This bag is huge. Easily as big as most hiking day-packs. There’s room for everything and the kitchen sink. Currently I have my old Canon AE-1 with 80-200 mm lens attached. My 55 mm auxiliary lens. A half dozen assorted filters. Cable release. 1:1 reverse adapter AND my Kodak Z-650 point and shoot all in the main compartment.

Ease of use is incredible. The shoulder strap and waist belt are widely adjustable for people of almost all sizes. The zippers work flawlessly and fast never catching or hanging. The velcro throughout the pack is quite heavy duty and looks like it will hold up to years of abuse. All you need do is slide the pack from your back to the front of your body and the camera access section is right there. You never have to take the bag off to get at your rig.

Those are the pros.

Here are just a couple cons:
The micro-fiber cloth is not removable. I’m not sure what you could do if it became soiled or stained and needed cleaning. The strap for the tripod is not fixed to the pack and could easily be lost. The all-weather cover fits very tight to the bag (in and of itself this is a good thing, but…) it won’t fit over any but the smallest mono-pod or tripod. My 54″ Ambico tripod just barely fits on the pack.

I have no doubt this bag would last years for anyone from amateur to most demanding professional.

Five Stars!

BidCactus:
Bids cost $0.75 each and come in packs of 25, 50, 100, 250, and 500.

BidSauce:
The base cost for a bid is $1.
Bidboxes are sold in 25, 50, 100, 250 and 500 and cost as little as $0.70 per bid.

Wavee:
Each credit costs $0.60 USD.

BeeZid:
Varies, starts at $1. Annoying video only FAQ.

The second part of the scam is even more insidious. Auctions don’t end until everyone stops bidding. While this might be fine for real life auctions, those in which each raise of your hand doesn’t cost you a buck, it’s a crappy scam online. When the auction timer is about to ‘expire’ and a bid is placed the auction is extended for another 20 - 30 seconds. First and foremost you have NO idea if it’s a real person bidding or if the site itself is jacking the price. There’s no regulation, no proof, nothing. They’re counting on your greed and gullibility… “Oh gee! That $400 digital camera is ONLY $13.45! I just have to bid one more… one more… one more.” And then you’ve SPENT $50 to lose an auction to someone willing to throw away more money or you’ve run out of bids and can’t get to your credit card fast enough. eBay has/had the right idea. Auctions start, they run a SPECIFIC amount of time and then they end. The seller pays the fees to place the auction and a small percentage of the end result of the auction. Period. That’s it.

For example (borrowed from Yahoo Answers) up for auction a 52″ HDTV, MSRP is $1699.99. Current bid is $196.07. Which equates to 19,607 bids. If you take the average bid price of $0.80 that’s already a net gain of $13,985.61, ($15,685.60 worth of bids -$1699.99 for the TV!)

Years ago when eBay started up there were several competing auction sites that came along when people saw there was money to be made. Some even tried this pay-per-bid crap. None of them are around now and I predict none of these new sites will last more than a couple years. Enough time to bilk millions from gullible people and make the site owners rich.

The story is told by several different animators in varying degrees of skill, the Fraud (second to last) segment being notably and particularly bad. Dante, no poet here but a super ninja Crusader Knight easily slaughters his way with little to no effort through the various Circles of Hell and it’s demons wielding the typical oversized unbelievable anime weapon, a giant scythe this time in an attempt to rescue his beloved Beatrice who is being held captive and about to be wed to Satan. Interspersed in the visions of Hell we’re treated (though it’s really no treat) to flashbacks of the acts of depravity and slaughter that Dante did during the Crusades. Instead of seeing him as a hero he’s really rather despicable. The dialog is overblown and pretentious trying very hard to be serious and deep which just doesn’t mesh right with the rather silly nature of the movie.

Had they not used Dante Alighieri and his Inferno and simply made this a trip into hell alluding to the epic poem I’d have given it three stars but for the blatant misuse of Dante’s name and work I have to give it two.

Two Stars

First and foremost Adrienne Hall repeatedly refers to herself as a thru-hiker. She is NOT. When you quit the trail, twice, and go home you’re NOT a thru-hiker. When you hop a bus and bypass part of the trail because you’re not enjoying yourself you’re NOT a thru-hiker. If you don’t walk the entire trail, you’re not a thru-hiker.

That being said this book is a rough read. Very short sections discussing her experience on the trail are interrupted incessantly by lectures and soap-box diatribes about just how horrible we humans are at taking care of the wilderness. We’re treated to pages and pages on the plight of salamanders, the history of the trail, the wolves that didn’t make it, the poor health of the trees, indian legends, etc. etc.

I didn’t pick up a text book about the ecology of the Eastern Seaboard I picked up a book to read a female’s viewpoint on walking the AT. We actually get very little of that and that consists almost entirely of complaining and whining and crying about how horrible the trip was and how insanely hard the trail was to hike. It makes one wonder if all the other authors accounts of walking the Appalachian Trail were candy coated or if Ms Hall was just not suited to the lifestyle and only embarked on and completed the trip in fear of losing her boyfriend as it’s touched on early in the book that her making this trip was some sort of ‘test’ to see if she’d be worth having as a wife/girlfriend.

The two reviews on the back of the hardcover praise Hall’s humor in her writing… I must have read a different version as I didn’t see anything even mildly humorous in her disjointed writing style (one review also praises her writing skills) in which we flit back and forth from place to place, time to time and subject to subject. She’ll be discussing New Hampshire, segue into some irrelevant bit of history and then jump back to something she suddenly remembered happening months beforehand a thousand miles from where we’re standing.