Jackson, and search engines
Having just found out that Michael Jackson had died (as well as Farrah Fawcett) from such sources as Facebook posts and The Onion, I decided to gather a bit more information on-line. I've also been curious about the Microsoft search engine for a while (disclaimer, I'm a rabid MS hater when it comes to Operating Systems, but not as much with other technologies), so I figured I would take this chance to run a little comparison. At this point, I still had no idea what had happened to Mr. Jackson.
A little earlier before I write this (at around 1930 hrs EST), typing the first letters of Michael Jackson's name (mich) in the search field in Google, it auto-completes it to "michael jackson died today" as the second option given. On Bing I get "Michael Jackson" in fifth spot. OK. So thanks to Google I'm starting to believe that the man had really died (or maybe that just a frigging lot of people were searching those words for no good reason).
The results page in Google starts with a "Related Searches" list, containing "michael jackson cardiac arrest", followed by "michael jackson heart attack." The first actual result is "News results for Michael Jackson", with a link to a Canadian story on his death ("Pop icon dies at 50"), including a bit of text explaining the how and the where ("cardiac arrest, in his Los Angeles home." OK, I can stop now, it seems I got everything I needed to know.
In Bing, my results page started with background links (official site, wikipedia, tickets, etc.) and in fifth, a link to a CNN story on his death ("Pop music legend dies at 50"). The summary text, copied here in full, was: "Michael Jackson, the show-stopping singer whose best-selling albums -- including 'Off the Wall,' 'Thriller' and 'Bad' -- and electrifying stage presence made him one of the most ..."
So, which one is better? Well, as a search engine, I'm not sure. But in this particular case it seems that Google did news parsing a bit better than Bing, showing a relevant news article on Mr. Jackson's death right on top, including a title and summary that contains all the basic info (what, how, where). The auto-completion gave the news right away. Pretty good. Meanwhile, Bing still showed a link to CNN on the first results page, so that's not bad either. You'd have had to click on it to find out how and where Mr. Jackson passed away.
R.I.P., Michael Jackson.
A little earlier before I write this (at around 1930 hrs EST), typing the first letters of Michael Jackson's name (mich) in the search field in Google, it auto-completes it to "michael jackson died today" as the second option given. On Bing I get "Michael Jackson" in fifth spot. OK. So thanks to Google I'm starting to believe that the man had really died (or maybe that just a frigging lot of people were searching those words for no good reason).
The results page in Google starts with a "Related Searches" list, containing "michael jackson cardiac arrest", followed by "michael jackson heart attack." The first actual result is "News results for Michael Jackson", with a link to a Canadian story on his death ("Pop icon dies at 50"), including a bit of text explaining the how and the where ("cardiac arrest, in his Los Angeles home." OK, I can stop now, it seems I got everything I needed to know.
In Bing, my results page started with background links (official site, wikipedia, tickets, etc.) and in fifth, a link to a CNN story on his death ("Pop music legend dies at 50"). The summary text, copied here in full, was: "Michael Jackson, the show-stopping singer whose best-selling albums -- including 'Off the Wall,' 'Thriller' and 'Bad' -- and electrifying stage presence made him one of the most ..."
So, which one is better? Well, as a search engine, I'm not sure. But in this particular case it seems that Google did news parsing a bit better than Bing, showing a relevant news article on Mr. Jackson's death right on top, including a title and summary that contains all the basic info (what, how, where). The auto-completion gave the news right away. Pretty good. Meanwhile, Bing still showed a link to CNN on the first results page, so that's not bad either. You'd have had to click on it to find out how and where Mr. Jackson passed away.
R.I.P., Michael Jackson.
Thursday, June 18, 2009
Indecency laws
There are times when I am forced to conclude that a significant percentage of Americans would much rather live under Taliban rule and Sharia law than under the US Constitution.
"Jail sentence for hentai owner raises First Amendment issues", at Ars Technica.
"Jail sentence for hentai owner raises First Amendment issues", at Ars Technica.
Tuesday, March 24, 2009
Unexploded Ordinance (March 17) - Part I
After the ill-fated attempt at the Imperial Sand Dunes we were a bit weary of dunes of any kind. But we had had a little taste of the kind of sand environment the FJ really likes when we played around at the border fence: Large dunes, with longer slopes. Or simply sandy undulating terrain. And that's exactly what we found in Superstition Mountain, and plenty of it.
We started the day by trying to follow a GPS trail Rick had downloaded. As it often happens, the trail was made by someone in an OHV (quad or dirt bike), who didn't necessarily follow any roads, so we ended up loosing that trail and just driving around impromptu. As we approached the mountain with the intent of going around it, we found a section of slope mostly sandy with rock crops here and there. The slope itself ended on a bowl, at a steep grade. But by going around the bowl from the right, and going accross on a diagonal over a segment of less steep slope and then up between two rock crops, it looked like we could do it.
I was explaining that idea to Rick, who, unbelieving, just said "why don't you go first then?", jokingly. It felt like a challenge, and it probably was. I got back into the car and off I went, doing exactly what I had suggested. The climb was successful, and soon after, all the other vehicles followed me up the hill. Perfect, except by the fact that in the testosterone-induced mental fog, I'd left Ellen at the bottom of the hill. Finally, Ellen shows up after climbing on foot, and none too happy about having been left behind like that. Being the nice person that she is, she eventually forgave my lapse in judgment.
From the top of the hill we sighted a communications tower nearby, over on the other side of the mountain ridge. We drove there across more sandy bowls and rock crops, really cross-country at this point, and enjoying every minute of it. We spent a few minutes near the comm tower (which had a fairly usable paved road leading to it from the base of the mountain), enjoying the view and planning our next move. I had been leading the group since the hill-climb, and continued to do so from the comm tower, as we decided to go down-hill on the paved road and try to find a trail that would hug the northeast face of the mountain and lead us towards its waist. Our objective was another comm tower on another peak about a mile or so away.
We started the day by trying to follow a GPS trail Rick had downloaded. As it often happens, the trail was made by someone in an OHV (quad or dirt bike), who didn't necessarily follow any roads, so we ended up loosing that trail and just driving around impromptu. As we approached the mountain with the intent of going around it, we found a section of slope mostly sandy with rock crops here and there. The slope itself ended on a bowl, at a steep grade. But by going around the bowl from the right, and going accross on a diagonal over a segment of less steep slope and then up between two rock crops, it looked like we could do it.
I was explaining that idea to Rick, who, unbelieving, just said "why don't you go first then?", jokingly. It felt like a challenge, and it probably was. I got back into the car and off I went, doing exactly what I had suggested. The climb was successful, and soon after, all the other vehicles followed me up the hill. Perfect, except by the fact that in the testosterone-induced mental fog, I'd left Ellen at the bottom of the hill. Finally, Ellen shows up after climbing on foot, and none too happy about having been left behind like that. Being the nice person that she is, she eventually forgave my lapse in judgment.
From the top of the hill we sighted a communications tower nearby, over on the other side of the mountain ridge. We drove there across more sandy bowls and rock crops, really cross-country at this point, and enjoying every minute of it. We spent a few minutes near the comm tower (which had a fairly usable paved road leading to it from the base of the mountain), enjoying the view and planning our next move. I had been leading the group since the hill-climb, and continued to do so from the comm tower, as we decided to go down-hill on the paved road and try to find a trail that would hug the northeast face of the mountain and lead us towards its waist. Our objective was another comm tower on another peak about a mile or so away.
Friday, March 20, 2009
ISDRA (March 16)
We broke camp and headed SW towards Glamis, where the Imperial Sand Dunes Recreational Area (ISDRA) is located. This was something that Andras had an itch to try, and we all went along. My concerns before we got there were mostly about how my 255s (a tire width slightly thinner than what you have on a stock FJ) Mud Terrains would fare on the soft sand.
The Glamis location was basically a few stores and a couple of RV camping grounds. The place was crawling with quads, dirt bikes and serious looking dune buggies. Conspicuously missing were any sort of SUV type vehicles around the dunes. There were pickup trucks with 12 in lifts and 37 in tires, but mostly towing trailers with quads or bikes. Still, we figured we'd give it a shot. We let Andras lead.
We go over a dune, and then over another. My tires are at 18PSI, and I'm having no issues. And then Andras heads for a steep slope. A this point I should explain that the dunes where we were were not large. They were at most 20 ft height. But that is precisely what made them dangerous for us. The tops of the dunes were not wide at all, for instance. And they tended to be steep. I felt like I was driving an FJ on a skate park. In any case, Andras goes over a larger, steeper wall, barely makes it. Then his voice comes on the radio: "This is harder than I thought!" I follow him, but didn't have enough momentum, so had to slide down backwards. And there's the other reason why those dunes were dangerous to us. The FJ sliding down does not track straight, and turning the wheel has little effect, so you could be sliding on a diagonal or even on your side. Which was precisely what happened moments later with Erik. But we'll get to that.
We go over a couple more dunes, at which point I radio: "Am I the only one feeling uncomfortable about this?" to which laughter breaks on the radio, as Rick and Erik heartily confirm that I'm not. Moments later I drop without slowing down from a four feet ledge where the slope broke. Lots of those around, too. Yet another evidence that the place was going to end up outright killing us.
Still we continue, trying to find paths through the dunes. Eventually we found ourselves surrounded by bowls, and the only way out was along the dune tops. Rick and Andras were ahead, and Erik and I a little behind. And that's when it happened: Erik is trying to stay on the top, but he starts sliding sideways, on a fairly steep slope. Not too steep if you were going down on it front first. But very steep as it was. Miraculously, he did not tip over. That's when I hear on the radio (don't remember if Andras or Erik himself): "That's it, we're done!" This happened about 20 minutes or so into the run.
Finally out of there and laughing at ourselves about the whole ISDRA visit we headed south via dirt roads towards I-8. I-8 is the southernmost interstate in this area, and in certain points it travels at less than a mile from the US-Mexico border. Before we came we talked about the possibility of accidentally traveling into Mexico, due to the proximity and the fact that we would driving through the back country and often not even on roads. Well, as we drove on I-8 west-bound I realized that would have been difficult: There is a 20+ ft metal fence along the boder. We took an exit towards the border when I-8 seemed particularly close to the fence (about half-mile) and drove right to it (after clearing it with the border patrol agents in the area). We got out of the vehicles, took pictures and touched the thing. The idea of having a fence like this does not agree with me, but the worse part is that, even at the height of 20 ft, it would still be possible to climb it, for someone even moderately in shape, even if that person did not have a hook attached to a rope. Like many other actions take by government, this seems to be a token to show that it is taking action (any action). This is only my personal opinion, of course.
After following the fence for a bit and driving over the dunes, and even racing along the fence (Andras and I drag-raced to the exit road for about 300 ft) we headed to a hotel for the night.
The Glamis location was basically a few stores and a couple of RV camping grounds. The place was crawling with quads, dirt bikes and serious looking dune buggies. Conspicuously missing were any sort of SUV type vehicles around the dunes. There were pickup trucks with 12 in lifts and 37 in tires, but mostly towing trailers with quads or bikes. Still, we figured we'd give it a shot. We let Andras lead.
We go over a dune, and then over another. My tires are at 18PSI, and I'm having no issues. And then Andras heads for a steep slope. A this point I should explain that the dunes where we were were not large. They were at most 20 ft height. But that is precisely what made them dangerous for us. The tops of the dunes were not wide at all, for instance. And they tended to be steep. I felt like I was driving an FJ on a skate park. In any case, Andras goes over a larger, steeper wall, barely makes it. Then his voice comes on the radio: "This is harder than I thought!" I follow him, but didn't have enough momentum, so had to slide down backwards. And there's the other reason why those dunes were dangerous to us. The FJ sliding down does not track straight, and turning the wheel has little effect, so you could be sliding on a diagonal or even on your side. Which was precisely what happened moments later with Erik. But we'll get to that.
We go over a couple more dunes, at which point I radio: "Am I the only one feeling uncomfortable about this?" to which laughter breaks on the radio, as Rick and Erik heartily confirm that I'm not. Moments later I drop without slowing down from a four feet ledge where the slope broke. Lots of those around, too. Yet another evidence that the place was going to end up outright killing us.
Still we continue, trying to find paths through the dunes. Eventually we found ourselves surrounded by bowls, and the only way out was along the dune tops. Rick and Andras were ahead, and Erik and I a little behind. And that's when it happened: Erik is trying to stay on the top, but he starts sliding sideways, on a fairly steep slope. Not too steep if you were going down on it front first. But very steep as it was. Miraculously, he did not tip over. That's when I hear on the radio (don't remember if Andras or Erik himself): "That's it, we're done!" This happened about 20 minutes or so into the run.
Finally out of there and laughing at ourselves about the whole ISDRA visit we headed south via dirt roads towards I-8. I-8 is the southernmost interstate in this area, and in certain points it travels at less than a mile from the US-Mexico border. Before we came we talked about the possibility of accidentally traveling into Mexico, due to the proximity and the fact that we would driving through the back country and often not even on roads. Well, as we drove on I-8 west-bound I realized that would have been difficult: There is a 20+ ft metal fence along the boder. We took an exit towards the border when I-8 seemed particularly close to the fence (about half-mile) and drove right to it (after clearing it with the border patrol agents in the area). We got out of the vehicles, took pictures and touched the thing. The idea of having a fence like this does not agree with me, but the worse part is that, even at the height of 20 ft, it would still be possible to climb it, for someone even moderately in shape, even if that person did not have a hook attached to a rope. Like many other actions take by government, this seems to be a token to show that it is taking action (any action). This is only my personal opinion, of course.
After following the fence for a bit and driving over the dunes, and even racing along the fence (Andras and I drag-raced to the exit road for about 300 ft) we headed to a hotel for the night.
Tuesday, March 17, 2009
Racing through Arizona (March 15)
The nice hotel bed in Yuma was a well deserved break for everyone. All of us had had very busy weeks preparing for this trip, all of us had little sleep the previous night for one reason or another, and our day got three hours longer upon arrival in Phoenix. Even though some of us were itching to use our new roof top tents, the thought of making camp in the dark and very tired just wasn't that appealing.
We woke up on Sunday and all of us set out to reorganize our cargo in the parking lot at the hotel. The previous day of light wheeling had revealed problems such as poor visibility and loose objects bouncing around in the cabin that we were all trying to resolve.
Out of Yuma we started driving NW, eventually to get to the Parker 400 race course. Our itinerary took us through some tough Arizona back country terrain, including some spots of moderate difficulty, where Kakie's navigation skills were put to the test, as we crossed the hills and canyons on barely visible trails. At least once the trail indicated by the GPS map simply ended on a rock wall.
Before getting to the race course we did a run through an easy trail nearby, that we sped through as a means of making it more interesting. These are trucks, not rally cars, so "sped through" means as fast as we dared go through the obstacles without ejecting everything tied up to our roof racks. In other words: not really that fast. At least until we reached the race course. There things got decidedly faster.
The Parker 400 race course is a desert truck racing stage. It's a dirt track where most of it is leveled, which allowed a handful of East Coast desperados in their FJs to tear through at 60 to 80 mph. There were quite a few very deep dips, in which somehow none of use managed to fly into, especially when one accounts for the dust raised by the forward vehicles. The thick, white dust in the sunset light made it impossible to see anything more than 10 m ahead, unless you gave the vehicle ahead of you at least 100 m of lead, and as long as there was some wind.
We decided to end the day by camping on the BLM land, just off the track, on a small hilltop. And then it was dinner, chat around the imaginary camp fire (we weren't certain about the regulations on camp fires, so we didn't light one) admiring the beauty of the backcountry night sky, and finally off to our tents for a good night of sleep.
We woke up on Sunday and all of us set out to reorganize our cargo in the parking lot at the hotel. The previous day of light wheeling had revealed problems such as poor visibility and loose objects bouncing around in the cabin that we were all trying to resolve.
Out of Yuma we started driving NW, eventually to get to the Parker 400 race course. Our itinerary took us through some tough Arizona back country terrain, including some spots of moderate difficulty, where Kakie's navigation skills were put to the test, as we crossed the hills and canyons on barely visible trails. At least once the trail indicated by the GPS map simply ended on a rock wall.
Before getting to the race course we did a run through an easy trail nearby, that we sped through as a means of making it more interesting. These are trucks, not rally cars, so "sped through" means as fast as we dared go through the obstacles without ejecting everything tied up to our roof racks. In other words: not really that fast. At least until we reached the race course. There things got decidedly faster.
The Parker 400 race course is a desert truck racing stage. It's a dirt track where most of it is leveled, which allowed a handful of East Coast desperados in their FJs to tear through at 60 to 80 mph. There were quite a few very deep dips, in which somehow none of use managed to fly into, especially when one accounts for the dust raised by the forward vehicles. The thick, white dust in the sunset light made it impossible to see anything more than 10 m ahead, unless you gave the vehicle ahead of you at least 100 m of lead, and as long as there was some wind.
We decided to end the day by camping on the BLM land, just off the track, on a small hilltop. And then it was dinner, chat around the imaginary camp fire (we weren't certain about the regulations on camp fires, so we didn't light one) admiring the beauty of the backcountry night sky, and finally off to our tents for a good night of sleep.
Sunday, March 15, 2009
Arrival - Yuma (March 14)
We arrived yesterday in two separate flights: Rick and Kakie and Andras and Ottilia first (they had the same connection flight) and Erik and Jill, and Ellen and I (we carpooled to the airport and came in the same direct flight), about one hour behind. There was quite a bit of work on the cars before we managed to leave the storage space: Rick's tent and mine had to be reinstalled, the packing in the car reorganized, and water containers filled, to name a few tasks.
We drove around town for an hour or so, got gas, had lunch at a Burger King, and bought some last minute items at a very large Wal-Mart. After that we kept driving west, and after an hour or so (already near dusk at this point), we finally hit the gravel. This wasn't off-roading yet, but it was enjoyable. We drove for about two or three hours on gravel roads, deserted but for our four vehicles, and it was completely dark early into the driving. We stopped a bit on the road to "take the night in", as Rick put it through the radio. What a pleasant night; mild temperature, dry, fresh wind blowing. After chatting for a few minutes, we were back in the trucks and heading to Yuma as originally planned, and to a hotel bed. We arrived at the hotel around 2130 hrs local time.
We drove around town for an hour or so, got gas, had lunch at a Burger King, and bought some last minute items at a very large Wal-Mart. After that we kept driving west, and after an hour or so (already near dusk at this point), we finally hit the gravel. This wasn't off-roading yet, but it was enjoyable. We drove for about two or three hours on gravel roads, deserted but for our four vehicles, and it was completely dark early into the driving. We stopped a bit on the road to "take the night in", as Rick put it through the radio. What a pleasant night; mild temperature, dry, fresh wind blowing. After chatting for a few minutes, we were back in the trucks and heading to Yuma as originally planned, and to a hotel bed. We arrived at the hotel around 2130 hrs local time.
Saturday, March 14, 2009
A note of thanks
As you get into off-roading and start looking into modifying your vehicle to increase its capabilities or adapt it to your personal tastes, you become part of a relatively small market segment, dealing in quality customization products made in low volume by small shops. The first thing you notice when you look around at your options is that the people behind these products are not anonymous. They are there, posting on the forums, having heated discussions, discussing their design, etc. These people have reputations they need to preserve, and misbehaving or letting customers down could easily mean the end of their business.
I just would like to put a little note in here to thank some of those guys for their commitment to an out of the ordinary customer service:
I just would like to put a little note in here to thank some of those guys for their commitment to an out of the ordinary customer service:
- Special thanks to Chris, at Lucrum Industries.
- Bud, at BudBuilt.
- Mike, at AutoHome USA.
- Doug, at Newark Toyota World.
Sunday, March 8, 2009
Tying up the loose ends
With the truck gone, Ellen and I are now getting the smaller items in our check list done (things that we can bring with us in the plane). Yesterday I bought some extra PL-259 coax connectors, just in case I need to redo some of my antenna cables (further dependent on parts of our equipment that couldn't make it to our home in time and had to be redirected to Arizona actually arriving there on time). Our two pelican cases we ordered arrived on Friday, and we were playing around with the foam lining. One will hold our handgun and magazines and the other our laptop and some cables.
The idea of using a pelican case for the gun made more sense when we thought we were going to have to check it in as a volume by itself. It turns out that with Southwestern Airlines the locked box containing a firearm can actually be inside a suitcase. So any lockable box would have been fine. This is the thing with trips like these: we're trying several things for the first time, and learning (sometimes the hard way) how to deal with the unexpected. The overlarge pelican case I'll be carrying in my suitcase is just a minor "case in point."
So, I'm also bringing a laptop. A two-year-old macbook, somewhat underpowered by today's standards, but capable of running the National Geographic TOPO! mapping software. The NatGeo (as the cool kids prefer to say it) software is a bit too simple, and often awkward to use. But there doesn't seem to be a lot of options for Macs and Linuxes out there today in terms of mapping software. It's a shame, since the USGS data is basically available for free (as far as I can tell) to anyone with enough brains to implement their data standard. I'm toying around with the idea of starting an open source project in this area (file under "when time allows"). But I digress. So the other thing we've been doing is buying last minute stuff online, like a Garmin etrex serial connector (with a USB adapter), and some map cds from NatGeo, covering AZ and CA (I can get the NV and UT maps piecemeal, since we're not covering much in those states). These should be arriving on Tuesday. I hope to be able to have some level of a rudimentary electronic nav system available, just in case Rick's state of the art GPS paraphernalia decides to die an untimely death. Come to think of it, it would have been a good idea to get paper maps too.
The idea of using a pelican case for the gun made more sense when we thought we were going to have to check it in as a volume by itself. It turns out that with Southwestern Airlines the locked box containing a firearm can actually be inside a suitcase. So any lockable box would have been fine. This is the thing with trips like these: we're trying several things for the first time, and learning (sometimes the hard way) how to deal with the unexpected. The overlarge pelican case I'll be carrying in my suitcase is just a minor "case in point."
So, I'm also bringing a laptop. A two-year-old macbook, somewhat underpowered by today's standards, but capable of running the National Geographic TOPO! mapping software. The NatGeo (as the cool kids prefer to say it) software is a bit too simple, and often awkward to use. But there doesn't seem to be a lot of options for Macs and Linuxes out there today in terms of mapping software. It's a shame, since the USGS data is basically available for free (as far as I can tell) to anyone with enough brains to implement their data standard. I'm toying around with the idea of starting an open source project in this area (file under "when time allows"). But I digress. So the other thing we've been doing is buying last minute stuff online, like a Garmin etrex serial connector (with a USB adapter), and some map cds from NatGeo, covering AZ and CA (I can get the NV and UT maps piecemeal, since we're not covering much in those states). These should be arriving on Tuesday. I hope to be able to have some level of a rudimentary electronic nav system available, just in case Rick's state of the art GPS paraphernalia decides to die an untimely death. Come to think of it, it would have been a good idea to get paper maps too.
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