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Tag Archives: hiking
Congratulations, 100 Peaks!
Just wanted to wish congratulations to the 100 Peaks hiking blog, which is celebrating its 2nd anniversary. That’s like 20 in blog years, so well done!. ;D I’d highly recommend subscribing, and also check out his YouTube channel, for cool … Continue reading
Canyoneering
Smithsonian.com: “Canyoneering: Much More Than a Hike in the Park” At the sandy bottom, in the shade of a lonely tree, we rest and enjoy the view. “It looks like someone took a knife and carved the rock,” says my … Continue reading
Tagged body, canyoneering, canyoning, hiking, outdoors, Simpsons, Smithsonian
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Pan-Galactic-Gargle-Blasted Links
While my gray matter continues to flow out my nose (a cold has slammed me not unlike the Pan-Galactic Gargle Blaster, which is said to be like having your brain smashed out by a slice of lemon wrapped around a large gold brick), enjoy these fine links:
Mark Wing-Davey as Zaphod Beeblebrox – Image from Wikipedia
The Open Sourcerer: “How to remove Mono from Ubuntu 9.10 Karmic Koala”
Anyhow, my personal opinion of Mono hasn’t changed much. There are no Mono applications in Ubuntu that make me go weak at the knees and get all excited[...]
In the latest, shiniest, bestest, release of Ubuntu to date, and it really is a cracking release, the desktop version of Karmic Koala (version 9.10) contains two Mono dependent applications in the default install along with the Mono VM and associated libraries etc.
Now, this time, we have 3 ways to go Mono free[...]
BLAFS: “Tomboy to Zim notes conversion” (Via Zim extras page.)
The script provided here is useful if you for some reason would like to convert your Tomboy notes to a set of notes for the similar Zim application. Both are desktop wiki style note taking applications. While Tomboy uses the Mono framework, Zim uses Perl and is in general considered to be leaner on resources than Tomboy.
This small python script converts notes written by the Tomboy application to notes for the Zim application. It does most of the work of conversion but some Tomboy formatting does not exists in Zim and is hence stripped of the notes (different text sizes, fixed width). Nested bullet lists in Tomboy is converted to a flat bullet list in Zim. Besides this the script does a descent conversion job, I think.
NY Times: “Hiking History: England’s Ancient Ridgeway Trail”
The Ridgeway is the oldest continuously used road in Europe, dating back to the Stone Age. Situated in southern England, built by our Neolithic ancestors, it’s at least 5,000 years old, and may even have existed when England was still connected to continental Europe, and the Thames was a tributary of the Rhine.
LA Times: “Physician convicted in cycling case”
Continue readingA physician accused of deliberately injuring two cyclists by slamming on his car’s brakes on a narrow Brentwood road last year was convicted Monday of assault with a deadly weapon, mayhem and other serious criminal charges.
The three-week trial of Dr. Christopher Thompson drew close attention from cyclists, many of whom viewed the case as a test of the justice system’s commitment to protecting cyclists.
End(ing) Pavement
I have decided to retire the End Pavement website and subsume its content back into my main Celsius1414 site.
In late 2006, I broke out several different topics that used to appear on Celsius1414 into their own websites. After a year or so, I realized I was spreading myself too thin and got rid of a few. Only one of the satellite sites (Trolley Dodger) really took off, and so I have been debating the fate of the last two for some time — End Pavement and Grown Diaries. I’m still hoping to expand the latter (though I still might change my mind), but I think two or three blogs+websites will be more than enough for me to deal with.
Especially if I want to be doing any actual bicycling and hiking. :)
On a practical level, and apart from the blog and domain disappearing, not much is changing, the content has been integrated into Celsius1414 and life will continue. I believe all of the comments will come with as well, if my research is correct.
Links will not be redirected automatically as I am letting the endpavement.com domain expire, so please update your outbound links. However, I’m trying to make it as easy a transition as possible with simple substitutions of the celsius1414.com domain for endpavement.com.
Thanks to everyone for reading these past three years, and please do switch on over to the new (old) site if you have a mind to. I look forward to lots of new writing and lots of being outdoors in the year to come.
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Tagged 1414, body, cycling, End Pavement, hiking, outdoors, writing
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Sierra Club Starts Up Social Network for Hikers
They’re calling it a “Hiking Wiki,” but there’s a lot more to the Sierra Club’s new sierraclubtrails.org website. In addition to the wiki enabling you to find and report on cool local hikes, you’ll find:
Tips for hikers, a birding blog, photo contests, and Nature Notes, a series of audio features based on interviews with naturalists and Sierra Club Outings leaders. Sierra Club Trails is also an online community where users can create profiles and meet other hikers and nature-lovers, as well as join discussion forums with topics like the best trail mix recipe or whether guns should be allowed in national parks. Community members can form groups around a particular outdoor interest or place.
Sounds pretty spiffy to me, and the site looks cool as well. The wiki concept seems to be a natural fit for grassroots outdoor reporting, and with the prevalence of iPhones and other handheld computers, that communication can often take place while you’re out and about — I can foresee a quick check while in the car or at the trailhead. Assuming of course you’re not looking to get away from technology while you’re on the trail. ;)
Carl Pope, the executive director of the Sierra Club had this to say:
“Over a hundred years ago, Sierra Club founder John Muir understood that once people experience the beauty of these places, they will be motivated to preserve our natural heritage for future generations. We’re taking that idea into the 21st century with this new technology.”
I should point out it’s also meant for cyclists and kayakers, so feel free to visit if you’re in one or all of those groups. :) Check it out!
Continue readingMulholland Drive, er, Trail
LAist has the story on a missing 22-mile trail in Los Angeles:
It was back in 1992 when the Mulholland Scenic Parkway Specific Plan went into effect, setting course for the city of Los Angeles to preserve the historic 1924 drive through a set of land use regulations and improvements. Among those was the Core Trail, some 22 miles in length, roughly from near the Hollywood Bowl to Topanga Canyon Boulevard. Approaching 20 years since it became law, some are wondering why nothing has been done.
Continue at “What Happened to Los Angeles’ 22-Mile Hiking Trail?”
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Tagged hiking, history, Los Angeles, outdoors, society, trails
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Retracing Muir
I have to get out on a trail, even if it’s only a few miles — I’m starting to get twitchy. :)
Meanwhile, Alex McInturff is off on a real adventure.
“Stanford grad student walking 320 miles in John Muir’s footsteps”
Alex McInturff, a 23-year-old earth sciences student, finds that much has changed as he retraces the conservationist’s trek from San Francisco to Yosemite Valley in 1868.
McInturff, walking through Central California, says his spirits began to lift once he hit the Sierra foothills. The mountain range that changed Muir’s life 141 years ago hasn’t lost its magic. “Returning to the forest today, I rediscovered the freedom I love about walking, which was lost a little in the San Joaquin,” McInturff wrote on his blog.
Not sure how they managed to mangle his blog California Transect’s URL so badly in the online version of the article, but it should be muirwalk.blogspot.com. Alex describes himself and his journey thusly:
On April 6, Alex McInturff is setting off to retrace Muir’s path across California. Alex is a master’s student in the Earth Systems Program in the School of Earth Sciences at Stanford University. He has been researching the history of and current state of conservation in California in conjunction with the Bill Lane Center for the American West and our collaborator iMapData. Alex envisions his own walk as a way to examine the history, current state, and future prospects of a wide range of conservation efforts on public and private lands, across a telling transect of California, from urban areas, through suburbs and parks, across the large parks and ranches of the Coast Range, the irrigated industrial agriculture of the Central Valley, Kesterson Wildlife Refuge, up the Merced River, across the Don Pedro Reservoir and Lake McClure, through historical mining towns, and national forests to Yosemite National Park.
I’ll definitely be adding his blog to my RSS reader.
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Tagged blogs, body, hiking, John Muir, outdoors, San Francisco, trails, Yosemite
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