http://www.tsn.ca/nhl/news_story.asp?ID=135759

Let this be a lesson to all of you. This is the first of many.

I think everyone should be using Eclipse and CFEclipse. However I do realize that if everyone switched, then that might not be so good for a number of reasons. But I do wish that most people would take a look at CFEclipse and the advantages it has over Dreamweaver. I’ve tried, somewhat fruitlessly, to explain to my peers why they should switch. I think part of the problem lies in the fact that I don’t know enough about Dreamweaver to really contrast the two well enough. I know what I like about CFEclipse, and I know that using one IDE for everything makes my life a lot easier, but that in itself isn’t a great argument.

One of these days I want to write a piece about why people should switch not just from Homesite+ to CFEclipse, but also from Dreamweaver to CFEclipse. In the meantime, a post over at Blog In Black describes some of the arguments he used to switch people from Homesite+ to CFEclipse.

Macromedia announced Flash Media Server 2 (previously Flash Communication Server 2) today according to Yahoo.

It looks like it focuses heavily on Flash Video, which is good, but I really want to see some big enhancements in sharing data. It may just be that the announcement focuses on the video stuff, and as we get more information we’ll find out that they’ve also made improvements to the data aspect. It looks like it will be available in October and a public beta will be out this month.

I think that the Flash Media Server is really going to bring some great things to the RIA space. I can’t wait to try it out. When I think about the way our apps could benefit, I get excited by the possibilities.

Note: This is my first “gear review”. Non-backpackers will probably find this boring.

REI was having a sale on the MSR MiniWorks EX Filter and we’ve been using tablets for so long that I thought it was time to pick up a filter and use it for our cooking. The iodine just leaves a strange taste in the food.

After picking it up, I realized that I had inadvertently become a bit of an MSR fan-boy. I have the WhisperLite and also the BlackLite Guide Cookset so I may not be the most objective person to do this review.

That aside, I thought that the MiniWorks performed pretty well. Going from popping in iodine tablets and waiting 45 minutes to almost instant water was great, and the taste comparison is no contest. Because the Miniworks is a filter, and not a purifier, I wouldn’t use it close to Philadelphia, but for the places we go, a filter is fine.

I like the fact that the MiniWorks is built to screw onto a Nalgene top, and the pump speed is admirable, but I didn’t reach the 1 liter/minute threshold on our trip. One thing I don’t like is that when you get close to filling the Nalgene bottle, the MiniWorks starts to spray water out the sides. It may be that I have the Nalgene screwed on wrong, or that I’m priming the filter incorrectly, but it’s still annoying.

It’s a pretty good filter, and for $60, it does its job and should last a long time.

Scoble posted the video of an Avalon presentation over at Channel9 while I was away on vacation. The video is pretty impressive and they do a good job of showing off Avalon as a solution to a problem. It’s definitely worth a look because some of the features are pretty cool. I like the fact that they placed such a big emphasis on security in their presentation, because the applications that Flex/Avalon will be able to impact the most will have some high security requirements (think healthcare in the video and financial firms and student data for some of our projects).

I’m sure Flex 2.0 will be able to do a lot of the things that the demo shows in this video, but the Microsoft team did make good use of the Direct3D engine and the 3D graphs are pretty impressive.

All kinds of things went wrong with our West Virginia trip. Some stuff got lost, we got lost a couple of times (driving and walking) and we had to skip a hot dinner last night, but overall the trip was the most fun we’ve had backpacking on the east coast yet. West Virginia is absolutely gorgeous. It’s beautiful in a very different way from Colorado or Wyoming, but it has that wild quality that Ciara and I have been looking for in an east coast backpacking spot.

We selected the “Sods Circuit” from the book Hiking West Virginia which is a 16 mile loop that includes the Red Creek Trail, the Breathed Mountain Trail and the Big Stonecoal Trail. I’m a little embarrassed that we turned a 16 mile day hike into a three day backpacking trip, but with the drive times it was really only a day and a half trip.

We drove from Philly to the Dolly Sods wilderness on Saturday morning. We tried to leave on Friday night but some wrong turns and traffic thwarted that attempt. We got started on the trail at about 4:30 and hiked in about 1.5 miles. The trail was rugged, and not well marked, but not overly hard to follow either. The signs at the trailhead had huge warnings about being in the wilderness unprepared and that the trails were muddy and hard to follow, but for the most part it was pretty easy to see where you were supposed to go. There were signs at most trail intersections, so that helped.

We found a nice campsite out of the way of the trail and near Red Creek, so we had camp set up by about 6:00. We had a great dinner of Katmandu Curry (I highly recommend it, Backpacker’s Pantry is good stuff), cleaned up and sat by the river. I picked up John Muir’s book My First Summer in the Sierras so I read a little bit before we turned in for the night.

On Saturday we had a leisurely breakfast and packed up camp. We headed out somewhere between 11:30 – 12:00 and we figured we needed to go about 12 miles so we could get out early Monday morning and beat Labor day traffic. The trail was kind of crowded, but easy enough to follow. We had a creek crossing which was cool because it was a full out “boots off, sandals on” crossing which I haven’t done in a while. After the crossing and climbing up out of the valley, we hit the sods. The sods are basically open fields of grass and brush. They’re supposed to be special, and they were kind of cool, but not really anything big. You can see for yourself on the pictures. After hiking through the sods, we started down Big Stonecoal Run (a very West Virginia name) and unfortunately this is where we had some problems. It was about 3 miles from the beginning of the Big Stonecoal trail to some very cool waterfalls on Big Stonecoal Run. We figured we could find somewhere near the falls to camp, and we got there at about 7:30 as it was starting to get dark. And of course there were no campsites near the falls.

After the falls, the trail continued going up while the run was at the bottom of the valley. If we wanted to get water we were going to have to go back. We kept walking along the trail hoping to find a campsite so we could set up camp and go back to get water for dinner. We walked for a while and finally reached a fork in the trail. One trail kept going and another trail went down towards the river (which was pretty far down by now). Instead of checking the book like we should have, we just kept walking thinking we would be able to find a site. By about 8:45, it’s getting very dark, and we haven’t found a place to camp. In checking the guidebook, we find out that the trail that went down to the river was the one we wanted, and this one leads us in the wrong direction. We have enough light to get back to the fork in the trail, but not enough to get there and walk the mile down to the river and not enough to go back and get water from the falls. So we walked back to the fork and set up camp in a small flat spot right next to the trail.

We woke up early the next morning and headed down the correct trail to the bottom of the valley where we took a break and had breakfast. After breakfast we crossed Red Creek again (it was much colder this time) and hiked the rest of the way out to the car. It was a pretty quick 2.5 miles and we got to the car at 9:30 so we could be headed home a bit before 10:00 am.

Despite the second night it was a lot of fun. I think next time we’ll be a bit better prepared for the terrain and have a good idea of what to expect. We both enjoyed it so much that we’re planning to go back once more this month and see it while the leaves are changing colors. My only big complaint was the crowds, but even in Colorado the crowds are getting out of hand. And even though it was crowded everyone seemed nice and it didn’t distract from the wilderness experience too much. West Virginia gets two thumbs up.

Trail(s): Red Creek Trail, Breathed Mountain Trail, Big Stonecoal Trail
Location: Dolly Sods Wilderness, West Virginia
Distance: 16 mile loops
Our Time: 3 Days (1 1/2 really)
Trip Photos on Flickr – http://www.flickr.com/photos/digitalbackcountry/sets/891932/

We finally get to take the West Virginia backpacking trip we wanted to take over the 4th of July. Ciara and I are taking off of work a little bit early to try and beat the holiday traffic. As of right now we’re planning to go to the Dolly Sods wilderness but our driving time down and the “scene” when we get there may make us change our plans.

I’ve heard that West Virginia gets really crowded during popular weekends (I think Labor Day qualifies). I’m not sure if this is crowded by West Virginia standards, which I can probably handle, or crowded by East Coast standards, which might be miserable. It really isn’t that far from DC so I’m prepared for the worst, but I’m not sure I’m ready for the crowded East Coast backpacking experience.

I’ll post pictures and info when we get back.