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Cheesehead Ranch Climbing Festival – Mural Wall
I’ve been fighting a cold all week, but I’m determined to make it down to Shelf Road with Ann, Doug, Liz, Kate, Mark and many other climbing friends for the annual gathering at Cheesehead Ranch, a generous climber’s spread near the crag. I’m still watery-eyed and runny-nosed as we set up camp Friday night. Saturday…
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Movie: Idiocracy (2006)
An ideal movie to watch while sick at home and writing some simple code for a project. The vision of a future world buried in garbage and with a professional wrestler as president of the US is great, but you have to sit through too much formula without enough of this kind of good stuff.…
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South Ben Tyler Trail Hike
We had planned an attempt to climb Mt. Sherman with my Dad, but upon reaching Kenosha pass we decide it looks too snowy and stormy. Instead we drive in to the South Ben Tyler Trailhead and follow the Ben Tyler trail up into the Kenosha Mountains. There are some thunderstorms, but the hiking remains quite…
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Geo Mashup 1.0.3 Release
A few more bug fixes, some that appeared in recent Google Maps API versions. I’m getting close to a new beta release with some fun new toys, so don’t think that 1.0.x is the end of the line for Geo Mashup. The new goods: Added French translation by obagot. Added some corrective CSS to help…
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Movie: Broken Flowers (2005)
I like this movie better after letting it sit in my mind for a while. As with most Jim Jarmush movies I feel like I’m missing some things, but it did give me a distinct impression of how the mind can operate. I’m reminded of Robert Anton Wilson’s theory of the Thinker and the Prover:…
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Getting the hang of Vedauwoo 5.7s
Not that they don’t still scare me, but I’m starting to gain just a little confidence on 5.7 Vedauwoo cracks. Sean and Colin join Ann, Kate, and me for some more quality time on the Nautilus. I start out on Ted’s Trot 5.7, which looks like an endless, grueling offwidth. To my relief it’s fairly…
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Twin Mountain Hike
Ann and I part ways today. She’s participating in a women’s climbing day, and I’m off to tramp around Vedauwoo. It doesn’t take long for me to reach unfamiliar terrain north of Reynold’s Hill. I find some roads and trails that go my way for a while, then turn away to parts unknown. I don’t…
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Book: Incompleteness / Rebecca Goldstein
It was the perfect time for me to read about the life and work of Kurt Gödel, the mathematician who shook mathematics so violently at its foundations in 1931 that there is still widespread disagreement about where it has landed. Of course I encountered his name and theorems in my own investigations of the origins…
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Movie: Islam, Empire of Faith (2000)
An excellent and visually splendid historical account of Islamic empire. We were looking for some background on the Sunni/Shiite conflicts in the middle east, and it provides some of that. It clearly tries to present Islam in a good light, and the atrocities and brutalities inevitably involved in the building of empires are glossed over.…
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Crystal Wall Before the Rain
Inspired by some blue sky visible through the window when we wake up, we rally to Crystal Wall. We scope out the Palace too, but the river looks higher than we want to deal with. It’s a little windy and cold. Ann has some trouble with cold fingers, but manages to redpoint the 7-bolt 5.7…