Hiking, web development, best practices, and general awesomeness
The first time I heard about a Mt Baldy in the Michigamme area was some three years back on a random web site. I was intrigued. The idea of a mountain near the reservoir seemed novel, as most of the hills are rolling and forested, and the chance of getting a good overlook of the town and basin was…
Iron played a strong role in the early days of Marquette County. People and businesses sprung up around the iron mines and, when the mines dried up, stayed. When Jackson Mine, the first mine to work the Marquette Range, set up camp on the shores of Teal Lake in the 1840s it didn't take long for the…
Finally. After years of neglect and false starts the Waterfalls of the Keweenaw site has a new look. It was my first website, predating this blog by several weeks, though I haven't touched it in close to five years. It was about darn time that it got a fresh coat of paint.
So what is this site?…
The narrow road weaved and bucked between piles of snow under the thick pines. I began to wonder just how far I'd have to drive along this county road. I was east of 550, in the narrow chunk of land between it and Lake Superior, and was surprised at just how windy and out-of-the-way this destination…
I stared at the stone monument, reading yet not comprehending the words etched on the smooth finish. 'Tumbles of Tlapak' was the title of the thing, maybe a paragraph or two, about odd lifeforms and extra dimensions and Kcymaerxthaereal. It reminded me of something from Lovecraft. An odd little…
Eyeing up the sign in front of me I continued forward to Wetmore Beach, snowshoes in hand. Apparently the state owns this land and visitors are required to have a recreational pass. I didn't have one. I also wasn't in my car where one would slap this sticker on. The road to Wetmore was buried in a…
Over the last few years I've found myself writing and implementing a number of client libraries for different APIs. PHP to scrape dailymile and twitter, PHP to post updates to twitter, and even more PHP to interact with customer.io. Okay, so maybe most of my API building and consuming experience has…
A frigid northern wind cut across the open field and right through my many layers. I couldn't stop my teeth from chattering. This was the first stop of the day, the first time I had to step outside my warm car after the long drive from Appleton, and the pre-dawn temperatures shocked my system. Head…
A few years had passed since I was last on Mulligan Plains. After all, as much as I enjoy wandering the wild valley sandwiched between lakes and highlands, there is only so much to see. I've visited Silver Lake Basin four times, the falls on Mulligan Creek three, camped on Rocking Chair Lakes twice,…
It's been a long year since the initial Midwest PHP conference kicked off in the Twin Cities. During that time the community has changed, new technologies have cropped up, and other things that once seemed so shiny and cool are starting to show a bit of tarnish. Also, I've personally had the…