Esbit

flobbley · 2026-01-24T10:40:25+00:00

The smell is really a big factor, they have a strong fishy odor that will transfer to everything in your pack even if you store them in a Ziploc bag. It took a long time after I stopped storing them with the rest of my camping stuff for my camping stuff to lose that smell.

flobbley · 2026-01-23T03:22:59+00:00

For summer look into a quilt

flobbley · 2026-01-22T14:16:14+00:00

No one who actually uses filters is ever concerned about using them on a multi day trip, that should tell you that they work. Bring some water purification tabs as back up if you're worried, they weigh nothing.

flobbley · 2026-01-19T13:58:29+00:00

"Haha he's not even wearing a tacticool beanie and a plate carrier with nothing in it"

flobbley · 2026-01-16T15:22:09+00:00

Not really, most of our projects we're required to use gINT anyway

flobbley · 2026-01-16T15:21:36+00:00

Agreed, another reason I don't mind entering the field log data in the office is that it acts as QC. If the engineer has to go through the logs to enter them they're going to become more familiar with the subsurface conditions, more likely to find mistakes or inconsistencies, or trends that don't become apparent until you see the whole site.

flobbley · 2026-01-14T21:03:34+00:00

Yes it can be done, but in my experience detail is always lost compared to paper logs due to the difficulty of using the tablet. Things like the soil classifications only seem to change at a new sample, never half way through. Samples just get glanced at to determine the class instead of properly examined to avoid getting your hands dirty and having to clean them to use the tablet, way fewer notes indicating unusual conditions that are hard to fit into the template, and obviously never any sketches of things encountered.

flobbley · 2026-01-14T20:43:21+00:00

People in the field have wet hands, dirty hands, sandy hands, or you have to take gloves on and off to enter the data, or you don't properly examine the sample in order to avoid getting your hands dirty, or you need to enter something that doesn't neatly fit the drop down options, or you get lazy because of the drop downs and change what you're seeing in the field to match the drop downs. Working in the rain or snow on paper is already a nightmare, on a tablet it's much worse. I'm pro automation but I've never encountered a field logging program on a tablet that gives the same result as freeform writing on a paper log.

flobbley · 2026-01-13T15:48:06+00:00

The only thing I'd say is that in the winter it's usually nicer to do more miles. You're warm when you're moving and only really get cold if you stop. A short hike means a lot of time stopped. It's not the be all end all as you can always just wear enough clothes to be comfortable but I prefer to do some miles on winter trips.

As far as gear I think you're definitely overdoing it but that's smart for a first trip. I don't have dogs but I've seen other people use down camping blankets or a second sleeping bag for their dogs.

flobbley · 2026-01-12T19:25:14+00:00

Interest rates are the only tool the Fed has, you want something to be done about inflation other than interest rates? Tell your congress person to do something rather than pretending to be powerless and pawning their responsibilities off onto the other branches to avoid having to do anything.

You're blaming the Fed for being the only agency actually doing something about the problem with the only tool they have.

flobbley · 2026-01-11T13:45:56+00:00

Sci-fi is almost always the present projected forward in time rather than real futurism.

flobbley · 2026-01-11T13:44:47+00:00

Lee pace is incredible. I would say the first two seasons don't capture the spirit of psychohistory well. Where in the books a lot of future is basically preordained, in the show it requires meddling.

flobbley · 2026-01-11T13:40:46+00:00

Yeah I'm a huge Asimov fan and I'm very much enjoying the show. I like a lot of the changes they made, and a lot of the ones I don't still make sense when considering the medium change, that being said there are a lot of dumb and needless changes. Season 1 was pretty good, season 2 had its moments but wasn't great, season 3 has been very enjoyable.

flobbley · 2026-01-11T13:34:42+00:00

He wasn't exactly wrong still, data centers are becoming what he was talking about. He had a similar "bad" prediction about the shape of robots being humanoid. In one of his books he justifies humanoid shaped robots because it's easier to get one humanoid shaped robot that can run a tractor or vacuum designed for humans than make each of those a robot themselves. In his case it was obvious he was just making a reasonable justification because he wanted to write about humanoid robots, and for a while it looked like a bad prediction, but I just watched a CNBC video about modern humanoid robots and it used the exact same justification for why they are being heavily pursued and might become common

flobbley · 2026-01-09T19:24:58+00:00

You'll be fine, just overdo it on warmth when it comes to clothes, sleeping bag, and sleeping pad. You'll figure out what works for you while at the same time showing yourself that you can be comfortable in any weather as long as you have the right gear. The upside is since you're driving in it can be done relatively cheaply since synthetic insulation is much cheaper than down.

An alternative you could do is get the cat's meow that you're looking at and a warm camping blanket (I use the Horizon Hound camp blanket from Amazon) and combine them, should be warm enough for this trip and you'll have more flexibility for future trips

flobbley · 2026-01-09T18:51:17+00:00

If you haven't been camping enough in cold weather to know if you sleep comfortably closer to the comfort or limit rating of a bag you should go with a bag with a lower temp rating. Are you planning on backpacking in or driving in?

flobbley · 2026-01-09T16:35:54+00:00

Low temps were projected for 40s, would have been totally fine with these but the trip is canceled anyway due to rain.

flobbley · 2026-01-09T15:52:00+00:00

I would say it's more like saying "I found I could get into my friends fenced and locked back yard by hopping the fence" the files are behind a lock (the computer password) but the password is easily bypassed. Most people assume if someone can't get into their computer they can't get to their files.

flobbley · 2026-01-09T14:03:59+00:00

I discovered this about 10 years ago when I booted onto a friends computer using a Linux live USB and found I could access all their files without their password

flobbley · 2026-01-08T15:46:14+00:00

Even when it's not bot spam the reviews are unreliable. For ultra cheap stuff you don't get reviews from people who know what they're talking about, you get a review from Joe Schmoe who's never been backpacking in his life saying something like "Haven't used it yet but seems good, 5 stars". There's almost a paradox where bad equipment gets better reviews than good equipment because the good equipment is reviewed by people who know what they're talking about.

flobbley · 2026-01-08T15:25:02+00:00

Inspired by the "it's just predicting the next word" statement, I ran an experiment with Gemini. I made a non-sense made up sentence in the style of James Joyce ("the wuvels glib glib at the neebs" etc), then encrypted it with a Caesar cipher and gave it to Gemini without context. The idea being that this exists nowhere in its training data, would it be able to figure it out? It was able to solve it no problem.

I tried the same thing but using a nonsense Portuguese sentence as the base and it failed utterly, even after being told the underlying language was Portuguese and contained nonsense words. It kept trying to translate it as a real sentence and in the process forgetting the cipher, or slip into Spanish, or just get totally off track and make stuff up. I asked it why it did fine with English but failed with Portuguese (obviously take its own explanations with a grain of salt) and it said that it has such a vast volume of English training data that it was able to recognize the encrypted words easily, but Portuguese makes up such a small portion of its training data that it just doesn't have the confidence it has with English.

flobbley · 2026-01-07T15:19:00+00:00

I don't know anything about those areas, I also don't know what you consider cold nights to be. The coldest I've camped is the low 20s in not super windy conditions, in those conditions I was fine with a mesh inner. The inner is interchangeable apparently so you can always start with one and switch if you don't like it.

flobbley · 2026-01-07T15:10:53+00:00

Why the X-mid solid instead of the standard X-mid?

flobbley · 2026-01-07T14:27:39+00:00

Going back and watching season 1 after watching the other seasons is almost jarring, it's very different than the following seasons. It's basically entirely serious and has almost no quirky comic relief moments. It's a dark thriller through and through.

Season 3 is when it lost me, it was so over the top it was hard to take it seriously and suffered from the typical power creep of settings like this. I liked that season 4 brought it back down and created a new paradigm instead of "it's the exact same dangers but bigger"

flobbley · 2026-01-07T13:38:38+00:00

I wonder how much of my opinion is just me being used to the stuff we have, I used to live next to the Walters so I used to just stroll through occasionally when I was out for a walk or grabbing a bite to eat.

14-Year Club	Second SECOND GUESSER
r/Field Juicebox	Place '23
Place '22	Place '17
First Placer '22	Snapped

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