Ramping Up for a Big 2013

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 six months of my pre-father life.

There's some of the typical stuff… I've been in running and working out over the last few months and plan on continuing straight into this year. There was a holiday break, due to a combination of obligatory family time and sinus infection, but I'm already ramping up to get back on the horse. Katie and I have been working on finances, trying to plan out budgets for pre- and post-baby decisions. That's the boring stuff - let's focus on code and hiking.

The Waterfall Site

I've been putting this off for far too long. While the site is quite outdated, both in terms of the code and content, I spent a lot of time collecting the information back in '08 and '09. With over a hundred waterfalls and five dozen journal entries I've poured days writing content and plugging in data. And I didn't even finish all of it before pushing and neglecting it.

Now, four years after launch, there's more. I now have around 160 waterfalls under my belt and about 40 more that I plan on visiting this year. There are 117 total journal entries to write, including the previous 67 that I need to refactor. Between these two alone the content that I need to write will be approaching 150,000 words. That's enough for a small novel and to justify a long procrastination… until 2013.

Over the last month I've put together about a third of what needs to be done and am working on a really awesome redesign to boot. At this pace I hope to get the site up sometime in March, which will coincide with the opening of the spring melt in the Keweenaw. There's some exciting stuff that will be coming out with this site, but I don't want to spoil it (or overpromise on the initial launch). I'm really looking forward to launching and filling out the waterfall site, my first and favorite personal website project.

Other Website Stuff

Outside of the waterfall site there are a few other projects here and there. I'd love to bring my hiking map up to present day, both in terms of the code and content. It's overly difficult to use and update right now so I've just let it sit for the last few years. My music site and portfolio are also neglected, and the lifestream could use (another) facelift… but the waterfall site comes first.

The blog, however, is pretty solid right now. I've been pushing out a lot more posts, even though this means that hiking posts are a bit more diluted with personal and web development ones. I just don't get up north often enough to push out more than 3-4 hiking posts per month. I'd still like to continue the posting schedule, with the chance of hitting 200 posts early this year.

Hiking

Ah yes, the good stuff. With a baby on the way I'm not going to pretend that I'm going to be up north every weekend this year, though I am hoping to be up there plenty before June and sneaking up a few times in the fall (don't tell Katie). There are some waterfalls to check out, pushing into the Porcupines and Gogebic County in the west and Chocolay to the east. I'm always learning about falls that I missed out on too, in the Keweenaw, near Alberta, or even unnamed drops on the Peshekee Highlands.

Outside of waterfalls, which are receiving unequal treatment with my site revamp, there are some other places I want to check out. I was thinking that this would be the year to push more into the Porkies or over by Pictured Rocks, but I've got far too much yet to explore in the core still. I'm still planning on doing a circle around the tip of the Keweenaw, from Bete Gris to Copper Harbor, and climb around Mount Curwood and Dirkman Lake. Ives Hill, or Lookout Mountain, still has plenty of outcroppings on public land that I haven't tackled yet. There's even some sections of Mulligan Plains that I mean to explore, the far northeast corner that was just logged a few years ago.

So, what does this all mean? Between hiking, coding, writing, and raising a kid, I'm just going to stop in sleeping in 2013. Completely. So I guess that's my resolution: no more sleep.