Running Scrappy In The Old Pueblo by Jamil Coury - A nice blog post by accomplished runner Jamil Coury about running the Old Pueblo 50 Mile Endurance Run - included here largely because while I am no where close to doing a 50 mile race this is pretty inspirational with it being so close to Tucson (a few other reports if you are curious Old Pueblo 50 Mile race report and Strangely Alive). Rating: 4 of 5 (for inspiration! If you have no interest in trail running maybe skip this...)
Road Trip - Anton Krupicka - I work in Specialty Outdoor Retail as a Buyer and I think that the most iconic imagery in the past few years has been the New Balance Minimus ads for the original MT10 with Anton Krupicka. As I remember them he is on an awesome trail and all he has are shorts, a pair of MT10 and two water bottles - no complicated gear, not even a shirt, but exploring places in an afternoon that might take me a day or more to get to... What a great inspiration and reminder about simplicity and what is possible - I am no Anton Krupicka and for many adventures I want/need a little more than shorts/shoes/water bottle to be safe/appropriate, but over the past few years I have realized I don't need much more and I think I have gotten outside more and more (which is AWESOME) by keeping things increasingly simple... If you think images in the ads and my response to them were just classic great marketing magic check out this link... Rating: 4 of 5 (Authentic!)
Oblivion (2013) - Pros: looks cool, I did not guess all of the plot twists, avoids being just a Hollywood action movie with sci-fi details, not too much terrible dialog, acting was decent. Cons: Ending is absurd, while I did not predict the plot twists they are pretty concrete when revealed, there is little sense of mystery (I think the best science fiction may be just as much about awe and mystery as about tech), as ADT pointed out it kind of feels like a mash-up of other (better) sci-fi films. Not the best ever - but decently solid if you are a sci-fi fan (especially since decent sci-fi films (imho) are few and far between)! Rating: 3 of 5
The Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 4 Book for Digital Photographers (Voices That Matter) by Scott Kelby - I recently purchased and started using Adobe Lightroom, while there were some things that I caught right away there were quite a few details/features/concepts that were complete mysteries to me - I appreciated that this book gave me quite a bit of help/instruction concisely and with nice examples. Certainly all of this information is somewhere online, but I am fairly confident that this was a better/more efficient way to get started. Rating: 3 of 5
A Colorado summer begins! - Scott Morris's Blog is full of great adventures and I have quite a bit of admiration for all the riding/exploring he has done in Southern Arizona. This particular post is included for the feeling - this made me smile! Rating: 4 of 5 (Also two software projects that Scott Morris is involved in that are very awesome and well worth checking out: TopoFusion (GPS mapping software) and Trackleaders (SPOT Event Tracking Service))
UltraPedestrian - There is some amazing content on both UltraPedestrian and the UltraPedestrian Facebook Page - I have to admit that this appears here partly because of the name 'UltraPedestrain' - this is a completely completely awesome name - I can not ever remember feeling even slightly jealous of a domain name until now... To be sure I don't deserve this name/moniker so in the grand scheme of things much more fitting that it went to someone who does deserve the title instead of someone who likes clever things and does not mind spending a few dollars on domain name registration...
Argo - This has received some very good reviews but was not top of my list to see because the premise/plot from the trailer never really grabbed me. I was a little surprised by this movie - the background/setting ('true story' pieces I suppose) are fascinating but apparently bent to the need to make a Hollywood movie and the characters and plot seemed predictable - but certainly far from the worst movie I have ever watched... Rating: 3 of 5
Catch my Disease - Ben Lee - Started off kind of interesting and promising (but admittedly that might have been because I graduated High School in the early 90s so some of the references where kind of nostalgic/memory lane sort of things) but it seemed to degenerate from an interesting mix of material into a single talking head endlessly rambling on and on and on - fell asleep part way thru and did not make it to the end. Rating: 1 of 5
Talk Ultra Episode 35 – Jornet, Forsberg, Canaday, Olson, Clayton, James and Transvulcania - Too many awesome interviews in this episode to not include it - as mentioned in my review of this podcast the episode is monster long but WOW! Rating: 5 of 5
Cloud Atlas (Movie - 2012) - I have read the book and it is a little hard to imagine the experience of seeing the movie without that context (and perhaps even better I read Cloud Atlas years ago so my memory is too hazy to be disrupted by knowing exactly what changed/what was the same in the movie). Cloud Atlas consists of stories from a number of different time periods that are all connected in some way - but the film did not seem as cohesive as my memory of the book... Even if this does not ascend to my favorite film of all time this movie presents something unique and interesting (which I appreciate!) - but maybe just make the time and read the book! Rating: 3 of 5 (Read the book!!!)
Springtime Zion 2013 - Jared Campbell writes an absolutely inspiring post about adventures in and near Zion - there are too few write ups of interesting adventures like this!!!! Rating: 4 of 5
True Blood - Season 5 - Enjoyed - pretty sure that I will watch the next season when it comes out on DVD. Rating: 3 of 5
Star Trek Into Darkness (2013) - OK action movie - but nothing interesting. I was sad that 'to seek out new life and new civilizations, and to boldly go where no one has gone before' is absent and this vision of the future is kind of depressing (especially depressing considering that this franchise includes Star Trek: The Next Generation which may be one of the most hopeful visions ever produced for TV/Film). Rating: 2 of 5
Published this month:
I wrote two blogs for the Summit Hut that were posted in May on section hiking/running the Sky Island Traverse. It was a good challenge to try to express what it was like out on the trail and to write in a bit different style than I have used for other trail/destination reports - hopefully this series will give me more chances to experiment and write about places I love! I also enjoyed the challenge of doing the maps for these - the final maps were done in Terrain Navigator Pro with some of the planning and editing done in TopoFusion - Sky Island Dreaming A Windmill to the West
My cmiles - blog has not had many posts over the past few years but with the recent changes to flickr I anticipate writing there more frequently. Years ago I wrote more on cmiles - blog, but eventually I did more and more with flickr sets because they matched what I wanted to do very nicely. flickr sets were - to me - a great idea that was executed just well enough to make them an interesting option - but in the latest flickr update the story/narrative/text for the set is poorly presented for someone like me who (in some cases anyway) values the writing about the pictures as much as the pictures themselves - so it is time to find a different way to write about my adventures. I think flickr for the pictures and cmiles - blog for the 'story' is the best (reasonable) idea I can come up with (I would love to hear other suggestions!)... Canada del Oro – 2013 May Slavin Gulch – May 2013 Wasson Peak – King Canyon Trail – Night Hike, 2013 May A Night Hike to Point 4981 – May 2013 A Section of the San Pedro River – May 2013
cmiles-outside: Added several items to Santa Catalina Mountains News and a new item to Pusch Ridge Wilderness Bighorn Sheep Restrictions. Updated both Gibbon Mountain and Gordon Hirabayashi Recreation Site with some information from the 1904 USGS Tucson Quadrangle.