Pockets of Blue

Mexico: Part One

February 23, 2007 in Mountaineering, Travel by alalonde | No comments

Hey, I’m back. So it seems as if I’m going through phases of creativity and self-expression, alternating with apathy. Bear with me. When I do post, it’ll probably be worth the wait. But anyway, on to the post. I’m going to break it in two since it’s gonna be a long one:

On January 27 I flew down to Mexico City to embark on my first high-altitude mountaineering adventure. Several months ago the idea was ping-ponging about my brain and I did some internet research to see what kind of climbs would be feasible and within my limited time and budget. I came across a few candidates, and mentioned one to my roommate Curtis: Pico de Orizaba, an 18,500 foot (5800 m) volcano between Puebla and Mexico City in central Mexico. Unlike most high climbs, there wasn’t any sort of fee for using the mountain hut and we figured the whole trip would end up being pretty cheap.

Wow, were we wrong. It was hella-cheap. I spent $350 on the flight to and from Mexico City and no more than another $350 while there. Most people spend that just getting to their vacation destination. Then again, most people don’t sleep with mice or get up at 1 am to climb mountains on vacation either. But more about that later.

Curtis was immediately in and excited about the trip. We contacted all our climbing (and some non-climbing) buddies to round up some more people. After a few weeks two more had committed: Greg, one of Curtis’s college buddies, and Tim, one of Greg’s friends. Over the next couple of months we recruited two more: Nick, another runner and friend of Curtis’s, and Adam, another of his college friends. That made six. We figured this was perfect since groups of three are ideal for roped glacier travel.

On Friday, Jan. 26 we left Rochester to drive down to Philadelphia, where our flight would leave at 7 am the next day. We stayed at a friend of Greg’s, made it to the airport on time, and were in Mexico City by 2 PM. Beforehand we had decided to try and make it to Tlachichuca (the closest town to the mountain where we would spend time acclimatizing) that day. By 10 PM we had arrived at the climber’s hostel after a long day of bus-riding and mountain viewing.

Side note: Touching down in Mexico City is really cool. You can see two enormous glaciated volcanoes in the distance (Iztaccihuatl and Popocatepetl) as well as numerous smaller mountains within the city. The city is a massive sprawl; getting from the airport to the outskirts took well over an hour by bus.

After the insanity of Mexico City it was nice to settle down in the small mountain town of Tlachichuca (say it: tlah-chee-CHOO-cah) for awhile. It is a poor village with very few restaurants or tourist attractions of any sort. There are three hostels that cater to climbers, and we chose what surely is the best, run by the gracious Joaquin Canchola Limón and his wonderful daughter Maribel. When arriving she asked us if we were hungry. We were of course famished and she cooked up a multi-course meal right then and there, serving it up by 10:30 PM! It was fantastic. We enjoyed authentic, delicious homemade Mexican meals three times a day until we left for the mountain on Monday.

On Sunday we had our first taste of exertion at altitude. Mexico City lies at about 7,300 feet (2200 m) while Tlachichuca is closer to 8,500 (2600 m), and while we didn’t feel any effects the first night, Sunday was different. The group split into two and I, and in my typical gung-ho hiking
spirit, decided to go climb the ridge right next to the city. Adam and Curtis joined me while the others went for a run. It was a sweltering 80 degree day and it took about an hour and a half to reach the middle summit in the photo at right. I would guess we were at about 10,000 feet at that point, and it was a little slower going up than normal but not too bad. The others, however, were hurting during their run. (Nick, Greg and Tim all run marathons for fun [yeah they're nuts] so they know their limits very well)

It was a pretty fun hike besides the nasty cacti that kept assaulting my shins and feet. We got some breathtaking views of the mountain and topped out by mid-afternoon. There’s nothing like getting sunburned in January.

We also wandered around the market (typical street market stuff, kinda like in Europe but dirtier) and picked up a soccer ball, with which Greg and I displayed our American skillz on the street outside the hostel. At one point Maribel’s son (of about 5-6 years) joined in; he had quite a kick on him.

By noon on Monday we were in Joaquin’s 4×4 heading up a dirt road to the mountain hut at 14,000 feet. The road was BADASS. I wish I would’ve taken a few pictures of it, there were several points where there were hundred foot drops two feet past the edge of the road and the hugest potholes I have ever seen. Taking anything less than a monster truck on it would be disastrous (and highly entertaining for any passersby). We took some awesome shots of the mountain on the way up, and after two hours were at Piedra Grande, the rustic mountain hut at the top of a large field. The air was distinctly cooler but the views were amazing.

We spent the rest of the day hanging out at 14,000 feet, and after three or four hours we all had come down with pretty bad headaches. First signs of altitude sickness. I popped a couple Ibuprofen and was good to go, but the others didn’t have such luck. Before Joaquin left to go back down the mountain we had to tell him what day to pick us up. After a lengthy discussion we decided to have him come back on Wednesday, thus we would have one full day to acclimatize and an extra day at the beach later on in the week. That night it was incredibly windy, the hut had a metal roof and it would go BANG BANG BANG BANG every time a gust came overhead. It was like sleeping under railroad tracks, except trains usually don’t go by EVERY FIVE MINUTES.

At dawn we were up ("up" being a poor term, we were up most of the night) and ready to, well, not do much of anything. Tuesday was supposed to be an acclimitization day, meaning we would hike around for a bit and let our bodies build up a tolerance to the lack of oxygen. I got bored at one point and went for a walk by myself, purposefully going REALLY slow so as not to exert myself too much. When I got back four of the other guys were all geared up to go up the mountain for a few hours. Curtis was feeling pretty awful and I didn’t feel like going again so soon so I hung back with him. We went for another walk up behind the hut to a ridge so we could get a good view of Tlachichuca, which we couldn’t see from the hut. It was ferociously windy and we had to lean into the wind so it wouldn’t blow us off the mountain, but a good time nonetheless. Curtis got an awesome panorama from the ridge.

Sometime in the late afternoon the other guys returned. They had gone all the way up to the labyrinth (a glacier-carved boulder field above 15,500 feet) before entering the clouds where they couldn’t see a thing. Greg got a bit of a scare on the way up when he got nailed in the face with a fist-sized rock that got launched off a rock wall to the right of the path. He was OK but a little shaken. At that point we were debating whether we wanted to make a summit bid the next day or wait for the weather to clear, and when the clouds cleared off the summit and wind died down that night we made up our minds: Go for it tomorrow and get picked up in the afternoon by Joaquin. So we made dinner early and passed out by dusk to get some sleep before we were to get up at 1 am the next morning. We wanted to allow enough time to get up and down the mountain by 4 PM, and an alpine start sounds badass anyway.

During the first night Nick and I stayed up to do some killin’. Mice killin’, that is. The hut was infested with several families of mice, and not just any mice; mice that have LOST ALL FEAR of human beings and possess a KILLER INSTINCT. Well, a killer instinct for pissing people off, anyway. I narrowly missed goring one with my ice ax the first night, and Nick nailed one with his boot during the day. They must’ve been pretty riled up because that night one crawled into Greg’s sleeping bag. Greg literally flipped out (of his bag) and we tried to ignore them the rest of the night. Stupid mice.

1 AM came pretty quickly. I felt great and was really pumped for the climb. But it’s late and I have to get to bed. Coming up next: Summit Day and walking on the beach in Veracruz.

Guitar Tabs are EVIL

January 19, 2007 in Rants by alalonde | No comments

…or so says the gigantic music publishing conglomerate that is determined to stifle any musical inspiration in this country. How? Well, this link sums it up pretty well. If you don’t know anything about guitar tabs, then check out the linked article before proceeding…

I must say that I only realized how bad the situation had become after doing a thorough search for Pearl Jam’s "Animal" guitar tab. Four years ago I viewed the tab easily through my favorite tab search engine, Guitar Tab Universe, but tonight couldn’t find it anywhere. That is, anywhere except Ultimate-Guitar.com, which didn’t include the solo (which happened to be exactly what I was looking for, the rest of the song is trivial). It turns out that this site is one of a very few sites offering tablature for viewing these days. Unfortunately a great internet democracy has turned into an authoritarian state where choice doesn’t exist and servers are located in Russia to avoid legal threats from entities such as the NMPA and MPA, who make peanuts (and always have) from selling overpriced guitar sheet music for mainstream artists.

The battle is much like the peer-to-peer file sharing battle of years past. The RIAA and MPAA have largely won this battle [save the fantastic thepiratebay.org, located in Stockholm], but at what cost? Conglomerate radio now spews a pathetic selection of mainstream crap to its audiences while record sales, well, haven’t really changed at all. Several studies have proven this; simply do a Google search on "record sales" and see for yourself. There is so little worthwhile music on mainstream radio that everyone with the least bit of musical knowledge turns elsewhere for creative inspiration. This hurts everyone, and eventually, the music industry will feel it itself when the eventual backlash occurs.

This particular battle is an egregious trouncing of Amendment Number One. A musician’s interpretation of a song is just that, an interpretation, and should be the sole property of the transcriber. People shouldn’t be forced to buy published transcriptions of their favorite songs, especially when (in my case) such transcriptions don’t exist.

Politics quiz

January 15, 2007 in Politics by alalonde | No comments

Tonight I happened to stumble upon a really great politics quiz. It’s not all that thorough (or up to date) but does a good job of hitting the key issues. I like it because clicking on the question brings you to some background information where you can explore the topic more deeply.

According to the quiz I am a moderate liberal. No surprise there, really.

Try it yourself!

It’s Hip to be Liberal

January 12, 2007 in Politics by alalonde | No comments

I’ve been spending a decent amount of time on Facebook lately, sending messages, posting on people’s walls, stalk–errr, reading about people, etc. One thing I’ve been noticing is people’s "political views." There are eight selections for this category:

Very Liberal
Liberal
Moderate
Conservative
Very Conservative
Apathetic
Libertarian
Other

I’ll admit that most of my friends tend to lean to the left, but I can still count on my fingers the number of people who have put "Conservative" or "Very Conservative" in their profiles. Even a lot of the people that I strongly couple with conservative ideology and frame of mind are "Moderate." This intrigued me to compile some numbers:

In the RIT network (this includes current students, alumni, staff and faculty with Facebook accounts) the political outlook is:

Innnnnteresting…this begs a number of questions: Why are there so many "liberal" people? There are only 102 people that are unabashedly conservative? This at a tech school full of engineers and IT students! This where most students’ idea of a good time on a friday night is sitting in their room playing World of Warcraft, drinking Mountain Dew, and locking themselves away from the outside world?

Politics in this country tends to be fairly evenly split between the Democrats and Republicans. It has been like this for several decades, with the typical pendulum of partisan support gently swinging every decade or so. Yet these numbers aren’t remotely close to balanced.

"2008, here we come!" One might think on first glance. But the problem is, just about everyone represented here is between the age of 18 and 24, and frankly, most of us should jump into that "Apathetic" column. We don’t speak up, get involved, or even vote!

I believe that these numbers are just part of a trend. After six years of bullying, fear-mongering, and outright lies, we’re pretty fed up with the man in charge and his administration. As a nation we finally spoke up in November, and a whole lot of people (GOP’ers included, clearly) are disassociating themselves from the President. It’s about time, but still, I think all this means is that right now, it’s just hip to be liberal.

The End of a Friend

December 22, 2006 in Uncategorized by alalonde | No comments

Today my iPod died. It is a sad day in the land of portable electronics, for my most beloved portable has bit the dust. Today at work I put on my headphones and started my iPod, navigating to Music->Playlists. There were none shown. Usually there are hundreds. So I backtracked and looked at the settings:

The aPod
Songs: 0
Capacity: 9.2 GB
Available: 3.3 MB

…hmmmmm….I thought. That’s no good. Where’d my music go? So I plugged it in to my iBook after work and got the ‘ol ‘Disk scan’ icon. Nothing new there, I see that on a monthly basis. Except this time, after finishing I clicked the center button and it just repeated the process. I tried again several times and could never get it to negotiate a connection. Seems the file system’s hosed.

So, naturally, I took it apart. It is now in four pieces hanging on my wall:

…and yes, it still works. Well, if by works I mean you can play the stupid brick-breaking game. That’s about it.

We’ve been everywhere, that thing and I. London trains, Austrian bunkhouses, New York subways, we’ve seen a lot together. It has lulled me to sleep on flights home from Vegas, allowed me to steal people’s reserved seats on trains from München, and made me nod off on drives home from college. (errr, well, until I put something louder on)

But it’s time to move on. After figuring out my finances I will decide what the next iPod will be. Currently I’m looking at one of the newer 30GB models. I don’t care about having video capabilities, so I may look on eBay or something for a deal. I was feeling cramped with 10 gigs though, and it’ll be nice to not have to restart it every week when it gets hung up on a song.

It gave me almost three years of service, so I got my money’s worth. It’ll be a shame to throw away the various accessories I picked up along the way (namely my integrated power adapter/FM transmitter) but they won’t work with any of the newer models.

Bon voyage, señor aPod!

Perfection

December 18, 2006 in Uncategorized by alalonde | No comments

A screenshot from my laptop. Draw your own conclusions…

Chew Toy

December 14, 2006 in Rants by alalonde | No comments

Ever get the feeling that you’re turning into someone’s chew toy? Well, before this month, I hadn’t.

Last monday my employer informed me that I would be no longer employed after two weeks. This was a bit of surprise, but I guess it shouldn’t have been since I hadn’t had any real work for several weeks and was spending each day working on a personal web site. Anyway, "employed" isn’t really correct since I am technically a contractor (more like a glorified co-op). They had offered me employment at the end of the summer but I turned it down because I didn’t want to make the commitment. (Looking back, I doubt anything would have been different had I come one as en employee anyway.)

So over the past few days I’ve been probing various colleagues about the cause for all the layoffs (at least 4 people in Rochester and 2 elsewhere were being canned). Apparently one of our customers cancelled a service contract with us and it was a pretty big hit, so they couldn’t afford to pay so many people anymore. But the unique thing about this company is its size (60-70 people). Most of the time when large companies do layoffs their oldest, most expensive employees are the first to go. In this case they are just getting rid of all the contractors and one new hire (who was a rather sub-par developer anyway), while all the oldest, more experienced people will stay. My reasoning for this is that the company is only 3-4 years old; I doubt the most senior developers are making much more than the newbies.

Another problem involved project management. In my case, I was one of three developers who rolled out the first version of one of our web apps. This was finished by late October, the next few weeks were just bug fixes and minor adjustments due to requirements changes. After that, there was supposed to be a rather large "phase II" to the project, but nobody could agree on the details of the requirements so I just sat by idly. Finally, yesterday my boss handed me the requirements for this next phase of the app. I sarcastically informed him of my being canned in three days and he responded with a "well, we can keep you on for another week if that’s ok with you." By that point I had very much accepted my situation and responded with a "yeah, ok, whatever." So I am employed until the 22nd, which isn’t bad timing for the pending holidays.

So what’s next? Well, I might take some time off, but it’s too early to tell where I’ll be next so I won’t speculate. I’m looking forward to a healthy raise wherever I end up.

But for now I’d better go clean up all this saliva and teeth marks…

Resuscitation

November 20, 2006 in Uncategorized by alalonde | No comments

1……2…….3……..clear! *Brrrrzap* beeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeep….. "………..my God, we’re losing it! More wattage, please, Nancy, I’m not giving up that easy! 1………2……..3…..clear!" *BRRRZZZAAAAPPP* beep, beep, ……, beep, ….beep "We’ve got it back, however faint! Now the syringe, please…"

…phew, that was close. This weblog is back from the dead. Hopefully we won’t have to go through that again anytime soon…

You’d think I’d have posted something in the past few weeks, with all that’s going on. A new Congress come January, a trip to Vegas in a couple weeks, holidays, parties, etc.

So I guess I’ll start with the elections. First, the bad news. I didn’t vote. Nope. Second election I could’ve taken part of, and I didn’t get my shit together enough to cast a simple freakin’ ballot. Poor performance, Alec. But in my defense, I’ve moved four times and lived in two different countries since the last national election. I don’t know where my absentee ballot is, but it sure never made it here. My fault for not contacting the Lewis County board of elections in time. So bring on the good news then. Well, the senate/gubernatorial races weren’t even close in New York (like most statewide elections here) so Clinton and Spitzer cleaned up nicely. Both congressional districts (here in Monroe county and back home) were won by Republicans, but I couldn’t have participated in the vote here, and McHugh back at home cleaned up by about 2-1. (On a side note, my district, NY #23, is just hilarious: it’s the biggest district in the state by far, and you could drive for over four hours without leaving it, from Oswego way over to Plattsburgh in the extreme northeast. And this is in the country’s third most populous state.) But more importantly, we’ve taken back both houses of Congress. Thirty more seats in the House and six in the Senate. The question remains, though: Will we actually accomplish anything over the next two years or just continue bickering amongst ourselves? The Democratic party has little reason to pat themselves on the back, they still can’t form any sort of consensus on a lot of issues and don’t have a consistent image in the minds of voters, unlike the Elephants. It was the President’s unrealistic, unrelenting optimism on Iraq that tipped the congressional scale. It’s too bad it took two more years and thousands of US soldier and Iraqi civilian casualties for the public to realize this, for now it’s too late to salvage much of anything from the Iraqi quagmire.

That being said, let’s get back to the peephole. I haven’t posted in almost two months, and regretfully haven’t done all that much during that timespan, so I’ll just hit the high points (as usual). One weekend in mid-October I headed down to the Catskills to do an overnight hiking trip. I wanted to do some hiking while the fall colors were still decent, and had so many memories of dsriving through the blazingly red and orange Catskills on the way to New Jersey growing up that I thought I’d give ‘em a chance. The weather turned out to be really nice, in the 40s but clear. Most of the leaves were off the trees but there were enough still on to make the views really nice. I unfortunately forgot my camera, but Marcin took a pretty good set of photos to bail me out. The nice thing about having other people take the photos is you actually get pictures of yourself! We ended up doing a loop hike of my choice, the Slide Mt-Wittenburg-Cornell range. It was a pretty long day hike, about 15 miles over 8-9 hours. We ran into a dusting of snow above 3500 feet that gave the woods a nice frosting. Ice was still minimal so conditions really couldn’t have been better for that time of year.

Two weeks later, and it’s the weekend before Halloween. We decided to throw a Halloween party for that friday. I spent a couple afternoons making the rounds of all the thrift stores in the city, and picked up enough random articles of clothing to become Oliver Twist (albeit slightly taller) for the weekend. Maybe I’ll find a picture or two to show everyone.

The party was a success, we decorated (or should I say Adrienne decorated) the place and picked up two kegs for party fuel. It ended up being way too much so we made a pact to finish one of the two by the end of the weekend so it wouldn’t get warm (the other we could just throw in the fridge). Well, as it turns out there’s a lot of beer in a keg so Saturday ended up being a bit of a blur. Endless games of pong led to a trip to high falls to a huge bar/club called Saddle Ridge. It was pretty fun, I entered a costume contest but lost to a bunch of lame Chippendale’s dancers and Cinderellas. How clichéd.

This thursday is Thanksgiving, so I’ll be home to spend the weekend with my family and aunt and uncle. Should be a lot of fun. The weekend after that I’m heading to Vegas. Just an afterthought.

Thus, the next few weeks will undoubtedly be interesting enough to fuel another post or two. See ya then.

Vacation

September 25, 2006 in Hiking/Backpacking by alalonde | No comments

So it looks like I’m at a monthly post ratio for this blog. Guess I don’t have that much to say, but there’s been plenty going on over the past month. Let’s start from the beginning:

Aug. 25: Last day of coop, and last day of being a college student. Feels kinda strange writing that..

Aug. 26: Moved to my new place. I lucked out in catching a group of RIT students who were looking to rent a house in the city, around the Monroe Ave/Goodman St. area. Two of them are my age, and the other a couple years older. We all get along really well and share quite a few interests (drinking, sports, hiking/climbing, but mainly just drinking). The house is pretty big, it is three floors with an enormous loft on the third, spacious kitchen, and decks in the front and rear. We put in a pool table, couple of TVs, stereo system, and fish tank/coffee table, with a kegerator soon to be installed. The loft is thus far unfurnished, and will probably just be used for parties. And even though I am further from my job as before, it takes half the time to get there, thanks to I-490.

Aug. 28: Headed home. Thus began my two-week vacation. Anyone who knows me well knows that I will take full advantage of any large block of free time available due to its scarcity, and I did. At first I pretty much just relaxed, but soon grew bored of that.

Aug. 30: Headed to the High Peaks with the aim of conquering Mt. Colden. Colden was one of those peaks I hadn’t climbed that John had already done, so I figured I’d knock it off in a day trip. I was up at 5 and summitted just before noon. Since it was early I cut over to the Van Hovenberg trail to Marcy and took one of the side trails up Tabletop. Colden was really nice, you can actually see all the way down to the tip of Avalanche Lake 3000 feet below. It was a beautiful day and I took quite a few pictures. The total hike was about 8 hours and 15 miles, with ample summit time. Suki accompanied me the whole way with sheer jubilation.

Sept. 1-3: moe.down. The 7th annual festival for Buffalo’s premiere jam band was a blast. moe. played six rockin’ sets throughout the weekend to a crowd of new age hippies dancing in the mud and rain. It was awesome. It was so muddy that they had people lined up outside the parking area to help push people’s cars through the mud to the road. My front-wheel drive Acura Integra didn’t handle it too well, and by the end of the weekend it resembled one of those Jeeps in their commercials. The elected mayor of moe.down: A sculpture of a squirrel humping a beer can. Frank Zappa won it last year, and he’s dead, so I don’t know which is stranger.

Sept. 5: Came to the conclusion that I had caught a cold, and attributed it to moe.down. Big surprise.

Sept. 7: Embarked on my three-day journey in the High Peaks. I had wanted to do a certain trip for quite some time, and couldn’t get ahold of anyone free that weekend, so I went solo. That morning I got up at a decent hour, drove to the trailhead at Elk Lake, and was on the trail by one. It was supposed to be a beautiful few days, and the weather was clear by day, cool by night. Perfect. The nine miles into Panther Gorge went pretty quickly, considering the 30 pound pack on my back. Panther Gorge is a pretty awesome place, it is nestled between three of the four highest peaks in the state, and the lean-to there is new and really nice.
The next day I was up at 7 to do a pretty ambitious hike: The Great Range from Mt. Haystack to Gothics, then over to Sawteeth, then down to Upper Ausable Lake and back around to the Gorge. The climb up Haystack from Panther Gorge is pretty intense, something like a 1400′ ascent in a mile. There was some pretty sweet scrambling near the top, especially when you avoid the marked trail for a more fun climb! I summitted by nine and was surprised to see somebody already up there, a kid from Schenectady. He was looking to do a Great Range traverse, so it was gonna be a long day for him, even longer than mine. The view was simply spectacular, easily the best I’ve found in the High Peaks. And that’s saying something.
Next I headed over to Basin. It was another achingly steep climb, not quite as bad as Haystack but still draining. I stayed and took some pictures (attempted a self-portrait actually), soaking in the view. After 20 minutes or so I ventured off for Saddleback. Saddleback has a notoriously steep trail on its western shoulder, and when I hit the bottom of the col between it and Basin, I didn’t see how it was going to be possible to get up. There’s a ladder at one point to get up a particularly tall cliff, but there’s still a good 50-60 feet of scrambling just before the summit. It was deliciously fun. The "trail" is at right.
Right around the col between Saddleback and Gothics I started worrying about my water supply, since I was just about out and wouldn’t encounter any until I got near Upper Ausable, which was two mountains away. So I pretty much ran up Gothics (a pretty sweet climb itself) and hung out for 45 minutes attending to a blister. Afterwards I headed up Sawteeth, which had a surprisingly nice view, especially of Basin, one of new favorite peaks. I will soon be posting plenty of pictures.
The hike down Sawteeth was pretty fun because the trail clearly didn’t get much use, and was hardly eroded at all. I blasted down to the lake and filtered some water (not enough, I would soon discover). From then on, the hike pretty much sucked. There is some 1000′ feet of climbing from the lake back up to Panther Gorge, and I was tired and sore and unhappy. At around six I made it back to camp, exhausted. I had hiked about 13 miles with over 15,000 feet of elevation change. Not your typical hike. After posting trail conditions at Views From the Top I received quite a few incredulous emails from people about the hike.
The rest of the trip was pretty uneventful, I made it back to Elk Lake in just over 3.5 hours. Pretty much on cue, as soon as I had finished loading my stuff back into the car, it started raining, and pretty hard at that. Immaculate timing.

Sept 10: Headed back to the Roc.
Sept 11: Went back to work, this time as an "Independent Contractor" at Soleo. Since I’ve been back they’ve been keeping me pretty busy, which is also keeping me happy.

Since: Working during the week, partying on the weekends. Just the way it should be.

Migration

August 23, 2006 in Uncategorized by alalonde | No comments

So it’s been a few weeks since my last post. Well, that’s because not all that much has changed. I have been doing quite a bit of developing over the past month, both at work and at home, and have a few things to show:

The redesigned, reimplemented, FGA tour golf score tracker. Admittedly, the content is much the same, I just added a few more statistics. The presentation, however, is a drastic improvement on the old version. It follows the logical layout of a ruby on rails application, with the addition of a few nifty AJAX/CSS tricks.
AlecLaLonde.com has been born. I dropped some cash for hosting at Dreamhost, and will be placing all my upcoming applications/sites in subdomains.

And a few things still in the pipeline:

The migration of this site to weblog.aleclalonde.com. I mentioned a few months ago how I wanted more control over the presentation and content of this weblog, and will soon be doing something about it. I have been checking out a few weblog publishing engines, and am leaning towards using Typo. It’s a rails-based engine, so configuration should be familiar. Migration of all the existing content might prove difficult, especially how I’m going to deal with all those photos.
A hiking site. This will probably end up being more like a subset of my main blog, but it seems like since I have so many postings devoted to hiking anyway, it should make sense. There I will post all my hiking photos as well as planned trips, checklists, trip reports, etc.

Clearly, I’ve taken an interest in web development. With all the new, standards-based web technologies, we are going to see the line between desktop applications and web applications blurred. Just take a look at Meebo, Google Maps, GMail, Sudoku Combat, and so on…

So keep one eye on this site and the other at weblog.aleclalonde.com. When everything has been sufficiently migrated, I’ll be sure to let you know. The Peephole 2.0 awaits.

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