In the most extreme conditions I used to visit building sites as the site offices tended to remain unlocked (there's nothing in there to steal) and they were unattended from 7pm through 5am. They also tended to have a kettle and some enamel cups... usually all dirty at the end of a day but with boiling water to hand that isn't an issue. One can sleep there and actually feel really safe and secure, not just from the harshest conditions but I never saw anyone else in those spaces so I didn't have to fear being mugged either.
The very worst thing to do is precisely what you see some homeless people do, which is to drink alcohol. It's temporarily soothing and warming, but your body loses some of it's ability to effectively regulate temperature. The people I saw in the worst trouble when I walked the streets were those who drank heavily.
Strange how I didn't comprehend at the time that my extreme hunger over winter could probably be correlated with the cold and burning more calories to deal with it. Thankfully compassion increases during winter and food is slightly more readily available.
The only other thing I'll add is shoes. If your feet are warm when you're walking your 30 miles a day (what I believe I averaged through rough calculation) then you feel warm. Cold feet and you feel freezing. Good boots, thick soles, are a blessing and felt more valuable to me than a heavy coat.
Actually, another thing. Wisdom says to layer, but if you're not actually mobile much overnight I always found fewer thicker layers to be better. i.e. a thick cable-knit jumper trumped multiple thinner layers. I suspect layers are really the solution for highly active people such as skiers, runners and so on, but if you're immobile in the cold a thick jumper helps more.
> Actually, another thing. Wisdom says to layer, but if you're not actually mobile much overnight I always found fewer thicker layers to be better. i.e. a thick cable-knit jumper trumped multiple thinner layers. I suspect layers are really the solution for highly active people such as skiers, runners and so on, but if you're immobile in the cold a thick jumper helps more.
It's a matter of managing the sweat. In the winter you want to be warm up until you start sweating. Sweat in the winter freezes and makes you more cold. Layers help wick away sweat, and are easier to adjust so you don't get too hot. So, yeah, layers are much more important when being active.
A little bit off-topic, but why were you walking so much? And where did you find so much energy to do so (I presume you would probably need to eat a lot (much more than 2,000 calories) to be able to walk so many miles)?
I'd made myself homeless to move on from a place I didn't want to be.
I didn't really see the point in staying in a new place I didn't want to be (sitting on a street).
I chose to walk cities, talk to people, hitchhike around the UK, and generally see if I could find a life and place I did want.
It also means I avoided getting into a rhythm of hostels, soup kitchens, and charity.
I know I was homeless and sleeping rough, but at the time I didn't view it like that. At the time I just viewed myself as a nomad, wandering around with a backpack containing some library books for company.
I acted like it was an adventure because it was the only way to deal with what I was doing. I left home, to sleep on the street, without any money or possessions, until such a time (for as far as I could see into the future) that I could get my life to a better place.
If I hadn't walked around a little in make-believe and "Scout on a quest" type mode, well... maybe I wouldn't be here.
During the darkest days on the street I thought I wouldn't live to be 20. It still haunts a little today: perhaps I should have been dead (many times over)?
By pretending it was an adventure then, and revising my personal history of it now to sound more adventurous (and less dull, traipsing on my own around cities), helps me to survive now.
Varied greatly, from Pizza Hut all you can eat buffets, through to toast provided by students who let me crash.
For a long time I used Complan and other "off your food" alternatives as supplements to a bad diet - http://www.complan.com/nutritional-info.aspx . Very much like Soylent is doing today, they provided a simple way to get everything you might need. They say to only have one or two per day, I used to consume 2-3 with milk and also add pasta to the mix (I had a camping stove and pasta was my most reliable simple meal).
It varied greatly though, I was homeless for almost two and half years. Diet was something I got wrong a lot before I got it mostly right. I was much healthier when I was sleeping rough than I was when I was living in damp social housing on a diet of whatever my mother could deep fry.
I was someone back then that I didn't like, I'm glad I moved on but if I did a comprehensive job of putting it in words I'd have to re-live that time again, and who I was. Hate to go all Bladerunner, but I've seen things, done things, that I no longer want the memory of. Putting it into words would give it life again.
You're most likely familiar with Orwell's "Down and Out in Paris and London" and "The Road to Wigan Pier", two of the finest books ever written.
The first is his "vivid and moving account of life below poverty line", first in Paris, when he, after resigning being a servant of the Empire as a police officer in Burma, had to resort to low-wage, hard, menial 17-hour works in Paris restaurants, and later when he lived as a "tramp" in London, going from spike to spike, meeting others like him.
I don't know if you'd "enjoy" these books though... But they are unrivaled in their shrewdness and, well, it is Orwell and he can write better than anyone.
How about practical advice to those who find themselves in the same situation? Dictate into a sound recorder to minimise the engagement with the memories?
One of our city-based HPC facilities has had a recurring fault where the aircon goes off for no obvious reason overnight. Eventually we figured out that a homeless guy had realised he could sleep above a vent from the aircon and be relatively warm - and had also realised he could turn off the system (it's not very secure) to cut the noise down but still be warm from the heat coming out.
At the moment we're just ignoring it as it's -3C just now in the daytime. Better to loose a few HPC jobs than freeze the poor guy.
I know of a guy that lives in the wood next to my town. Even in harsh winter, you can be quite warm if you can have a fire and snow to build shelter. The poor guys in Montréal don't have that luck and sleep in every corner you can find that cuts the wind.
> Where and how do you get your news? How do you order them?
We get the news via data feeds like RSS and social networks. The ranking algorithm is similar to the HN one (http://amix.dk/blog/post/19574), but instead of upvotes it uses our popularity score system.
> And why only 30 in each category?
In the future we may add mechanisms to let users browse more links, like a 'Show more' button below the links list, or an Archive section.
> Other than that, nice design. Bookmarked, will see. Btw, I guess comments would be nice.
