I’m just this guy, you know?

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Joined 3 years ago
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Cake day: July 6th, 2023

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  • Well, I can say definitively that I know what is making that clicking sound. It’s hard to see since the cable is in silhouette, but there are silver-colored spirals wound around the cable, and the sound is made by the plastic sheathing of the black cable wobbling inside of those metal spirals. The spirals are made of aluminum, I’m pretty sure. Those spirals are put there to stiffen the the hanging cable, and appear on the hanging cable between every set of poles (not just these, that are wiggling). There are two spirals mounted on each cable between the poles. I assume the spirals are mounted there to provide damping, just in case the wind does cause the cable hanging between the poles to swing too much. But, there was no wind blowing when I shot this video (Dec 5, 2023). The voice you hear is mine, just speculating on what might be causing the oscillating cable…



  • Hmm. It’s odd that this isn’t ALWAYS vibrating, but it IS only between these two poles that I’ve noticed the vibration. But why not between other sets of poles? And since the cable vibrating the most isn’t a power cable (I believe it’s fiber, but it could be copper - but it’s definitely telecom, since it’s not insulated on the top crossbar, as the other power cables are), it can’t really be much power going through it. I’m kind of hoping someone else has seen similar behavior somewhere else. You can see the anti-wind-twist devices (don’t know what else to call them) bolted to the other telecom cable (sort of diamond-shaped) and they will cause the cable to stabilize when the wind is really blowing, but you can see the wind isn’t blowing at all, and the cable continues to vibrate quite noticeably. I really do hope someone else has seen something like it elsewhere…







  • I’m enjoying Memmy right now. My only gripe is that I’d love to see in-app orientation lock. It’s the one feature of Apollo that made me go for their lifetime purchase. You could easily set portrait mode for reading while lying down (I do this a lot - browsing while prone on the couch or in bed), and it would auto-rotate to landscape for videos, but stick to portrait for everything else (articles). I don’t know how Christian finally managed it (it took quite a while before he implemented it), but it worked great. The old Reddit “Antenna” app had it first.

    But other than that, great work. I’m really enjoying the ‘swipe to navigate’ which allows it to feel a lot more like Apolle for now. Thanks for all of your hard work, and I hope you’re enjoying a break from it for now.

    Cheers.



  • So, as a long time backpacker, I found my holy grail series of packs from Nunatak gear.

    A couple of seasons ago, I ran into someone beta-testing a Nunatak “Bears Ears 50” model pack. It carries a bear canister at the bottom of the pack, at the hip. It’s such an obvious and simple idea, and it’s amazing that no one else really ever designed it. But Jan over at Nunatak build this for himself, as a climber as well as a backpacker, who often spends time where a bear canister is required.

    I live in Bishop, California, and all of the areas nearest me require bear canisters for overnight trips. So, I was intrigued.

    I checked out the pack that this guy was beta testing, and when I asked what he liked best, the answer surprised me. I thought it would be the weight distribution, or the minimal pack weight, but instead he pointed out that the hip-belt water bottle holders were the best he’d used.

    I was using an Osprey Exos at the time, and this was a major frustration for me. Water bottles slid easily into the side pockets, which are angled for ease of use, pulling a bottle in or out. But it turns out that if you bend over (to tie your shoe, or pick something up off the ground, or even lean over to take a photo) then a full bottle would slide out. I use Smartwater bottles, as most do these days, and when it happened one one trip, the darned bottle hit a rock and cracked, making it useless to me. Frustrating.

    The Nunatak uses a water bottle holder that is just foolproof. They don’t fall out, are ultralight, and are mounted slightly behind the hip, making it so your arms don’t hit them when hiking, but are still very easy to reach.

    The unique bear can system is also perfect for me. Having a canister lowest in the pack makes for a much more natural weight distribution while hiking and especially when climbing or boulder scrambling. The Nunatak Bears Ears is perfect for that.

    The original Bears Ears 50 is frameless, and that works fine for me almost all of the time, but Jan has designed framed versions that are now available, as well. For a pack with up to a 30-lb load rating, it is ultralight, and durable.

    Oh, you don’t HAVE to carry a bear canister, either. Nunatak sells a bag-in-lieu-of-canister solution, which I have used in areas that don’t require a bear canister. It’s basically a bag roughly the size of a standard bear canister that you can stuff with anything you like, and put it in the place where the bear canister would go. I’ve stuffed it with my quilt, and extra water bottles, when I was hiking in an area that didn’t require a canister.

    Anyway, here’s the link to their site for their Bears Ears series of packs:

    Nunatak packs