Windy Tops

Tag: toys

  • Being hip and groovy, just like skiers

    Trying to help dig a snow cave during a blizzard a couple of months ago (during that training course) really made an impression on me. I realised that although handy at times, regular sunglasses can be seriously out of their depth in some conditions. For much of the weekend it was difficult to choose between being blind from perpetually fogged up glasses (thanks to warm breath coming up the balaclava) or being blind from a stinging and freezing wind in my eyes. In the end I guess it was fortunate that we were digging the cave about 30 metres from the club lodge, so it didn’t really matter.

    It’s true that we were there on a weekend that was noted for its unusually severe weather, and as we were sipped hot chocolate in our toasty lodge, about 2,000 skiers were being hastily evacuated from the mountain. Perhaps I’ll never experience that kind of thing again, but one thing I learned was that the people with proper goggles protecting their faces were a whole lot better off than people like me who’d decided to try and put off getting any. It inspired me to buy some proper snow goggles before my next alpine trip, primarily for a safety thing I suppose, just in case. This will probably be a few weeks away, but I thought I’d try to go shopping now before all the stock’s gone, since it’s getting towards the end of the ski season.
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  • I have a new camera

    I have a new camera! It’s a Canon Powershot A720 IS, which is actually very similar to my old Canon Powershot A710 IS. Notable differences between the two are that it takes photos at a slightly higher resolution, it’s reportedly several grams lighter, and it has less water inside.
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  • Branders as retailers

    Lately it was announced that the Fairydown brand is under new management (again) for about the millionth time in its history, although I don’t feel as if I’ve been around on the scene long enough to really appreciate all the changes it’s gone through. (Ben of Cactus Climbing has a brief summary of the recent situation.) Well done to these three guys and good luck to them. The new business plan, rather than manufacturing quality NZ-made goods for NZ conditions, is to manufacture it all in Asia (as everyone does these days to be fair), and open New Zealand Fairydown retail outlets in the main centres. I guess I’ve been wondering from my limited perspective about some of the changes that have been going on in the Wellington retail sector of tramping shops.
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  • I have a new toy

    I have a new toy (a Sony VAIO VGNSZ433NB), although the guy at the Sony shop in Wellington didn’t help much. I’d narrowed it down to three choices from Sony’s website, based on specifications. Not many places near the south end of the CBD seem to stock Sony laptops, and I thought I might actually be able to get a look at them. It turned out that my third choice was down to a display model, and the guy claimed that the first two models had been discontinued. He then tried to tell me that I’d be much better off getting its replacement (which wasn’t actually a replacement so much as the next model up), which cost an extra thousand dollars. When I mentioned I was planning to blow away Windows completely, he started practically trying to talk me out of it, and attempted to convince me how great Vista. (He reckoned there would be all sorts of driver problems, which I didn’t believe.)

    I then walked over to Noel Leeming, which didn’t have it but said they could get it on special order. Either way, it wasn’t available for me to actually play with. In the end I ordered it off Ascent late on Tuesday night, it arrived on Wednesday, and I’m really happy with it. I blew away Windows last night and installed Kububtu Linux. There are a few issues with the Suspend function, which so far I’m optimistic about, but otherwise it’s been working great. I’m now an owner of a Notebook produced by Sony, which incidentally is also one of the most evil media companies in the world. Yay for me.

    Off to the Tararuas this weekend.

  • My Dell is choking

    As of this evening, my old Dell Inspiron 5150 has started choking. It’s randomly rebooting, or putting itself into a half-asleep state, within a few minutes of switching on. This is a little sad, but in the back of my mind it’s quite exciting. It’s the first laptop I ever bought (in 2003), and there are plenty of things I’d do differently next time around. (I’d avoid Dell for one thing.) If it really is dying, it could be a convenient excuse to buy a new laptop.

    Meanwhile, I have to try and figure out if there’s any important data on it that I’ll need to try and get off.

  • Expensive compasses

    I went shopping for a compass at lunch time today, as I can’t find my old one since arriving back. It turns out that not much has changed: the cheapest basic base-plate compass in a tramping shop is $30, and the ones worth getting are at least $45. Fortunately I managed to get a Coleman compass identical to my old one from Rebel Sport, which as far as I can tell is just as good, except it’s not a fancy Suunto or Silva branded compass with shiny lights and mirrors all over it.

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  • Hooray, I got my shoes back

    Two weeks, three weekends, plus an additional week of drying out time later, my trampey boots finally came back from Christchurch. (This is a 35 minute flight or overnight courier.) They had a note attached from the distributor saying that unfortunately the rubber wasn’t split enough to be able to repair them, and suggested that I keep wearing them. The retailer then had them fixed in Wellington, and I got them back again. I wasn’t really expecting to get a credit, and after the previous experience I wasn’t so surprised about the length of time it took, but I was a bit flummoxed that they didn’t even repair them at all.

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  • Travel sinking in

    It’s been a whole weekend without any tramping, and it’s starting to sink in that I’m flying out of here a week from now. I went into work for part of yesterday and this morning, because I couldn’t think of anything else to do. Then this afternoon, I walked home the long way, and found a new track through the town belt around the Newtown end of Mt Vic.

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  • Problems with Salomon Alp-7 GTX boots

    So anyway, here’s what happened to my new boots. In summary, be cautious before buying Salomon Alp 7 GTX boots, because in my opinion they aren’t that great. To be fair, my opinion’s probably been influenced by the problems I’ve had with getting them fixed under warranty.

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  • Shiny new boots

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    Yesterday I bought some shiny new boots. Someone told me a while ago that New Zealanders don’t have a very good reputation for looking after their trampey gear, so I thought that perhaps I should take a photo of them before I trash them.

    Here they are.

    They even still have the label attached.

    In any case, I’ll make an effort to keep a record here of any misfortune they might happen to suffer under my ownership, and make notes of how they cope with it. This afternoon, I’m planning to take them for their first walk, if my broken knee can handle it okay. (Nothing too strenuous, just a walk up to the air traffic control radar dome behind Wellington’s wind turbine, and wandering around that area for a while.) I expect to suffer a blister or two as a result.