Ryan's Journal

Today's hike went east from Vermont Canyon and involved conquering Glendale Peak and finding a couple decent spots to sit down and do some reading (Timon of Athens, Shakespearean tragedy appropriate for any time). All told, it was a bit more than 7.5 miles. I'd hoped some of the views from the east, a bit lower in elevation than the highest peak on Mt. Hollywood, might show some of the zoo from above, but I couldn't make any of it out from that vantage point. There's a bit of a parking lot near Glendale Peak where some Pentecostals were holding a prayer session of some sort, subsequently displaced by what looked like a filming crew. Griffith doesn't disappoint on the weekends.

Edit: There was yet more; the site of the Old Zoo still retains some of its enclosures, visited for a friend's birthday. I'll go back with a camera. Some of the cages are being slowly overtaken by greenery. It's a fascinating little spot tucked away near the merry-go-ground and pony and train rides, and there appears to be another peak just off the main zoo grounds worth a climb.

Now that phone and computer are from the same manufacturer, there are some interesting tricks to pull around the data. Someone put together a Ruby script that synchronizes iPhone call log and texts to iCalendar. Unfortunately, it broke with iPhone OS 3.0 / iTunes 8. It's been sitting around waiting for me to look into it, partly for an audit trail when it comes to business expenses, partly because it's just kind of cool.

It wasn't really any more compelling to undertake today than some other day, but I did actually take the time to examine what was going on and found that the changes in backup format were minimal. They were weird, but minimal. I submitted a patch to the project even though it might be dead. If the patch languishes for too long, I'll fork and then leave my own dead project lying around. Other changes include fixing contact name lookup, improving the SMS version of the script to better recognize numbers, placing the texts in the notes field, adding the tel: URL, and writing a shell script and launch plist that ran less frequently and made more sense for my purposes.

The next maybe step is to convert the call data into a form I can use for precise auditing of phone related business expenses. For another day.

I had less time available this weekend, so the hike was truncated and not worth tracking. There's a route from the tennis courts up a mild slope and along a fire road back to Vermont Canyon.

I had more time in the evenings, so I finally completed 120 levels of Super Mario Galaxy. Just in time for the sequel. Or not. If it's as good as the original, I don't really have time for it.

This week's hike was at night. Los Angeles has enough light pollution that a cloudy evening doesn't even require a headlamp, though I brought one just in case. The park is technically closed after sundown, but the Griffith Observatory remains open since it obviously works best during the hours opposite of those for the park. None of the street entrances close, as far as I know, so this particular restriction as it pertains to the observatory seems to mostly be about where you can park. Getting to the observatory from Vermont Canyon is straightforward, though it does require some scrambling. The authorized-access only applies to cars; I guess it's an employee/VIP only segment of the lot. They won't care if you're walking.

The route doesn't actually go to the observatory, but it's just down the road. The view of the whole of Los Angeles at night is fantastic.

From Godfrey Reggio's eponymous film, koyaanisqatsi meaning #5 as translated approximately from Hopi: a state of life that calls for another way of living.

I've put off watching the Qatsi trilogy for a bit since "experience film" tends to require undivided attention for a longer period of time with no promise of engagement, understanding, or worthwhile interpretation. Into Great Silence, a three hour documentary on an order of silent monks, is itself almost entirely silent, inviting the viewer for a brief moment into the lives of a strict monastic order whose daily experience from the time they take their vows dwarfs the comparatively short and yet decidedly uncomfortable time an audience would sit through it. I sort of watched it. At home. I cheated. I had two monitors at the time. The other one wasn't quiescent.

Koyaanisqatsi is a bit harder to describe. If you're not interested in monasticism at all, then Silence can be fairly safely written off (but don't write it off). Most people don't speak Hopi, and taking the more broadly used definition of "life out of balance" only conveys some small sense of what the actual experience is like. Thus you could read through a fairly detailed, scene by scene description of the film on wiki and still be unprepared to be moved by the film.

There is no plot, there are no characters. What narrative it offers must be inferred from observing and from the tone of the soundtrack, composed by Philip Glass. One of the final scenes, where a flaming piece of a disastrous explosion in space tumbles back to the ground, is utterly absorbing. The intention becomes clear in each segment, and I wish the film was more often described with that fifth meaning. Modern day life is out of balance - and that is a desperate plea for something about it to change. For a nearly thirty-year old film, Koyaanisqatsi is still wholly relevant. It may still be a bit before I get to the next two. There were nineteen years between the first and last, though; I'll try not to rush it.