August 11th, 2008
One of my favorite things about our national parks is getting out on the trails, away from the roads and crowds. In Western Rocky Mountain, I had set my sites on the Lulu City Trail, a 7.4 mile fairly-level round trip to an old silver mining town.
With a late afternoon start, we began hiking along the Colorado River and the surrounding forests and streams while keeping an eye out for moose in the meadows. Instead, there were a few robbins, and after crossing a few rock slide areas, a marmot appeared on a boulder above the next bend. I took a few quick photos with my regular lens before switching to my telephoto, at which point it started the rain.
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August 11th, 2008
Visiting the western side of Rocky Mountain National Park in Colorado was a new experience. Though I had been to the park before, it was primarily the east side and Trail Ridge Road. Grand Lake is a much more mellow entry point than Estes Park, and the western side of the park seemed similarly quiet and less crowded.
It consists primarily of the Kawuneeche Valley, through which the early stages of the Colorado River flows. It was overcast our first day, making it a great place to watch and hear mountain storms developing. There is something magical yet foreboding in seeing dark clouds building over the mountains as the distant rumble of thunder rumbles across open space.
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August 4th, 2008
The highest paved continuous highway in the United States, Trail Ridge Road climbs over the Rockies between Grand Lake and Estes Park. The views and driving are unparalleled; at 12,183 feet, you’re on par with many of the surrounding peaks.
We started in Grand Lake, passing through the Kawuneeche Valley before climbing above it. Stopping for a few short hikes on the way up quickly confirmed the changing altitude: thinner air, lingering snowbanks, and new critters including marmots and pikas.
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August 4th, 2008
Grand Lake, on the west side of Rocky Mountain National Park, was one of my favorite stops on the Colorado trip. A small town on a mountain lake, it still has that mellow, leisurely feel. Our location didn’t hurt, either: a cabin overlooking the lake just a few blocks off the main street.
From looking over the docks out onto the lake and to the mountains, it was a short walk to the main hotel building, where a squadron of hummingbirds were feeding and flying about. The town itself boasted a very old-west feel: wooden sidewalks and overhangs passed various shops and restaurants. It was a nice change to be able to walk to dinner and stroll by the ice cream shop on the way back.
August 3rd, 2008
You meet some interesting people traveling, or rather, Chandra does since she’s a bit more outgoing. Coming back from Rocky Mountain one day, we pulled in next to the very colorful Bug Songs van. It turned out the guy sitting on the porch was Tom, who does his program of bug songs for kids across the country. In one of those fortunate turns of events, he had been working for a pest-control company looking to educate people on what they do, and bug songs was born.
The songs themselves are pretty entertaining - bugs sing about their lives in tunes ranging from punk rock to a little Johnny Cash. It made for a fun soundtrack driving through the radio-less mountains of Colorado.
August 1st, 2008
After our stay in Steamboat Springs, Chandra and I drove back up to Rabbit Ears Pass on our way to Grand Lake and Rocky Mountain National Park. We bounced down a few dirt roads at the Dumont campground to begin our hike.
The trail was a slightly inclined, rougher dirt road that wound through high alpine meadows full of wildflowers. The dual rock spires of Rabbit Ears popped in and out of view, and in and out of the light as scattered clouds shifted above. It was a pleasant hike, and we saw more people on it than I expected, as well as getting a closer look at the Rabbit Ears.
July 31st, 2008
While Time Machine handily restored my MacBook after it’s original Apple hard drive failed after two years, it missed one thing: 10 GB of Colorado photos, half of which I hadn’t published yet!
The reason is infuriatingly simple, yet was kept completely obscured:
Time Machine doesn’t back up your Aperture library while the application is running. This is due to the way Aperture utilizes a MySQL Lite database which needs to be open for reading and writing all the time.
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July 31st, 2008
I came home to a crashed MacBook Monday and rebooted to ominous clicking sounds and a flashing question mark - smelled like hard drive trouble. A bit of troubleshooting and a quick visit to the Apple store later, and I was shopping for a new hard drive and crossing my fingers that Time Machine saved my data and unpublished photos from Colorado.
The hard drive was a total loss; neither I or Apple could see it when booting from another location, and the clicks hinted that something mechanical broke after two years. Apple did well on several counts: their troubleshooting article was easy to find and follow, I was able to get the last tech support slot the same evening, and the guy at the Genius Bar was honest enough to tell me that for the $250 they’d charge to replace the 80GB drive, I could pay half and install a bigger one myself.
They missed on one small thing, and one very big one: their reservation form still doesn’t work in Firefox, and there’s a nasty, unadvertised limitation on Aperture and Time Machine that meant many of my recent photos were lost!
July 27th, 2008
One of my goals for this year was to be more active in a few photo communities, notably Flickr and Digital Photography School. The latter’s weekly assignments have been a particularly good challenge to create a photo based only on a concept, and also see what others do with it.
The artistic variety and quality of the entires always make the weekly contest tough, so it was an awesome surprise to return from vacation and find out that I won for the Sunny Days assignment! The assignment happened to be well timed; I had just spent a sunny Saturday afternoon on the water shooting waterskiing and wakeboarding.
July 18th, 2008
I’ve always been a big fan of making the computer do the arduous part of the work so I can concentrate on the more interesting parts. When writing software, that’s generally meant relying on terse or sophisticated languages like Perl and Matlab. I’m currently taking it to the next level, though, by using code-generation tool and frameworks to generate complete code layers with full unit tests.
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