Complaining does not help

Complaining will not make a bad situation better.

I went for a hike recently.
The brief for the journey was that we were to go about 3 km on mostly dirt roads to a creek.
The environment was dry Australian forest, mostly eucalyptus trees.
Thinking that the creek would be full of fresh water I foolishly didn’t take any water.
The journey was mostly down hill on the way there. The weather turned from warm to hot and humid.
The creek turned out to be a largely stagnant trickle. I had no way to purify the little water that was there.
Fortunately my companions had brought some water with them, but on the way back to camp we quickly ran out.
I was beginning to suffer the effects of dehydration and heat exhaustion. I felt very tired and even a few minutes walking was exhausting.
We stopped many times on the way back to the camp for me to recover some strength.
My friend asked me on the way back during one of our many stops ” What’s the most important thing for survival?”

Immediately I said “Knowledge”

Had I known the water in the creek was not drinkable I would have taken water.

Had I known the weather would become so hot and humid I would not have carried a jacket in my bag.

Once we had arrived back at camp we all drank lots of water and rested.

My friend commended me on not complaining about my obviously exhausting return journey.

I said ” Complaining never helps, so there’s not point in doing it”

He nodded knowingly.

Hearing the complaints of other people simply converts their problem into your problem.
It multiplies their irritation and makes that person your irritation.
One person complaining a lot can really destroy the morale of a group,
and then people will start arguing and fighting rather than attempting to solve the real problems they are being faced with.

So in the forest (or other places away from civilization) there will be hardships,
how you deal with them physically and emotionally is your choice.

Occasionally the person suffering will be you, it’s easy to ask people to not complain when you are not the person suffering.
When the suffering person is you, remember to not complain, you won’t be respected for your weaknesses, but you will be respected for being laconic.

Political correctness: What you need to know.

It seems that political correctness has its roots in Marxism. Critical theory is just  criticism without actually offering a solution because the solution (unspoken) is to destroy everything and replace it with Marxism.

having failed to get support from the working classes they turned to minority groups and academia to get support and created the language of political correctness.

Did you ever wonder what kind of politics the language was correct to?

Whats wrong with Marxism? Well Marx never had a job in his life so what exactly could he know about labor and economics?

Marxism has failed numerous times as an economic/political model because ultimately it’s an inefficient form of fascism.

Other forms of fascism are more efficient, not that it makes them inherently more justified, just better at distributing wealth and rewarding useful work.

It’s interesting to talk to people who use a lot of politically correct language in order to sound educated or intelligent, often quite quickly in a debate they become completely lost because their ideas have very little in in-depth analysis to them. They have simply not thought about what they have been told and rely on the flimsy arguments they were given and assume a theory (unproven) is a fact.

 

A theory is not a fact, and political correctness seems to be Marxism in disguise, that is a theory.

Comments are now enabled

Now that all the readers have had enough time to see the tone and style of the posts here, I am accepting comments.

By making a comment there is no guarantee that it will be published, but nothing relevant, reasonable and well written will be refused.

Of course I reserve the right to add conditions for veto on a  case by case basis, as different eventualities arise.

So aside from the above , I’d like to hear what you have to contribute.

The comment button is not obvious because of the theme, if there are no current comments.

This should help you find it in relation to the post title and the grey line.

How to find the elusive comment button.

Scram bag: Radio

Got to get information.

Access to information is very important and radio, while an old technology now, is likely to be one of the best sources of information during a crisis. AM radio is a particularly good source because of its range and likelihood of operation.

the DEGEN DE13 world receiver.

DEGEN DE13 Solar / windup/ 5V DC powered. Radio AM FM SW, LED flash light, red flashing LED, USB power output, and alarm.

This is a really great radio, packed with features.

A radio? You may think that because your mobile phone has a radio you’ve got it covered. Well partially. Mobile phones generally only receive FM radio and usually only with headphones attached as they double as the antenna.

FM is a relatively short range radio signal so if you are far from a transmitter you wont hear anything.

AM radio stations use large amounts of power and have large capacitors in order to operate, so that when the power goes off to radio stations FM stations only have generator reserves. AM stations will have a few days of electric reserves in their capacitors on top of generator reserves, so an AM receiver will be more likely to give you information and for longer. AM stations also have much longer range in reception as well.

Shortwave SW radio has enormous range, you’ll realize this when you start hearing languages other than English on them. Shortwave radio receivers are somewhat uncommon these day also.

Powering it.

Solar: A nice little polycrystalline panel.

Wind up: 60 turns of the handle for 1 hour of radio.

AAA cells: 3 AAA cells are an option.

micro USB port: the 5 pin connector, connect to a computer or other 5V DC source.

Lithium battery: Just like what is in cordless phones.

Features:

3 LED light, a pretty good light for shorter range illumination.

Red flashing LED, this is meant to be for reading maps at night, the red doesn’t affect you night vision too much.

Siren: I’m not sure how this is useful but its there.

USB output: I think this runs from the wind up only,  and has output limited to low current for charging older mobile phones or small electronic devices, but better than nothing (though the manual doesn’t specify).

Down sides.

Not waterproof, this can be mitigated buy using a small water proof container or bag.

Not dust proof, if your operating environment is very dusty of silty you could have trouble.

Antenna clasp is a bit fragile, fortunately this is not a critical component.

Battery case cover for the 3xAAA compartment seems a little flimsy.

No clock, one of the few products where the addition of a clock might have made sense, radio shows are scheduled to start at certain times, thought announcers do tend to quote the time often enough.

The instruction manual that comes with this device is pretty vaguely written, a bad translation from Chinese, it’s almost a throw away manual.

There is not form of charge indicator, just  charging LED (green) and a discharging LED (red).

 

Short wave radio stations sometimes talk about transmitting on X meters rather than a frequency.

This length distance they are talking about is the wave length of the radio wave, wavelength is usually given the Greek letter λ

c is the speed of light in a vacuum 299 792 458 m / s , you’ll notice this number is close to 300,000,000,  300 million or 3 x 10 ^8.

Frequency: f , measured in Hz (Hertz).

For example if someone was transmitting on 19 meters:

c  = λ  *  f

f =  c / λ

f = 300,000,000/19

f = 1,000,000   *  300/19

f = 1,000,000   *   15.79 Hz

f   = 15.79 MHz  (or 15,790 kHz )

This radio can detect that short wave frequency and those between 5.8 MHz and 18.2 MHz (51 to 16.5 meters in wavelength).

It should be noted that some SW bands are not in the frequency region where they should be due to some historical conventions.

 

Radio frequency notebook

You should create a series of notebook entries listing for each location you plan to be in which frequencies are operational and what type of information is given.

ie

location 1

AM  frequency  information types

station 1             music and hourly news

station 2             news and weather (mostly prerecorded)

FM  frequency  information types

station 3        music  (infrequent news)

SW frequency  information types

station 4        Chinese language (shipping?)

 

A great deal of information can be inferred from which stations are still broadcasting also with what information they are giving.

 

This handy radio comes in several colors; dark green(pictured), lime green fluoro, and white, though I’m sure almost any color is possible

Can be bought from many internet sellers for about $30.

$5 Fingernail sized computer

micro SD card, finger nail size, with SD card adapter.

Impossible?

Put a live USB for Linux Ubuntu LTS 12.04 on a bootable 4Gb micro SD card and you’ll realize it’s not impossible.

http://www.ubuntu.com/

http://www.ubuntu.com/download/help/try-ubuntu-before-you-install

http://www.pendrivelinux.com/universal-usb-installer-easy-as-1-2-3/#button

<need make bootable and loader links>

In fact I’m using it right now. And I bought the card (4Gb with SD card adapter for $5) just weeks ago.

O.K, it’s not a whole computer, is a whole operating system and saved files , but as soon as you find PC with with a flash card adapter or a USB port, you’ll quickly be able to have your familiar environment and files on screen.

You can get all the software for free, you may need to hunt down someone a little computer savvy to help you set it up.

Once set up, it is a small as you are going to get your files, and it contains a system to view and alter them, connect to the Internet, the whole thing.

To use this you will  possibly need to alter the host PC BIOS to accept boot from USB and probably press a key on restart to enable this to happen*.

micro SD card with USB adapter

*guide coming soon

You could of course use a USB stick but its not quite as compact. The extremely small size of the micro SD give its the ability to be hidden if necessary. Something that small can be hidden in so many places the mind boggles, even more so for a person trying to find it.

If you find yourself in a an emergency or sudden collapse scenario, you can take all of your important data with you as a very small item and very fast. Any one searching your computer would not be aware for quite some time that you took this essential component with you. leaving behind a computer with a copy of windows or apple OS with nothing particularly interesting/identifying/incriminating on it. It can really change the game.

You may be traveling for a long time in a sudden collapse scenario and the ability to periodically access a computer and have everything you want on it ( exactly the way you left it last) would be very useful.

Imagine you have been on the road for  a week and find an abandoned house.In the house there is a desktop computer with the side of the case missing,clearly the hard drives are missing. The house still has some power from whats left of a solar PV and inverter setup. They left in a hurry, and as it is, the PC wont work .Those plants you saw 2 kilometers back, are they edible? Load up your tiny fingernail computer and compare them to the edible plants data you have. Are there any WI-fi signals here?  What dose my map tell me? All these things become possible with this tiny investment you made when you saw a post on the Internet about a $5 fingernail sized computer.

Cost $5 or less, might save your life.

Ubuntu Logo. Ubuntu is a popular variant of Linux, a free and open source computer operating system.