I regularly read Lifehacker which often has a great tips and tricks. I noticed they had an article about CHDK firmware for Canon point and shoot cameras, which lead me to another article about the same firmware. I had heard about that earlier, but back then it didn't support my Ixus 850IS. This has apparently changed. CHDK is a firmware hack for Canon point and shoot cameras that bring quite a few new features to those cameras. Most interesting of those to me are the ability to shoot RAW and bracketing options for shooting images to be used as ingredients of HDR images. So clearly I needed to give it a go.

After uploading the CHDK, I managed to get my Ixus 850IS (aka SD800IS with Digic III processor) to shoot RAW images (CRW), but none of the apps I normally use seemed to be able to read those. Apparently the RAW files produced by CHDK are not compatible with Canon official RAW files, so conversion is required. This was a kicker. dng4ps2 is able to convert Canon cameras RAW files into Digital Negative (DNG) format, which is ideal for this purpose. As it supports Powershot SD800 IS, which is American for Ixus 850 IS, one might thinks that all that is required is to simply select that as a camera from Settings - Camera options and be done with that. One would be wrong, this produces the error message "Can't find camera profile for this file". After some digging out, I found the solution:

• Do NOT select anything under Settings - Camera types
• Under Settings - Camera options, choose "Powershot SD800 IS" and press "copy". Type "Canon DIGITAL IXUS 850 IS" as camera name and "IXUS 850 IS" as short name.

Unfortunately, dng4ps2 loses your camera profile when you close the app, so this step has to be done every time you start the app. Interestingly enough, the created profile seems to be stored in Windows register but it doesn't seem to have any effect whatsoever. Anyway, I can live with that.

XnView, RawTherapee and Gimp armed with Ufraw plugin are also able to read the files and export the files as tiff, however not to DNG. The same goes for Google Picasa, except that it can't create TIFF either.

I did some experiments with bracketing as well. I am using Allbest build of CHDK which has several extra photo oprations , one of them being Bracketing in Continuous Mode . Following the guide Bracketing I managed to get it to work. Well, sort of. I couldn't figure out the way to get to the sub menu where I am supposed to be able to adjust the number of bracketed shots. Other than that it seemed fine. There are more advanced options for bracketing involving the use of scripts . To use scripts for creating ingredients of HDR images, see Make ANY Single-Shot Intervalometer into an HDR-Bracketing Script .

As RAW files always, and uncompressed ones in particular, are much larger than jpeg images, I went on bought new SDHC memory card. Only to find out that my memory card reader doesn't want to co-operate with such cards.

• CHDK. A wiki dedicated to the CHDK firmware add-on for Canon's Digic II, Digic III and now the Digic IVcameras!
• How-To: Expand your camera with CHDK. By anwilliams at Hack a Day.
• Turn Your Point-and-Shoot into a Super-Camera. By Adam Pash at Lifehacker.
• dng4ps2. DNG for PowerShot-2 (DNG4PS-2) is free software for conversion of Canon cameras RAW files into Digital Negative (DNG) format.

While I am at it, I though to throw min few links to articles about climbing photography:

• Climbing Photography. At Spadout.
• Climbing photography tips'n'tricks. At What do you want to climb today?.
• Climbing photography: some tips. By Quang-Tuan Luong at Terra galleria.

One of the issues of climbing photography is that especially in the mountain environment, cameras in general and compact cameras in particular do a rather pathetic job of capturing the full dynamic range of the nature. Luckily, this shortcoming can be remedied with HDR images. the big idea of HDR images is to shoot multiple shots of the same image with different settings, then combine the images into a single image that utilizes color information from the multiple shots.

• How To: Create Stunningly Realistic High Dynamic Range Photographs. Gizmodo's John Mahoney explains how to take high dynamic range (HDR) photos so that the results of your photograph more accurately recreate what you were seeing when you snapped the shutter. By John Mahoney at Gizmodo.
• How to Create Professional HDR Images. The Backing Winds weblog details how to create high dynamic range (HDR) photos using Photoshop. By Ryan McGinnis at Backing Winds.

Often there's only need to combine multiple shots into a single panorama photo.

• Create a perfect panorama. By Mark Galer & Philip Andrews at Adobe Design Center Tutorials.
• How to Create a Panorama with Photoshop and Photomerge. By Darren Rowse at Digital Photography School.

I am considering buying new camera. As most of my photographing is done during the climbing trips, its suitability for climbing photography is the driving decision factor. Unfortunately, no one is producing s camera that would fulfill all my requirements, which are:

• Very small and light. Camera needs to fit in jacket pocked, otherwise it will see very little action. This rules out both SRL and larger compacts as well. We are talking about sub-200g range and as small as possible, especially depth is important.
• Robust and weatherproof.
• Lens. This is where it gets challenging. To be useful, the lens needs to have proper wide-angle. On the other hand, it needs to have reasonably long telezoom as well. Obviously the overall quality should be outstanding and it should not have any distortion to speak of. Tough order, I know. And it gets worse. As the lightening conditions are often difficult, large aperture is needed.
• Controls. On top of proper automatic and metering, the camera should have usable manual controls. The key here is usable, which pretty much requires manual focus ring (you can't really use menus when trying to focus, can you).
• Features. Ability to shoot RAW is probably on top of my list. GPS would be very handy for automatic geotagging.
• Video. To be useful, optical zoom needs to be available when shooting video and the camera needs to be able to shoot HD video with normal frame speed, otherwise the whole feature is useless to me.

During my research, the following models made it to the short list:

Panasonic DMC-TZ7

Followup model of successful TZ5 with improved video features. Looks possibly the best compromise. However, based on reviews there are some rather alarming shortcomings. First and foremost, it has very small censor. This is almost a necessity if you want to pack an impressive zoom into a very compact body. The downside of this is of course reverse impact of aperture, noisiness and dynamic range. And sure enough, e.g. Panasonic Lumix DMC-LX3 and Fuji Finepix 200EXR reportedly boast vastly superior dynamic range. LX3 would shoot RAW as well, but unfortunately it has much shorter zoom, is quite a bit larger and its video features are far inferior to TZ7.

Fuji Finepix 200EXR

Reportedly very good dynamic range and boasts 5x zoom which would be acceptable I guess, but its video features are sorely lacking.

Ricoh CX1

Ricoh seems to have an interesting looking model in their offering as well, namely CX1 (only SD video, though). Very interesting features such as in-camera HDR.

Canon PowerShot SX200IS

Canon's entry into compact superzoom market. Sorely lacking in the video department (no zoom during recording, seriously?).

Nikon Coolpix S620, S610, S710

Nikon offering in its Coolpix S range sport both wide angle lens and reasonable zoom (up to 7x), however sadly not in the same camera. The video-side can't really keep up with the competition either.

Olympus μ9000

Samsung WB500

Interesting feature set but reportedly can't hold its own in image quality department.

• Panasonic Lumix DMC-TZ7 / ZS3 review . "Ultimately while there’s now more options to compare, the Lumix TZ7 / ZS3 remains a great choice, updating the compelling pocket super-zoom concept with the latest features. In short, one of the best compacts on the market just got better, and as such we can easily award the Lumix TZ7 / ZS3 our Highly Recommended rating." By Gordon Laing at Camera labs on 2009-03.

If only Panasonic offered similar camera to TZ7 with larger censor (granted it would limit the zoom, but something like 6-8x would still be very good. Combine that with with lower pixel density (meaning that instead of 10MP, it would have "only", say 8MP) and it should sport greater dynamic range and shouldn't suffer from high noise as badly as it currently does. In my book, something like that would be very hard to beat in supercompact point and shoot market.

I went on and replaced the "web 2.0" links available on some of the pages with JavaScript menu, which I reckon is less obtrusive and ultimately better from the maintenance point of view as well, as it would not require changes in markup. The script used on the site is based on JavaScript Context Menu by Luke Breuer. The sample has been changed quite a bit though. Unfortunately my tweaking seemed to have broken compatibility with Internet Explorer 7, though. I tested the script with Firefox (3.0.7 and 3.1 beta), Internet Explorer 8, Chrome 2.0 beta and Safari 4 beta. Furthermore, it should work just fine with other browsers as well as long as they allow replacing right-click menu. The best of this approach is that whenever the integrated services syntax requires changing or if I want to add new services, all I need to do is change the JavaScript. At this point, the integrated services are:

• Google Search
• Wikipedia
• SummitPost
• Flickr
• Picasa
• Google Maps

Essentially, the functionality pulled off with the JavaScript is rather similar to Accelerators , introduced in Internet Explorer 8. Those are pretty handy BTW; if you are using Firefox, IE8 Activities for Firefox comes highly recommended.

Recently some book recommendation came my way courtesy of Amazon's marketing ploy. I've picked a habit of checking their "customers who bought this also bought" recommendations. Which is where I noticed Andy Cave's "Learnign to Breathe" and "Thin White Line". As I had read Mick Fowler's books not too long ago, the name immediately sounded somewhat familiar given that Andy was part of the same tragic Changabang expedition featuring in one of Fowler's book. As I found out that both of Cave's books are highly acclaimed, I went on bought both of them. So far I am in the middle of "Learning to Breathe" but already it's safe to say that it was money well spent.

• 'I could do it at altitude - I had the gene'. By Tim Adams at The Guardian on 2005-05-08.
• Andy Cave
• Andy Cave - An interview and extract from Thin White Line. At UKC Climbing.
• From the pits to the peaks . Andy Cave writes movingly of his life as a miner and ace mountaineer in Learning to Breathe, says Alan White. By Alan White at The Guardian on 2005-06-05.
• Learning to Breathe by Andy Cave. By Mike Higgins at The Independent on 2005-07-24.
• Thin White Line by Andy Cave . By Giles Thurston at Mountaindays.net on 2008-06-03.

I recently noticed that Internet Explorer (including Internet Explorer 7) did a pathetic job of displaying this very site; (at least) all unordered (ul) and ordered lists (ol) were displayed incorrectly. This seems to be caused by IE:s inability to process such elements correctly whenever they are located within floated elements. Which is rather sad given that many pure-CSS layouts rely on floats to build the layout. Which is the case with this site as well. To make matter worse, there's no real solution to remedy this. Fortunately upcoming Internet Explorer 8 (currently available as beta 2) seems to finally fix this.

However, since lists are heavily used on this site and lack of bullets and inproper indents can seriously impair the readability of some of the pages, I added IE conditional comments along with CSS targeted to IE7 that fix this problem. At least up to the point where the layout is at least pretty close to what it should look like.

• About Conditional Comments
• Conditional Comments
• Internet Explorer conditional comments
• Internet Explorer conditional comments
• Targeting IE Using Conditional Comments and Just One Stylesheet

I also changed the mime-type to application/xhtml+xml which is what is recommended for xhtml 1.1. I am well aware that this may cause issues with old browsers. Furthermore, references to xhtml 1.1 schema are now added to html-root element.

• Lead in blocks. Leading in blocks reduces the wait time, as it distributes leading and belaying more evenly (timewise, that is). This is very significant during the winter. It also often means less need to swap gear at belays if the pitch took less than half the rack.
• Limit the number of belays. On multi-pitch routes very easy way to save loads of time is to build as few belays as possible. Usually this means using the full length of the rope. Naturally this isn't always feasible, but aim to run full rope length before placing the belay. Sometimes simul-climbing or soloing may be called for for the easier sections.
• Get efficient on belays. By far the easiest way of shaving off time is at the belays. The key here is not so much to do things as fast as possible, it's more important to do the right things and nothing more. Stuff like building a belay so that no fumbling with it is necessary when continuing upwards, handling a rope when bringing up the second so that no recoiling is needed, efficient way of swapping gear, the second starting to clear the belay as soon as the leader is secured (in ice this means the first solid screw is placed) etc. make a lot of difference.
• Make do with a single pack (if at all possible). Leading with a pack is so not my favorite thing to do, especially if the climbing is anywhere close to my limit. If you can't get by with just one bag, use small leader's pack and large second's pack.

• 10 ways to speed up your climbing. 10 tips on how to climb faster. By Andy Kirkpatrick at PsychoVertical.com.
• Alpine efficiency. How to get efficient (as in fast) in alpine terrain. By Rich Cross at Alpine Guides.
• Simul-climbing. Charpter about simul-climbing in an online book. By Cameron McPherson-Smith at Technical Alpine Climbing for Two-Person Teams.
• Tech Tip - Aid - Block leading. Concept of block leading explained in aid climbing context. The same principles can very well be employed in other forms of climbing as well. By Mike Shore at Climbing Magazine.
• Tech Tips - Multi-Pitch Climbing. Tips and trick for multi-pitch rock climbs. By Jules Barrett at www.outdoorsmagic.com.
• The winter leader's pack. What is a leader's pack and why you should use it. By Andy Kirkpatrick at PsychoVertical.com.

I just noticed there is a newish climbing-related film available in Blu-Ray: movie The Alps Stephen Judson . It was originally shot as Imax, so the feature length is substantially less than the is the case with typical films. Furthermore, it is more of a document than a feature film. Just as one might expect from a HD transfer of a Imax film, quality of shooting as well as picture quality leave very little room for improvement.

• John Harlin III
• John Harlin Reaches The Summit Of The Eiger. John Harlin reaches the summit of the Eiger North Face forty years after the infamous mountain claimed the life of his legendary father.
• Son Conquers A Killer Mountain. John Harlin III Lived His Life In His Father's Shadow, But Finally Eclipsed It. At CBS News, 2007-03-04.
• The Alps (Blu-Ray) . The Alps tells the story of John Harlin III, a man born in Switzerland whose father died attempting to climb the great Eiger, an extraordinarily dangerous mountain. John has spent the majority of his life in America, but he has recently decided to go back to Switzerland. "As the editor of the American Alpine Journal, I love to write and to climb," he says. This film, of course, is primarily concerned with the latter of Mr. Harlin's two loves. John Harlin III has determined to conquer the very mountain that conquered his father. Will he succeed? By Judge Clark Douglas at DVD Verdict on 2008-09-29.
• The Alps (IMAX) Blu-ray Review . Featuring music & songs by Queen, from MacGillivray Freeman Films, producers of the blockbuster hit Everest, comes the giant screen story of THE ALPS: its breathtaking beauty, harmonious culture, perilous avalanches and irresistible allure to a mountaineer on a personal journey to make peace with the mountain that killed his father. By Sir Terrence at Blu-ray.com on 2008-09-29.
• The Eiger Obsession by John Harlin . John Harlin III was nine years old when his father made his fated attempt on a direct ascent of the Eiger. Harlin had put together a terrific team and, despite unending storms, he was poised for the moment he had long waited for - the summit dash. However, Harlin’s rope broke at 2,000 feet from the summit, and he plummeted 4,000 feet to his death. By Giles Thurston at Mountaindays.net on 2008-08-18.

Now that the winters isn't too far far away, I decided to pay homage to Abalakov thread (aka V-thread), ingenius, yet extremely simple ice anchor. Knowing how to build one efficiently is a necessary skill for anyone planning on doing multipitch ice climbs. It can be used to bail off a route without the need to leave expensive screws behind. However, it's greatest potential lies in a use as belay anchor. Whenever you can't descent by simply walking down, Abalakov thread is often a better way to rappel than to use trees. Of course, on alpine terrain trees are often not readily available either. But even if you had abundance of sturdy trees, using them usually involves criss-crossing across the fall to get from the tree to next. Meaning that you often can't use the full length off the rope. However, by far the biggest downside of using trees is rope's magical tendency to wrap around them and bushes, making a tedious, and often dangerous, process of retrieving a stuck rope a very real possibility. Using Abalakov's the risk of rope getting stuck is far diminished as you can follow a vegetation-free line.

• How's your Abalakov?
• Ice Belays: Abalakoff thread

Mountain Hardwear Transition Featherweight Zip T. Ari Paulin 2008-10-06 About a year ago I finally decided to dig my pockets deep enough to dish out cash to purchase "Mountain Hardwear Transition Featherweight Zip T", lightweight, yet windproof shirt made of Gore-tex Windstopper Next2Skin (N2S). After using it in rock climbing and trail running, I can't rave enough about it. Why more manufacturers don't make apparel like this, is beyond me. Windstopper N2S is typically far thinner than (most) softshell fabrics, thus it breathes better, packs smaller and is not too hot. In my book, you can't find a better clothing for summertime rock climbing in alpine surroundings or otherwise chillier days. Granted, these things don't come cheap, but they are worth every hard-earned cent.

Mountain Equipment Matrix. Ari Paulin 2008-10-06 Few year back I decided to replace my old and reliable bombproof Marmot Alpinist jacket with new hardshell. Finally I decided on Mountain Equipment Matrix, basically a Paclite shell with reinforcements of Gore-tex XCR. After experiencing its greatly enhanced breathability, reduced weight and bulk through simpler design, I doubt I'll ever go back to full-on armour-like shells. Granted, these things aren't as durable (which I experienced first hand by tearing mine with an ice axe pick during one less controlled slide during a walk-out). That being said, very few fabrics are particularly resistant against well-sharpened picks. Furthermore, light weight shells are also so much cheaper that I feel somewhat reduced longevity is justifiable for getting better function and added comfort.

I went to shopping spree after founding out that a film based on Joe Simpson's classic movie Touching the Void Kevin Macdonald is available on HD DVD as well. Clearly this was too good to pass, no matter that I already owned a copy on DVD. Although mountain footage would benefit greatly of High Definiton quality, there is very little climbing-related stuff available on HD. That being said, there is BBC's documentary movie Planet Earth , one episode of which contains beautiful mountain scenery. That being said, movie Vertical Limit is available in Blu-Ray. In it's unrealism it is either a very funny comedy (however unintended that is) or failed attemp at action/thriller.

There are several great articles by Andy Kirkpatrick available at his site PsychoVertical.com . It seems that book of the same name is in the works as well.

Andy collaborates with Climb Magazine , which currently offers host of articles for free divided in three sections:

• Articles
• Gear Reviews
• Mountain Info

To access those articles you have to registered though.

This winter has been extremely disappointing for us Finns willing to climb ice. Actually you pretty much need the calendar to know, that it, indeed, is mid winter, not early autumn as the weather has been plenty misleading. Should winters go on like this, retailers should probably forget about long screws and only stock 10 and 13 cm versions; there's not much use for the 16 or even 22 cm screws when your drink has more ice than local ice falls.

Lucky for me then, that since I happened to own a pair of recalled Petzl Sharken crampons, I decided to take single 10cm Petzl Laser Sonic ice screw as part of the compensation for returned crampons. I initially though that that screw wouldn't see much action. How wrong I was! This year I've placed it on most of my leads, to the point that I went on and bought another one, this time Black Diamond Express. Seems like American 10cm is more than 1cm shorter than the French one.

Although 10cm screws don't look like much, if you only have 10cm thick layer of ice, those certainly are the best options, much stronger than tied of 16 or 13 cm screws. Furthermore, fully sunk 10cm is way preferable to 13cm screw that made a little too close contact with underlaying rock. Saves plenty of money as well. Obviously quality of the ice is even more paramount to the strength of the placement than is the case with longer screws, though.

After reading some very interesting stories about the climbing life of Briton Mick Fowler, that can safely be described as eventful, not to mention hardcore, I decided it was time for me to buy his autobiography Vertical Pleasure: Secret Life of a Taxman. For brief foretaste, read the article The Secret Life of a Tax Collector: Climbing Mountains .

Turned out that buying that wasn't nearly as straight-forward as I expected. amazon.co.uk offered it for a bargain prize of £75.00. Most of my usual suspects don't seem to list that at all and those that do offer prices even higher than Amazon, culminating in thoroughly affordable $350.00 at Chessler Books . Surely it is supposed to be superb read according to reviews (eg. Vertical Pleasure ), but $350 sure is steep. Finally I stumbled on Antiqbook , which offered it for much more reasonable € 29.50 + shipping. Not exactly affordable either, but not too astronomic.

Since I have recently employed quite a few web 2.0 techniques, I decided to continue the trend. This time around, I added mashup of sorts, namely I exported newly geo-tagged locations from Glockner Group page (Hohe Tauern) to Google Maps map and embedded that map to said Glockner group page.

While I was at it, I also implemented a couple more microformats, this time hCalendar and hAtom. This essentially forced me to employ tagging as well. Next time I feel the need to review something, its likely to mean the inclusion of hReview.

Finally, I fixed some bugs in RSS creation (change log), added tiles to index page entries, and changed the presentation of the said entries slightly.

I decided it was time to go more semantic by implementing microformats. In more exact terms, I implemented hCard (html vCard) to item list type, which I use to contain information about huts, hotels, lifts, tramways etc. The big idea behind hCard is to allow browser to recognize contact information on a web site so that it can be easily picked up and exported to vCard, common standard to store contact information that can be exported from and imported into common contact management applications, such as Microsoft Outlook or Google's gmail. Somewhat related, postal address works poorly in the mountains, therefore coordinates are much more usefull in locating huts etc. Especially if you use gps device. Luckily, there's microformat for that as well, namely geo. My own homebrew linking system seems to be not too far away from xfolk so I might change the site a bit so that it takes advantage of that as well.

Forthcoming Firefox 3 and Internet Explorer 8 are likely the first browsers that can handle such microformats out-of-the-box. That being said, there are already plugins for current browsers, eg.

• Tails Export
• Operator

Parts of the site now has new layout based on the techniques and ideas behind 3 columns fluid layout by TJK design website relying on Faux Column technique and stylesheet branching to keep things compatible and manageable.

Being anal retentive tinker I am, I couldn't go with the solution as it was, of course. Instead I had to roll up my sleeves and incorporate some changes. As I get the rest of the kinks ironed out, the whole site will switch to new layout. After Ajax, RSS is the next web 2.0 technique employed by the site.

Pretty complete rework of info page . Most of the information is the same, but organization is improved and some more information is added. Also some of the dead links have been removed.

I added nice javascript code tablesort.js which uses Ajax technology to turn static tables into sortable ones. While I was at it, I also tweaked table css a bit to produce nicer looking table. Also, I couldn't resist adding title attribute to grade link to show link description as tooltip. All this is currently in action on 4000m peaks in the Alps .

On the climbing side, few Finnish climbers have been in Kunlun for a while, doing a couple of first ascents. Hats off! The expedition has a blog at: Kunlun2007 .

I recently saw a document film called movie Farther Than the Eye Can See It’s a true story about blind climber summiting Everest. I have to say I was scared when watching him cross numerous crevasses using unstable ladders in Khumbu Icefall. Somebody once said that many of the most incredible feats were accomplished by people not smart enough to know they are impossible. After seeing the doc, I must admit there might be some truth to it.

Keeping to the theme, I was wondering whatever happened to Stephen Daldry’s film Everest. It’s filmatization of infamous 1996 incident on Everest (you know, that “Into Thin Air” deal)? The crew went to summit Everest few years back with several elite climbers acting as stuntmen (David Breashears, Ed Viesturs and Veikka Gustafsson among them). Gotta admire the strive for authentity.

book High Exposure It ranks very high on my list of best biographies, climbing related or otherwise. It’s full of interesting, and sometimes funny, anecdotes related to his previous filming projects. Best known of them being movie Everest (Imax) and movie Cliffhanger .

I did a pretty substantial change on a publishing side. Earlier details of books referenced in this page have been stored either directly in source document or in manually maintained xml-file that was used as central book database. While solving one of my requirements (reusable data), manually maintaining xml-file was not the most convenient of solutions to achieve this. I finally got bored to this and did something I had planned on doing for ages, namely switched over to real book collection management database. My choice of application for the need is Bookcat . It has neat features for data input, including internet lookup from various sources, nice lookup tables that help to standardize the way the data is stored, can store every piece of information I need and can export xml.

The latter makes it relatively easy to extract the data I need to be used on the site. Furthermore, it uses Microsoft Jet database engine (Access), which while not being too great a database fulfills one of my paramount requirements: it's open in a way that I can access the database directly to perform maintenance tasks using all sorts of SQL trickery should I need to. Furthermore, not being a big fan for doing the same tasks again, this makes it possible to transfer data to different database system should I want to do so at some point. Finally, this also makes it possible for me to write code that accesses data directly from the database rather than relying xml-export function.

Right now there is only one entry making use of Bookcat data, but now that I have all the code needed for this in place, it is just a matter of inputting the data in Bookcat, then replacing book data stored locally in source file with reference to books (I use isbn as key). Now, if only I could figure out a convenient way of reading xmp or iptc metadata from image files with xsl. Or failing that, creating xmp-sidecar files for images.