Tablesaw!

With all the caching I've been doing, I thought I should spend some time getting reacquainted with Google Earth. And yet, I didn't get around to uploading any of the new stuff. Instead, I touched up some photos and made a map of a hike I made three years ago with ojouchan.

It was one of a few hikes that Ojou indulged me in, since she never really enjoyed just walking through the mountains like I did. When we reached the peak, she was rather miffed that there was a road that led straight to the peak. Still, the trail led through a cool rocky narrow on the way up. She took a lot of pictures there. I did too, but most of mine didn't turn out so well.

Google Earth file / Online Google Map

My hike to Temescal Peak is finally finished. It should be pretty easy to see why it took so long. Ten miles, nineteen geocaches, sixty photos (not counting pages from the peak register), a video, and a few scattered waypoints. It was a big day, and there's a lot of information here.

In Google Maps, and in Google Earth.

I've been once again finding either the time or the impetus to post from work. And things have gotten a little crazy around the house. ojouchan finished work with the film she was on much earlier than expected, and a lot of time was dedicated to keeping up her spirits. Another large block of time has been dedicated to getting her her driving permit and teaching her to drive. Hollywood streets are way too busy for us to practice, so we have to take a drive before we spend time driving and drive back. And between all of that, I've actually had some activities of my own (generally planned when I thought I'd have much more free time than I could handle). So it's been fun and exciting, but rough on internet me.

---

April first is already starting to bug me. I'd wanted to catch up on the Story Games forum, but they've apparently archived nearly all of their old threads in service to today's "prank."

---

I've been doing a lot of hiking, but haven't posted much about it. Ojou joined me for my last two Santa Monica Summits, San Vicente Mountain and Saddle Peak. Both involved short hikes which, perversely, could have been avoided by driving. But that's not the point, of course. In retrospect, the unusual number of bugs meant that we should ahve driven up San Vicente, but the hike up to Saddle Peak took us along a beautiful stretch of the Backbone Trail that were wonderful.

---

On Saturday, I headed east to Game Empire to play some RPGs at Nerd SoCal's March Game Day. It was a lot of fun. I played Shock in the morning, and In a Wicked Age in the evening. I'd heard a lot about both, and both were excellent. I have to say that IAWA was significantly more excellent, though. I'd like to go into details, but that would be a whole other post.

I enjoy these convention and miniconvention outings. It seems like I always have enough interested friends around to do some gaming, but it very rarely coalesces into playing games. But at these gatherings, the people I've played with have been pretty uniformly awesome, and it's great to try out a new game every four hours.

---

One of the reasons I can't really hang with fandoms is that I can't keep a text alive within my heart very long. Fans of a show or book—I mean Capital-F-Fandom fans—just seem to be able to keep that show alive regardless of what's happening. Writer's strike, delayed book, early cancelation, none of these can dim the spirits of fandom because they keep things alive through fanfic, speculation, spoilers, art, reruns, rereads, and any manner of thing. But for me, that fire only really exists while the show is going; when it stops, everything cools.

Battlestar Galactica restarts this week, and I'm having trouble remembering everything about it. I feel like this any time something I was a fan of goes away and comes back. I'll be into it soon enough, I know, but when I look at those giant ads plastered around my home, I feel disconnected.

I develop fandom muscles quickly, but I let them atrophy too easily.

---

radiotelescope wrote a fun little puzzle called Praser 12 a little while ago (last week?). It didn't take too long to solve (though it did take a while to find the time to actually do the solving); I think I was just on Zarf's brainwavelength when it came to laying to whole thing out.

---

TueNYTX: 5:45.

I've definitely let my crossword muscles atrophy. I agree with thedan that Nikoli puzzles work out a different part of the brain, and it's hard to keep both of them going. I need to shape up both for Hunt construction this year.

Of course, I'm getting better at solving the Nikoli puzzles. I absolutely breezed through the mega-sized puzzles released today.

In before the deadline, here's my hike to Mount Chapel on February 14. No pictures; I couldn't remember where I'd left my camera that morning, and I was trying to hike and come back before ojouchan had really woken up.

I'm working on not a whole lot of sleep. I've been shaving a few hours off for most of this week, and today I got up early for an online Hunt meetup. I'm looking forward to my nap tomorrow before meeting up with cramerica.

Yesterday, I was thinking about joinging Hike the Geek, but a series of plans changing, then changing back, then changing again left me unwilling to rush to drive all the way out to Agoura. (Sorry guys.) Instead, I went to my own backyard (as it were) to hike up to Cahuenga Peak.

Here's the Google Map, and here's the Google Earth file.

I spent some time organizing my geocaches and GPS and eventually settled on a route from the Hollywood Reservoir area to the west. It meant a short hike, but a kind of brutal one: I'd be gaining about eight hundred feet of altitude in three quarters of a mile.

The ascent was as rough as I expected, and expecting it didn't make it feel any better, but I was amazed when I finally made my way to the top of the ridge. You see, the whole way up, I was walking through the standard Southern California chaparral—the same stuff you'd find on any hillside in LA. But when I got to the top, in addition to a stunning view of the Valley, there was a huge landscape of black.

See, the fires had completely wiped out the north side of the hills, but the south side, where I was climbing, was untouched. So as I walked east to the peak, I could see a normal landscape to my right and a wasteland to my left.

Most of this you'll have to take my word on, though, because I left my camera at my parents' house during Thanksgiving. Still, I think I need to go back up there on another clear day when I do have it.