Hiking, web development, best practices, and general awesomeness
A bright pink-orange glow lit up the side of my tent early in the morning. I jumped out of the sleeping bag and my breath was taken away by the fiery view over Lake Superior. Caught in Wisconsin traffic on my drive up last night, I had climbed Raven's Nest near Little Huron River late at night…
Of the three volcanic plugs in the Ottawa National Forest (see an earlier post about Ottawa volcanic plugs), I enjoyed Haystack Mountain the most. It's relatively remote, virtually unknown, and involves a short but challenging hike. A recent trip to the Upper Peninsula brought me close enough to the…
I woke up early with the sunrise, still sore from yesterday's hiking. Dressing quickly, I rolled out of the tent and started a small fire. The coffee didn't take long to make and I was soon standing on the shore of the northern Rocking Chair Lake, watching the sunrise over the tall eastern hills and…
When a computer script crawls across the web looking for information (like Google's search robot) they need to do a lot of thinking to figure out what information is located on a web page. After all, web pages are written by humans for humans, with the data and information contained in our complex,…
Recoding all of my subdomains to follow a model-view-controller framework has been a really interesting process. I've had the opportunity to experiment with different design patterns and techniques, especially in the realm of data handling and content delivery. Abstracting out my resume is a great…
A few weeks ago, on an early morning hike in the Upper Peninsula, I met a bear cub and his mother. I've seen a lot of wildlife while wandering through the woods up there, including wolves, porcupines, and more grouse than I care to count, but this was the first bear I've seen outside of the car or…
There is a small mountain and tiny lake located on the western end of the Trap Hills right off of M-64. A blazed trail leads up from the road to the mountain, passing near the lake, before it heads south to the North Country Trail. Known by locals as Cookout Mountain and Weidman Lake, this area…
As a web developer interested in creating a web presence I'm constantly looking for new projects to add to and inhance my websites. Some of these (like this blog) require a fair degree of committment to create new content, while others (like my about page) is a simple static page. I've always kept…
Something that I've been working on a lot with both my work and personal web programming is data abstraction. The opportunity to work with several different handmade php frameworks has given me different ideas on what an effective data abstraction system should have. Without formal education,…
After a full day of hiking yesterday at Deer Lake and Silver Lake Basin I slept in past the sunrise. When I finally woke up and made some breakfast I made the difficult decision to head home early. The original plan was to stay at Mulligan Plains for another full day, going on multiple hikes around…