Hiking, web development, best practices, and general awesomeness
The clear sky was a giant blue mirror reflecting back the heat of the rocky earth. At least, that's what it felt like as I stood near the van and looked over at Ballantine Trailhead. The hot air swam around me and my skin prickled with the promise of a sweaty afternoon. With a long sigh I walked…
Noah and Thomas munched on their breakfast in their seats behind me, occasionally breaking out in short bursts of chatter between long periods of quiet eating. I drove the three of us eastward on US-60 under a predawn sky towards Globe. This was my weekend alone with the boys and we had ambitious…
Swagger spec is an awesome tool for describing APIs in a standardized way, allowing programs to understand and interpret them. It is a set of files (often just one) written in JSON or yaml that defines the routes, parameters, responses, and metadata of an API. After a spec has been written it can be…
A mostly-full moon hung high over First Water Trailhead and my lonely car parked there. I gazed up at it, debating once again on simply turning around and driving back to a warm bed. My breath wheezed in and out through the congestion of a week-long chest cold as I stood there and let the darkness…
Cars, trucks, and semis roared out over the desert mere yards away from Ballantine Trailhead. I guess this is the alternative to long, rocky roads that usually prelude my desert hikes; parking next to a busy highway and doing my best to ignore the traffic. Wincing as my shoulders took on the heavy…
Creating test doubles, or mocks, is a feature of PHPUnit that I recently discovered and am quickly falling in love with. Previously I would find other ways to mock my system, like creating SQLite connections instead of a persistent database, or even duplicating an entire mock class for injection.…
Hiking with the boys has, for the most part, been limited to short outings in San Tan or South Mountain. There are a number of loops in these parks that are less than five miles with wide, easy trails that are perfect for them to wander along. I've tried taking them to the Superstitions a few times…
Forest Road 201 was a long and winding ordeal, stretching north from AZ-87 and circling around numerous ridges and peaks on a slow climb up into the Mazatzals. All three of us were impatient to get on the trail. My dad and I had woken up at four this morning in order to meet Chris at six in Fountain…
Sleep came in hour-long chunks at best near LaBarge Spring. The temps dropped under the clear night sky to the point where I, fully dressed in the hammock, was rolling uncomfortably around by midnight. Perhaps a sleeping bag would have been a good idea after all. Every time I opened up my Kindle to…
Peralta Road was in rough shape, with huge rocks, loose sand, and deep ruts at every wash crossing. It was obvious that a major storm had dumped some water here, though I couldn't think of when. Seems like it's been dry out here for a long time. Maybe that little sprinkle we got in Gilbert last week…