hobolinks :: March :: 2007

Crow is considering a new backcountry water filter. I’ve never seen or tried one, but I loved the small gravity filter I used on the PCT, which may have been similar.

Here we seem to have a some predictions of what the predictions will be. A third of all species will have to move to new ecosystems or they’ll become extinct. The only extinctions cited so far are 17 species of frog. So first we’ll what the actual report predicts, and then how those predictions play out…

It’s easy to wish for things in the Google Maps API once you get started using it. Chances are that others want the same things. Google has taken the first step towards letting us work on their API by opening parts of it on Google Code.

I just learned what a freegan is. For me the interesting part is the proposition that we’re ignorant of most of the detrimental consequences of our actions. I think that’s true.

I can almost envision how these things form, but I’ve never seen one.

A post at outdoorsmagic notes that outdoor blogging is catching on in the UK, and provides some URLs to get you started:
http://www.alansloman.blogspot.com/
http://walkaboutuk.blogspot.com/
http://londonbackpackers.blogspot.com/
http://aktoman.blogspot.com/
http://bgontheweb.spaces.live.com/
http://www.skunkbag.co.uk/blog/index.php
http://mikepitt23.spaces.live.com/
http://maverickapollo.blogspot.com/index.html
http://www.cameronmcneish.co.uk/diary/
http://www.alpinechallenge.info/
http://www.andyhowell.info/trek-blog/

They’ve apparently survived on less intensively farmed coastal lands in Devon. The article indicates that they depend on declining bee populations, but not how.

A GPS receiver with a built-in solar panel is reviewed at Vector One and sold at KEOMO.

(Via Free GeoTools

A nice howto from Free GeoTools with instructions for downloading National Forest topos that are more recent than the standard USGS quads.

As is happening more all over the world, a species may require genetic testing to identify.

As housing prices continue upward on the beachfront, they’re finally taking some action to get the homeless people living there out of their tents, to someplace where they are aren’t visible.

These are not available as Web Mapping Service (by a long shot), but Free GeoTools tells us where to download the images.

Many of the new species being discovered are considered endangered from the moment of discovery. Or perhaps it should be endangered by discovery. The colorful Celestial Pearl Danio fish discovered a few months ago is already threatened by demand from aquarium owners.

An ornithologist captured the rare bird in Thailand, and was dumbstruck when he realized what it was.

I haven’t tried it yet, but GPS Tracks has nice, simple, utilitarian interface for uploading and viewing GPX files on a Google map.

Apparently the record for the longest journey by skateboard no longer belongs to an American. I still remember being impressed when on a long bike tour I met a guy heading the other way on a scooter, bag over his shoulder, headed 200 miles south to San Francisco. He didn’t have a camera crew, and probably never made the paper.

This radio story about the annual hobo gathering in, strangely enough, Brit, Iowa, is pleasantly free of hype. I guess Americans don’t care for such fare.

A “high-end” store owner in New York files a million-dollar lawsuit against a homeless man who habitually got warm on the grate outside his store. “”As long as he’s not a nuisance, live and let live,” says the magnanimous owner, who dropped the lawsuit when cutting off the warm air supply did the trick.

This is a nice outdoor activity mashup for Southwestern Pennsylvania. Quite useful if you live there, I’d imagine.

No scholars have come out with a species name yet, but laypersons continue to collect bigfoot evidence: