Beginners Guide to Packing

“Hi all, I've just written a short guide to backpacking and was wondering if anyone would like to edit it?

It can be found at http://leif902.googlepages.com/TheBeginnersGuidetoBackpacking.pdf and, though the copyright notice is not readily visible, is copyright under the included licence by GNU. If you find any typos, wrong information, or just have any suggestion for other articles just email them to the address found in the document. Thanks, - Leif

(Please note that this document is not yet released to the public, It's no secret, I just havn't published it yet.)”

“No one has commented back yet, but Just to let you know, I have just updated the document with a few typo fixes and an easier to use table of contents that includes page numbers and just looks nicer. Also included the copyright and licence in an easier to see place (licenced under the GNU FDL, meaning you can copy it and modify it).”

“I want to say something, but I am not going to start 2007 #&%!$ing...besides I am maybe the only one that don't agree.

still like the comment about the proper 'no bounce' sports bra. that was funny.

oh, and I should add that I am only at page 9
last edited: 1/01/07 10:43:07 AM”

“I was getting paid 20/hr the last job I had where editing was involved. And I would expect my name on the Front or at least the Title page.”

“My only comment would have been Why? Why would I want to edit somebody else beginners book?”

“I got a warning box that says: "expected a dict object". That made me look twice, but then nothing else loaded.”

“anyone check the other sites to see if this individual has requested input there also?

btw this individual obviously thinks we care about newbies - we do but mainly what blood type they are so we can sell their organs”

“Based on the sentence structure and grammatical errors of your two posts, I'm not going to bother.


Learn to write, then give us a call...

Welcome to Trail Talk, btw. Come join a hike - plenty of grammatical errors there!”

“HOI, keep your hands off the noob's organ......”

“HOI, you're cracking me up!! ROFLMAO”

“I am sawry my daddy sayed them theengs a bout grammers.
I theenk yer pots was rote verry good!

Good lukk wif yer book!
(o:3”

“could it be icetea reincarnated?”

“I glanced at the manuscript. What is the underlying purpose of your book? What makes it special? There are lots of resources for beginners, including a very nice set of links on this site. What niche are you going after?

I didn't see evidence of much research...mostly personal preferences for gear, etc. I know I am impressed more when the author's recommendation is based on the looking at all (or most) of the options before making a recommendation. Perhaps your personal recommendations are based on lots of research, just not mentioned.

Just some casual comments from an educator. (I usually get $300+ for critiquing a textbook for a publisher. $100 for critiquing an outline, proposal, or beginning chapters.)”

“could it be icetea reincarnated?”
Pathman
12:15:01 PM
1/01/07

He's not been around for awhile, has he? I wonder if he's finished college?”

“probably got a GF that he is shacked up with and is hen pecked”

“Haha. If that's the case, welcome to the real world, tea.”

“it's not a good idea to tell beginners to eat wild plants.


wear three pairs of thick wool socks at a time???
ho do you squeeze into your boots?
last edited: 1/01/07 2:19:46 PM”

“hand sanitizer?
LNT?”

“leif, i realize you didn't ask for opinions or criticism, but you might want to go over all your info again while keeping in mind that a beginner has a totally different perspective.”

“wear three pairs of thick wool socks at a time???
ho do you squeeze into your boots?
last edited: 1/01/07 3:19:46 PM”
helinka
3:10:56 PM
1/01/07

That's so you don't have to wear boots.”

“Icetea a GF?
I thought he was... well - you know...

lol, teaman! Just poking...er, having fun!”

“heck even knurds like tea get laid sometimes”

“Very slick and well done! I normally hate PDF docs but you obviousely know what you're doing. For old hags like us here at TT a beginners book is somewhat hard to get the point of. Many old timers don't remember what it's like to not know the finer points of backpacking. you seem to do a good job at sticking to the basics where it is the most help to beginers.

I think that if you return back to it and update it from time to time as gear trends change it will stay fresh. When a writer tackles the issue of gear and what's hot and what's not it can date the writting somewhat.

Good job. I'm sure you put in a lot of work on this and you should be proud of your efforts.”

“well thanks and no thanx to all of you, i am, for your information, not a noobe, i am an experienced packer, I was simply writing this little guide for a small group of people i know actually who wanted to start packing and asked me for some advise. Lol, sorry, i didn't mean to ask people to edit it (i can't explain things, which you probably realized when you read the "How to read a map" part)... my grammer is awefull, so thanks for the constructive critisizm (sp?) and no thanks to those who just flamed it.

And just cause i found it funny :D, yah, i normally wear more than one pair of socks on the trail... don't you? I'm astounded! (Especially in winter) :D

Have a happy new year!

Oh yah, hand sanitizer, I did leave that out didn't I, good thing to have....

Yah, i'm new here, I just found this page when searching for a place to try and get a little feedback on a new filter i'm thinking about buying.

And sorry if i made it sound like it, this isn't meant to be a novel or anything that will actually be published, just a little reference manual for the new packer.

(Is there any way to make this message board email me when there are new replys? That would be nice)”

“oh right, sorry for the double post, just lots of comments to reply too...

About the error, thats an adobe thing, download adobe 8 and reinstall and it should fix it (mine did that too).

And yah, i realize i did way to much on the gear side, i will try to keep that updated but I'm thinking about maybe taking all the how to buy gear stuff out and replacing it with more generall information, trail reviews, etc. not sure yet. I put it on my webpage thismorning actually (http://greenmangames.vze.com)... but I'll probably do a complete re-write for a second edition kind of thing, as I said, it's just a kind of fun project for a group of friends really. Anyways, if you learn from it, great, if you're already experienced, all the better, have a great hike! -Leif902”

“after all our #&%!$in'...and you still post a reply? Wow and welcome!!!”

“Ask Rad. He's the nubes man.
"A rag with all yer stuff in tied to the end of a stick" he'd say - but more grammatically correctly...

I wear one pair of socks. Tried liners once, and only once. Seems I doubled up in New England before. Idaho, too.

Get out. Fall down. Get up. Learn.”

“lol thats wierd, i always wear multiple pairs of socks and have never gotten blisters or anything... maybe I just have small feet? Who knows, yah anywas, all preference i guess.

Okay, fixed a few typos... went back through and realized just how comercial it was, I gave REI alot of free advertising and, as much as i like their products, I think i'll remove some more links later...

anyways, the link is still http://leif902.googlepages.com/TheBeginnersGuidetoBackpacking.pdf if anyone would actually like to give me any feedback :) (and thanks to those of you who wern't jerks and just said, concentrate on an audience, make sure you fix this... constructive critisizm (sp?) is always welcome)”

“looks like you had fun writing this. thanks for sharing.

i have to laugh. 30% of the document is the GPL... ;)”

“wierd
thats
wierd
anywas
comercial
alot
wern't
critisizm

There's this neat device called Microsoft Word...


Oh and

if anyone would actually like to give me any feedback :) (and thanks to those of you who wern't jerks and just said, concentrate on an audience, make sure you fix this... constructive critisizm (sp?) is always welcome)

Yur sentenz strukture and punxuasun ned sume seriouz werk.

Wot elze half yu writen?”

“if you want to see samples of some of my other work try http://writings.greenmangames.vze.com , thats all me plus a few links to external sites. Yah, i'm not an english person, I write poetry mostly on the trail. Can't do anything formal (just take a look at my essays if you want proof... they all suck ;) )

Lol yah, the GPL is long isn't it (ehem... i mean, my writing is short isn't it?)? Oh well, i like free information.

And this was done in MSWord btw... it dosn't pick up on anything except sentance fragments... which i don't care about in the slightest.
last edited: 1/01/07 8:17:43 PM”

“Well at least people being blunt with you doesn't scare you off.”

“lol yah, something like that, though i consider bluntness a good thing, people can say, i don't like it, thats fine by me. it's flaming that just annoys me, but this isn't to bad ;)

have a good day
-Leif”

“Microsoft Word's "Spelling & Grammar Check" would not have worked on his punctuation, grammar, and spelling errors. I'm sure he did use it. When it comes right down to it, you really do need to hone your writing skills. No one can count on what is essentially a back-up program.

However I doubt that his intended audience will care very much. They are looking to Leif for information alone and are not there to critique his book. So, sa la vie.

Here is an interesting fact a college dean shared with me. Most everything written is at the 8th Grade Reading Level.

Back when I had a Mac SE with Word 4, the Spelling & Grammar Check actually would give you the reading level of your finished work. No matter how well I wrote my college essays, I never wrote above the 10th grade level! It was very distressing, even though I received an A+ in this class. Finally my dean shared this with me, God Bless her!”

“Pamela - I used to have some "readability" software that told the reading level of a document. I would always try to get it down to the 8th grade level or below. Documents written at the 12th grade level or above are actually very slow reading, regardless of the reader's vocabulary or educational level.”

“Phil, if you are going back to school after eons of time, it's not something you are likely to be aware of! For several months I thought I was some kind of stupid, after all I graduated high school and could not write an essay at the 12th grade level. I was really upset about it!”

“Somehow it seems to me that the level of someone's writing should not be judged by grammar and spelling alone, rather, by the intentions and themes that they express. Granted, an essay (especially formal MLA or APA) is poor material, no matter who the writer, and a guide book leaves little room for creative thought and meaningfull opinion anywhere, so yes, I agree, this is poorly written, but I wouldn't be quite so willing to trust a software program to evaluate my writing level. Beleive me, If it said you wrote on a 12th grade level, you probably wrote much higher. (My dean last year told me that, ;) (no just kidding, he didn't, but he sent me to a great packing spot once!))”

“If I remember correctly the average newspaper in the United States is written to a 4th grade reading level. The NY times and the Wall Street Journal I believe are targeted at 8th grade reading level.”

“Public speaking coaches always recommend speaking at a 6th grade level.”

“Ah don't worry about the grammar so much. Form looking at your site it's obvious you take great joy in writing. I'm not the strongest speller either but I got an extension for Firefox that is a spell checker no matter where you are typing. It's been a life saver.”

“Microsoft Word's "Spelling & Grammar Check" would not have worked on his punctuation, grammar, and spelling errors.

Funny. I used it to quickly find his spelling errors. I just found it odd for a "writer" to suck so much at writing. But I'm a bit cantankerous.

Nigal - wut extension would that be? Got a link?”

“Firefox 2.x has that extension built in. It is very nice for TT. The only problem I have had with 2.x is that it kicks illegal errors more frequently and shuts down. Particularly when I have been taxing the multi-tasking of the system so it may not be an FF problem at all.”

“Here ya go Bear:

Dictionaries

Firefox 2 was horrible at first but I think the latest one is better now. I can't remember if they had an update that fixes the crashing or not. I do like the "session restore" thingy so when it does crash you can get right back where you were.”

“Thanks! Guess I need to download Firefox 2? I have 1.5, why didn't it update itself?”

“I'm somewhat surprised no-one has sent this individual off to the FAQ yet - FAQ for packing”

“I have a problem loading that page, HOI. I've also had 2 crashes. Why does Firefox 2.0 seem to suck more than 1.5?

The spell check is nice. It's not overly obnoxious when pointing out errors.”

“The food recommendations seemed odd to me. I've tried grits for breakfast, and they were awful. Maybe I didn't know how to cook them. I also like toasted bagels, but mine are buttered before toasting, and I also toast a slice of Canadian bacon or ham, and have a slice of cheese.

The gear recommendations were obviously personal faves of the author. People with different needs would go for different gear. The MRS water filter is SLOW SLOW SLOW, so although I have one I never use it. The jet boil is a good stove set up, for boiling water. If you are cooking fish, sauteeing veggies, or cooking steak, its a loser. Also for winter use, gas stoves work better.

Starting fires with corn chips? That is a new one on me. But taking chips backpacking is not something I would recommend.

Lots of typos. A really good book is Allen and Mike's Really Cool Backpacking Book is a wonderful book for beginners. No need to reinvent the wheel unless you are going to present something different. Another good book is Ray Jardines book on ultralight hiking. Between those two they have it about covered.”

“I am running Vista on this computer, so I didn't use Firefox. Am now though...cool...spell checker is already automatically working. No need to download it.
Now let's how Vista and Firefox 2 will get along.

BTW: I must be the ONLY one who does not clean out their cup with water and drink it. Really, that's what you all do? you clean by drinking the rins [dangid it's spelled wrong but it won't give me the correct word]”

“clean out what cup and drink what?”

“the rinse water

BM - don't worry about the access to the link I mentioned above - its about a different sort of "packing"
last edited: 1/02/07 11:08:59 AM”