hikeitall.com email temporarily down.

Warning, techno-babble ahead!

During what should have been a routine maintenance upgrade to the server that hosts the email services for hikeitall.com, I ran into some somewhat catastrophic problems — to the tune of losing the RAID controller. So, I hope to have things up in a couple of days, but in the mean time, Chad’s and my email address (along with the help, info, etc ones) will be unavailable.

This downtime for the email should not affect the rest of the site.

Sorry everyone.

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Some Rhymes and Reasons

There are many reasons why Ryan and I do certain things when it comes to the show. It has become time to explain a few of them.

The way I see it, the core of backpacking is comprised of two basic components: hiking and surviving. Hiking is fairly self explanatory, just get out and walk for the most part. Surviving is completely different, but can be broken down into two basic components: food and shelter.

When Ryan and I decide what to film we look at those three components: hiking/walking, food, and shelter. If you look back at every episode you can see this correlation in every episode. We try to give each of these equal airplay and over the years to come we would like to cover everything imaginable.

Another thing you may not have noticed is that we release a re-occurring topic (cooking or gear review) episode then do an episode about a specific technique or topic. There are several reasons why we do this…

• Typically the one off episodes take us several weeks to orchestrate, film, and produce. The gear reviews and food episodes — while they still take planning, time, and a 100% effort — are not as difficult to pull together. This allows us to give our viewers a steady stream of content and provides us with the time we need to create meaningful content for each and every episode.
• I love food and I love to cook, that all carries over to when I am in the backcountry. I got tired of eating dehydrated meals — and ramen — so I branched out and started developing better things to eat while in the woods. That is one of the main reasons why I like to do food based episodes.
• The biggest reason why we do this is because our viewers have requested more of this type of content. Plain and simple, we film what you guys want to see.

With that said, we have some exciting new content coming over the next few months. We are doing a few new gear reviews, going to show you how to tie knots, take care of your down filled gear, hike with kids, and much more. Stay tuned, and as always let us know what you think.

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New Episodes Coming Soon

Ryan and I have been planning a hike for the last few months. While hiking we are going to film some new episodes. Because of the trip we have decided to wait on publishing new videos until we are back.

Do not fret though, the trip is in a few weeks and we will be back on schedule soon. We have been releasing a new video at least every three weeks since we started. I am surprised that we made it 12 episodes before missing one. We have every reason to believe that the next episode will be on time (June 13th).

Thank you for understanding and as always thing for watching.

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iPod Issues

It has come to our attention that a few viewers are having issues viewing the show on their iPods. We are doing what we can to get the issue sorted out. I do know have an iPod or a computer that can even use one; all of my stuff is Linux based.

I have tried to put the videos in a format that would play on an iPod but apparently that is not working. When we do get the issue sorted out we do not plan to update the old videos, sorry. This would reek havoc on every subscriber of the show and cause everyone to download the episodes all over again. When we get it sorted out we will make sure all new videos work with the iPod and post a separate link on the old episodes for an iPod ready version.

We are truly sorry for the issues. It is my fault and I am doing what I can to get it sorted out. Please let us know if you have experienced any issues with the videos or the site. You telling us is the only way that we can get them fixed.

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How We Produce the Show

I almost forgot to mention that I recently wrote an article on how we put the show together. Ryan and I are both open source software (OSS) users, developers, and advocates so it is only fitting that we use Linux and OSS from start to finish to do the show.

So if your curious, bounce on over to Linux.com and read up on how we do it.

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Episode 11 - Get Physical, Show Notes

This episode is one that I have been wanting to do for a while. I recently ran a marathon and wanted to shoot this while I was still in running shape. The weather here in Arkansas did not cooperate for this shoot. We have had severe weather almost constantly for the last three weeks. I literally shot most of my footage between thunderstorms. As it goes, right after I finished filming the clouds parted and the sun came out, go figure.

I also got to use my new shotgun microphone for this shoot. I think the quality was way better than the wireless mic I have been using. It is by no means a high-end piece of equipment but it gets the job done. On the outdoor shots with me in-front of the camera it did a really good job of removing the background noise. The very flooded Arkansas River was rolling on right behind the camera.

This was a fun one to shoot, to spite the weather; next time we get to talk about food!

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Episode 10 - Spike Tail Review, Show Notes

Wow folks, I should have done this a week ago. Sorry about not getting the show notes up as soon as the episode was ready.

This was my first episode to go it alone and I have to say that it was an interesting experience. The episode that you see is actually the second complete one that I filmed. I had originally filmed episode 10 a full week beforehand, but it turned into one long lecture. The more I watched and edited it, the more I disliked it. So, at the last minute (literally) I was blessed with some great weather and I headed out to the beach and recorded the version that you see here. I did an experiment in the other version, but it was much more boring. Filming at the beach allowed me to do it more ad-hoc and in a style more true to life (i.e. trudging around in water, therefore saturating the material as best I could).

We continued to use Amazon’s S3 service for transferring the files between each other and it has made working with them much easier.

As always, head on over to the wiki to see what we are currently working on and to get involved. We always interested in seeing what others think of our show topics and their contents. Please don’t hesitate to let us know what you would like to see in future shows.

We hope you enjoyed the show!

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Episode 9 - Tarpe Diem, Show Notes

Over all, the making of this episode was rather uneventful. The biggest thing was the time crunch; as usual Ryan and I waited until the bitter end to pull it all together. I was still editing yesterday morning.

If you wonder why my camera work was so shaky it was because I had to hand cam most of my footage. I got out on location and realized that I left the tripod’s camera attachment at home. All of the straight away shots were easy enough, I just propped the camera on the tripod. The rest of it I had to do by hand.

For the third episode in a row we had serious issues with blip.tv, our video host. The upload of the high-res version failed three times before it finally posted. The flash encoding also failed for the third straight time. All of these issues have us contemplating a move to a new video platform.

We solved one of our “distance apart” issue making this episode. I signed up for Amazon’s S3, a storage solution built around web services. We were easily able to transfer the large DV files from Seattle to Arkansas without too much issue. This is where we are looking to move the video hosting. It does cost money though, so we are just thinking about right now.

As always, it was fun putting the episode together. We hope you enjoyed it.

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Gossamer Gear “The One” arrives

I was just informed that a package from Gossamer Gear has arrived at my apartment. It undoubtedly is “The One” tent we covered earlier on the News site. I will be spending some time this weekend and next week filming, so I will be sure to get some pictures and footage of it.

If you would like us to mention and/or cover The One in our upcoming episode about Tarp Tents, please give us your thoughts in the Wiki page.

Posted in News | Tagged as manufacturers, tarps | No Comments »

Donations

If you notice, there is a new block in the side bar for donations. We put it there encase some of you liked the show so much you wanted to give us money

There are four options for donating: reoccurring (monthly) donation in the amounts of $10, $5, and $2 and a one time flat amount. The entire donation process is being handled through PayPal.

In all sincerity, we would love it if you feel compelled to donate but please do not feel obligated. If the donations cover the costs of operations we plan on dropping the few small ads that we have running.

As I decreed before, we will also provide full disclosure of all donations that we receive. Please let us know what you think.

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