Author: cyberhobo

  • Casual Hikes Around Santa Fe

    I got a nice email asking me about Santa Fe hikes: Every Christmas we come to Santa Fe – it is the greatest escape from our lives here in Dallas, TX. We always like to go walking/hiking and as I was researching I found your wonderful site. But I was overwhelmed by the amount of…

  • Earthfire Institute

    The crisp design of this wildlife sanctuary and retreat center site is by Free Range Studios. My contribution was to implement some jQuery interactivity, like the expanding footer menu, and a fairly complicated navigation system. No Google maps this time around, but I did work a bit on the fun little sanctuary map. Now I…

  • Ropes at the Playground

    Do we deserve this? Probably not, but it doesn’t prevent us from basking in warm sun once again high on the banks of the Rio Grande at the The Playground. Sean joins us for the ride. We dangle ropes on a couple of enticing climbs, and we’re all used up well before the sun is.…

  • Book: Born to Run / Christopher McDougall

    I was convinced I’d never run again, but many miles of hiking experimentation had already put me on the minimalist footwear path. This book convinced me to try running again, very cautiously, despite my fear of injuries. So far, I’ve done more running in my Vibram Five Fingers than I’ve ever done before without pain…

  • It’s Game Time Obama

    How many times has someone used this site to encourage President Obama to make progress during the climate talks in Copenhagen? I wrote a WordPress plugin that will instantly create as many atomic counters as needed, and some client side AJAX to keep track of all the different types of actions one can take. Try…

  • Cerrillos Hills Hike

    Kate asks for a desert hike, and we think of this trail we haven’t been to in a while. The scattered mines make good rest stops, some with a platform for an age-old game of toss-a-pebble-into-the-black-pit. There are pretty nice views here too, a chance to race a train, and some good New Mexico sights…

  • Potrillo Climbing with Kate & Mark

    Despite below-freezing temperatures, we stay optimistic and pile into Kate & Mark’s Prius with our climbing gear. It looks good when we park, but then the sun disappears behind a cloud and a frigid wind starts to blow. Persistent, we drop some topropes anyway, and are rewarded by the return of sunshine and gradually warming…

  • Book: In Code / Sarah Flannery

    Could a 16-year-old Irish girl make a major advancement in the highly cerebral field of cryptography? It seemed as if Sarah Flannery might have done it with her 1999 science fair project, and when the London Times put a story about her project on the front page, she might as well have. This a great…

  • Alliance for Climate Education “Crush” Site

    This video sharing application was built with the CodeIgniter PHP framework and makes heavy use of the Facebook API. Both of these were new to me when I came on board to fix some problems with the existing application. My impression of CodeIgniter is good, I may use it again for web applications that don’t…

  • Cabezon Peak

    This volcanic peak is the closest thing I’ve seen to Wyoming’s Devil’s Tower in New Mexico. It captured my attention first on our 2004 Continental Divide hike, and I’ve returned to the areas several times since. Unlike the monolith in Wyoming, there is one non-technical (no ropes needed) route up this peak. Jesse joins me…