牧高笛 TOP 拓扑普及款

一個大前廳, 是非常方便的事, 特別在下雨天... 牧高笛這東西, 就是擴大前廳的最簡單方法

這東西頗大, 可以放好多東西, 一張椅, 一張小桌子, 還有許多空間多出來! 開一張天幕也可以, 也這東西就輕得多了... 搭建也不算難, 我第一次在晚黑開, 也不算太難... 基本上, 是建好營幕內帳, 然後就用三個小鈎子固定, 再拉兩條風繩, 就完成了... 這前廳算不錯, 但因為是搭建在 2-3 人營的基礎上, 所以自然比較矮小, 要從旁邊進去, 再進入營幕, 也有會點辛苦... 整體來說, 一個人露營, 這東西是個好選擇...

DIY 450D external power supply

I had a third party battery dead, so why not convert it into an external power supply?

First of all, open the case carefully.

And then you see there are two Lithium cells inside, lift them up:

Take them out with the circuit board.  This is supposed to be the protection circuit, we're going to keep them both as the interface to the camera, and also to serve as the protection circuit of the external battery.  I will use two unprotected 18650.

Put the battery case inside, insert it into the camera, mark where you should drill a hole for the external battery.

Now, you're ready  to do the soldering work.

Solder the case, mark the polarity.

I put some hot melt glue for insulation and for fixing the cable in place... you may want to fill more just to glue up the cover.

QED.

I think it is good for astrophotography.  You don't want to remove the camera just  to replace the battery, one could do it externally without touching the camera body.

Replacing the hard drive of Dell Inspiron 2020

It uses a 3.5" desktop HDD, the original one was a Seagate 512G.  I'm going to replace it with a Seagate 1T.

The original plan was the following:

1. Clone the original hard drive
2. Disassembly the Inspiron
3. Replace the hard drive

But then the cloning process was not very successful.  The way I did was to connect the new hard drive with a USB to SATA cable, and then clone from the internal hard driver.  However, I soon realize that the sector size was different, and none of the software that I tried could do the clone.  I believe even a "dd" won't work.  I found that internal drive had 512 bytes sector size, while USB connect drive had 4K sector size and that is the source of the problem.

Finally, I backup the original drive and then install the new hard drive, followed by restore from the backup image.  It works flawlessly, Windows 8 does not complain about the change of hardware.  I've created a new partition with the added space and it works fine, too.

Keeping food for camping

To keep food fresh is an issue for camping.  Vegetables are easier for one or two days, but meat could be hard since you can hardly have a refrigerator outside.  Some people will bring a large ice box, but this is not often an option for someone without a car.  And it makes no sense to bring a large ice box if you're going alone.

So I bought the following for this purpose.  I boiled some soup yesterday and I couldn't finish it at once, so I put them into the bottle for later consumption.  The weather is not cold and I expect it could keep the content hot for a few hours.

BU 

After two hours or so, I could the cap was pretty warm.  I believe the cap is the weakest link.

I will try it out soon by first freezing some meat, and then keep inside, see if it could keep them until the next morning.  Consuming it at the same night is problem free, you don't even need such a bottle, but I usually have can food before buying this one.

Toaks Titanium Cookset plus a small gas stove

This is an ultra-light setup, big enough for personal use and marginal for two persons.  I bought it for hiking + camping trip.  While I've no time to go camping immediately, so I tested it at home with my BRS-8b.

The cover could be used as a frying pan, and it fits nicely together, that handle is really nice too.  The first exercise is to reheat the soup from the refrigerator and it works flawlessly.

To complete this ultra-light setup, I've also bought a small gas stove with a tripod shape converter, you could see how compact and light weight it is.

 Finally, I bought some more titanium stuff so as to complete my ultra-light collection.

So right now I've a pair of chopsticks, a fork/spoon, a cup and also a 800mm water bottle.  Enough for the moment.

Solo Hiking: Dragon's Back

Actually, I did it before, but this time is longer and more complete.

I did wear a heart beat monitor to alert myself, there are so many people along the way perhaps this path is so famous.

Taking bus 9 from Shau Kei Wan MTR station, all the way to 土地灣 (also indicated as Dragon's Back), the entrance of the hiking trail is in view after dropping off.

The view could be really nice when weather permits.

I brought along my ukulele...

I should do more hiking myself and I wish to have my first solo camping soon!

Summer Camping

I hadn't gone camping in summer for something like 20 years.  It's always rainy, and exceptionally wet and hot here in Hong Kong.  This is a breakthrough to me to serve 20 kids in a local campsite.  When we said a campsite, we have bath room and we can have meal without cooking and indeed, we just cooked our own breakfast.

To tackle the hot weather, I have another camp which has good ventilation, and I have a small fan inside, powered by 3 18650 batteries in series.  I found that a set of 3400mmAh battery could last for a whole night.

This time I have so many 18650 with me, 3 for another small fan, 6 for a portable mobile charger, and another 6 as spare, and also 1 with my tent lamp.