2013-07-21

CRKT RSK Mk5 Sheaths

The CRKT RSK Mk5 is a nice knife cursed by a terrible sheath.

I’ve been EDCing the knife since my Nemesis Hellion was lost last November. Unfortunately, the “glass filled nylon” sheath that the RSK Mk5 ships with is a poor design. The grommet in the tip is too small to accept a piece of paracord. This was done to keep the overall size of the sheathed knife small enough to fit inside an Altoids tin. I have never understood the obsession with the Altoids tin survival kit. I prefer to carry a knife about this size around my neck.

Some time ago I purchased a new sheath for my RAT Izula from a fellow on eBay who goes by lemonwoodgallery. I was pleased with that purchase, so as soon as I bought the RSK Mk5 I shipped it to him to make me a custom kydex sheath. It’s nothing fancy – just your standard taco style sheath with two grommets at the top for a piece of paracord and one on the side for retention. This is the same design as the sheath for the Nemesis Hellion, which served me well for 6 years. The new sheath has held the RSK Mk5 around my neck for about 8 months now. It’s a much appreciated upgrade.

This article was modified 2013-07-22.

2013-07-14

micro, books

Currently reading The Way of the Knife by Mark Mazzetti.

In the book Mazzetti tracks the CIA’s re-entry after 9/11 into the business of killing people, and the resulting decline in their ability to perform intelligence work. It is a good companion to Eric Schmitt’s Counterstrike.

2013-07-02

micro, bicycle

I had never ridden a century before last week.

On the eleventh day of my Northwest tour I rode 101.3 miles. On the final day I rode 105.4 miles – with my touring load, through a thunder storm, over a mountain pass, in temperatures reaching the mid-90°s Fahrenheit. It never gets easier, you just go faster.

2013-07-01

micro, books

Currently reading Kim by Rudyard Kipling.

The combination in Kim of self-discovery across India and espionage of the Great Game in reads like the mixing of Siddhartha with a John le Carré novel.

2013-06-30

bicycle

A Northwest Tour

I have done a handful of bike tours ranging from two to four days, but nothing longer. During the winter I had a notion to do a longer ride this June while waiting for the snows to melt out the backcountry. The idea began as a ride to Idaho, then lengthened to include Montana, and then in practice reverted to the original Idaho idea.

I left on Monday, June 17th and took the first day getting up to Marblemount. From there I picked up the Adventure Cycling Association’s Northern Tier. I followed that route to Sandpoint, Idaho, with a detour through Grand Forks, BC to avoid Sherman Pass. I had intended to use the Ride Idaho route to head to Thompson Falls, Montana and then loop back through Idaho, but I was concerned about running out of time. Instead, from Sandpoint I took back roads and a highway down to Spokane. There I picked up US 2, which took me back home via Stevens Pass. The route looked roughly like this.

Along the way I camped where I could, stayed at Warm Showers when available, and even did a couple motels. I packed my Seek Outside Lil’ Bug Out Shelter to provide a bit more luxury than my normal tarp.

Luggage-wise I used the same setup that I have developed on my shorter trips: a combination of bikepacking gear from Revelate Designs and Cleaveland Mountaineering, with small custom panniers from Velo Transit. This kept me fast and light, without the sacrifice in functionality that I think a strict bikepacking setup necessitates. I ran into other tourists along the Northern Tier, most of whom had heavier setups that they regretted when climbing mountains.

I had no mechanical failures on the trip. Not even a flat. I’m still running the same pair of Schwalbe Marathon Supremes that I purchased last December. I don’t know how many miles I have on them now, but it is somewhere north of 4,000. They have yet to have a flat and the tread, while worn, is still going strong.

Statistics

Day One: 83.8 miles
Day Two: 78.6 miles
Day Three: 60 miles
Day Four: 32.5 miles
Day Five: 53.9 miles
Day Six: 87.2 miles
Day Seven: 88.4 miles
Day Eight: 36.6 miles
Day Nine: 87 miles
Day Ten: 70.3 miles
Day Eleven: 101.3 miles
Day Twelve: 24.8 miles
Day Thirteen: 105.4 miles

Total mileage: 909.8 miles

Average daily mileage: 70 miles

I have no record of elevation change, but the trip took me over five mountain passes. I bypassed the sixth by detouring into Canada.

2013-05-31

micro, books, bicycle

Currently reading Travels with Rosinante by Bernard Magnouloux.

Magnouloux spent 5 years cycling around the world. He crossed paths with Richard and Nicholas Crane in Lhasa, and this book has some echoes of their Journey to the Centre of the Earth.

Thanks to Joe Cruz for the recommendation.

2013-05-29

backups, crypto, linux, annex

Optical Backups of Photo Archives

I store my photos in git-annex. A full copy of the annex exists on my laptop and on an external drive. Encrypted copies of all of my photos are stored on Amazon S3 (which I pay for) and box.com (which provides 50GB for free) via git-annex special remotes. The photos are backed-up to an external drive daily with the rest of my laptop hard drive via backitup.sh and cryptshot. My entire laptop hard drive is also mirrored monthly to an external drive stored off-site.

(The majority of my photos are also on Flickr, but I don’t consider that a backup or even reliable storage.)

All of this is what I consider to be the bare minimum for any redundant data storage. Photos have special value, above the value that I assign to most other data. This value only increases with age. As such they require an additional backup method, but due to the size of my collection I want to avoid backup methods that involve paying for more online storage, such as Tarsnap.

I choose optical discs as the medium for my photo backups. This has the advantage of being read-only, which makes it more difficult for accidental deletions or corruption to propagate through the backup system. DVD-Rs have a capacity of 4.7 GBs and a cost of around $0.25 per disc. Their life expectancy varies, but 10-years seem to be a reasonable low estimate.

Preparation

I keep all of my photos in year-based directories. At the beginning of every year, the previous year’s directory is burned to a DVD.

Certain years contain few enough photos that the entire year can fit on a single DVD. More recent years have enough photos of a high enough resolution that they require multiple DVDs.

Encrypt

Leaving unencrypted data around is bad form. The archive (or each of the files resulting from splitting the large archive) is next encrypted and signed with GnuPG.

$ gpg -eo 2012.tar.bz.gpg 2012.tar.bz
$ gpg -bo 2012.tar.bz.gpg.sig 2012.tar.bz.gpg

Imaging

The encrypted archive and the detached signature of the encrypted archive are what will be burned to the disc. (Or, in the case of a large archive, the encrypted splits of the full archive and the associated signatures will be burned to one disc per split/signature combonation.) Rather than burning them directly, an image is created first.

$ mkisofs -V "Photos: 2012 1/1" -r -o 2012.iso 2012.tar.bz.gpg 2012.tar.bz.gpg.sig

If the year has a split archive requiring multiple discs, I modify the sequence number in the volume label. For example, a year requiring 3 discs will have the label Photos: 2012 1/3.

Parity

When I began this project I knew that I wanted some sort of parity information for each disc so that I could potentially recover data from slightly damaged media. My initial idea was to use parchive via par2cmdline. Further research led me to dvdisaster which, despite being a GUI-only program, seemed more appropriate for this use case.

Both dvdisaster and parchive use the same Reed–Solomon error correction codes. Dvdidaster is aimed at optical media and has the ability to place the error correction data on the disc by augmenting the disc image, as well as storing the data separately. It can also scan media for errors and assist in judging when the media is in danger of becoming defective. This makes it an attractive option for long-term storage.

I use dvdisaster with the RS02 error correction method, which augments the image before burning. Depending on the size of the original image, this will result in the disc having anywhere from 20% to 200% redundancy.

Verify

After the image has been augmented, I mount it and verify the signature of the encrypted file on the disc against the local copy of the signature. I’ve never had the signatures not match, but performing this step makes me feel better.

$ sudo mount -o loop 2012.iso /mnt/disc
$ gpg --verify 2012.tar.bz.gpg.sig /mnt/disc/2012.tar.bz.gpg
$ sudo umount /mnt/disc

Burn

The final step is to burn the augmented image. I always burn discs at low speeds to diminish the chance of errors during the process.

$ cdrecord -v speed=4 dev=/dev/sr0 2012.iso

Similar to the optical backups of my password database, I burn two copies of each disc. One copy is stored off-site. This provides a reasonably level of assurance against any loss of my photos.

2013-05-06

micro, bicycle

I put rule #7 into practice yesterday.

Six hours, 85 miles, two very sharp lines.