Winter work pics and reflection

A few pics from the end of March as I reflect on this awesome winter we were blessed with. 31 hiking days, 17 skiing days, and 35(!) climbing days between December and March. (Not including a few bonus ones in November!) Eternally grateful for the work, and for the clients and friends I was able to share these outdoor adventures with — you make even the less-than-ideal days fun! ❄️🏔️🧊⛷️

I’ll be happy to see the snow fly again next winter, but now I’m ready for pulling on rock, moving fast in the mountains, sleeping in tents, and gliding a paddle through water. 🧗🥾🏕️🛶

Snow covers a sloping mountainside with barren branches extending upwards illuminated by the bright sun against a backdrop of lush forested hills and a cloudy blue sky. Calendar for December 2025 with handwritten activities each week Ski on Tuesdays Ice on Wednesdays and Saturdays Hike from December 25 to 28 BlankCalendarPagescom at the bottom right Calendar for January 2026 shows activities written on various days. Ski on 5 19 21 31 Ice on 6 7 8 12 14 17 25 26 27 28 29 Hike on 4 9 10 11 13 16 18 22. Calendar for February 2026 with handwritten activities in various colors Ski Hike and Ice interspersed on different days BlankCalendarPages com text at the bottom right corner Calendar for March 2026 shows activity schedule. The words Hike in red and Ice in blue are written on various days. Blank days are present, providing a visual plan. A group of six people is cheerfully posing with trekking poles on a snowy mountain slope surrounded by trees and an overcast sky. They are bundled in winter gear. Five people stand under a rock ledge with icicles and snow, holding hiking poles, wearing winter clothing, and smiling in a snowy outdoor setting. People wearing winter gear and helmets prepare for ice climbing with ropes in a snowy forest setting near an icy rock face and trees. Climber ascends icy wall using an ice axe while a person in an orange jacket belays in a snowy forest setting with several others nearby. Two people in winter gear smile in snowy forest both wearing red jackets with sunglasses and hoods up one person in foreground visible from shoulders up the other slightly behind. A person wearing an orange hooded jacket is hiking in a snowstorm, carrying a large backpack. Another hiker in a red jacket follows behind, with snow-covered trees surrounding them. A person in a red jacket climbs a snowy slope using trekking poles surrounded by snow-covered trees in a dense forest setting. Two people wearing winter climbing gear stand smiling with arms crossed on a snowy roadside surrounded by bare trees and rocky terrain. A person in a hooded jacket is ice climbing a snowy slope, using ice axes and a safety rope. They are smiling at the camera. Another person stands below with arms outstretched, surrounded by snow-covered trees and branches. A person is ice climbing a steep, snowy surface. They are wearing a helmet and climbing gear, including crampons and gloves. The climber is using an ice axe to ascend while secured by a red climbing rope attached to an anchor in the ice. The background is a snowy and icy landscape. A person is ice climbing a frozen waterfall, using climbing gear and a safety rope. The ice appears thick and textured, cascading down a natural rock formation. Trees and a clear sky are visible at the top of the waterfall. The climber is wearing winter clothing and is positioned partway up the icy surface. Two climbers are ice climbing a steep, frozen waterfall. The person on the left is wearing a blue outfit and yellow backpack, using ice axes for support. The person on the right is dressed in dark clothing, also utilizing ice axes. The icy terrain is rugged with visible ridges and icicles. There are trees and rocks at the top and sides of the waterfall. A person is dressed in winter gear, including a hooded jacket and helmet, smiling at the camera. They are standing next to a large, icy surface, presumably for ice climbing, holding a NOMIC ice tool. The background shows a snowy, forested area.

Finished watching: Shrinking Season 3 📺

Goodness, what a special show. Right up there with Trying as one of my favorites from Apple TV.

Every episode was so good. Equally spit take funny and heartwarming. The season’s arc, as a whole, was perhaps not as cohesive as past ones, but I still loved it.

🚨 Shit shit shit!

Jim Pattiz: ‘Trump administration orders dismantling of the U.S. Forest Service’

They’re ripping the headquarters out of Washington and shipping it to Salt Lake City, Utah — the beating heart of the anti-public-lands movement in America. […]

If the headquarters move is the gunshot, the destruction of the research program is the burial. […]

You cannot move a thirty-year watershed study. You cannot relocate a decades-long old-growth monitoring program. You cannot box up a forest and ship it to Colorado. When these facilities close, the experiments die.

Very bad. Call your reps!

Federico Viticci:

LunarWall is a simple shortcut that picks a random image from a curated set of 23 photos pulled from NASA’s Artemis II Lunar Flyby gallery and sets it as your wallpaper. That’s it! Each time you run it, you get a different photo. […T]he LunarWall shortcut fetches each image directly from NASA’s CDN and passes it to the ‘Set Wallpaper’ action, which is configured to automatically crop images to fit on mobile devices, blurs the wallpaper for the iOS/iPadOS Home Screen, and uses the original widescreen images at high resolutions on macOS.

I’ve set this up and am loving it. 🌕

PSA: Switching from 1Password to Apple Passwords? (Been very happy with the swap, personally.) It’s probably worth migrating on your iPhone instead of a Mac. You can migrate everything directly from app to app, rather than exporting to a CSV file as an intermediary and leaving behind your passkeys.

Really enjoyed this well-done interview of @imyke@myke.social by @maxfrequency.net. Covers a bunch of Myke’s thoughts on the podcasting industry, how he designs his own podcasts, some nice thoughts on dad life from the both of them, and more. 🎧

Maya Silver, Climbing:

Astronaut Christina Koch, currently onboard the Artemis II mission, is a climber. And not just a climber in passing, with rental shoes and little else. She’s a climber to her core: listing “rock and ice climbing” among her hobbies in her NASA profile. […]

A deep dive into the wormhole of Koch’s climbing past reveals she has been lead climbing for at least a decade, enjoys the challenge of trad routes, and gets out ice climbing in Hyalite Canyon in Montana, where she once lived. She also backpacked throughWyoming’s Wind River Range, a premier climbing destination.

🤘🧗‍♀️🚀

🔗 ‘Macs crash after 49 days of uptime’ sixcolors.com

Robert Birming:

Maybe that’s the secret to true happiness, being thankful for what we have, here and now. We may have plans and ambitions, but we don’t let them overshadow the value of the present moment.

After all, this is all we have.

This episode of The Good News Podcast about hyper-detailed instructions and AI-powered solutions to help people with low/no vision to enjoy building LEGO sets is so very cool. 🎧

🆕📝 Louie Mantia’s ideal burger ingredient stack

Anyone else a little hungry?

Louie Mantia’s got a good system for rating burgers on his new Burger Digest blog:

One-star ★ burgers are the ones I’ll eat again, but only if I’m nearby. Two-star ★★ burgers are burgers I’ll come back to again and again. And three-star ★★★ burgers are the ones I will happily go out of my way for.

For years, I’ve been partial toward the Netflix-esque 👎 / 👍 / 👍👍 system, but 0-3 stars works quite well too — especially when paired with Mantia’s qualifiers. Plus, zero stars plays better with the idea that if you don’t have something nice to say, you shouldn’t say anything at all.

Abducktion is a really fun little board game that my wife and I have been enjoying lately. In case you’re looking for a new one.

Acme Weather’s custom notifications are pretty sweet. I’ve set one to give me a heads up when conditions are right for ice to build overnight. Maybe ice climbing season isn’t quite over yet? 🤞

A notification overlay from the “Notification Center” against a blurred background of a smiling person. The notification is from an app with a blue icon featuring an umbrella and the word “ACME.” It reads, “Maybe new ice? Saranac Lake. Temperature will be 14° around 2 AM tomorrow, falling to 12° around 5 AM tomorrow.” The notification was posted 1 hour ago.

Tom Ley: ‘I Guess We’re Just Waiting Around To See If This Demented Psychopath Kills Everyone’

It’s likely that this is the most proudly and nakedly evil statement ever made by a sitting U.S. President, and now we just have to sit around and see if he actually means it.

If it wasn’t already apparent by the numerous other examples, this should make it crystal clear that our government is profoundly broken if nothing can be done about an elected official making a genocidal statement such as this. It’s sickening. 🇺🇸

Watched: The Martian 🍿

Seemed right for home viewing last night (only $5 on iTunes Apple TV’s movie store right now!) considering the Artemis mission and Project Hail Mary being in theaters. Great movie! Although, Apollo 13 might have even more appropriate. Perhaps tonight.

I’ve finally gotten around to archiving a bunch of Apple’s videos that they’ve released over the years. I like looking back at the production quality and how they presented their products to the public. Wish I would have set this up years ago — so many of them are now private or lost to time.

Pebble wants to make super sure that you buy the right size of the Index 01 ring, so they send you a 3D-printed (or you could print your own) set of mockups at all the sizes. They ask that you test them and keep the best size on your finger for a day to be confident you’re happy with it. Good idea!

A hand with a dark rectangular clasp ring on the index finger. In the background, there are several similar rings laid out on a colorful, rainbow-themed mouse pad with an animated figure in a red outfit. A USB cable and part of a monitor stand are also visible.

The Washington Post: (News+)

President Donald Trump threatened to wipe out “a whole civilization” if Iran’s leaders don’t agree to his terms to open the Strait of Hormuz tonight, prompting Iran to call off talks and his political opponents to question his fitness and call for his removal from office.

Trump/Republican/MAGA voters, this (and this) is on you. You were warned, and we won’t forget. I sure hope you’re ready to make some different choices. 🇺🇸

(If you vote red because of “Christian values”, I don’t know how you can see those values represented in Conservative leadership these days.)

Really cool webpage showcasing every iPhone model ever released with significant milestones, price, feature removals, colors and more all beautifully visualized.

(Via Daring Fireball)

David Pierce: ‘Vertical browser tabs are better and you should use them’

After all this time, Chrome actually executed the idea pretty well. When you switch to vertical tabs, the Chrome address bar moves up to the top row of the app, which makes the interface take up substantially less space than before. If you’re a real minimalist, you can shrink the sidebar to show only website favicons, and suddenly Chrome’s chrome is almost entirely out of the way.

I’m pretty happy with my top tabs in Safari, but I must admit that this is a pretty clean look. And Tahoe’s tabs take up more room than ever.

🔗 ‘At $150 off, the new MacBook Air is now cheaper than last year’s model’ theverge.com

Simply incredible images coming from the Artemis II crew from their time going ‘round the moon. What a privilege for them to experience such a wonderful solar eclipse. Check out The Verge’s post for some history and metadata. 🚀🌕

An image of a total solar eclipse seen from space, with the moon completely covering the sun, creating a bright corona around the dark silhouette of the moon. The surrounding sky is filled with distant stars.

9to5Mac: ‘Apple faces supply chain problem as MacBook Neo demand exceeds expectations’

One option is to pay TSMC a premium to ramp up A18 Pro fabrication again, although it’s unclear how much that would cost on a per-unit basis. Apple may have to bump the price of the Neo to make the math work, preserving its preferred healthy profit margins. This could mean removing the base $599 configuration from sale, leaving only the $699 model.

A good problem, I s’pose. I think it’s unlikely that Apple would bump the price—it’s too central to its marketing. They’d restrict the $599 model, if anything.

Psyched for the next season of Dark Matter to come out in August! I loved both the book and the show.

Today, Apple TV revealed a first look at the second season of the acclaimed sci-fi series “Dark Matter,” which is set to make its global debut on Friday, August 28.

Season two will pick up where season one left off but where the book ended—so there’s no existing storyline to guide it this time. Not to worry though, author Blake Crouch serves as creator, executive producer, showrunner and writer—so it’s coming straight from the source.

The Verge has the pics without spoilers like Apple’s post.