Mapping My Backyard

I was lucky enough to get a few weeks of leave for Christmas, so I went home to my family’s house in Vermont with my wife, Jackie, and our cat. In between camping and ski-hiking, I was looking for another little project.

My parents bought the land which our house is on when we still lived in Beijing, and there’s a lot of history in the woods. Only two modern roads survive in the immediate area, but if you go into the woods it’s clear that there used to be others, which have been neglected for a long time. The woods are also home to an entire system of bike trails, maintained by the Brewster River Mountain Bike Club, of which my dad is a member. There’s a lot going on up there, but if you look at Google Maps, it’s utterly empty.

Testing Torpedos Part 2

A while back I wrote an article about torpedo guidance strategy in a submarine game. The concept was to compare five different methods of torpedo control, and to implement each in C#. In this follow-up, I test each one and compare them, to see which is most effective.

Hausdorff's Backpacks

Since my last post, I’ve gone backpacking a few times, and each time I try to bring a little less. No, I’m not ultralight yet (often defined as base weight under 10 pounds), but I’m pretty close. My last base weight was 12.1.

Once I went through the relatively easy phases of lightening my bag (bring smaller bottles of things, stop bringing changes of clothes, weigh my meals), I started to fantasize about buying another backpack. This time, I thought to myself, I would get one which was incredibly light. My current pack weighs almost two pounds (17% of my base weight!) and I was desperate to take a little weight off.

Novice Backpacking

Over the long weekend, I took a trip with a few friends out to Seneca Rocks, WV. My friends are big rock climbers, so they spent all day on the rock face. I decided to use the time to take a step towards a long-term goal.

I’ve always wanted to go ski-camping. I have a really sweet pair of Alpine Touring (AT) skis, and I’ve used them to ski around a few resorts and state parks in my home state of Vermont.

Testing Torpedos Part 1

I’ve played pretty much all the big modern submarine simulations (Dangerous Waters, 688I, Silent Service, Sub Command, etc.), and in my opinion, Cold Waters is the most fun by far. It’s not the most realistic game: there is pretty much no parallel between Cold Waters and how sonar, tracking, classification, etc. work in real life. Damage control is pretty simplistic. Driving the submarine is easy. That’s all okay, because that isn’t what Cold Waters is about. The fun part is dodging torpedos.