gofer articles

Check out their front window and you’ll agree that On Off Digital World seems to have all the latest in consumer electronics, yet their real bread and butter comes from selling to tourists some desperately needed photography equipment. After all, the store is practically in the heart of the city, near most of the major attractions. Naturally, folks on vacation aren’t going to spend their precious time bargain hunting for specialized photographic equipment and supplies and therefore often pay whatever the price is in order to get on with their holiday.

It’s amazing how more and more people can be found in modest swimsuits. These were not dour designs at all, but quite colorful and bright, yet they had sleeves that covered the elbows and trousers that covered the knees, with no plunge lines and just the neck exposed. That was the most striking thing about them: they drew attention, which seems against the spirit of “modesty” or whatever principle it is people think they’re abiding by when wearing such apparel. Isn’t the point to avoid standing out? Then again, I suppose these girls would argue that all they’re attracting attention to is their good old-fashioned sense of modesty!

What’s so interesting about On Off Digital World for me is that it evokes a certain period of old New York. Well, the eighties, really. Back then you still needed a token to use the subways, when pizza was a buck a slice and comic books just as cheap. Back then there was no Neflix and video on demand, a time when, indeed, cable was still getting off the ground with regards to market share. It was an innocent time, in a really — when family-owned and run types of retailers like Montgomery Ward were it for electronics. That’s what today’s On Off Digital evokes.

The Mongolian yurt is no camping tent but a veritable mobile home – latch it to a few horses as the locals do and you might virtually call it an RV!
Yurts are much more technical as opposed to Native teepee (also spelled “tipi” nowadays) more familiar to most Americans, but can be positioned in mere minutes: below ten, typically – which makes them similar to a camping tent in this respect!
They are larger than teepees and house several pieces of full-sized furniture, yet with sufficient manpower (normally a family of ten or so individuals) they are swiftly set up and can be just as quickly packed up.

The strength of the ancient Mongolian empires is frequently attributed to their fast and hardy horses, and the people’s intimate relationship with them.
But a case can be made that their yurts were also a contributing factor, perhaps secondary in value but deserving the recognition of a top-five placement nonetheless.
Far from being a lightweight camping tent, the yurt was a true home for these roaming warriors of fate, who followed treasure and adventure to create a history like no other on earth.

All things considered, though the ponies helped them ride for a while, it was the yurt that provided housing for their support – wives, families, and non-fighters who contributed them the essential supplies.
Unlike the cities to which the Mongol warriors laid siege, their own homes were safely far behind, and the overall mobility the yurt provided became a great tactical as well as strategic advantage.

The Mongols did not come by their empire as a result of fear and terror by itself, in spite of their historical status.
As much as their steeds and yurts helped them conquer, so too did a relatively enlightened hands-off policy help them maintain their holdings.
Subject towns, cities, and whole countries had but to acknowledge Mongol suzerainty, in effect paying a regular tribute, and were mainly left on it’s own to otherwise continue their affairs in pretty much the same way as before.

The ancient Mongols have been caricatured as a bunch of short swarthy fellas riding horses and living out of a camping tent while hacking their way around the world, but the truth is somewhat different.
Far diverse, in fact; for one thing, the ancient Mongols were most proficient with the bow and crossbow, though of course they also knew how to work a sword and ax as with any other self-respecting marauder!

And that camping tent…isn’t.
They are yurts, which are like Native American tipis, only more spacious and likely even hardier, tougher, able to withstand the strong wind-swept steppes of Eurasia.
Additionally, though they did not achieve the high degree of civilization such as many of their Chinese, Arab, and Indian subjects did, they were not stereotypical barbarians, either, but also fairly enlightened as conquerors went during those times, fierce only in war but reasonably easy-going as rulers.

Actually, ancient Mongol rulers effortlessly traded their nomadic lifestyles for the settled living of their subject peoples.
From Persia and Babylonia to India and China, many Mongol rulers gave up the “camping tent” and lived the remainder of their lives in opulent palaces.
Such soft living may have precipitated the eventual breakup of their empire into a series of smaller successor-states.
Over not much time whatsoever, Mongol conquerors adopted the culture of the natives and would then become a part of the locals’ own histories, such as the Mughal Empire still fondly remembered by Indian chroniclers or the Il Khanate still recalled in modern-day Iran.

Indeed, the Manchu elite of China may have had their Mongol relatives in mind when insisting on regularly scheduled hunts to keep their royals and nobles reminded of their hardy heritage!
For it was an imperial Manchu decree, no less, that institutionalized the original hunt so that you can counteract the consequences of palace life – not forgetting the soft culture of subject native peoples!

An electronic cigarette presents a rare case of truth in advertising, for these products are precisely as the name indicates, where nicotine is delivered by using the power of a battery rather than fire! Yes, it’s the Twenty First Century, and utilizing a match is so old-fashioned. After all, does anyone still stand up from their seats merely to switch the channel? ( Or more so, do people still watch tv or are they more regularly surfing the internet and enjoying content via Netflix and the like?)

Owing to today’s technology, these smokeless cigarettes – another name by which they are often referred – provide nicotine with no combustion, perhaps offering up a better solution for users. Indeed, they are frequently sold as the easiest approach to eventually quit smoking! But although carcinogenic substances may be absent, many makers continue to give warning labels with their items as a result of presence of nicotine. In fact, in the USA, these are categorised as drug delivery devices by the Federal Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and thus subject to the agency’s regulation because of this.

But since this is the United States, the case has wound up in the courts, although the most recent decision on record went against the Food and Drug Administration. As an end result, electronic cigarettes usually are, though not always, restricted for sale to minors from the local level, whether state, county, or municipal. For instance, it happens to be legal in NH even with a formidable movement in opposition to it in the legislature.

The scientific community has been just about as divided up, too, with a 2010 Boston University School of Public Health study finding that such merchandise really are better than classic cigarettes and therefore possibly of assistance in kicking the habit even though the World Health Organization proclaimed just the contrary 2 years earlier. Most tellingly, however, users happen to have been making e-cigarettes increasingly popular all along!

Must have a family vacation? don’t we all! but we can face it a vacation can be very expensive. I’m sure in these difficult financial times a lot of people do not have the excess money laying around to pay for a trip. But let us not forget that a vacation would not always need to be a big expense. There are smaller trips one can take to keep their sanity while still enjoying themselves on a great getaway. One of the main travel sites to provide great bargains and special discounts is Travelocity. They have fantastic deals and discounts and you can also find Travelocity Coupon Codes to make the price even better. So the next time you’re about to pull your hair out, stop and consider taking a great trip, even if the finances is restricted.

Regular people generally don’t take the right amount of getaways. And when we do take vacations, we sometimes bring along our work. This behavior of carrying work along renders us in the mindset of work. The very same mindset we are striving to get away from. Vacation trips present many advantages. For 1 it will help us avoid burnout. It also makes it possible for us to always keep our stress degrees lower. A trip may also help bring families closer together. Any way you want to look at it, trips do the trick. If you are apprehensive about the price tag of a vacation perhaps you should use one of the most liked travel online websites such as Travelocity. It’s also possible to find Travelocity coupons to help you in saving a bunch on your vacation. I’m not sure about you but I’m beginning to feel good already.

A camping tent is a vital piece of equipment, even for just day hikers, for there’s no telling when circumstances change and shelter becomes imperative! Mother Nature is notorious for being quite temperamental, after all; any forest ranger can talk about stories of stranded hikers who expected to spend only a couple of hours in the woods getting lost for several days due to such surprises as unforeseen inclement weather or inaccurate GPS routes.

But a camping tent that’s carried along for “insurance purposes” need not be bulky, either. Today’s market features a wide selection of ultra-portable designs that are low on weight while still providing a good set of features. But of course, how can one argue over portability where safety’s concerned? Should it be noted that modern tents also come in a large assortment of styles?

Certainly there can be no compromise with regards to personal safety. So always carry a camping tent when going into the woods! It is a proven fact that most people overestimate their ability when it comes to orienteering. Our modern lifestyles have protected us from much of nature’s power, however in the wilds we are completely at her mercy.

At the very least have a sleeping bag. Yes, technically speaking, you do not need a tent when you have a sleeping bag, and many people prefer to just take along a sleeping bag instead because it somehow feels much more useful in comparison. In general, a tent should offer more protection, but it is better to have some than none at all so do take one or the other (or both, ideally) with you when venturing forth into the wild. You really do not want to end up being a forest ranger’s latest story! While most lost hikers don’t end up a statistic, there is no reason to take such a chance simply due to laziness.

A backpacking tent is really a necessity even when you expect to do only a simple hike. I learned this lesson the hard way, personally, and it would’ve been at a great cost were I not lucky enough to have been rescued by volunteer forest rangers who dutifully answered to a midnight call.

My friends and I hadn’t taken any gear at all, never mind a backpacking tent. It was meant to be nothing more than a quick enough romp up and down a straightforward mountain of modest height, some two thousand feet above ground level as well as the tallest point in all the region. It was Mount Buck, near Lake George in upstate New York, the busiest tourist attraction around for miles. Yet as luck would have it, it turned out to be a cloudy, then rainy, day (note to self: check weather forecast day-of).

And yet with no backpacking tent, we decided to proceed anyway. After all, we’d traveled up from New York City hundreds of miles, way over three hours by car; we really needed to stretch our legs! But soon it got dark – just like in the movies, fading to black in mere seconds – and we’d thought we were done for. It was literally black, and we made the decision to remain in place so that we don’t worsen our predicament.

Luckily, that fateful choice proved to be the right one, as it was through remaining on the trail that volunteer forest rangers, hiking up the trail hours later, were able to fairly easily rescue us. But until that hopeful time, at one or two in the morning, we had to endure the cold – how cold it gets, and how quickly, in a forest! And so never leave home without portable shelter: always take your tent along, no matter what.

It’s interesting to watch old science fiction movies and compare the technology onscreen with current state-of-the-art technology in real life. For example, isn’t it funny that the world of interplanetary travel depicted in Stanley Kubrick’s “2001: A Space Odyssey” should not have thought of smartphones and invented them – though in fact, such devices were in reality just another five or so years away from commercial feasibility! And it’s funny how with all the cinematic attention focused on such grand ambitious technologies like extraterrestrial travel the wonders that really did take place, in the real world, should carry, arguably, a lot more weight, impacting as they do our lives in perhaps much more important ways. Take, for instance, the sort of rides operated by serial entrepreneur Zalman Silber.

Zalman Silber is the founder of a number of tourist attractions in the United States and Australia. Some are really great, such as Skywalk and The Edge, while others are rather uninspired, such as the Skyride and Oztrek. These last two are billed as an immersive you-are-there experience for the whole family – blah blah blah – but they’re nothing more than travel movies the kind you can get on public TV, educational fare you’ve seen a million times over already in school, even. They are helicopter fly-bys of New York and Sydney, respectively, with the only concession to “multimedia” (a buzzword that’s been commonly used to ballyhoo them) being so-called motion seating providing kinetic feedback in sync with goings-on onscreen.

Nothing, as noted already, anyone hasn’t seen before.

Yet such things were to be found in many a science fiction film (albeit B-grade knock-offs, admittedly), someone’s vision of what hi-tech audio-visuals would be like one day! Obviously, that just speaks to the poverty of the imagination on the part of the writers more than anything else, but the point is that such contemplation makes for much amusement when screening the science fiction films of yesteryear.

Or take one of the earliest scenes from “Logan’s Run,” when the title character uses a kind of television-teleporter to find a date. Instead of going to a bar, the people of that world use this device to summon dates! It’s nothing short of a kind of 3-D Craig’s List!

These “everyday details” tend to show up in the more thoughtful and interesting movies, and on the whole make up one useful yardstick by which much of the best examples may be separated from the mundane. For most sci-fi flicks focus on laser guns and starships, but leave out what really makes science fiction interesting in the first place, the nexus between science and technology and the everyday lives of human beings.

See how the worldwide web has changed everything? And what is that but a network of computers connecting to one another, serving up information, most frequently in a graphical (and truly multimedia) way? Nothing especially incredible here; no “warp drive” or “plasma cannon” here – proving the old adage that life is stranger than fiction!

Unless you’ve got one of them portable Coleman Roadtrip grills, camping meals will probably mean some thing like an MRE, or Meal, Ready-to-Eat. Originally created for the U.S. military, MREs are self-contained lightweight rations available in a wide range of flavors. They’re also produced by other nations for their militaries, with all the familiar flavors a local would expect!

For instance, MREs for South Korean troops feature such regional delicacies as kimchi, while Italians enjoy beef tortellini; Swedes and Norwegians get cod stew with sour cream and potato, and Poles make do with bogracz (beef goulash). And though soldiers in the field can’t use camping grills for obvious security reasons, thanks to the marvels of modern science MREs now provide hot meals flamelessly!

Today’s MREs contain a Flameless Ration Heater, or FRH, which will raise the temperature of an eight-ounce entree by a hundred degrees Fahrenheit in no more than twelve minutes. FRHs use a simple chemical reaction to supply heat sufficient to warm up the precooked contents of an MRE.

The idea is to use the natural oxidation of a metal to produce heat. MREs now reach boiling point within seconds, steaming and bubbling! In ten minutes or so, dinner is ready. As may be imagined, they aren’t anywhere near the power of your least expensive Coleman Roadtrip grills, but they ain’t any person spending the night outdoors.

No, combat cuisine does not compare to camping fare, but it’s not actually that bad, and, frankly, isn’t roughing it part of the overall experience, regardless of whether in the military or living out of doors?

Of course, you could just opt to go totally authentic and hunt game and roast it over a campfire spit! But an MRE is a nice compromise between that and a Coleman grill.

The NEMO Equipment tent is the flagship product category of NEMO Equipment, an outdoors business specializing in high-level design and engineering. The business was started by Cam Brensinger while still in school, and was moved after his graduation to its present location between New Hampshire’s gorgeous White Mountains and RISD and MIT, the Rhode Island School of Design and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

From the very beginning, the NEMO Equipment tent was destined to put the new business on the map, targeted as it was to bring significant innovation to the industry. Early concepts explored the possibility of creating an entire tent from one compound beam rather than sewing them together.

Once successfully developed, the business began hiring its first employees. Its expertise in the field even allowed it to offer consultation on human habitats for lunar and martian exploration! And so, with its credibility thus established, the organization branched out beyond the original NEMO Equipment tent to research other designs for an increasingly diverse market of outdoorsmen and women.

The spirit of extreme sports had by then taken hold of campers, hikers, climbers, and trekkers alike, and so the AST range of products designed for extreme situations was unveiled. Industry accolades poured in right alongside increased sales, and no less than U.S. Navy Seals have endorsed NEMO products for real-world use that’s reliable like no other.

Most recently, NEMO Equipment has been exploring greener products, work that has resulted in the first-ever nearly hundred percent recycled tent, with poles made of bamboo. Product lines have expanded to offer tent accessories and even fan gear, in response to the company’s dedicated following!

In fact, the company is staffed with individuals whose pastimes often incorporate company products. Being avid outdoorsmen and women themselves has surely lent the business invaluable marketing insight.

Various ships of the New York City Staten Island Ferry service offer various kinds of boat seats. Some designs enable you to lay down flat almost as comfortably as on any other hard bench, while other kinds feature seats with what is supposed to be an ergonomic curvature that makes them unsuitable for laying down on.

Most times of the day, of course, a ferry’s boat seats wouldn’t be available for such a use anyway, seeing how loaded New York rush-hours can be, even for transportation to the so-called “forgotten borough” of Staten Island.

Other times, however, particularly on the weekends, seating is plentiful and many a commuter takes to them as to a bed, almost. You can be certain it’s a commuter, one who habitually travels on the ferry, because tourists are otherwise too busy oohing and ahhing over the sights.

After all, viewing Lady Liberty from the confines of ferry boat seats – none next to the windows face out – is nothing in comparison against leaning over the railing at her. And who wants to take pictures with the most famous statue in all of the United States from behind a glass window, anyway?

No, if you’ve come this far, well over a mile from the harbor of downtown Manhattan Island, you will experience her the way countless immigrants have, in passing in the open air, you are actually heading in the opposite direction, away from the city, in common with countless soldiers spanning two world wars.

Other differences exist, too, between the various ships employed by the Staten Island ferry service. Some offer a second storey observation deck of sorts, while others can transport cars as well. However, since the September 11, 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center, vehicles have not been allowed on the ferry.

Virtual travel has basically only come of age now, in the 21st Century, thanks to the kinds of Web 2.0 applications like Google Magps’ Streetview function. Unlike something like the sort of hokey movie one might view at a Zalman Silber Skyride or Oztrek, where the audience simply sits back and watches tape of a helicopter flyover intended to induce a you-are-there feeling, virtual travel today is really virtual, and much more interactive – which is all to say, realistic like never before.

Indeed, two pals have even embarked on that time-honored tradition of The Great American Road Trip – only this time, thanks to the marvels of modern technology, they will do it all from the comfort of their own homes. Making use of Google Maps and its Streetview option, Peter Baldes and Marc Horowitz have been able to trek across the country without paying for gas – or speeding tickets!

Perhaps best of all, however, are all the people you can meet along during such a road trip – and they aren’t necessarily locals, either! Thanks to those same wonders of modern technology, it’s easy for others to check in on you, joining you for a part of the virtual trip by webcasting the trip live, just as Marc and Pete mentioned above had done. After all, what’s virtual travel without virtual companions?

Unlike the travel videos of yesteryear, virtual sightseeing this way is fully open-ended, the same as if you’d won the lottery and can afford to do whatever you want, whenever you want to! No longer will you merely be following along passively; with the simple click and drag of a mouse you can instantly teleport anywhere! Started off in Rome and suddenly longing for Paris? Have most of Germany covered and now want to check out Japan? It’s easy, and fast, with virtual travel in the 21st Century!

Of course, as any Physics 101 student will tell you, you don’t get something for nothing in this universe. And with respect to sightseeing virtually, you give up a lot even as you save a lot of time and money. You won’t meet folks face-to-face, or feel the wonderful weather or sample regional specialties, culinary and otherwise. Most of all, as any globetrotter knows, much of the fun lies in the journey itself, the very getting there. All this, and much more, are lost on a virtual trip.

It is, in many ways, about what you get with a Zalman Silber spectacle, only without the professional production values – a flowing stream of images, as if instead of a juicy well-done steak on your plate you are presented with a glossy high-resolution photo of one! Virtual travel will likely never replace really being there yourself, and it still has a long way to go before it can even begin to rival the same level of fun offered by the real thing – for right now, the sizzle is the most attractive thing about it.