Ryan's Journal

"My life amounts to no more than one drop in a limitless ocean. Yet what is any ocean, but a multitude of drops?" — David Mitchell

Pensive & Brooding

Posted from Culver City, California at 5:58 pm, June 29th, 2010

With the retirement from DirecTV back in December there was a brief window of opportunity to travel and work on side projects, but the Backcountry.com job fell immediately into my lap and the window was quickly closed. The new project has had its up and down moments, but it would be unreasonable to complain about a job that allows working in pajamas at home (and occasionally from Utah), so despite some slight burnout no such utterances will be made. As of last week the job has been extended through October 1, which unfortunately means that June is yet another month in which the journal updates are essentially “got up, worked, ran, worked a bit more, slept, repeated”; with luck the last three months of this year will be more eventful.

One item of note from the past month that likely no one but me will find interesting is that JAMWiki 0.9.0 was released on June 21 after over seven months of development. While those in my immediate circle tend to stare blankly back at me when I introduce JAMWiki as something I spend my free time on, it’s still been a really rewarding side project, and with more than 36,000 downloads since the project started it’s actually been something that has been of use to a number of individuals and (increasingly larger) organizations. Although some of the more ambitious plans for the project have been slowed due to working full-time, I’ll make the prediction that before the end of the year there will be news to report that will be of interest even to those folks who typically see JAMWiki and enthusiastically state “It looks really cool! What’s it for?”

Spe-lunkin’

Posted from Park City, Utah at 9:54 pm, June 13th, 2010

The job with Backcountry.com has again brought me to Utah for a week, and since this time there was talk of working over the weekend I flew out on Friday night. The work didn’t materialize, so the time was instead spent roaming around the Wasatch Front. Rainy weather and lengthy naps limited exploration, but never being one to ignore a green dot on the map I made my way to Timpanogos Cave National Monument this afternoon. Unbeknownst to me Utah apparently has some fairly impressive caves, and after a hike to the cave entrance that was a mile-and-a-half long and involved 1100′ of elevation gain I was treated to the most enjoyable caving experience since a visit to El Malpais National Monument five years ago.

American Fork Canyon

American Fork Canyon in the clouds. Everyone claims Utah is a desert, but today’s hike to the cave entrance was a decidedly wet one.

Timpanogos Cave Stalactites

Good cave pictures require long exposures; long exposures require not being on a ranger-led tour with a group that has to keep moving, so the result is this poor illustration of what was actually a very impressive formation.