Hiking, web development, best practices, and general awesomeness
The word 'brogrammer' has gotten a fairly bad rap over the last year or so. It was never a particularly popular word but lately it has come to symbolize a genuine and ever-growing concern over sexism in technology. Whether you're talking about booth babes or male-focused conferences, women are not…
Waterfalls were my first love in the Upper Peninsula. I'd walk miles and miles searching out little known drops deep in the woods, guided only by rumors and intuition. Most of these quests resulted in discovering an unnamed wonder far from the beaten path, even if it meant returning several times to…
There are a few things that frustrate me more as a web developer than finding cross-layer coupling in frameworks. I'm not just refering to 'view' or 'model' layers here… Front-facing parameters, module logic, and data storage structure are all unique layers of an application and should be…
Huh. I guess we made it past another potential doomsday, the Mayan apocalypse. We're now two weeks into 2013 and well past the time to make resolutions about losing weight and writing novels. But that's not enough to stop me from laying out some goals, especially as the next six months are the last…
Near the southeastern end of the Keweenaw Ridge a series of named peaks rise up, one last push towards the sky before Lake Superior swallows up the land. Mount Horace Greeley is the highest point in Keweenaw County but is on private property, with an old Air Force base perched on its peak. Mt…
A few years ago I was considering hiking around Lake Superior. It's been done now (Full Circle) by an elderly couple who took 145 days to hike the 1,555 miles in 2010. While it's still tempting to try this hike in the future a new target has come up that seems more feasible: the Appalachian…
Katie and I were married on a beautiful August afternoon. After the wedding a lot of our family and friends jokingly asked how long it would be before we had kids, a question that we would respond to with a good-natured laugh. We're in our late twenties, and while some of our peers have a decent…
Dense fog broken only by scattered showers made my early morning drive to Rockland a stressful journey. There was no stars or moon to break the darkness, only thick, cloying whiteness and occasional city street lights. It wasn't until I was within ten minutes of my destination that the sun began to…
There's been a lot of changes to a few of my websites lately, including this blog. Inspired by the whole idea of responsive web design I've been going through and refactoring the front end logic. This involves more than just updating CSS. Removing jQuery, adding some HTML5, and cleaning up the…
On a small point of land north of Ontonagon, MI sits an abandoned lighthouse. Built in the 1890s to help guide traffic from Houghton to Ontonagon along the unmarked coast this lighthouse was in commission for over fifty years before it was snuffed out. In 1984 a fire consumed everything but the…