Hiking, web development, best practices, and general awesomeness
Best practices can be great for a language like PHP. PHP is almost too easy to work in. Its low barrier of entry and high flexibility allow for many possible solutions to any given issue. Being a programmer, especially a PHP developer, you find that coming up with a fix or writing a new script is…
Sometimes I miss the good spots on a hike. I often head into an area with little more than a topographic map and a rudimentary understanding of the area. Depending on how the hike goes my rough plans can change rapidly to avoid rough sections or check out an interesting side destination, but many…
When developing applications it is easy for programmers to think in terms of successful occurrences. Code is built to expect certain results because the programmer is thinking of how the application should work. Whether the specifications are being outlined or the code itself is being tested before…
I was only a few months into my waterfall adventures in the summer of 2008 when I learned some distressing news. A dear friend of mine was leaving Houghton for the summer, someone I had hoped to spend a lot of time with and who meant a lot to me. At that time I was searching for some waterfalls in…
Twitter has been slowly changing up their API over the last few months. When I first set up a cron to pull my Twitter timeline over a year ago I was able to pull a public RSS feed without too much difficulty. If they were over capacity, either just on the API side or with the entire application, my…
Sometimes things go wrong. I have been very fortunate over the years considering the number of adventures and idiotic ideas I've had, but sometimes bad things can and do happen. Among the problems that have cropped up during hikes I've had to deal with car problems, injuries, exhaustion, and…
Looking back at my previous jobs it's interesting to look at both what skills I gained while working there and how they shaped the direction of my career. At Michigan Technological University I learned about databases and priority management. SparkNET taught my about object-orientated programming,…
It was so, so early in the morning. I watched sunrise try to seep over Ives Hill in the east but got impatient and headed downhill before the rays touched my chilly outcropping. There was a long hike in front of me and I didn't want to waste time, especially on a lazy sun. Most of this hike would be…
Moving to Wisconsin from the wilds of the Upper Peninsula was a difficult move. Living in a small duplex on Wheatfield over the last two years with few friends nearby didn't help the transition. It was a nice place for Katie and I to start in but we were anxious to have a more solid footing. We…
Dull grey seeped into my tent signalling a long-awaited end to a miserable, sleepless night. I scrambled around in the frigid air, pulling on stiff clothes and grabbing prepared gear in a rush to start moving on a long hike. My campsite was less than ideal even though I had took pains to pick the…