They're not exactly common in the Boston area, but they're here, and new ones are getting added (mainly in Cambridge, as far as I can tell). At least one even has separate traffic lights that turn green for bikes a few seconds early.
FWIW I tend to stick to the roads anyway, though, because the segregated bike lanes often have pedestrians and runners in them regardless, and the paths often get cracked from tree roots and whatnot. Most drivers don't seem to care if I'm not on the dedicated path, so long as I'm hauling and not riding crazy.
It's primarily a stove, and does a relatively good job at boiling water or cooking food. As a nice bonus for us, we used it to shave some crank time off a hand-crank/USB-chargeable lantern, deep enough in the woods that a solar panel probably wouldn't have done a whole lot.
(FWIW, I generally agree that it's probably not great for serious backpacking, but I had a lot of fun using while camping.)
I found references to it going back to 2008, and the git repo that has my dotfiles says I've been using it (in Linux) for 3 or so years. Maybe it depends on the OS/distro.
The patterns are similar to shell globs: * matches zero or more characters, ? matches exactly one.
If you're used to riding in traffic, it's not really any riskier than other seasons -- they salt the roads heavily and tend to have the main ones pretty clear the day after a storm.
Probably the riskiest part (as a commuter) was that with shorter days, I was often riding home well after sunset.
I brought a BioLite stove with me on a recent camping trip and loved it. That had other advantages: easy to get a fire going during a very rainy week, no fuel to carry (in the White Mountain National Forest, anyway) and it was pretty easy to cook with.
USB charging didn't seem all that useful at first, but with a USB-rechargeable LED lantern it ended up being great. If that's all you really needed, you could get it from the FlameStower without the battery + fan machinery of the BioLite, I guess.
I've been having an internal struggle regarding the purchase of a BioLite stove. The primary reason I haven't is because of it's weight. As a backpacker, the stove is just way too heavy to carry on a trip (weekend trips, fine - but anything longer it would have to stay behind).
The FlameStower seems much more practical for longer trips because of it's weight / bulk.
Agreed. I saw the BioLite setup at Maker Faire this weekend. They have some cool products but at 33oz the stove is too heavy for my pack. This one is only 7oz.
Same - been on the fence about the biolite because it's only paying for the weight if you're 100% wood based on your trip.
This kind of makes that decision easy I think. The design seems nice, and the fact that it folds is doubly so. In backpacking your limits are in both weight and volume.
I'd like to see some reviews of ruggedness - the main thing I'm concerned about is what happens to the part of my USB cord that's plugged into the unit - it may be designed for high heat, but an average apple plug probably isn't.
well the Biolite seems to be a top notch stove plus it charges your devices. The link above are comments of buyers, nearly all positive. For a stove you prefer gas?
The biolite weights 33oz. My MSR pocket rocket weighs 3oz, + 2-8 oz for the fuel. (I generally take 4oz for short trips). Even with an external battery pack I could still be almost 1lb lighter than the biolite.
Biolite is totally cool, but 2lbs is a LOT for backpacking, you can get tents lighter than that.
I recently bought a Biolite. It's a really great product and I love it, but you are right, it isn't the lightest things. I think it's perfect for those shorter trips where weight doesn't matter as much. However, it won't fully replace a good gas/gasoline stove.
I haven't done any backpacking with it yet -- though if I did, I probably wouldn't be taking anything I could charge via USB anyway. (The aforementioned USB lantern isn't exactly light either.)
Battlecode (RoboCraft!) taught me a whole lot about the sorts of tradeoffs you have to make as an engineer in the real world in a way that nothing else at MIT really did. It definitely put freshman-year me in my place, too. Pretty sure it was my first MIT all-nighter.
It's an awesome experience for the directors as well, as the competition itself is basically a small startup. 3 or 5 students responsible for coming up with an idea (for that year's game objective), pitching to investors (sponsor companies), shipping a product (game engine + docs + online scrimmages), supporting several hundred users (contestants), keeping servers up, orchestrating a live tournament, placing an order for $2500 worth of pizza, getting up and speaking in front of a thousand contestants/spectators/sponsors, fixing bugs in the tournament bracket viewer in the middle of the tournament... Not something that every undergrad gets to do, that's for sure.
Glad to see other people experimenting with this kind of setup. I've known a few people to use one of these [1] for Emacs (for Ctrl & Meta), and I finally picked one up a while back.
My setup has one pedal bound to Escape for Vim, and the other two switchable using F keys and some xbindkeys magic. By default, they're "switch WM workspace" (sort of like Alt-Tab) and "switch window focus within a workspace" in Awesome WM, but I can change them to e.g. j and k for reading my email, or have them run various scripts, or whatever.
It's a lot of fun to use, but I haven't been on it much lately having switched to a standing desk and I haven't yet figured out a way to make the two play together nicely. And, as always, I've been meaning to throw the scripts & dotfiles on GitHub, but I'm a slacker.
FWIW I tend to stick to the roads anyway, though, because the segregated bike lanes often have pedestrians and runners in them regardless, and the paths often get cracked from tree roots and whatnot. Most drivers don't seem to care if I'm not on the dedicated path, so long as I'm hauling and not riding crazy.