damian
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Posts posted by damian
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Hey citizens of Canad(i)a,
Please help me with some info.
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For no less than 14 hours I sat at my kotatsu and wrote part of a simple computer program that had been eating away at my imagination for a week or two. I am a messy code writer and that causes slow progress in debugging. I couldn't get a certain variable to calculate properly and so from mid afternoon until midnight I spent the time deconstructing the code into to isolate the problem. It still doesn't work properly. This is what I do with my nights and spare days.
I bet you wish you were me.
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Who would win requires pictures. It is a rule.
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Will the 2000yen bbq and beer also include a "Niseko is flat" t-shirt?
I'd fly all the way over for the party just for that.
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Second that: Aframes + Giro Fuse or 9.
They work well together.
I have never used those strap adapters for helmets. Never found them necessary at all.
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Hey! Thanks EBC, its good to see your story and pictures from the NZ trip. You seemed to maintain pretty good humour and attitude considering that the skiing was all over in 5 days. Pity you fell over that rocky bit. I admit that I had pictured something a little longer. Bit like Beanie said, its enough to break a leg on as it is.
The season was a good one in NZ but perhaps you were there before it really kicked off. Your photos are great, but some show the scarcity of snow pack. And it looks hard and windy as well.
This looks mildly depressing, but without having been there its hard to know the lay of the land and the snow situation.
And this looks like a nice spot to buy a house
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>No snow means less ski sales...Quote:cross-country skier Wendy Wagner said, "Ski racers are environmentalists. Some of it is related to self interest. No snow means less ski sales, less ski sales means manufacturers have less marketing funds to support elite athletes. It's a vicious cycle, with one more contradiction being that to travel to good snow conditions, skiers usually have to drive gas-guzzling SUVs. The next vehicle I get will be an SUV hybrid.”
>less ski sales means manufacturers have less marketing funds to support elite athletes....
>It's a vicious cycle
Way to go sweetie, good for you for working it all out. The fact that your game depends upon manufacturers, marketing and has an element of being 'elite' is half the problem in today's world.
And now, here's the bad news. The way human beings are wired mentally makes it almost impossible for us to collectively comprehend what is possibly facing us, let alone identify the key issues and act upon it.
1. Seeing and comprehending what might be happening is almost impossible, that's why so many people have so many trite responses and discuss it like its a controversial event on reality TV. We are in chronic denial and think we have the luxury of a personal opinion. Heads in the sand. Look around you, almost no one in the unwashed masses nor the educated masses actually cares, or is capable of caring, about what might be coming. If you think you care enough to act then you are in the 1% minority. The way we behave has not changed and nor will it through freewill. None of the following will motivate the majority to act: no more ski seasons, melting glaciers and acidic sea, even rising seas levels and dead coral reefs with depleted fish stocks and mass extinctions. Human life can and will go on amidst all of that, the fact that it might be an undesirable life is emotionally blocked from our collective minds. Its like being in a bad investment that just keeps getting worse and denial makes clarity of vision impossible. So we do nothing until something breaks and our mind is made for us.
2. Even if we had the ability to pull our head out of the sand, it would be impossible to change anything without cutting CO2 emissions 80% from current level. An impossibility without social command and ordering based on strict observance of CO2 purpose. As individuals, families, communities and small businesses you would only have freedom to act in so far as it produces 80% less CO2 than you currently do and it provides some form of social need. That means you don't do something until you are told you can do so.
3. Cutting CO2 from current levels is a laughable idea that seems to assume current CO2 output is stable at today's level, when it is in fact growing strongly every year. Without an almost instantly on-line technological solution, current levels are unstoppable and growing thanks to population and economic growth: these things simply can't be stopped without risking deep collapse and certainly not without a command system of government. CO2 output is forecast to grow massively in the next 50 years, and people talk about cutting them?! Its a fairy tale. To cut 80% from current levels we need to: i) stop all future increases and then ii) cut current usage by 80%. It is impossible unless we change such that every single thing we do is primarily concerned with not producing CO2 whilst providing nothing but the essentials of community need. All under the command and control of a higher authority. That means no personal car, no ski holiday's, no buying CD's and no flying to Guam to sell an small guitars. Are you going to voluntarily give it up? Why should I if you don't... why can't I have my bit? I only live for 70-90 years, I want to have my bit of fun, success, money, etc etc etc. That's the way we think.
If we don't act, the world is going to be incomprehensibly different in 50 years: 9 billion people is too many to feed with natural processes and CO2 will be out of control and there will be no crude oil or its derivatives. If we do act for the better then we will have to make society incomprehensively different to be effective. Come what may, 50 years from today will be almost unrecognisable. Even the spectre of 'only' 50 years is long enough away to de-motivate people yet close enough to push their heads further into the sand. One would have thought 50 years as a quantity of time would give urgency to peoples actions today. It would appear not. We will just squeeze through whilst our children will possibly be deprived of the luxury of dying from old age. (I don't use 'the children of today' as a sound bite figure of speech that is glanced at and not digested by those in denial. I mean literally: the toddler in nappies crawling across a loungeroom floor right now may well not die of old age).
In only 150 years we have managed to establish a capitalist's and social recipe for collapse at worst or severe disaster at best. 50 years is not such a long time. Its easy to remain in denial, after all Airbus are building the A340 and a new football stadium is going up in town. Why would people do that if they thought the future was so challenging? Because humans simply can't just stop, and they especially can't stop on the basis of "well, what's the point building a 500 person plane if we don't even have any oil or becaue of CO2 restrictions". Imagine if business and government cancelled all construction projects on the basis of "given the future, there is little point continuing with this development today". Without a command rule in place a strategy like that would cause uncontrollable morbidity of public emotion, evaporation of confidence, collapse of non-essential business (that's most of them) and good old fashioned panic.
I am thinking about becoming a popularist leader of some small state or country (with water and volcanic soil) and putting in place a structure of social rule which would ensure the survival of that state. People are too stupid and too greedy to be given choice, we have proven that. But do I hear you say its better to live like progressive civilised Humans today whilst we can rather than like subsistence strugglers just to sustain ourselves into the future. So I'm being dramatic? I don't think you have thought about what it takes to cut CO2 by 80% and are resting far to comfortably on the throw away line 'they will invent an alternative'. Yes, 'they' might, in fact will, partially meet the need with technology. But how pray tell do you expect 'it' to be globally rolled out in the next 10 years? It isn't just some new operating system for all network terminals!
Having the ability to go skiing in the future at a resort with 150km of groomed pistes and 5 restaurants is _utterly_irrelevant_. If that's your only concern then see point #1 above. -
He wouldn't drop a 30m cliff. I think he meant feet, approx 10m
I have been over plenty of 3m drops. I would be very picky about the landing if it were any higher.
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I probably ate rosukatsu once a week for 104 weeks in a row, or perhaps every second week. I shit you not. I knew every tonkatsu place in akasaka, which one had the best rice or sauce or miso or katsu, offered free rice top ups, best cabbage, mustard quality. If you wanted thinly sliced cabbage, good rice, didn't care about the sauce, hand-ground goma, oily meat: I could recommend one. If you wanted dark miso with tofu bits, didn't care about the rice, wanted quality sauce and no goma, weak sweet mustard, again, I knew which one would meet you needs.
Hirekatsu doesn't compare to rosu.
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It seemed like a good reason to celebrate.
Now hold him accountable for his mistakes, the pain and the death that he helped create.
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% gradient is crap for a few reasons:
1. It isn't a natural way for the mind to visualise a slope, eg, "for every horizontal unit of travel the slope goes down 36% as much". It isn't intuitive.
2. What happens with slopes greater than 45 degrees? Please try and visualise in your mind how steep a slope is which is marked 119%. You can't, can you. You know its over 45 degrees, and that's about it.
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stop using 2.
This is a criminal offence:
2 b 2gether
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Mate, that sounds like a really shit trip. I don't think you will have much fun at all. Stay at home, get a desk job.Quote:Originally posted by snosurf:
I'm heading to south america in July next year, kicking off a long journey... I want to do a season in Argentina, Surf the Andean coast, Surf Brazil with my brazilian friend, then head up to mexico and central america to surf there with my freind. After that, i'm going up to Utah to spend the season at a resort there, then over to Europe for the summer where i want to travel eastern europe then surf france and morrocco again. At the end of the summer I want to go boarding in Austria until i run out of money and fly back to oz.
Of course, there will be other things besides surfing and boarding...namely: girls, music festivals/concerts and food as well as searching out skateparks.
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I dont have run in my start menu. I has XP set to look like classic
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no probs, it was funQuote:Originally posted by thursday:
whoops! well spotted spuds. Didn't notice the % sign. I saw "for experts only" so I thought must be steep.
Apologies for the gaff.
ps - my new signature isn't aimed at you personally. -
Hakuba has some lamer resort terrain than Niseko, no doubt. Its also got lots of good stuff as well (more than N)
The bottom edge of Tsugaike Kogen in Hakuba is the flattest, tamest, most gentle, wide open, forgiving, all round hamster, beginner ski slopes I have ever seen anywhere. I actually taught myself to snowboard there over several weekends. And look what I became: an internet tosser!
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The newer Google translator BETA now does an ok J to E job these days (well it isn't great, but at least its better than 3 years ago). Here is the translated reservations page. Looks like xmas and NYE are booked out.
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dude, take her to tsugaike kogen in Hakuba. The bottom area is flatter than Niseko. And it stays consistently flat with no crowds as the space is so wide open. It is perfect for beginners.Quote:Originally posted by albit:
hi
my family and i are planning a trip to ski/snowboard japan around december/january. my wife is still coming to terms with how slippery snow is and panics as soon as she gets going. can any one recommend a ski place that has long, very gentle slopes that she would be able to try learning on as most of the beginners slopes we have tried so far (in canada)are too short or become too steep before she is able to get the hang of it.
Seriously very gentle slopes. -
EBC - Your pictures are the best I have seen in a very long time, those ones from the valley at dawn. I am really impressed. You saw something that gave you a mountain feeling, you picked up the camera and you captured that feeling. Looking at the pictures I feel it, even if it were not your intention. I have no idea if the exposure, composition, shades and blah are correct, probably they aren't. But those things are only important if you want to publish a picture in a magazine. They don't change the enjoyment I get from pictures like yours. You should keep taking pictures, because your efforts so far are beautiful.
I have the same little point and shoot camera as you, by the way.
As for stealing pictures: people steal things that they don't have themselves, thats the key issue for me: they don't have pictures of the terrain. I don't care so much that they lower themselves by cropping the SJ logo out of another persons picture. I care that they want to cash in on the terrain from 'a wow, look at us' perspective yet don't even have any pictures of it of their own. Why? Probably never actually been up there themselves is the most likely answer.
Gnarly-dude: I agree with your maths, or the sentiment of it.
ok, that's 2 posts from work today, I'm out.
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Quote:
Thursday, you are a well intentioned but uninformed (nice) clown
They are PERCENT gradients, not degrees!
Seriously, you as an individual must to question the plausibility of a numbers and your interpretation thereof before you post them. Does a resort in Korea really have a 57 degree piste? Does that smell right to you?
The formula for converting slope in % to degrees:
Degrees = 180/pi * arctan(gradient/100)
A gradient of 100% is 45 degrees.
In your hopeful example, 57% = a lazy 29 degrees.
The % gradient is an expression of the ratio of elevation change for a given horizontal distance travelled. Old fashioned rise over run.
Put this is a spreadsheet.
cell A1: =180/PI()*ATAN2(1,B1/100)
Then in cell B1: put your percent gradient. Go on, type 40 in there. The number in cell A1 is the converted slope in degrees. It should read 21.8 -
My first day living in Japan, didn't have any cash, went to Post Office, put card in slot, machine wouldn't take my CBA Visa 8 digit pin, no cash for me. Very few cards have 8 digit pins, I have no idea why that one did.Quote:Originally posted by powwwers:
I agree with using your card to get cash advances. exchange rates are pretty much what they should be.
just remember one thing, if you`re going to use your credit card at a PO, be sure it`s a cc with a PIN for cash advances.
No PIN, no cash!!!
ATM convenience is very low relative to Australia - some are closed on Sundays and after 10pm in the evening. Plus different banks aren't always linked. Don't take it for granted like you do in Oz. (Australia as the best cash on demand system I have seen anywhere so far. You can get 50 bucks out of the till at the petrol station) -
I'd just like to say I am sorry for the above post.
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That's a tough one. I had a look around here but couldn't find anything.
ps - I hope you have suitably low expectations.
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55 requires really good conditions under your edges, no playing around either. Its actually hard to find it in quantity. I reckon the most I have had on it was 150m of vert, than backing off to 50, 48, 45, back to 50, etc with a long run out of 40 (which feels like 20 after being on 50). Even then, its hard to find sustained 50 in good conditions. 35-45 isn't really that noticeable unless its icy or very tracked out.Quote:Originally posted by Fattwins:
that made me chuckle really. I class it a bit different than db though 35 to 45 depending on features etc is steep and above 45 is usally always no fall steep, depending on the location.
for example a 50 degree treed slope with no drops is way easier than a 40 degree slope with drop features.
You are right about 40 trees with drops. Easy to do slow but really hard to do fluidly and quickly.
Trees really aren't my relative strength. I don't get much practice at them over here as the tree line is so low relative to the quality snow line. Although after some heavy falls there are seriously steep tree lines on offer in some spots. Really steep and full of granite cliffs. Often I find trees here too tight as well.
Have you been lost in a white-out?
in Snow talk, trip reports, Japan avalanche & backcountry
Posted
Yo Snosurf, I might expand on what toque raised his eyebrow at:
So FYI, you are playing dangerous games mate and don't appear to know it ("Turned out I was never in any real danger")
Strong wind... heavy snowfall... previously closed terrain... alone... no avalanche gear.
That's one recipe for a very panicked death. Forget the fact that it was a white-out and you were a bit scared at feeling lost, that was the least of your worries. Although, having just said that, the white out doesn’t help much: you cant see terrain features like [cross] loaded ridges and convex rolls. And crew in the resort cant see if you get in an avalanche either (not that you should ever depend on that as some measure of back up).
On the white-out topic:
Not knowing if you are even sliding, or which direction, is a nasty situation. And like Montoya said, staying on low angled stuff doesn't help, especially if it deep and you keep flopping over and having to un-strap to get going again.
Along with standard avalanche and navigation gear, I always ride with an emergency insulated bivi sack, a metal cup, gas, micro-stove, tea bags and sugar plus extra thermals, body vest and beanie. If the worst happens in a back country white-out then staying put for the night is a perfectly safe and sensible thing to do. Keep in mind I am most often in crevassed terrain and don't like the idea of navigating out of that with zero visibility. In that situation, unless we are with an experienced local, we'd just stay put.