Mike's Page

I'm a baseball fan and I'm excited that the new season's beginning. But I'm not a big fan of the Major League Baseball money machine. A few years ago they took away my free web broadcasts (like I'm going to pay to listen to choppy broadcasts on Real player over dialup).

This article talks about how MLB has thrown out baseball tradition in favor of the almighty dollar (or is it yen?). I may be biased because I'm a Cincinnati Reds fan, but the first pitch of the season is supposed to be in Cincinnati.

I could probably live with some out-of-the-country games starting the season, but having real games play out simultaneously with spring training games is ridiculous.

Go Reds!

Yesterday we drove up to the beautiful South Carolina mountains for a little fresh air and hiking. Looking for something new, I found the Eastatoe Creek Trail, situated between Table Rock State Park and Lake Jocassee.

This trail drops down into the Eastatoe Creek Gorge, which is noted for its tropical-style microclimate and interesting foliage, including one fern that grows nowhere else in North America.

We arrived at the parking area before 2 pm, with clear skies and low 70s. Perfect for a hike. We loaded our one-year-old into the backpack, and hit the trail. It didn't take long for me to lament leaving my hiking stick at home, but I found a halfway-decent stick to use for the trip.

The trail is a leisurely up-and-down for about a mile, then it starts dropping quickly to the bottom of the gorge, 500 feet lower. I'd say we descended about 350 of those feet, down makeshift stairs and around switchbacks, when we came to a tricky area. The trail itself became fairly narrow, and the drop-off steep. Soon thereafter we came to a spot where several large trees had fallen down the upper slope and completely blocked the trail. Normally I would've just tried to climb over them, but I was leery about doing this with a baby on my back.

I'm not sure how close we got to the end of the trail, but we decided to turn around at that point. Despite not seeing everything, we had an enjoyable hike and a good workout. Next time I'll bring a chainsaw.

I recently updated my photo album software to use the (X)HTML 'link' tag where possible. Here's an example:

<link rel="top" href="/pa/pa.php" />

Most surfers won't notice. I've been using Mozilla browsers (far superior to IE these days) for a couple years now, and I thought I'd take advantage of a cool plug-in feature.

One of the things I haven't liked about my simple album layout is that the navigation links shift vertically based on the height of the image (I know I could rework the layout but I've been saving that for when I implement templated themes). The 'link' tag solves that problem. Using Mozilla and the excellent Link Toolbar plug-in, I now have navigation buttons located conveniently on the right-hand side of the status bar. Some buttons are ghosted out when they're not available, and if the site doesn't use the 'link' tag, the toolbar disappears.



(apparently a similar plug-in for IE is also available)

Now if only more websites would implement this, and if browsers would include it by default! I hope to add this feature to more of my site in the future.

Tuesday I went with a couple friends to paddle the Tyger River (map). This was a scouting trip for the official Palmetto Paddlers trip this Saturday.

Despite being cloudy and cold, this was a fun trip. We started out at the Highway 49 bridge and ran the river to the Highway 176 bridge. It was all flatwater, but it was moving swiftly in places. There were a few deadfalls and strainers blocking our path here and there. We had to portage 100 yards around a large obstruction. Brian and Joe did some work clearing it, so hopefully the weekend paddlers won't have to stop for it.

The river is beautiful and there was hardly a sign of human activity along most of this stretch. We passed under one small bridge and by a forest service road. If not for the occasional garbage that had washed downstream and the abandoned 12-foot boat, it would've looked totally wild. There was a lot of bird activity. We saw wood ducks, a flock of wild turkeys and a few herons. Not much else stirred on the cold day. The terrain was interesting too, varying from forested floodplain to steep rocky bluffs.

Some Union county locals want to dam(n) the Tyger and turn it into a 5300 acre lake. Their argument is that it will bring economic development to a place hurt by the decline of textiles. I prefer the river. South Carolina is loaded with lakes created from dammed rivers already. That area is also some of the best deer hunting territory in the state from what I've heard.

Hopefully the lake will not happen, but paddle the river while you still can!

Troy Bartlett has been publishing cool insect and spider images on the web for a while now. Today he announced the creation of a new site, BugGuide.Net. It takes his excellent bug photography and categorizes it nicely. It's also set up as a community-based site, so others can post images, make comments, and try to help ID the unidentified images. I posted my beetle from Costa Rica here.

Here's a link to all my bug images on the site.