www.arareko.net

Today Beto and I woke up early and left the camp for driving to Cerro Ñadó, which is 30 minutes away from the canyon. We wanted to do some trail running before the hard climbing (which Covita begged the whole week to have). In about 45 minutes we managed to drag ourselves up the 3.5 km steep trail that goes to the summit of the mountain. At the end of the trail and at the base of its summit cliff, we turned back and finished our lap in another 30 minutes. Total time car-to-car: 1 hour 20 minutes. Not so bad… We drank some water and drove to the town of Aculco. There we bought some delicious sweet bread and milk for breakfast and went back to the camp.

Once at the canyon we picked up the tents, ate breakfast and headed to the climbing routes. It was around 12 p.m. when we finished setting up the anchors and the rappel for Polvo Ascendente, a stunning 5.11c fingertip-lieback dihedral which is to the left of the waterfall. After everyone managed to climb the route, we headed to the other side of the canyon and rappeled into it for climbing Chompepes, a very tricky 5.11a which falls into my category of 5.9-squeeze crack climbing. Fortunately, this time I could climb it on the second try. By 5 p.m. we were setting up a top-rope for Ceci (who was learning to climb) in Ñaca-Ñaca, a beautiful 5.10a face climb (where many years ago I broke my ankle while falling from the summit of its pillar).

By 6:30 p.m. we called it “a day” and left the canyon for eating some well deserved tacos at the little and nearby town of Aculco. Then we came back home…

Have you ever renamed 768 files? Merged the content from 96 files into a spreadsheet? Filtered 100 lines out of a 20,000-line file?

Have you ever done these things by hand?

Disciples of laziness–one of the three Perl programmer’s virtues–know that you should never repeat anything five times, let alone 768. It dismayed me to learn that biologists do this kind of thing all the time…

Perl.com: Data Munging for Non-Programming Biologists

We’ve been putting up some new hard boulder problems at Chiluca. It’s incredible to see how creative the mind & body can get after a brief disconnection from the usual activities (lets call them “climbing”). We think all the problems are in the 5.11-5.12 range. Fortunately, most of them are tendon-friendly due to their sloped handholds. We managed to send most of them after some tries. The rest will have to wait for the upcoming days…

By night, I met Fer at her place and we started her training for the upcoming Nike 10K race, which will take place on November 6th. We did a small running circuit of almost 5 km which wasn’t on totally flat terrain. We have only a few days to quickly raise her endurance. She’s also a stubborn girl, so that will help…

• Bozhestvo: Great animation. A short and fun clip which shows a fight between the god Shiva and a fly.
• Psicobloc: Excellent action video. Klem Loskot and a friend deep water solo some new and exciting routes in Mallorca, Spain. Inspiring!
• Ciao Martina: Simone Moro gives us a lesson of great fatherhood. He narrates how much he misses his 5 year old daughter Martina while he climbs the difficult south face of Shishapangma in winter.
• Yukon Quest: Nice video. A sledge-dog race which takes place in Alaska and takes its competitors along a 1,600 km adventure.
• Alone Across Australia: Jon Muir narrates his solo trip across the giant australian continent. A story which took us to the origins of mankind as nomads and an adventure not for the faint of heart. This guy is by far more extreme than Forrest Gump!

As every year, I’m sad that the film festival came to its end. I’ll be anxiously waiting for the next year’s edition, which I know will be memorable as always.

It was my first time running after a whole month of illness and recovery. I must admit that I dragged myself to the very top as a snail, but the sensation of being again in the nature was so great!

• Au bout du Monde: Excellent cartoon. A house which delicately balances at the top of a mountain makes its inhabitants have a hard & funny time living in it.
• The Collective: Great action video. A group of freestyle mountain bikers do a bunch of tricks at different custom routes. Excellent photography.
• The Man Who Jumped Beneath the Earth: Eric Jones becomes the oldest (66 years old) and most unexperienced B.A.S.E. jumper to plummet into Sotano de las Golondrinas cave in México. Inspiring!
• Tom Crean: The Forgotten Hero of the Antarctic: Nice documentary. It narrates the life and adventures of Tom Crean -the hard man behind Ernest Shackleton- while the antarctic exploration took place at the beginning of the 20th century.

After the movies, we (the whole climbing gang) went to dinner some tacos and had a really fun night.

After so many days of illness, my body has almost completely lost its power. I can’t dyno on some routes with the same confidence as before! I must be patient and wait until a few days of training help me recover that power…

A few days ago, I sent the port for Bio::ASN1::EntrezGene. Today I received a notice that it was accepted and committed into the FreeBSD ports collection. If you want to know what is it for, check out my FreeBSD ports page

• Ouray Ice: Excellent action video. It shows the best moments of the Ouray Ice Festival and how only 2 climbers were able to finish the extremely difficult mixed climbing route.
• Wehyakin: Great action movie. A group of paddling experts take a tour in different rivers from Iceland, Norway and México. Lots of adrenaline!
• Ride the Lightning: Nice video. Some of the best mountain bike riders do a lot of tricks in different downhill routes.
• Thumbnail: Excellent movie. Cecilia Buil and Roberta Nunes climb a new route in a remote big wall from Greenland. It shows the real strength of female climbers!

I hope tomorrow films will be as good as the ones from today…

New study suggests the chemicals may also act as anxiolytics and antidepressants

Cannabinoids promote neurogenesis in embryonic and adult rats, and produce anxiolytic- and antidepressant-like effects, according to a new report in the current issue of The Journal of Clinical Investigation. The effects appear to contradict those seen from other studied drugs of abuse, the authors note…

The Scientist: Cannabinoids boost neurogenesis?