I wrote every line of PHP and CSS in 11 files that make it work. I had to custom write the search.php file because my “if” statement on the sidebars was conflicting with other logic. That was 6 weeks of work. And I took about 4 days off during that entire time.
So I’m a little burned out on computers right now. It’s cool to learn new stuff, and I’m lucky to be working less than half time this quarter so I could study, and then apply my new knowledge to a nice project. Plus I was studying ecommerce, and building lesson plans for the new class I’m teaching, all at the same time.
Turban Squash Thanksgiving 2016
It’s really nice to have that in the bag finally. I plan to build on that, but I have to take a break to do some grading now.
In other news, an old friend of mine died in a car accident recently. We used to play volleyball together on the company team. Cars are so darn dangerous. People think climbing is dangerous, but I think cars are much scarier than climbing.
Now that I have a little free time I’ve started a new self portrait. Getting going was like pulling teeth, but now I can’t wait to get back to the chair and the mirror. Maybe after I get this grading done later today… I want it to be all crazy colors, like my last palette knife turban squash. I should be able to use that color scheme on my portrait. Skin is orange, like the squash…and I feel a need to throw some paint around.
I’ve skied Mazama Ridge twice with my daughter and Sue on my days off. That thing is such a grind when you include the return trip up the road. But the runs on top are very nice. Both times there were no tracks, and we had to break trail the whole way. Navigating up there is super fun. You never know exactly where you are, especially in a whiteout, so popping out on the lake, with a clear trail home is a thrill. Off to work.
Custom theme development in WordPress
February 13th, 2017
I’ve been studying WordPress since January. First I got my cart running. It’s actually live and there is now an SSL certificate in place. This means you can use your credit card or paypal to purchase my paintings. I left the “you can’t buy, it’s in testing mode” banner up since I’m still not happy with the shipping functionality. However, you can actually buy a painting, everything works. And if it doesn’t, send me an email and I will fix it. I will try to add in a coupon for free shipping. This way, if you know me and live nearby, like Seattle, I can drive halfway with the painting and save us both the headache of shipping.
But before I do the coupon I have to focus on my next lesson plan.
I’ve gotten very deep into creating a custom wordpress theme. I’m converting a static html page over to a theme. I have it working already, but it needs a lot of work to be called done. This is one of a series of ten tutorials I’ve working through.
Making a custom theme is the hardest thing I’ve ever done in computing. It pulls together everything I know about HTML, CSS and JavaScript, plus a ton of stuff I don’t know about PHP. The functions that make WordPress work are so deep they remind me of writing jquery libraries from scratch.
But when it does work, it’s very cool. I’ve always liked that about web design. If you do it right, there is an instant feedback.
I do feel bad about not painting. My last painting was at Thanksgiving. But it doesn’t matter. It’s fun learning new stuff for my job, and the painting can wait until I have some free time.
Blast from the past (2-19-98)
February 9th, 2017
February 19, 1998
Today I got a plain manila envelope from the California State Highway Patrol. I panicked and searched my mind desperately for the last illegal thing I did in California. There was that illegal lane change in Joshua Tree, 6 years ago. Could it be a traffic court summons? I gingerly pried open the tape and found a musty old leather wallet inside with paisley patterns on the lining. I realized with a shock it was a wallet I lost in 1972 on a hitchhiking trip near Big Sur. I can just barely remember standing in a long line of hippies on the side of the road. We all had our thumbs out hoping to be interesting enough for a ride up the coast. I was coming home from a month long hitching trip to see a girlfriend in Frisco. I remember looking for my wallet. Talk about a trip down memory lane. There was my moldy original social security card, My drivers license card, look at that haircut! Plus a couple of rolling papers, now what could those have been for? And a lot of old miscellaneous receipts and notes about people who had given me rid es or hospitality on the road. There was even an REI membership refund for 3 dollars. There were a bunch of phone numbers of friends long lost in the mists of time. I couldn’t help wondering what was going through the minds of the clerk at the Highway Patrol who finally decided to go to the trouble of finding my current address and returning my long lost wallet 28 years later. But hey, thank guys!
NOTE: this is an excerpt from an old online journal I’ve had since 1997. You can email me if you’d like to read more from those days. It’s in a hidden directory at the request of one of my old deans.
Shopping Cart is almost done
February 5th, 2017
I was asked to teach WordPress last summer, and then low enrollment canceled the class. This Winter it was offered again and it ran. I’ve been using WordPress since 2011, but never delved that deeply into it. It’s been fun diving into it and learning all the intricacies of the application.
I learned most of the new stuff about the shopping cart here at Lynda.com. This guy does a great job of explaining it. I haven’t bought the SSL certificate for the store yet, so you can’t use your credit card to make a purchase, however, the paypal function may be live…I’m actually not sure. I just launched on February 4, 2017 and I’ve not done any testing. I do definitely have the paintings, and those are the prices unframed.
Playing guitar
January 19th, 2017
I was hard at work today learning ecommerce on wordpress. It’s a new class for me, which is always fun. I don’t get paid for lesson planning, so I try to take lots of breaks to avoid burnout. Because I have band practice tomorrow, I decided my break would be some quality time with my 1977 Martin guitar. I got my neck brace for the harmonica, loaded in my C harp and started playing Sweet Carolina, by Ryan Adams.
Not sure why, but I got chills all down my body. Like suddenly all my emotions were at the forefront. It was almost as if I’d been out of touch for a while…too much work probably…and the right side of my brain was suddenly seeing the sunshine again. That kept going for the entire time I was playing. I allowed myself half an hour before going back to work.
I’ve been updating my website with the new photoswipe plugin that I taught my students last quarter. It’s a ton of work: about half an hour a page, and I have 8 pages to update, plus stripping out the custom javascript and css I had written for my previous animated gallery page.
My trip to jtree this year was ok, though I’ve had better. I went down with a partner, which meant I wasn’t able to spend the first few days painting. Climbing was awesome as usual, my favorite new route was High Strung, up in the Wonderland. Weather was iffy this year. We had our warm days, but we lost 2 full days to rain. We climbed every day, but it was only a pitch or two on the rainy days. I hear the reservoirs are full in California, for the first time in 6 years. That’s a good thing for the state, but not so good for climbers needing sunny skies. I need to get back to work. Writing in this blog is fun, but my lesson plans won’t write themselves. This painting is my most recent work, done at Thanksgiving.
Turban Squash Thanksgiving 2016
Winter climbing at Vantage
November 21st, 2016
The Vantage forecast looked iffy but James and I went for it. Saturday morning we woke up to a steady drizzle. We took our time over breakfast and decided to hike out and do something easy in the drizzle. When we got there it was dry and we jumped on a crazy hard 10 that looked good to James. After we climbed that I did Pony Keg and Air guitar clean. Can’t remember what we did after that. The fire that night was relaxing and we woke up to still winds and overcast weather. I started the day on George and Martha. I felt powerful on the first 40 feet. My placements were clean, with no time wasting errors. I flowed through the moves easily, nailing the stem rests and side pulls until arriving at the rest jams. I’m normally pumped when I get to the hand jams, but I’d done the start so smoothly I still had some gas in the tank. Still, it was very nice to get up to the first solid rest about 50 feet up. After that James went back to his debacle from the day before. He still couldn’t send it clean, but I have to admire his persistence. I can tell he’s going to get that thing clean. I led the 9 to the right, and it was quite fun. The moves were bold, and the second bolt is loose, but I still enjoyed it. It’s got some great movements though the arete is so thin on top it’s freaky.
Last but not least I led Sunshine Buttress. It is a climb I did with Vladi a few years ago. It starts out vertical but has a number of platforms where you get rests, and where the climing style changes. It goes from vertical aretes to cracks to broken face. It finished on a narrow column with 3 steps notched out of the face. They aren’t positive so you have to hug the column as you mount the steps. It feels super sketchy but is quite safe due to close bolts, 16 on the route. Love that climb!
It was nice to take my mind off work for an entire weekend. The 5 classes I have this quarter have been challenging. It’s fun work but one of my classes burned through my entire book and I’ve had to pull a book off the shelf to finish up the last few weeks. My latest re-write cleaned up some of the old problems, and that meant the book flows better and we got through it faster. They have better websites, but I need to add in a couple more chapters so it has enough content to last the whole quarter without pulling in other textbooks. Other books are fine, but they typically aren’t written as clearly as mine. I would love to find a book that I didn’t have to write.
My problem with textbooks on web design is they rarely make anything pretty. They can be functional, or they can be pretty, but never both. It’s the old “you are an artist or a programmer” problem.
Back at work
October 8th, 2016
I haven’t written since July. I’ve reached a point where I would rather live my life than write about it. But I do enjoy perusing my old online journal entries. Life gets so busy looking forward that I forget to look back once in a while. And if I don’t write it down, there is nothing to look back on. What do we really have after all? A few pictures stored on a hard drive, or up on social media. Some old paid bills in box. And some toys….perhaps a new camera or a rope and some climbing hardware. Memories? Those last for a while, but even those fade away into the noise of a busy life.
The highlights of my summer, at least as I can best remember them were the long hikes I took with Sue and sometimes our daughter Lisa. Sue and I did long overnight backpacks (10 miles) out to Ptarmigan Ridge up on Mt. Baker, where I painted both Mt Baker and Shuksan.
Earlier, Lisa, Sue and I climbed the Tooth. That was a vivid reminder of why I don’t alpine climb anymore. The cascade rock is highly fractured compared to cragging on quality granite close to the road. As we stood around on top taking pictures, I was not at all sure we could make it down safely. There were huge loose rocks strewn all over the ledges we had just climbed up, and that was exactly what we had to rappel over. But we made it down fine and didn’t knock any rocks down on the parties climbing up in the late afternoon light. At the base of the climbing I looked out over the mile long boulder field and sighed. We had to boulder hop through everyone of those boulders, some the size of large cars. And after that it was 2 miles down the car, in the dark.
Sue and I also backpacked out to Elephant Rock on the coast. I wasn’t able to do a good painting out there, but it was fun hanging out. I sewed an oversize backpack on my Juki industrial sewing machine Model #DU-1181N. It allows me to carry both painting and backpacking gear. Its a copy of an old Lowe Expedition, but double the size. A friend of mine said it would sell for $900 if I wanted to get into the business, which I don’t.
On my fall break I wasn’t able to go to Squamish due to rain squalls. By the second week it was better, and I should have chanced it, but chose instead to head for Smith, followed a week later by the City…where we got rained out after 2 days of climbing. Should’a gone to Squamish, where it had dried up. It was ironic to be calling my wife from the City in the pouring rain. I actually had verizon service in site 26 sitting in my car, in a major downpour complete with lighting. She told me it was perfect at Squamish, whose rain I had tried to escape by driving 11 hours to Idaho. But that’s the nature of a road trip: you make guesses and hope for the best.
Today I have a beautiful turban squash set up in my still life box. Paintings are one of the few things I’ve found that last forever. These things could easily outlast me. I like to think I am adding beauty to the world with these little paintings. Or, at least to my world. Someday I may take them to a gallery, but for now I like the experience of creating them. Most of my paintings are actually fairly bad, but I enjoy the process of creation, and the end result really doesn’t matter. It’s a very satisfying way to spend time. So I think I’m done here. I’m going to shut this macbook and start painting.
My Jukiwalking footJukiBig motorJukiNo plans, just guessingA big garbage canFixing mistakesWaist beltpaddingWaist beltWaist beltWaist beltDone.The pigOld pig, new pigCampIn my officeLisa hiked up and met usBakerKnife painting of Baker
RIP Laurel Fan
July 30th, 2016
When I heard about Laurel I felt a deep shock, a sense that no, this can’t possibly have happened. She was such a solid climber. She was, in many ways, one of the leading members of our close knit climbing tribe. She was humble and not at all cocky, she always wore her helmet. It was hard to imagine her making a mistake.
Up until 6 years ago I only knew her by reputation. I met Laurel and Daphne together late on a rainy night in Vantage when Ritchie and I drove up to their tent. They were already asleep but they popped out and we re-lit the fire to drink beer and tell stories.
But in the years that followed it seemed I couldn’t go anywhere without running into Laurel. From Darrington to Smith to Index to Trout and Vantage, there would be Laurel, climbing something so hard I couldn’t even do the first move. Daphne climbs closer to my level, and we’ve been on some long trips to Smith together, she is good people.
I last saw Laurel when I dropped by her house the day she was packing for Waddington. I was there to pick up my Valley Giant which she had borrowed for Pipeline. We had planned to do Pipeline together that weekend, but it was raining in Squamish. I asked her about her recent lead of the notorious offwidth and we did that classic climbers dance out in the road in front of her apartment. She would mimic the moves and I would mimic them back.
Me: “So, at the crux, did you do a double fist jam, or was it like this, with a chicken wing?”
Laurel: “No, like this, you jam the edge of your hip in and kind of wiggle, see?”
Me, watching her movements: “Hm, I think I need to send Split Beaver clean first, before I try Pipeline.”
Laurel: “Ok, next sunny weekend after I get back from Waddington.”
But now we won’t get that chance to climb Pipeline together…
It was 1976 when I lost my first friend to the mountains. My former high school girlfriend died on Nanda Devi in the Himalayas. Devi was a beautiful blonde goddess who for some crazy reason took a liking to me. Her dad Willi Unsoeld was a world famous climber. He told some amazing stories about his first ascent on Everest in ‘63 as he sized me up around the dinner table.
They were both gone within 3 years, killed mountain climbing. I’ve lost 4 other friends in the mountains, and now Laurel.
It is so, so beautiful up in the alpine, I very much miss those views.
Back in the 80’s there seemed to be a trajectory in mountain climbing, at least for Sue and I. As we got better, and started trying bigger and harder routes with mixed rock and ice in the winter, the close calls got scarier.
It didn’t happen often, and in fact was quite rare, but we started to notice that some of the best climbers we knew were dying. We got so scared after one memorable epic that we quit climbing altogether and took up gold panning. But that only lasted 6 months and we were back to climbing, but not in the mountains.
Cragging still has plenty of danger, and could easily kill me someday. After almost 40 years of climbing with nothing worse than a broken ankle, I feel like I’ve found a balance between the fun and the risk. I sometimes wonder whether civilization is simply too tame, and we have a biological need for danger. I’ve seen people who swear they would never climb, drive down the freeway like a maniac, endangering their lives far more than most climbing trips.
Craig and I went to an open mic in Port Orchard last week. I was very nervous beforehand.
A little history: I had not played at an open mic since I was in my twenties. At that one (1978), I got stage fright so bad I blanked out halfway through my first song. I was staring at my sheet music but I couldn’t see it. It took me 30 seconds to recover. During that time I saw and heard the audience get restless and begin talking to each other, clearly nervous about my stage fright. Once I calmed down, I played fine, and even got some nice applause for my last number.
Back to the present:
While sitting there with Craig, watching the people playing before me. I was remembering the chaos of my last open mic experience. As my turn got closer and closer I got more and more nervous. In the back of my mind I was also remembering that I can’t sing on key. I’ve recorded myself singing, and my voice is terrible. For the son of a choir director, I sing badly.
Finally my turn came and I walked up to the stage with my guitar, harmonica and sheet music. The owner was very friendly and came up to help me set up the mic’s and do a sound check. When we first walked in he was singing the blues while simultaneously playing the guitar and harmonica. I have never heard anyone do that. He was awesome! I told him beforehand that I was a better harp player than anything else and he said he would make some calls to bring in some good blues players.
I had planned to introduce myself first, but my sound check sort of turned into my first song. I was too nervous to talk and just wanted to get it over with. As usual, my voice felt very strong, and I knew my harp and guitar were passible, if not decent. I got through my 3 songs without any huge errors. But afterward, I asked Craig how I did.
“Well, your harp and guitar sounded awesome, but your voice was just ok. It’s too bad you can’t find a way to perform without singing.” …That’s my buddy Craig. He doesn’t pull any punches. And he was right of course. If I really want to sing, I need to take voice lessons. Definitely didn’t inherit perfect pitch from dad. I can hear pitch great on my harp and guitar, and it feels right when I sing, but it’s not.
Afterward, as promised, two other great blues musicians showed up, and they invited me to jam with them, which was awesome. I can rock the harp with no problem at all. I’m on key, I can riff between verses, and I was even able to team up with a sax player, who was possibly the best musician in the house. Plus those guys could sing the blues! Man, that was so much fun.
But afterwards I lost my drive to practice. I’m already not painting, not since Christmas. Stopping the guitar too was shutting off all my creativity. Finally today, 10 days after the open mic I played guitar at the kitchen table.
In the words of Maya Angelou: “A bird doesn’t sing because it has an answer, it sings because it has a song.”
Stopped painting again
May 21st, 2016
My last painting was December 30th. I painted 5 days a week for the six months prior to that. Since December I’ve been using my spare time to study web programming. Someone quit at work last April and I was able to get back to full time hours. It’s been great to get normal paychecks for a while. In five days I will have my credit card payed off for the first time in several years.
So financially we are doing great. We might even save some money soon, assuming this 2009 Macbook doesn’t die. But I feel guilty about the painting. Working feels like the right thing to do right now, and climbing on the weekends is always fun. But life passes so quickly when I’m not painting. All I have to show from living like this is a few photos and bank statements. Oh, and a shelf full of empty packaging that used to hold new toys. Like my iPhone, which which I’m already bored, a new flashlight, a couple cams, a new battery powered drill…etc.
My back bedroom is literally covered with the paintings I did over the last couple years. All the walls, shelves and boxes are covered with unsold oil paintings. Each painting is a memory of a time when I knew I was doing exactly what I should be doing. It’s true that they aren’t very good, though I could probably sell a few at a craft fair if I wanted to spend my weekends standing around under a white tent. I love creating the art, but the selling part not so much.
Work is going well. I have some great students and they are rapidly downloading everything I know about web design. The teaching business is perplexing. When I start out with a new group of students it’s kind of like bringing a bucket of water to people in the drylands. By the time they move on, my bucket is empty. I fill my bucket by studying the latest trends in web design and preparing lessons. Then the cycle starts again.
But my paints are calling to me. Maybe I can do some still lifes soon. That would be fun.
I’m looking forward to some climbing. On my April break I finally got up Cruel Sister clean. It is a 10b red camalot sized crack that has been shutting me down for about 8 years. My daughter and my niece Pam were there and tried it after my lead. That was a super fun trip!
