Hiking, web development, best practices, and general awesomeness
Dry August heat rushed at me as I stepped out of the car. It was supposed to be cooler, with a slight north wind off the still-chilled Lake Superior waters, but the temperature near Wolverine didn't want to cooperate. I organized my gear and gazed up at the tall poor rock pile, the first of many,…
A few weeks ago I found myself in hot, sunny Arizona. Katie, Noah, and I were visiting some family in the Phoenix area during the warmest time of the year. After a few days of catching up inside during the daylight hours and swimming during the evening I was starting to get a bad case of cabin…
A little less than two years ago my parents embarked on an ambitious move across the country. For over twenty years they lived in the thumb area of Michigan, a wonderfully remote and quiet land that was a perfect place to raise a family. However, after my sister and I left and some time passed, they…
Between the months of April and October a plague of insects descends upon the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. A variety of biting and blood-sucking bugs, flying and crawling, lie in wait in the woods for unsuspecting visitors to lash out. Swamps, rivers, hills, beaches: no place is safe. Rumor has it…
Point Abbaye had lured me out many years ago during some of my first adventures east of L'Anse. The long peninsula separated Keweenaw and Huron Bay and looked like a tiny version of the great Keweenaw Peninsula itself, stretching out into Lake Suprior like a crooked finger. Also, it promised (and…
Six years of hiking in the Upper Peninsula has taken me to a lot of cool places. Mulligan Plains, High Rock Bay, Ives Hill (Lookout Mountain), and the McCormick Tract are all locations that I never dreamed existed during my years at Michigan Tech, places I only found after research and exploring…
There is no other waterfall in Michigan that has confounded me as much as Vista Falls. Sure, I did get lost over night while cutting through the Herman-Nestoria swamp looking for Upper Sturgeon Falls. And I almost got my car stuck in the mud looking for Upper Silver Falls. And there was that time at…
Sun trickled down through the wet, green leaves overhead. I paused, listening for the soft rustles of the wind high above me, feeling the sprinkles come down as the branches moved and swayed. The hill I was walking over was just west of Victoria and Lookout Mountain, within a few miles of my earlier…
Throughout many of my hiking posts I frequently use the word 'bushwhacking'. I learned this word from my dad when we would bust through the woods on a walk and was recently surprised to learn that it is actually had a legitimate definition. Honestly, when pushing my way through vegetation or…
Many people avoid using regex in their application because of speed issues. When you're developing a site and are looking for sub-second response times a regex that takes a few hundred milliseconds is not very appealing. Especially when that slow pattern is being matched against several dozen…