Hiking, web development, best practices, and general awesomeness
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…
Trying to hide my nervousness I glanced around at the snowy trees and hills around us. Emily and I were driving up M-26 towards Atlantic Mine, one of the most notorious stretches of winter roads this side of the Mackinaw. Sputtering snow and strong winds cut down our visibility and kept our…
Emily and I pored over her ten-year-old McNally Atlas looking for a good snowshoe destination. The wind howled outside the small Ontonagon house as I checked the clock out of the corner of my eye. It was still early in the afternoon, with hours of daylight left in the snowy February day, but I still…
There's been something bugging me about interacting with Twitter through its API. Sure, it's easy enough to pull data for records, even if you're building your own OAuth request by hand. Its not too hard to take that logic a step further and post tweets on a schedule either, something that thousands…