I was a photojournalism student at the University of Missouri in the early ’90s when I discovered the Leica M. In contrast to the massive steel Canon and Nikon bricks we all used at the time, Leicas were small, elegant and unimposing.

Image from a fantastic New Yorker article on the Leica mystique

Despite my lavish $4,000 annual income, I vowed to acquire one. Luck would smile upon me (in the guise of a friend’s crazy photographer boyfriend) and I soon had not one, but a pair of well-used M2s.

My big Nikons (and later Canons) were the workhorses, with their choice of wide-angle and telephoto lenses, motor drives and fancy light-meters. Framing in an SLR was precise, showing you exactly where your focus was and what you would be capturing on film.

But I always had one of those little Leicas tucked away under my arm, loaded with forgiving Tri-X black-and-white film. In the large, bright viewfinder, everything appeared in sharp focus with transparent lines to show you *about* where the edges of your frame were. Focus was fast, but not precise- that’s why God made Depth of Field. There was no built-in light meter. Most of the time I’d set exposure by experience and let the film’s latitude take care of the details.

The Leicas were all about shooting fast and loose, ideal for catching quick, unguarded moments at unexpected times; the perfect tool for making pictures when you weren’t Making Pictures.

Fast forward about 10 years. Digital had finally stopped sucking and I bought a pair of Canon EOS 10d SLRs. Instantly in love with the ease of digital, my old Leicas were immediately relegated to the closet. I’ve been an digital SLR user for years now, but I’ve continued to long for that fast and loose, go-anywhere camera in digital form.

My first experiment with digital point-and-shoots (an Olympus C-5050) left me insanely frustrated. Yes, it captured beautiful images- sharp, plenty of resolution, great tonal scale. But it lacked what I consider 2 fairly critical features- the first being the ability to see what the hell your taking a picture of. The Olympus had a joke of an optical viewfinder (more of a small tunnel for aiming) and the now-standard answer of the LCD on the back of the camera. That’s great if you want to make sure you’re not cutting grandma’s head off, but even the largest P&S LCD lacks the fine detail and resolution needed to really see what your subjects are doing and what else is going on in the frame.

In an attempt to solve this problem, I found this Voigtlander hot-shoe mounted 35mm viewfinder. Like the Leica’s, the image was large, bright and detailed. The frame lines weren’t exactly precise, but close enough. Mounted in the Olympus’ hot-shoe, I thought I was finally getting somewhere. Unfortunately, I was never able to work around a second critical problem.

The single most important feature of the fast, candid camera is taking the damn picture when you press the button.  Not kinda-approximately-when-you-press-the-button-after-I-check-the-exposure,-focus,-wind,-cycle-of-the-moon,-call-your-mom-now, but NOW. The Olympus, likely in some madningly-Japanese attempt to upsell real cameras, would SOMETIMES take the picture when you pressed the button. No matter how well you set prefocus and exposure or disabled the nanny features, sometimes the camera would just think for a second or two.

The Olympus eventually ended up as a Christmas gift to my far more patient father, and I went back to my Canons.

image from DPReview

Last year, on the spur of the moment I decided I wanted a small camera to keep in my bag. I wasn’t looking for a Leica replacement, but simply something that was a) very small and b) had better resolution than my phone. After playing with about a dozen cameras, I decided on the little Canon Powershot SD1000. It was tiny, well-built and (to my shock) quite fast. It starts up almost instantly and as long as I pre-focus, the shutter lag is almost non-existent. Image quality seemed perfectly acceptable- a little noisy, contrasty and over-sharpened, but usable for the kinds of visual note-taking I intended. Alas, it too had only a tube-like optical viewfinder and no hot-shoe, so I was back to LCD framing.

Or maybe not.

I decided to bend out a bit of sheet-metal into a crude hot-shoe and super-glued it to the top of the camera. As with my Olympus experiment, the framelines aren’t exact but are surprisingly close.

I played around with the positioning of the finder on the top of the camera and eventually settled on a position slightly offset from the center of the lens. Why? So my nose could comfortably lay aside the camera.

Finally, instead of framing a shot like this:
I can frame a shot seeing this:

I replaced the hand strap with a loop of bungee cord. I can carry the camera tucked discretely under my arm but still grab it and shoot almost instantly.

The last changes I made were to the camera settings themselves. Because I have no focus confirmation in the optical finder, I turned on the “beepbeep” focus lock sound and also reactivated the fake shutter sound to get audible confirmation that the camera had in fact followed my orders to take the picture.

Also, to minimize the problems with blown highlights and over-sharpening artifacts, I rooted around and found the “color effects” menu where I found custom settings for sharpness, contrast and saturation, all of which I turned way down. It’s not perfect, but I’m now able to get very acceptable black-and-white images, like this one.

Is it perfect? No. There are loads of new options out there to replace my old M2s, including an actual digital Leica M and I may eventually buy into one of them. But for now (and for relatively little money) I’ve got a happy little solution for fast and light picture making.

My beloved Leatherman Charge Ti

I’m ‘that guy.’ You know, the guy in the office you find if you need a knife, a screwdriver or a pair of piers. I’m the dude everyone calls ‘MacGyver’ (both in that jokey to-your-face way and, I’m sure, in that creepy behind-your-back way). My boss has brought my nickname into 21st century and calls me Jack Bauer, which is cool ’cause she also allows me to torture people with electrified lamp cords.

I haven’t always been this way, but having spent 10 years traveling to places like civil-war-era Macedonia, Papua New Guinea and post-Katrina Louisiana, I’ve acquired a few hard-to-shake ticks. I never let my gas tank get less than half-full and I always carry a Leatherman.

History

Grandma’s original SAK

Grandma has a tradition. When the boys in my family turn 12, she sends them a Swiss Army Knife. For all of high-school and college, it served as my one-and-only multi-tool. Being young and even stupider than I am today, I abused it repeatedly and managed to break both of the knife blades. I still have it, but it’s long since been retired from active use.

Supertool

By the mid-90’s, I’d finally arrived at my current place of employment, and I started getting mailed off to remote parts of the country and globe to cover news events. I carried lots of equipment- cameras, laptops, tripods and lights, and found myself in need of a more substantial tool to make minor and even major repairs. After a trip to REI, I became the proud owner of a then-new Leatherman Supertool.

The LeatherWoman

It was monstrous by comparison to the little Swiss Army, but it could do so much more. The piers were a godsend and (hallelujah) it had locking blades. I still have a scar on my right index finger from that original SAK closing up on me in use, and I’ve never trusted a non-locking knife since then.

Even Lee D. Zlotoff, the creator of MacGyver, recently admitted that today Mac would almost certainly favor Leatherman tools.

It served me very well for a few years, but it was just too large and heavy. Just as annoying, it was a chore to get any of the tools into use, requiring 2 hands to open and (seemingly) 3 hands to unlock the locking mechanism to close it back up again.

Thankfully, the geniuses at Leatherman had just the answer I was looking for, and the Supertool passed into the guardianship of my wife, who dubbed it the “LeatherWoman”. It has served a hard 10 years, but it remains her primary tool of choice around the house.

Wave hello, dear

In 1998, the world saw the introduction of what I still consider the best-designed multi-tool ever conceived, the Leatherman Wave.

A couple of my Waves (new and old style)

I still marvel at the intricate elegance of the design. In comparison to the Supertool, it manages to pack in even more functionality (scissors, yes!) yet is smaller and lighter. Most revolutionary for me were the instantly-accessible locking knife blades. I’ve always found the simple knife to be my most-used tool (from slicing apples to cutting up boxes) and now they were literally a finger-flick away.

I carried it on assignment to Taiwan when a massive earthquake hit the island (7.6 Richter). A year later, it came along in my pocket to Vietnam. I didn’t do anything heroic with it on either trip, but it proved invaluable none the less. It repaired a jammed tape mechanism, cut open UN MRE meal packets and cans of food. I used it to madly chop the tops off of water bottles to catch the… um… ‘output’… from a violently ill colleague.

It also accompanied me to the hairiest spot I’ve ever been. In 2001, I was assigned to a team working undercover to film the inside of a sex slavery ring in Macedonia. At the time, Macedonia was still in civial war, and the assignment took us from one side of the front lines to the other and back again. We posed as clients and, wearing hidden cameras, filmed inside clubs and hotels where the imprisoned girls were forced to do unimaginable things by the vilest scum I’ve ever met.

As journalists, we were of course unarmed and had we been caught I have little doubt what would have happened to us. My sole source of meek comfort: the little Wave in my pocket and it’s quick-opening blades. I knew that it was no match for an AK-47, but I admit to irrationally wrapping my fingers around that little block of steel on several occasions.

I’m sad to say that I no longer own that original Wave. I managed to break one of the screwdrivers and when I sent it to Leatherman’s excellent warranty service department, they sent me back a brand new tool. They could’t have known…

Gilding the Lilly

I have a couple of copies of the Wave, but my favorite and current daily companion is a Leatherman Charge Ti (which I consider a Wave in fancy Titanium trim). It’s a little bit bigger than the original, but it improves in a number of small ways- interchangeable screwdriver bits, better blades and (by far its best feature) a pocket clip. I use it enough that every pair of jeans I own has a thread-bare right front pocket.

It traveled with me to cover the horrific aftermath of Katrina (and the less-remembered Hurricane Rita). On both trips, we spent an inordinate amount of time drenched in a mixture of floodwater and sweat. Again, it proved invaluable in countless small ways- (again) repairing camera and sound equipment, opening food containers and jury-rigging a brace for the antenna of our satellite phone. You know those infrared, touchless paper towel dispensers in public restrooms? Guess what- they don’t work without power. I was able to ‘liberate’ the roll using the Leatherman, earning the gratitude of a small crowd of people trying to clean up after a long, nasty day working in the flood waters.

After I returned home, the tool spent about a week buried inside of an equipment case. It had been wet with polluted flood water, and when I finally dug it out it was nearly rusted solid. I considered sending it back to Leatherman with a letter explaining the situation, but I decided against it. It deserved better than to be returned and throw away. I spent a few loving hours over a weekend with some WD-40 and a wire brush scrubbing it clean. It still retains a few scars, but it still works beautifully.

Little guys

I’ve picked up a number of mini tools over the years. Most have simply been too small to be of much use, but I do retain a soft spot for one of them.

Mini SAK and a Leatherman Squirt

While Leatherman’s full-sized tools have long since displaced the Swiss Army Knife for my purposes, their little tools just don’t do it for me. Their current star is the Squirt, which I’m sure has its following. But for my money it’s too big to be invisible in my pocket but too small to be very useful. On the other hand, the appropriately-named Victorinox “Classic” is just about perfect.

It’s smaller and lighter than a USB drive, but for small jobs on small things it’s fantastic. For fixing eyeglasses, trimming your nails and digging out splinters, there’s simply no peer. I don’t carry one all of the time, but I very often find myself wishing I did.

A new beloved?

Earlier this year, Leatherman introduced their latest method to suck money from my bank account, the Skeletool. It’s a weird-lookin’ thing, but the basic premise is this: start with a full-size tool, pare down weight and bulk while retaining the most important functionality. Skeleton. Tool. Get it? Yea, those marketing folks don’t get anything past old Brainiac here.

Skeletool

I was skeptical about it and managed to hold off buying one for something like 3 whole months, but I have to say I’ve been very pleasently surprised. Despite being the same basic size as a Wave, it is noticably lighter and thinner. It’s a joy to carry, and the things it does (knife, screwdriver and pliers) it does as well or better than any multitool I’ve used.

But I’m not yet convinced and I may never be. I’ve been carrying a Wave-based tool for nearly 10 years now and I’ve developed an almost automatic response to problem-solving with it. When I carry the Skeletool, I find myself wishing I had scissors (for fingernails), or the serated blade (for crusty bread) or the wood saw for, well, wood.

For now, I’m carrying it a day or two a week to see if it grows on me. But I have to admit- when I slip the Charge back in my pocket it still gives me the warm-n-fuzzies. Like coming home after a long, hard trip abroad, it just feels right.

I carry my Fenix light in my front pocket, but I found it was constantly shifting around and bothersome. More worryingly, I went to use it one day and found it was extremely dim. After examining the light, I found a dime had wedged perfectly into the bezel, completely covering the light (couldn’t be a more perfect fit if it had been designed that way).

I slapped this together in about a 1/2 hour, to keep it upright in my pocket while still being easy to get out. I took some thin thermoplastic I had laying around, probably scavenged from a vent cowling. I cut it to shape, then heated it and formed the “tube” using a lighter. I flared the opening a bit to make inserting the light a bit easier.

The plastic is slippery and I wanted to keep the holster itself from shifting around in my pocket. I cut some thin leather (scavenged from a $5 pair of thrift-store leather pants I purchased years ago for projects like this) and glued it on rough side out with 3M Super 90 spray glue. Not shown here, I enclosed the bottom so that change couldn’t get up into the bezel.

Finally, to keep the leather from de-laminating from around the ‘tube’, I punched a few holes and ran 2 small zip ties through.

The light is completely loose in the tube, held in only by gravity but because its also in my front pocket it’s completely secure. The leather-coated flat part on the side provides vertical stability in the pocket, and also provides a lot of additional friction to ensure the holster doesn’t come out along with the light.

Finally, to give the otherwise smooth light body some grip when my hands are wet, I cut some 3M stair grip tape to fit the milled flats of the light.

I’ve been using this setup every day for a month now and I’ve been hard pressed to find anything to improve in it.

Shure describes the model SM58 microphone as a “unidirectional (cardioid) dynamic vocal microphone is designed for professional vocal use in live performance, sound reinforcement,and studio recording” with “Legendary Shure quality, ruggedness and reliability.”

Their marketing team is obviously a bunch of pansies.

Let’s try “the Sure SM58 is a small, hand-held tank, suitable for use in all hazardous environments including areas of nuclear, chemical and biological (NBC) contamination and active military combat operations, which also does a surprisingly good job of recording sound. And it shoot laser beams”

That’s better.

There have been countless copies made since the 60s’, and they can be had brand new for $99. Since the laws of physics do now allow one to actually be destroyed, they’re available used in perfect working order in every pawn shop in the country for less than $50.

Intended use

Introduced in 1966, the SM58 quickly gained favor among rock bands for its durability and its great, full sound in live performance.

Few musicians from that era are more qualified to comment on its unique combination of attributes than “The Who’s” Roger Daltrey. The band’s insane performance volume was bested only by the even more insane damage they inflicted upon their equipment and instruments.

For performing his trademark stage move- spinning a microphone on its cable like a medieval flail- Daltrey always preferred the SM58 secured to the cable with copious wraps of industrial gaffer’s tape.

Daltrey said,

“The SM58, well it’s the best microphone any singer in a rock band could ever wish to have, especially in the early days of The Who. I mean we were getting drums smashed over our heads. I’d be slamming my mic into cymbals … we didn’t get our gear free then so it bloody well had to be durable.”

(one of Daltrey’s battered SM58s after a concert in Los Angeles, from whocollection.com)

Shure, I’ll go cover Katrina

In August of 2005, Katrina slammed into the Gulf coast and I was temporarily called out of my desk-job retirement to go cover the aftermath. (the results of that coverage are here).

As I packed my equipment, I made sure to back back-ups for everything I’d need: cameras (still and video) batteries, chargers, etc. When it came time to grab my audio gear, the first microphone I grabbed was my Sennheiser ME66 shotgun. It produces beautiful sound and can be used a distance away from the subject (though not as far as most people think). It’s also delicate, requires batteries, and can be easily overloaded in very loud environments. My backup mic was an easy choice: the old SM58.

I admit that the Sennheiser served me in most situations, but the SM58 was always nearby and saved my audio-recording ass in a number of loud situations. A few weeks after Katrina, hurricane Rita started bearing down and I was off to Houston to greet it.

After the storm hit, we headed down to Cameron Parish, La., where a huge swath of country was under water. We drove until the road disappeared into the flood waters, where we found two men getting into a shallow motorboat. They agreed to let me tag along and we set off.

(yours truly, hoping into said boat. Photo by Bob Sullivan)

The full story can be read/watched here, but the point of bring it up here: the audio was recorded entirely with the SM58 while it was being dunked repeatedly in oily, nasty floodwater. The boat motor was deafening and the Sennheiser was completely unable to deal with it. I plugged the SM58 into a long cable and connected it to the camera. The mic isn’t very sensitive and has to be hand-held close to the subject. When I wasn’t recording, I stowed it in a pocket of my equipment belt.

Almost immediately after hopping in the boat, we started running upon barely-submerged fences, forcing us to jump out of the boat. The water in most places was up to my chest, and my gear belt (with the SM58 in it) was submerged over and over again. I would pull it out, shake the hell out of it, and start recording again. I couldn’t tell through my headphones how it sounded, but I could hear it generating sound and didn’t really have much of a choice.

It sounded great and that mic continues in occasional use to this day.

When in doubt, look to the Scandinavians

Swedish music mag Studio TV decided to put the legendary Shure through a series of test, apparently derived from the abuse a Scandinavian heavy metal band receives on a daily basis (or at least should, IMHO).

They hammered nails with it, dropped it repeatedly onto concrete, froze and dunked it. I don’t want to spoil it further but I’ll just say they got crazy with beer, a microwave and what appears to be some sort of grilled cheese fish cake thing.

Their nuttiness is our gain. Debt acknowledged, I bring you the amazing story of the Glock pistol.

History

Glock began its corporate life making curtain rods but branched out into manufacturing plastic utility items for military contracts in the 1970s. In the 1980s, they designed and introduced a new pistol, the Glock 17 in response to an Austrian military contract.

By outward appearances, Glock’s first attempt at firearm design was not auspicious. The pistol was exceptionally ugly, its metal slide perfectly block-shaped. The frame, sights and internal parts were made almost entirely of plastic (to this day, new Glocks come from the factory with a mold line running the circumference of the frame). The frame and slide were so poorly mated that you could see daylight between them. The crude, spring-driven trigger mechanism felt uncannily like a toy cap gun.

However, it was cheap, light to carry, held a lotof ammunition (17 9mm rounds per magazine) and was incredibly simple to maintain and repair- the pistol contained half the number of parts of other pistols. Slowly, shooters began to experiment with it.

First hints of ‘bombproof-ness’

The first widely acknowledged indication that the Glock design may have been ‘exceptionally robust’ came from (in)famous gun writer Chuck Taylor. He purchased one of the controversial new pistols in 1990 and set out to serialize his experiences in the pages of “Combat Handguns” magazine (archived here).

In 1995, he summarized:

”…after having fired a total of 100,000 rounds of virtually all kinds of ammunition…

Nothing has changed! The gun looks the same, feels the same, functions the same as it did before. I’ve done everything within reason to this gun. I’ve carried it all over the world, quite literally in every environmental condition known to man— the steaming jungles of Latin America, the windblown deserts of the southwestern U.S., the 40-below zero tundra of Alaska in the winter.”

For some context: the contractually-mandated service life of the U.S. military-issue Beretta M9 pistol is 5,000 rounds.

Further food for though:

• The retail cost of a Glock 17 pistol: $500.
• The retail cost of 100,000 rounds of generic 9mm pistol ammunition: $20,000.

Transfering this same formula to the automobile, your average $25,000 car would consume $1,000,000 worth of gas without breaking down.

(note: In 2003, Taylor reported that the pistol had by then fired 168,000 rounds without major failure.)

In extremis

In 2005, a gun forum user called BigBore began posting about the prolonged torture of his Glock 21 pistol. The forum posts have since disappeared, but his testing has been archived here at theprepared.com. Below is but a mere summary of the testing.

(the already-abused pistol before formal testing)

For almost 10 years I’ve been abusing and neglecting my Glock 21. Its been a running joke among some friends and I. Nothing was planned or documented. As I tell people what it has been through, most simply don’t believe me. I guess I wouldn’t either. If someone told you their Glock has at least 150K rounds through it and has gone almost 15K rounds with no cleaning or maintenance would you believe them?

I want to do this so I have documentation, of what has been done, and how it worked. I don’t care about 500rds without a FTE, or FTF. Once it was buried in the mud w/a full mag, and when I dug it out the next day it went bang the first time I pulled the trigger but the weight of all the mud on the slide kept it from cycling. I scraped off most of the mud on my boot and fired the remaining 12 shots without a problem.

(formal testing begins)

note: he also documented the process in video snippets, to which I’ve linked through this summary:

The testing began simply. The Glock was dunked in sand, dirt, baby powder paste, mud, sand blasting media (little glass balls), and then a slurry of all of the above.

It was then immersed in a rock salt bath.

It emerged heavily rusted, inside and out, but cleaned up fine.

Having failed to stop function or damage it during the first round of testing, BigBore decided that more kinetic means were in order.

It was tied to a rope and dragged behind a pickup. Then he ran it over with said pickup. Tasting blood, he ran the tests again (drag, run over), on concrete.

It was a little dinged up.

Hammering the sights back into place sparked more inspiration.

“Its been boiled before , no ill effect.”

He shot his Glock. With another gun.

It was covered in a wet, salt-encrusted sock for a week.

He dropped it from a building, a couple of times.

Again, sensing a thread of torture to be followed further, he dropped from a moving airplane at 500 feet…

then recovered and tested the pistol.

I will note again and finally that the above testing was performed on the Glock model 21, which noted firearms design consultant, trainer and former member of Delta Force Larry Vickers has called “the worst gun Glock makes,” which it strikes me as kind of like saying “the least attractive model at the Ford modeling agency.”

Fenix and the Ultimate Drop Test

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For those of you wondering just how tough the new Fenix L1P is, I found out today. I was working on top of an elevator in New York replacing some hatch wiring, when I dropped my very new L1P. Now in the elevator industry nothing dropped while on top of an elevator cab stays on top of an elevator cab. As I watched my new light roll off the top of the cab I thought thank God I bought two because this one is a goner. Now to make this story complete I must tell you that I was working between the 17th and 18th floors so I was pretty sure the little light was history.
My partner who saw me drop something asked “that wasn’t your light was it”. Well I told him that it was and since I had given him an L1P also, he knew how pissed I was at dropping it, and offered to take one of the other elevators down and look for it. When he came back up he showed me the light, which was dented and gouged and generally looked like it had fallen 17 stories, and without saying a word clicked the end of it. Well needless to say the light came right on, of course this would be a real crappy story if it didn’t. So if anyone is thinking about buying a Fenix but thinks it might not be well built or tough let me tell you this is one tough little light. I am not saying they all could take this kind of fall but if one can then certainly it falling out of your pocket or off a ladder should be no problem.

Seldom (as in never) have I put finger to keyboard with the sole intent of bashing a lowly computer input device. However, I feel it is my duty as a mammal with hands to warn the world about the ergonomic evil that is Microsoft Sidewinder Mouse .

A brief word about your humble messenger: I could be accused of being a computer input device slut (or connoisseur, by my way of thinking). I use a different mouse and keyboard combination on each of the 4 computers I use regularly. I have a hoarded stash of discontinued favorites: mice, keyboards, trackballs and Wacom tablets that I rotate frequently, like one might use a stable of antique British sports cars. I justify this sickness to myself by reveling in the fact that I’ve successfully avoided severe RSI despite having spent no fewer than 12 hours each day for the last 15 years using computers.

Upshot- I’ve used my fair share of mice ranging from excellent to poor at best.

The other day, my friend (I’ll call him G) called my desk and told me to look on my shelf. He’d left me a present… the aforementioned Sidewinder. He cagily said he didn’t get on with it and thought I might want to give it a try. This should have been what experienced inner-city homicide detectives call “a clue”.

I plugged it in and starting mousing. It’s ergonomic, kind of in the same way a cheap Chinese-made box cheese grater is ergonomic. To say it is angular is an insult to the science of geometry. While the shape may appear at first glance to have been line-drawn in crayon by a pre-pubescent Halo 2 fanboy, in use it becomes clear that there was a great deal of thought put into making every corner, bump and button as awkward and functionally counterproductive as possible.

One might argue that its shape is meant to give it a mean, aggressive, almost weapon-like appearance- appropriate for a mouse targeted at 1st-person gaming fanatics. I see the point, but would concede it only if firearms were routinely designed with their muzzles pointed backward into the face of the shooter. I suppose I’ll concede the point those who consider the suicide bomb vest an inspirational design.

The side buttons look as if a coke-addled Star Wars prop master glued them on as George Lucas screamed at him to match some feature of Boba Fett’s helmet. They provide a tactile feedback similar to a wrench turning a rusty lug nut.

The much-touted internal weight system is an ingenious design that somehow manages to make the device feel progressively worse each time you add or remove weight. By the time your give up, you’re consumed with yearning for the halcyon days before you decided try mess around with it.

My greatest ire is left for the display. Yes, this mouse- a device which by its very nature is meant to be COVERED BY YOUR FUCKING HAND- has a little screen on it. It manages, through the cunning design choices of both a red backlight and crappy, stair-stepped font, to ooze the technological sophistication one associates only with 1970’s-era LED digital watches.

So desperate is my loathing for this mouse that in the 3 days I’ve been using it, I’ve managed to learn almost a dozen new keyboard shortcuts. Give it another week and I’ll most likely be computing entirely through a command prompt window.

If you’re hungry for more now, check out this thread I started on ask.metafilter.

The Top Gear Toyota Hilux (image from carpages.co.uk)

The ethos of “cheap and bombproof” could be grocked almost completely by contemplating the humble Toyota pickup truck.

Across the world, for decades, the inexpensive Toyota truck has been the unofficial official vehicle of the rural Third-world, as well as second and first world inhabitants who require a tough, insanely reliable go-anywhere vehicle. The Land Rover may have originally conquered the Africa bush, but the Toyota pickup has now largely replaced it there. The old Rovers may be easy to repair, but the Toyotas have the advantage of not breaking down in the first place.

If you have a pulse, a vat of vaguely combustible liquid and a Toyota pickup, you can reasonably expect to be able to get around indefinitely.

In Afghanistan, while Taliban leadership were ferried in more luxurious Land Cruisers and Suburbans, the lowly foot soldiers who actually did the fighting drove Hilux pickups almost exclusively, so much so that the trucks picked up the nick-name “Taliwagon”.

While American Special Forces may have not agreed with the Taliban on much else, they did share an opinion on one thing: the Toyota pick-up. SF soldiers reportedly bought up Toyota Tacomas from dealers around Ft. Campbell, modified them slightly with radios and infrared headlights (for night-vision driving) but left them otherwise stock.

(this image and a lot more at Military Toyotas)

Me and My Taliwagon

My personal history with Toyota trucks began when we were living in Los Angeles in the early ’90s. I needed an inexpensive car to bomb around in, and found a 1984 Toyota 2×4 pickup for the bargain price of $2500. It had about 80,000 miles on it but by reputation I knew it could be expected to serve me well for many more.

I drove that car for another 140,000 miles, never ONCE needing to do anything more than routine oil changes and replace dead light bulbs.

Our first dog, Annie, was its nemesis. Annie was a Viszla, a high-strung hunting breed with the cunning, brains and temperament of a Velociraptor. As a puppy, she took to removing the interior of the truck, a proclivity that only grew in later years. Eventually, most of the interior was either bare metal or exposed foam. Half of the protruding knobs in the truck were missing all together, the other half gnawed to stippled plastic stumps.

Her most spectaular attempt to kill the truck, her coup-de-grace, happened one day as she and I were bombing down I-5 at about 70MPH.

She was wearing a cone on her head, one of those big white plastic veterinary jobs to keep her from chewing out some line of stitches or another. She was constantly chasing rabbits through barbed wire, getting in fights with Rotweillers and otherwise tearing the crap out of herself, and probably spent a 1/3 of her life in total wearing her cone.

As we were driving along, all of a sudden my vision was filled with white light. She had seen something out my window and shoved her coned head right in front of mine. I pushed her back onto her side of the bench seat, and noticed that while the car itself was headed straight down the highway, the nose was pointed about 15 degrees to the right. I also noticed a loud tire squealing sound from the back of the truck.

I realized then that she had hooked her cone onto the tree-mounted automatic gear shift and thrown the truck into reverse. Again, FTW, at 70 MPH.

I grabbed the shifter and tried to pull it back into drive. The transmission wouldn’t budge- the full moving mass of the truck had locked the gears firmly in place. We were starting to slow and I could sense other cars all around us. I knew that at some point we’d start to spin and pinball (at best) or roll end over end at worse. I took the shifter with both hands and used all of my weight. It popped back into gear with a huge BANG, and the nose righted itself as I quickly grabbed the wheel.

I gingerly nursed the truck off the highway and tentatively crept around in a parking lot, testing the transmission. It shifted up and down gears, into park and even reverse. I decided it was safe to drive home, which I did without incident. The next day, I took it to our mechanic, who drained the transmission oil in search of transmission chunks or gear shavings. He deemed it not only sound but completely undamaged.

A few years after that incident, the truck began to blow white smoke. I figured it was finally on its last legs and signed its ”Do Not Resuscitate” order. I discontinued all maintenance, including oil changes and decided to just keep driving it on my 60-mile-per-day commute until it finally gave up the ghost completely.

Only the specter of a mandatory emissions test finally drove me to part with it 2 years later. When I started it up for the last time to drive it down and donate it to a local charity, it started up and drove as well as it ever had. I actually cried that evening.

It was replaced with a new, 2003 Toyota Tacoma, my current Taliwagon:

Top Gear

Perhaps the most famous examples of Toyota abuse come from our friends across the pond, the BBC motoring show Top Gear. In 2003, they decided to see how much abuse an old, high-milage Toyota Hilux farm truck could actually take. Over the course of two episodes, they subjected it to increasingly outlandish abuse- driving it into (and through) things, attacking it with a wrecking ball, drowning it in the ocean and lighting it on fire. They finally placed it on top of a building. Then demolished the building.

See it all here, in 3 parts:

Part 1

Part 2(a)

Part 2(b)

Finally, last year, the TG boys decided to drive to the North Pole. Yes- Drive. To. The. North. Pole. What did they choose for the journey? Obviously…

It may be pushing the bounds of incredulity to call the Fenix P3D flashlight ”cheap” at $65, but if you compare it to the gold-standard light of similar size and function, the Surefire U2 at $275, it’s a positive steal.

Another point of ‘cheapness’ (as if I had to justify this to you): Fenix lights are mass-produced in China. Here’s a cute picture of the people who make them, posing with dear Chairman Mao:

(more images and engrossing information at fenixlight.com)

“Thanks for the fascinating lesson in the global manufacturing economy and all,” I can hear you saying, “but where’s the bombproof come in?”

Here is a forum thread entitled ”Fenix P3D Premium 100 abuse” by user Esthan.

Just to quote some of the highlights:

“I started having some fun with Fenix P3D by checking the waterproofness few days ago. Fenix was inserted into a bottle filled with water, where it has spent ca. 6 hours. Since there was hardly any Pressure inside the bottle I did not expect P3D to leak. It didn’t.”

and

“Test A to D have been done by dragging P3D on the ground

Test A: 400m walk on stony ground.

Once I came to the place I’ve got a bit disappointed because the stones from a long forgotten railroad have been covered with leaves and snow. P3D has not been punished as I intended, but I made the whole trek twice, just for confidence that it got some beating.”

It gets worse and worse. As you might expect, the upshot is that while the metal barrel was severely damaged, it survived and continued to function normally.

He then went on to devise an even more interesting test: turning the light on, inserting it into a bottle of water and freezing the whole thing.

Here’s how that worked out:

It is easy to imagine a set of even more grueling tests, but before decrying these tests as ‘wimpy’, one must remember that this is a goddamn flashlight. If you are a person who might reasonably find oneself in even more perilous circumstances, I suspect you have more pressing things to worry about, and could always fall back on igniting your own arm to light the way out of danger.

Needless to say, I purchased one, and it arrived yesterday.