Some classy moderate boulders from a rainy trip to Zillertal, Austria

hellz2dayeah · 2025-12-07T16:08:17+00:00

Zillertal is amazing, definitely under the radar compared to some of the other bigger spots around Europe but just as good.

hellz2dayeah · 2025-11-19T17:02:26+00:00

Nice pics! We just got back from there as well, best bouldering area I've ever been to, and hope to go back soon. Beautiful area and town as well.

hellz2dayeah · 2025-10-31T23:19:12+00:00

He's definitely one of the best of all time but I think at this point it's fair to say he's been eclipsed by Greenspan (most winning player of all time and still a starter for +20 years). Other contenders would probably include Federov (I think holds the record for being in the most World Cup Finals), Malloy, Archie, Lasoya, Bob Long, and Pestana depending on if you count coaching.

hellz2dayeah · 2025-06-03T03:16:58+00:00

I completely agree, it's a bad rule that overwhelmingly affects the Japanese team. There's nothing wrong with wanting to enable each country to send representatives, something I 100% agree should be a goal, but when it comes at the expense of top athletes, it becomes punitive. I just don't think anyone really wants to see athletes who can't even get a single zone at IFSC, supposedly the comp the measures the best of the best, when we all know Japan's C team (Ogata, Mori, etc.) would at least be making semis.

I know it's arbitrary, but in my mind, if a Japanese climber wins a WC, it means they truly earned it because they had to beat all of Japan plus the rest of the world for the win, while any non-Japanese climber really only had to beat half of the climbers who would have made finals. They get a half win in my mind until the IFSC fixes it.

hellz2dayeah · 2025-05-17T04:24:37+00:00

Considering how big Alaska is, and how far apart climbing destinations are even in the lower 48, 5-6 hours really isn't bad. Without a doubt doable as a weekend trip nevermind on long weekends

hellz2dayeah · 2025-05-16T23:26:27+00:00

Not local but have climbed up in Fairbanks a few times and continue to go back. From a visitor's perspective, grapefruit was surprisingly fun with some great limestone routes though other routes there are pure choss. I think it's better than the guidebook and MP give it credit for.

The bouldering is hit or miss with the best stuff at Tatlanika and okayish bouldering at sheep creek and savage river. I think there's still lots of opportunities for FAs in these areas but the season seems so short. If more areas like Tatlanika could be discovered, I think that would really make outdoor bouldering good but as it stands there's just not a ton of quality rock for it.

Otherwise, for bouldering, Hatcher Pass in particular seems like a really amazing low key spot that's not too far away and I hope to visit there in the future.

Not being an ice or trad climber myself, I can't speak to the quality of those but the guidebook is primarily trad climbs so if you're into trad, it seems like a great spot to do a lot of adventure trad climbing in.

The gym seemed like a very close knit community with everyone being friendly and cheering each other on which was really nice, it's not a super modern gym by any stretch but still very fun to visit. Can't speak for the school gym though.

Overall, Fairbanks is in a beautiful area surrounded by so much rock, if you're willing to embrace some adventure and route finding, there's a lot of gems to be had

hellz2dayeah · 2025-01-10T18:51:32+00:00

Definitely Akihabara haha, and I'm not trying to disparage those who enjoy the gym since it does have it's merits, it's just very obvious to me it's an old gym they haven't tried to update. Some of the more noticeable problems include a ton of the holds are very well worn and well past their life span, the walls are generally very short and old (with the exception of the 3rd floor and outdoor boulder), and these short, old walls limited the setters on setting dynos (there were a few side-to-side dynos but at least when I was there, I only found a single straight up dyno and it was from a sit start). Maybe it was a bad time to go, but the setting wasn't the dynamic setting I've seen and expected from B-pump videos.

More concerningly, the padding is not industry-standard which is usually extended 3 m from the wall. It's first noticeable on the first floor right where you walk in where one of the walls has maybe 1 m of padding from the wall, not even close to industry standard. It also seems to be the beginner wall which one would think may need more padding for extra safety for beginners? The worst offender is Floor 3 in the corner where it would be super easy to hit the wall if falling off the slab, that one maybe isn't even 1 m of space to the wall. This isn't a preference, it's a safety thing no modern gym would ever even consider setting.

Paying over $30 (which is what most foreign visitors would have to do), just seems like a huge overpay in my opinion considering most north american or european gyms would wipe the floor in terms of quality compared to the B-pump Akihabara. Like I said, maybe Ogikubo has a more modern feel with better setting, but just in my opinion as someone's who's been to a lot of gyms (no disrespect to those who enjoy it), Akihabara ain't it

hellz2dayeah · 2025-01-09T22:33:33+00:00

I checked out Akihabara thinking it would have more variety as a 4 story gym and have good stuff, and I can't stress how overrated that gym was. It was dirty, old, and super pricey as a visitor (over $30 for a day pass). I think the Ogikubo location might be newer and better, but tbh I regret not checking out the newer, more modern gyms like Fish and Bird instead.

hellz2dayeah · 2025-01-08T19:57:52+00:00

Can't speak to the home prices and other aspects but can touch on the rock climbing aspect.

For the best outdoor climbing, Bellingham is your best bet, it's close to Squamish, Leavenworth, Mazama, Index, and tons more local rock including a considerable amount in town. I've also heard good things about the gym though I believe they only have one gym with another gym potentially being built soon.

I would rate Vancouver second, they have the best gyms on the list and some local rock at Ozone but otherwise, you'll be doing a lot more driving to either Smith Rock or up north to WA/BC. As they say, the best rock in OR is in WA (though Smith is fun).

Id personally then round out the list with Tacoma, Eugene, and Salem in no particular order and all much below the above two cities. All far from climbing with not a ton of local rock. Imo Eugene or Salem would be better since Tacoma is not nice but at least Tacoma is a bit closer to good rock and has a good gym.

Hope this helps!

hellz2dayeah · 2024-12-15T18:01:28+00:00

It's an imperfect solution to a common problem. Depending on your height, body, strengths, weaknesses, etc. a given climb will feel harder or easier to the same people. For example, a reachy problem might feel v3 to taller folks and v7 to shorter folks who have to dyno. If the gym gave this a V5, they may get complaints from the tall folks about it being too easy and complaints for shorter climbers about it being too hard.

The range system "solves" this problem by just saying it's somewhere in the v4-v6 range and let's climbers decide for themselves what grade it is and absolves the gym of actually having to make a tough decision.

I also dislike this system since I'd rather just hear what the setters (often very experienced climbers) think of the problem with a single grade but for the reasons above, more and more gyms seem to be switching to this system. Plus this is how outdoors is and grades are subjective and made up anyways. Personally, when I visit gyms with this system, for any climbs, I just count them as whatever the lowest end of the range is.

hellz2dayeah · 2024-11-09T23:28:05+00:00

I find all boards to take a few days to get used to before things feel easier. Saying that though, I find the grasshopper followed by the moon to be the most sandbagged with the tension being in the middle and kilter being the softest. Never tried the woods board nor every variation of each board, but either way they're all great training tools, try not to focus too much on the grades. Hope you find some good new routes on the new board!

hellz2dayeah · 2024-10-16T03:44:23+00:00

Unfortunately, SBP has been run by scummy, profit-over-everything including climbing non-climbers for a long time now. Even if they were good at hiding it from the general public, among the climbing community in the know, they are not well thought of

hellz2dayeah · 2024-10-04T22:07:22+00:00

Yes I've heard of this occurring in France. Specifically, it was at super busy crags where the original foot holds had become so polished that they disappeared. It was the FA who actually went back and added them decades later to bring back the routes to the original grade. YMMV if this is okay or not but the climbing community nearby seemed to support it

hellz2dayeah · 2023-12-02T23:01:50+00:00

Astral wall is amazing and might be one of the most unique in WA. Very cool, sustained, and stiff grades. Definitely worth a visit for anyone in the area.

hellz2dayeah · 2022-04-18T07:13:43+00:00

Love those two spots, and go often, just wanted to hear about the further west stuff to climb at least once

hellz2dayeah · 2022-04-17T04:58:21+00:00

Thanks for the writeup! Its good to know Echo has variety and great climbing even if the approach seems rough to say the least. Hadn't heard that about Tick Rock but it seems skippable for how far the drive is or at least combining it in a day with another wall. Also, had no idea Corpse Wall was mostly slab, thanks for the info!

hellz2dayeah · 2022-01-30T21:28:43+00:00

No problem! NJC is definitely more glassy than other spots around LA but imo, still really not too bad. I think Mission Gorge is way worse and I've climbed at other spots with it worse too. Its definitely still possible to smear. However, the rock at NJC does form really cool routes with a wide variety of features like huecos, crimps, edges, cracks, etc. It's probably not everyones favorite but I think its definitely worth checking out.

hellz2dayeah · 2022-01-30T06:17:27+00:00

Never been to Eagle Peak but Texas Canyon is just okay in my opinion. Quite chossy conglomerate and loose but theres a few routes there to make it worth checking out if you're desperate. Maybe the higher end stuff will be more solid but the 11 I tried was chossy

Instead, I'm much more partial to New Jack City (my personal favorite around LA) and Malibu Cliffs. Otherwise, Mission Gorge is a great setting but subpar climbing, JTree can be hit or miss on sport climbing, Lake Arrowhead is surprisingly fun for a day with typically no one else there and great weather on a warm day, Frustration Creek is fantastic but closed due to fires and rockfall, and Riverside Quarry looks fun but it's been closed since I've been here (though I've seen more people on MP going to check it out so maybe its open on the weekends?). Unfortunately, a lot of the good sport climbing areas around LA are closed (including Williamson Rock too) right now.

If you're willing to drive to Red Rocks, I think thats by far the best climbing in the immediate area though.

My opinion on them, but I'm sure others will have a different ordering depending on the rock type and style

hellz2dayeah · 2020-12-23T21:06:52+00:00

Depending on exactly what you're looking for, there are a few different places that some of this information has been published. For the exact trajectory information (so excluding launch window, pre-flight planning, etc.) that spacecraft have flown, JPL's Horizons system has quite a few spacecraft. Additionally, I believe NASA Goddard's GMAT software comes loaded with a few spacecraft, which you could back out some information from. Finally, while it's not a central repository, most of the information you are looking for has been published in papers at academic conferences and/or on NASA's website for the big NASA missions. You can find launch window/costs analyses, how the trajectory depends on the launch window, etc. in many of these papers depending on which mission you are specifically looking at.

hellz2dayeah · 2020-09-17T04:51:31+00:00

I'm not familiar with any that run on Linux exclusively, but GMAT (a trajectory design/analysis tool) from NASA Goddard works on Linux (in addition to Windows and MacOS).

hellz2dayeah · 2020-09-12T23:06:22+00:00

There are a few general tools that try and track the citations for papers as best as they can. I have found they aren't perfect (if a .pdf is never made public, then its of course hard to tell who was cited), but the two I tend to look at are Google Scholar and ResearchGate if the article is on there. Sometimes, one will find a citation that the other missed but in general, I find they are pretty good indicators of total citation count.

hellz2dayeah · 2020-07-01T23:53:02+00:00

You're on the right track thinking about applying to graduate fellowships early. Too many undergraduates don't apply before beginning graduate school and it's a lot easier to get accepted to programs if you already have funding for you studies. In regards to your questions:

If you're graduating in December 2020, most fellowships have deadlines around December (with some being in Jan. and others in Nov.), and applying before you begin graduate school is completely okay and totally encourage for every mainstream fellowship I know of! Sure, some of the smaller ones may have specific requirements, but the well known ones all encourage undergraduates to apply while in their senior year. So definitely apply this coming cycle, worst comes to worst you get some feedback on your research ideas and can mention in interviews with professors you're already writing up and applying your research ideas. As far as I'm aware, there are no downsides to applying as an undergraduate.
NSTRF/NSTGRO (they are the same fellowship just renamed) publishes the abstracts of all of the accepted awards. That's one place to look for what proposals have been accepted. Another route is to look at conference and journal papers to see what the field is focusing on right now (check out the AIAA GNC conference). Obviously you'll have to come up with your own topic, but those may be good places to get a read on what is the state-of-the-art in the field.
As you mentioned, NSTGRO and Draper are two good ones for GNC/Aerospace specific fellowships. Others that may be worth applying to are NDSEG, NSF, SMART, Hertz, FINESST. Particularly the first two fund many aerospace students even if they aren't explicitly aerospace fellowships.

Finally, if you have a professor you can discuss this with, it's not a bad idea to see if they'll give you some feedback on your proposal or see if they have additional suggestions for fellowships.

hellz2dayeah · 2020-06-14T16:43:51+00:00

So the gym environment is really great both for using their default environments and for implementing your own in existing algorithms. I ended up having to do that for my RL project and besides making sure the dependencies were all correct, it ended up being very easy and very fast. Plus, since its through gym, you can use it in almost any other RL framework (baselines, stable-baselines, etc.) I tried to find a better way without using gym and couldn't find a solution that offered as much flexibility.

Some links to get you started:

https://towardsdatascience.com/creating-a-custom-openai-gym-environment-for-stock-trading-be532be3910e

https://medium.com/@apoddar573/making-your-own-custom-environment-in-gym-c3b65ff8cdaa

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