Monthly Archive for April, 2007

Google Earth Hiking Trails

Published
by
Modern Hiker
on April 16, 2007
in Geek Stuff, Web Sites and Apps, hiking and maps
. 3 Comments

Well, it figures.

Google Earth comes out with a brand new viewing layer devoted entirely to hiking trails, and my company’s IT department decides to completely cripple my work machine, removing all the programs I use for this site and limiting my internet access to Internet Explorer 6. Blech.

That said, I probably shouldn’t be doing this stuff at work in the first place, but I don’t go on smoke breaks - or leave for lunch most of the time - so I should be allowed this.

Anyway.

Google Earth has a brand new layer, courtesy of Trimble Outdoors and the venerable Backpacker Magazine.

It looks pretty robust, too. Clicking on trailhead icons will get you a detailed map, GPS coordinates and - if you’re lucky - some pictures and a paragraph description. If you’ve got a GPS phone, you can even have the maps sent straight to your gadget. Although if you’re going on the trail solely trusting a phone as your guide, then I hope you won’t be straying too far from civilization.

That said, it looks like it could be pretty cool, eventually. I don’t know about your home area, but right now the map’s Los Angeles hiking trail map looks pretty dang barren.

The trail difficulties seem a bit arbitrary, too. A boulder-hop down the Arroyo Seco is rated the same difficulty as a 12 mile trip up Mount Baldy with almost 4000 feet of elevation gain.

OK. I’m a little jealous. But know that - at least for now - Modern Hiker is your number one source for all things hiking in Los Angeles. Maybe not all. But some. And my write-ups are longer than a paragraph.

So go fool around with Google Earth, but make sure you come back ’round here, alright?

via Besthike.com, via Lifehacker.

Hiking in Japan: Kamakura Pt. 2

Published
by
Modern Hiker
on April 13, 2007
in Excursions, Japan, Trail Write-Ups and hiking
. 1 Comment

As we continued our unscheduled surprise hike through the wilderness of Kamakura, we came upon many of the same sorts of things we saw while walking through Takao-san: rugged, rocky trails; dense forests; elderly, fit hikers; and shrines hidden and carved just about everywhere you could think of putting one.


Continue reading ‘Hiking in Japan: Kamakura Pt. 2′

Hiking in Japan: Kamakura Pt. 1

Published
by
Modern Hiker
on April 12, 2007
in Excursions, Japan and hiking
. 1 Comment

Chris and I were supposed to go back to L.A. on Thursday, but decided to stick around for a few extra days on our own dimes. We’d hiked Takao-san on Thursday, and since I was roped into an extra shoot on Friday, Saturday was really my only extra day there. We decided to take a train to the coast south of Tokyo to the town of Kamakura, the capital of Japan from the 12th to the 14th century.
Continue reading ‘Hiking in Japan: Kamakura Pt. 1′

41 Pounds

Published
by
Modern Hiker
on April 12, 2007
in Environmentalism and Web Sites and Apps
. 4 Comments

41 pounds is the amount of junk mail the average American gets each year. And if you’re like me, I’m betting that 99% of that mail goes unopened.

41lbs.org is an especially green consumer group that promises to get you off of almost every mailing list for five years. It costs 41 bucks, and almost half of that goes directly to environmental groups - American Forests, WildWest Institute, New American Dream, and Friends of the Urban Forest.

According to the site,

To produce and process 4 million tons of junk mail a year, 100 million trees are destroyed, 28 billion gallons of water is wasted, and energy equivalent to 2.8 million cars is spent – which produces greenhouse gases and more global warming.

Sounds like that’s worth the cash, right? If not, I know I’ll just be happy to not get three dozen credit card applications every other day.

Hiking Mount Mooney and Vetter Mountain

Published
by
Modern Hiker
on April 10, 2007
in Angeles National Forest, Trail Write-Ups and hiking
. 0 Comments

A mid-length, easy hike to tackle two mountains on the Hundred Peaks List. Not a lot of elevation gain, but fantastic views of the San Gabriels and some of the urban areas outside the Angeles National Forest, and an historic fire tower.

 

Continue reading ‘Hiking Mount Mooney and Vetter Mountain’

Hundreth Post!

Published
by
Modern Hiker
on April 5, 2007
in site news
. 3 Comments

W00t!

Still nothing on Tom breaking the one-thousand mark, but hey - a guy’s gotta start somewhere.

If all goes well, I should hit my 100th hiked mile for the year this weekend, too.

Thanks to everyone who’s reading!

< /self-congratulation>

Google Maps for Everyone!

Published
by
Modern Hiker
on April 5, 2007
in Geek Stuff, Web Sites and Apps and maps
. 1 Comment

Earlier today (or yesterday, depending on when you’re reading this) the Great Google opened up their Google Maps application to everyone.

While it’s not necessarily news - Mountain View’s offered up its Google Maps source code for a long time - you had to be a serious code junkie to get under the hood and do anything useful with it. Now, Google’s made it streamlined, slick, and easy enough for anyone to use.

The new feature’s called MyMaps, and you can see it as soon as you hit up the Google Maps homepage. Right away, you can see some examples of just how versatile this thing is.

It’s very, very easy to make your own pushpin photoblog … just a few clicks and some descriptions, and you can make yourself a nice phototour of the Googleplex:

You can also overlay your own shapes, shading, and information, like this example of the state-by-state results of the 2004 Presidential election:

… and if you want to start getting fancy - and I know you do - each form can be customized with a built-in rich HTML editor, so you can make a self-contained travel-blog, with pictures, audio, and all other sorts of web goodies.

When you’re done, you can save your map as a static HTML file and link to it like a regular web page, or download it to your computer as a Google Earth KML file. If you make your map public, Google will index it and serve it up on searches.

Pretty neat. And it’s free.

Now you technophobic hiking bloggers have no excuse to start offering up Google Map visuals for your treks.

But if you want to have a bit more control over your data and presentation - or maybe don’t trust Google with all your data - Modern Hiker recommends Cyberhobo’s Hobomap Wordpress plugin. With a little know-how, it’s pretty easy to get running. And his new version 1.0.1 is even more powerful and simple than the earlier builds.

Hiking in Japan: Takao-San

Published
by
Modern Hiker
on April 4, 2007
in Excursions, Japan, Trail Write-Ups and hiking
. 5 Comments

Toward the end of last year, I was fortunate enough to travel to Tokyo for just over a week for work. It was a stressful, wonderful experience … and as I was pretty much on an independent shooting schedule from the rest of the crews, I had plenty of time to explore the city after I was done filming for the day.

And, of course, I also managed to sneak in some hiking trips on our ‘down days.’ This is a short hike I did on one of those days. I’ll post a few more of my more nature-oriented Japanese tales later.
Continue reading ‘Hiking in Japan: Takao-San’

You Should Be Watching This

Published
by
Modern Hiker
on April 2, 2007
in in the media and motivations
. 2 Comments

6 days until I can hike again.

Until then, I sure am thankful for the Discovery Channel / BBC’s “Planet Earth” documentaries. The 11-part series is running through the end of April, and over the weekend my TiVo caught the episodes I missed last week.

It. Is. Incredible.

The series took five years to film, and was shot on state-of-the-art cameras in every conceivable situation … and it shows. It’s hands down one of the most beautiful things I’ve ever seen on television, and notable for being the very first thing I’ve seen that made me wish I owned an HDTV.

Check your local listings or set yourself a Season Pass. You will not be disappointed. Even if you haven’t joined the digital television ‘revolution’ yet.