My last post was about the origin of my whitewater campsites website. It was my first attempt at a website, and all things considered, it’s worked out as well as I could have hoped. After launching it, I went along for a couple of years, just glad to be posting new campsite photos. (In fact, that website has a 5 year anniversary coming up. Hmmm… I need to check on when that is.) Anyway, over the years I’ve learned a bit more, and as I looked back at the code behind the campsite site I began to sort of cringe. It’s pretty rough, and really needs a rewrite. So my next effort was to simply get better at Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) and JavaScript. To do so, I created a website about a trip I took to Bangalore India. The site was just an excuse to practice, but the experience was one I’ll never forget. What a trip!
So, since I’m such a white water rafting nut, and fairly detail-conscious (you can’t be a software developer for 25 years without being pretty meticulous), my brother started getting after me to write a book. I wasn’t up for the hassles of publishing hardcopy, inventory, costs, etc. So I started thinking that another website might be in order. The sport of white water rafting has so many dimensions. The web is full of, in fact dominated by, web sites of the commercial outfitters. They play up the image of busting waves, paddle rafts full of screaming clients, go big or go home. There are a few hobby websites out there with a trip report and some links, and organizations like AW and regional clubs, and a bunch of link farms that just point to all of the above.
So my thinking went like this: I love a good rapid as much as the next person, but there are so many other aspects of the sport of whitewater rafting that I just crave too. I figured I could do a site that helps to show the other sides of rafting trips: camp life, the fun times we have just coasting along, the side hikes, the native American art, the scenery, the food, the specialized equipment, the camaraderie, having great fun with family and friends, the wilderness isolation and self-sufficiency… you get the picture… I could go on and on. I hope to add quite a bit to it over the next couple years. And of course I’d like to add some nice examples of carnage for all those who love a good photo of such. And there is a lot to say on taking high-water trips, so I’ll be gathering material and photos this spring. The multi-day trips are what it’s all about for me. Everything about them, even the long drives and hard work of getting ready, and cleaning the gear when we get home. It’s what I do, and I love it all.
But in the meantime, this weekend is our big club float of the season, the Green River Cleanup. It’s about a 4.5 hour float, and the scenery is outstanding. It’s just really a treasure, right in Seattle’s back yard, less than an hour from downtown. If you ever get a chance, do it.
Wednesday, April 30, 2008
Friday, April 25, 2008
Way cool article about clocks
I ran across this a few months back. This is truely amazing stuff. Looks like Mr. Spock's 'tri-corder' on Star Trek that can see through walls, rocks, and buildings isn't so far-fetched after all. Clocks may be the 'sensor' for such a future gadget:
http://www.wired.com/science/discoveries/news/2007/12/time_nist
http://www.wired.com/science/discoveries/news/2007/12/time_nist
Thursday, April 24, 2008
My white water rafting websites
For the record, here’s the story on how my three whitewater rafting websites came to be. The idea for the first website, http://www.whitewatercampsites.com/ started years ago on our first Main Salmon rafting trip. My friend Julie won the permit and I accompanied her to the permit holder meeting in the little ranger office at Corn Creek. We bid for and got Alder Creek as our first campsite. Back then the rangers didn’t consider group size as carefully as they do now. While we won Alder Cr. fair and square, the head guide for a large commercial group asked us to give it to him because they were such a large group. He didn’t offer anything in return, but the guy was pleasant, sincere, and made a good sales pitch. He suggested that a great alternative that would more closely fit our group size was Fawn Creek. Fawn was not reserve-able, but sounded nice, with a stream running through the beach. Others in the office nodded. So we caved, just to be nice, and not get our first Main Salmon trip off on a contentious note.
They launched before us and later that day, as we floated by Alder, which is a major beach with afternoon shade (the temp was something like 106F that day), watching them all playing in the water and enjoying that massive beach, we realized that we had gotten the raw end of that deal. Oh well, onward to Fawn. But the situation became worse when we arrived at Fawn about 2 minutes after another group, and our plan fell apart. Fawn did look great too, but it was not to be ours that night. So we wandered downstream until eventually taking the campsite now known as Grotto. We were totally cramped that night, and kicked ourselves for a few days about giving up Alder to such a flaky “plan B”. Being our first river trip on the Main Salmon, we didn’t know what the various sites looked like. We just stumbled along and got stung. So that was the spark that eventually led to my rafting trip campsites website. A year or two later some guys at work showed me some code they were using for posting their own online photo albums (this was ‘do-it-yourself’, before Flickr and other social networking sites). I grabbed a copy, doctored it up, and launched the website. If you go there, and open the first “Past Cover Photos” page, way down at the bottom is the photo of Magpie Creek camp from that same Main Salmon trip, that was the first cover photo.
At the time, I thought that was a pretty striking picture! Looks pretty drab now, given all the other cool shots that people have sent me. The site has come a long way since. Over the years dozens of folks have sent me photos and I’ve added many hundreds more of my own. Today, there are more than 400 campsites on rivers throughout the west, thousands of photos of rivers, campsites, and folks having a great time on rafting trips. And many people have added their own comments about various campsites,which is what I really like to see.
It’s been a labor of love and I go there myself before each trip to help me figure out our itinerary. I know a lot of people do the same, and I get a few 'atta-boy' emails that are really satisfying too. It’s been a lot of fun on my end and I’m glad it’s worked out so well. For those curious, I make about $1 per day in Google advertising. Before I put the ads in, it was a nagging question. Now I know the answer. No big deal. But ads do pay the domain and hosting costs.
My goal for the future of the campsites website is to apply the new Microsoft Silverlight 2.0 technology to present the photos in a much more vivid and immersive fashion. That’s the goal for next year, anyway. All the photos are out there in their full resolution, so it's a resource that deserves to be exposed in as cool a way as I can do it.
They launched before us and later that day, as we floated by Alder, which is a major beach with afternoon shade (the temp was something like 106F that day), watching them all playing in the water and enjoying that massive beach, we realized that we had gotten the raw end of that deal. Oh well, onward to Fawn. But the situation became worse when we arrived at Fawn about 2 minutes after another group, and our plan fell apart. Fawn did look great too, but it was not to be ours that night. So we wandered downstream until eventually taking the campsite now known as Grotto. We were totally cramped that night, and kicked ourselves for a few days about giving up Alder to such a flaky “plan B”. Being our first river trip on the Main Salmon, we didn’t know what the various sites looked like. We just stumbled along and got stung. So that was the spark that eventually led to my rafting trip campsites website. A year or two later some guys at work showed me some code they were using for posting their own online photo albums (this was ‘do-it-yourself’, before Flickr and other social networking sites). I grabbed a copy, doctored it up, and launched the website. If you go there, and open the first “Past Cover Photos” page, way down at the bottom is the photo of Magpie Creek camp from that same Main Salmon trip, that was the first cover photo.
At the time, I thought that was a pretty striking picture! Looks pretty drab now, given all the other cool shots that people have sent me. The site has come a long way since. Over the years dozens of folks have sent me photos and I’ve added many hundreds more of my own. Today, there are more than 400 campsites on rivers throughout the west, thousands of photos of rivers, campsites, and folks having a great time on rafting trips. And many people have added their own comments about various campsites,which is what I really like to see.
It’s been a labor of love and I go there myself before each trip to help me figure out our itinerary. I know a lot of people do the same, and I get a few 'atta-boy' emails that are really satisfying too. It’s been a lot of fun on my end and I’m glad it’s worked out so well. For those curious, I make about $1 per day in Google advertising. Before I put the ads in, it was a nagging question. Now I know the answer. No big deal. But ads do pay the domain and hosting costs.
My goal for the future of the campsites website is to apply the new Microsoft Silverlight 2.0 technology to present the photos in a much more vivid and immersive fashion. That’s the goal for next year, anyway. All the photos are out there in their full resolution, so it's a resource that deserves to be exposed in as cool a way as I can do it.
Tuesday, April 22, 2008
Whitewater trips ahead!
At this point, my whitewater rafting season is shaping up nicely with 3+ rafting trips looking like this:
May 19 - Middle Fork of the Salmon - high water trip, most probably doing Marsh Creek (and Dagger Falls). Depending on cancellations, this may evolve into a back-to-back with a Selway or another MFS and/or back-to-back-to-back with Main Salmon. So, the very best outcome could be as many as 300 miles of white water in one continuous dose! Can't wait! I've not done Marsh Creek before and it is possible this trip could involve two laps of it! Yikes. Also, expect lots of wood in the river(s) due to last year's fires and previous blowouts above Pistol Creek.
July - tbd, depends on picking up a cancellation somewhere (and that I live through May), or off to Montana for a 'guys' trip flyfishing on the Blackfoot or Rock Creek.
August 9 - Lower Salmon - should be a pretty crazy time with an unknown number of members of Yahoo idahowhitewater group. This is the rafting equivelent of a giant blind date. We'll see. Could go well or could just suck. But I doubt it will suck. If nobody can stand each other, we'll all just slink away and do our own thing.
Sept 8 - Green River - Desolation Canyon. This will be our big family trip of the year. Great food, good wine, let the Margaritas flow! Lots of fun times with the kids and their significant others.
Santa was very understanding this year (or fed the addiction?), so I'm taking my new Aire Jaguarundi out somewhere this weekend as a bit of a shakedown for the May MFS trip. I'm building a new cargo frame for it (for Lower Salmon and Deso) but will be using an older frame with the new tubes and new oars on the May trip. The Jag pretty much completes our little flotilla, bringing the boat count up to 3, plus one IK. So we now have passenger capacity for at least 8 adults and 600 quarts of cooler space, two big dryboxes, and 5 rocket boxes. We do camp in style!
The new raft frame has been the major project this winter, in addition to the two new websites. Looking back, it's been a busy winter. But I got a lot done, and now the fun begins. I'll probably post some photos of the new frame and reasons for the design.
Following yesterday's climate change comments, I notice that there is more news out there today on Solar Thermal. This time Google doing the funding. I sure hope this takes off. My hope for us all.
May 19 - Middle Fork of the Salmon - high water trip, most probably doing Marsh Creek (and Dagger Falls). Depending on cancellations, this may evolve into a back-to-back with a Selway or another MFS and/or back-to-back-to-back with Main Salmon. So, the very best outcome could be as many as 300 miles of white water in one continuous dose! Can't wait! I've not done Marsh Creek before and it is possible this trip could involve two laps of it! Yikes. Also, expect lots of wood in the river(s) due to last year's fires and previous blowouts above Pistol Creek.
July - tbd, depends on picking up a cancellation somewhere (and that I live through May), or off to Montana for a 'guys' trip flyfishing on the Blackfoot or Rock Creek.
August 9 - Lower Salmon - should be a pretty crazy time with an unknown number of members of Yahoo idahowhitewater group. This is the rafting equivelent of a giant blind date. We'll see. Could go well or could just suck. But I doubt it will suck. If nobody can stand each other, we'll all just slink away and do our own thing.
Sept 8 - Green River - Desolation Canyon. This will be our big family trip of the year. Great food, good wine, let the Margaritas flow! Lots of fun times with the kids and their significant others.
Santa was very understanding this year (or fed the addiction?), so I'm taking my new Aire Jaguarundi out somewhere this weekend as a bit of a shakedown for the May MFS trip. I'm building a new cargo frame for it (for Lower Salmon and Deso) but will be using an older frame with the new tubes and new oars on the May trip. The Jag pretty much completes our little flotilla, bringing the boat count up to 3, plus one IK. So we now have passenger capacity for at least 8 adults and 600 quarts of cooler space, two big dryboxes, and 5 rocket boxes. We do camp in style!
The new raft frame has been the major project this winter, in addition to the two new websites. Looking back, it's been a busy winter. But I got a lot done, and now the fun begins. I'll probably post some photos of the new frame and reasons for the design.
Following yesterday's climate change comments, I notice that there is more news out there today on Solar Thermal. This time Google doing the funding. I sure hope this takes off. My hope for us all.
Monday, April 21, 2008
A little good news on climate change for once
Ok, not rafting, but interesting and I’m in the mood to rant. Being a parent, I feel a fair amount of guilt at the crappy world my generation is leaving for our kids. While we aren't the only generation that caused the problem, we're the ones at the scene of the crime. Our parents were called the “greatest generation” for fighting and winning WWII. Meanwhile, the leak in the ship has been discovered on our watch. So I’m always looking for things to feel better about. Here are two technology news stories I’ve run across lately:
http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2008/04/14/solar_electric_thermal/
http://www.eetimes.com/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=206801669&printable=true&printable=true
Taken together, these two bits of news are very encouraging. Hydrogen can be, essentially, a battery to store energy from the sun. Solar Thermal is far simpler, safer, and cheaper than alternatives, especially nuclear. What’s 92 square miles? About one big ranch in the Southwest, that’s what. So even if they’re off by a factor of 10 in estimating the real estate, what are 10 big ranches worth of land to power the country, perfectly clean and green, happily ever after? Use Solar Thermal-driven electrolysis to generate hydrogen and we’ll have wired and wireless power, from essentially, the only free lunch around. Where are the politicians on this stuff? Behind bio-fuels, that’s where. Let’s have the hungry set face off against the Mercedes set to see who gets the corn and see who wins? Jeez.
http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2008/04/14/solar_electric_thermal/
http://www.eetimes.com/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=206801669&printable=true&printable=true
Taken together, these two bits of news are very encouraging. Hydrogen can be, essentially, a battery to store energy from the sun. Solar Thermal is far simpler, safer, and cheaper than alternatives, especially nuclear. What’s 92 square miles? About one big ranch in the Southwest, that’s what. So even if they’re off by a factor of 10 in estimating the real estate, what are 10 big ranches worth of land to power the country, perfectly clean and green, happily ever after? Use Solar Thermal-driven electrolysis to generate hydrogen and we’ll have wired and wireless power, from essentially, the only free lunch around. Where are the politicians on this stuff? Behind bio-fuels, that’s where. Let’s have the hungry set face off against the Mercedes set to see who gets the corn and see who wins? Jeez.
Goodbye ski season, hello whitewater season!
We left for Whistler after work Friday, driving through Everett, WA in freak snowstorm (Vancouver too). Both Sat & Sun were sunny, with the top 4000 vert feet of Blackcomb firm but carve-able, and groomed to perfection. What a blast and a great last weekend of the season. Even got a little boot-deep pow on one run down Blackcomb Glacier. Very cold the whole weekend, with high-temps around -15C up in the alpine. Finished off the season with a top-to-bottom-non-stop last run from the top of the Horstman Glacier T-bar, for the full 5200+ vertical foot last dose of my favorite mountain. Kicked myself the whole weekend for leaving the GPS home since the surfaces were outstanding for high-speed cruising. Global climate change treated Whistler very well this year. As of yesterday, April 20, they still had full coverage to within 100 vertical feet of Blackcomb base.
For anyone who doesn't understand the Whistler experience, here's a taste. (Some overactive marketing gland did this, but it's pretty cool.) Click the 'compare acreage' feature on this page and then select 'compare acreage' at the top of the little pop-up app and then select your favorite mountain:
http://www.whistlerblackcomb.com/mountain/maps/index.htm
Ok, that does it for the ski season. From here on out, I'm all about whitewater trips, my whitewater websites, and all things rafting.
For anyone who doesn't understand the Whistler experience, here's a taste. (Some overactive marketing gland did this, but it's pretty cool.) Click the 'compare acreage' feature on this page and then select 'compare acreage' at the top of the little pop-up app and then select your favorite mountain:
http://www.whistlerblackcomb.com/mountain/maps/index.htm
Ok, that does it for the ski season. From here on out, I'm all about whitewater trips, my whitewater websites, and all things rafting.
Wednesday, April 16, 2008
Whistler one more time
Several rafting trips are taking shape for my summer and fall, but right now I’ve still got a little bit left of the ski season to enjoy. This Friday is another Whistler trip. Last trip up there was almost a month ago, so I’m due. But I’ve gotten a little rafting in since, which is good. Living in Seattle is nice like that. A couple weekends ago I did a “NW Biathlon” – floated the Green River Gorge on Saturday and skied Stevens on Sunday.
Another fixation: earlier this year I took my GPS to Whistler and was surprised to see that we travelled more than 100 miles in the two days of skiing, including lifts and runs. Pretty cool. Ya gotta love Whistler; the place is HUGE! But the cool part was that they were grooming the Dave Murry Downhill course for the world cup event held a month or so back. We hit it early and hard and got the GPS cranked up to 52mph!! Not bad, given that I’m 57 years old! Also not bad since I was on my beloved Dynastar Legend Pro Riders, which are VERY FAT! They look like those old Cyprus Garden-variety water skis, where they ski around doing human pyramids!
So the GPS sort of brought the idea to mind of ‘skiing your age’. Golfers make a big deal out of ‘shooting your age’. But I figure the numbers work in your favor with golf. So here I am, at 57. Can I crank it up to 57 mph? I gotta try, but it’s not happened yet. Conditions have to be perfect. It’s gonna get much tougher every year from here on out. I’m within striking distance, so that has got to be a goal for next year.
But it will be as much about the conditions as anything. And when they have the nets up on the downhill course, it gets you pretty stoked. The course by the way is pretty damn cool. The world cup kids were ranting about it. None of the teams have skied it in competition since something like ’98 when they held some early season world cup races at Whistler and got rained out on consecutive years. The course reminds me of wicked-big staircase. Real steep headwalls onto flats, which then lead to falling off the next headwall, etc., etc, until you need to have your knees removed from your shoulder joints. Oh yea, and there is one massive jump right above the finish. Those world cup kids are crazy. I scrubbed a bunch of speed approaching the lip of that jump, given that I’m old and wise!
This weekend is the second weekend of the Telus festival so it’ll be a pretty crazy place. All the people, all the music. My friends and I hang out at Monks where they play the music from our youth (Stones, CCR, etc.) It’s always fun to see 50-somethings dancing on the tables!)
Another fixation: earlier this year I took my GPS to Whistler and was surprised to see that we travelled more than 100 miles in the two days of skiing, including lifts and runs. Pretty cool. Ya gotta love Whistler; the place is HUGE! But the cool part was that they were grooming the Dave Murry Downhill course for the world cup event held a month or so back. We hit it early and hard and got the GPS cranked up to 52mph!! Not bad, given that I’m 57 years old! Also not bad since I was on my beloved Dynastar Legend Pro Riders, which are VERY FAT! They look like those old Cyprus Garden-variety water skis, where they ski around doing human pyramids!
So the GPS sort of brought the idea to mind of ‘skiing your age’. Golfers make a big deal out of ‘shooting your age’. But I figure the numbers work in your favor with golf. So here I am, at 57. Can I crank it up to 57 mph? I gotta try, but it’s not happened yet. Conditions have to be perfect. It’s gonna get much tougher every year from here on out. I’m within striking distance, so that has got to be a goal for next year.
But it will be as much about the conditions as anything. And when they have the nets up on the downhill course, it gets you pretty stoked. The course by the way is pretty damn cool. The world cup kids were ranting about it. None of the teams have skied it in competition since something like ’98 when they held some early season world cup races at Whistler and got rained out on consecutive years. The course reminds me of wicked-big staircase. Real steep headwalls onto flats, which then lead to falling off the next headwall, etc., etc, until you need to have your knees removed from your shoulder joints. Oh yea, and there is one massive jump right above the finish. Those world cup kids are crazy. I scrubbed a bunch of speed approaching the lip of that jump, given that I’m old and wise!
This weekend is the second weekend of the Telus festival so it’ll be a pretty crazy place. All the people, all the music. My friends and I hang out at Monks where they play the music from our youth (Stones, CCR, etc.) It’s always fun to see 50-somethings dancing on the tables!)
Finally... or should I say "let's begin this thing"
Creating this blog has been on my list of things to do for awhile. I like to write. And as the blog title suggests, I'm pretty hopelessly addicted to white water rafting and more precisely, taking multi-day whitewater rafting trips. I'm also hooked on technology (I develop software for a living) so this blog will be a way for me to cache and pass along neat technology news that I stumble on. I'm also a life-long snow skier so between trips to Whistler (the non-rafting portion of my soul lives for Whistler) and my rafting adventures, I should have plenty of fun stuff to talk about. Lastly, I offer as evidence of my white water addiction, that I operate one of the more popular rafting-related websites (and have some more sites on the way) so I’ll fill you in on what’s happening behind the scenes of those websites.
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