Working Title

Author: Louis

  • St. Johns Bridge, August 2026

    Last weekend my family and I went to Hood River in Oregon for an event. On the way back they dropped me off in Portland, in the St. Johns neighborhood where my pals Shannon and Isaac live.

    I could write about St. Johns’s gritty charm but this post is about a bridge.

    Walking on the way to Shannon’s I saw it and had to cross it.

    I did and took pictures:

    In that last photo you can see there’s a ship stranded on land with no apparent access to the water. My friends took me there later and we saw it up close:

    Under the bridge on the St. Johns side there’s a park. Sadly we missed the Frasier club meeting:

  • Barclay Lake, July 2026

    I have a hard time remembering what hikes I’ve been on in western Washington. They usually start with trees and often end in fog, and I don’t pay much attention to the overall geography and topology of the many trails we have around here. I just go, usually with friends who do pay attention to that stuff. But what if I documented hikes here on this website? I might understand and remember them better. So here’s my first hike report.

    A couple of weekends ago, Saturday July 25, 2026, my family and another family we’re friends with completed a one night backpacking trip to Barclay Lake, which is off US-2 in the north Cascades.

    Barclay Lake, Snohomish County, Washington

    I’m fairly certain this was my first time at Barclay Lake. We’d originally planned to go to a different lake not far from Barclay but a nearby wildfire led us to switch it up last minute.

    Getting there was fairly easy from Seattle. You go to Monroe then take US-2 past Index and around mile marker 41 turn left. We didn’t leave particularly early, like 9am? Traffic on Saturday was not congested but it was busy, and it can be a bit treacherous getting on and off the highway here.

    Anyway, we followed a fairly-but-not-too-rough dirt/gravel road for 3 miles or so to the crowded trail head. We were driving a Subaru Forester and a VW ID3 AWD, but we would have been ok in 2WD sedans.

    Many cars were at the trailhead, both in the small parking lot and parked for some distance down the road. Lots of folks were here for camping or day hikes, and we were prepared to bail if we couldn’t find a campsite.

    This flexibility was possible because the hike is only 2.2 miles long and pretty easy. We got our packs on and took off: 4 adults and 2 8-year-olds.

    Despite some complaining from an opinionated youngster and frequent stops, we made it to the lake before long. The trail approaches the lake from its west bank where the shore is accessible and some of the land is fairly flat, sandy, and exposed, and some is dominated by logs and rocks. Barclay Creek exits the lake on this side.

    The trail continues east-south-east along the north bank of the lake opposite Baring Mountain, which is imposing and very cool-looking, its peak often obscured by misty clouds.

    The trail passes by a beach-like shoreline — the surface being compacted sand and dirt, not soft, and angled down toward the water so not as flat as where the trail first encounters the lake. People fish here.

    Keep following the trail past the lake’s east bank, where a wide grassy area begins. I don’t know what kind of grass it is but I imagine for most of the year it’s submerged.

    All along the trail there are campsites, and they were filling quickly before noon. We walked a ways and found a site some distance past the lake next to the grassy area, with enough space for 4 tents. We set up our site and then found some things to do.

    Note: this is National Forest Service administered land and there was one pit toilet we could find. Allegedly there was another one, but I only heard that from another camper who saw it on a map. That camper also said that another 2 toilets could be found farther down the trail, toward Eagle Lake. We walked for a ways but did not find those, and WTA suggests Eagle Lake is no longer accessible. As an aside within an aside, WTA says the trail to Eagle Lake is on private land but doesn’t explain what changed. I found some info about Eagle Lake and some more here.

    All that said, the one pit toilet existed and was… gross, but not like overflowing or shat-upon. My most recent pit-toilet memory is from the Pratt Lake area last year, and Barclay’s was worse than that — certainly odor-wise — but not like orders of magnitude worse. Given that Forest Service ranger staff were severely cut last year (the figure at the North Bend station was from over 20 rangers to 2 — Barclay is managed by Snoqualmie station so I have to assume they were screwed proportionally) it’s a miracle that it’s there at all.

    That was quite a long aside. Why? Because, apart from finding a campsite, that’s the other thing you’ll be forced to deal with, depending on your metabolism or whatever. So be prepared and bring a shovel.

    Moving on.

    So much of backpacking is dealing with routine stuff like filtering water and cooking and cleaning up. Everything’s awkward and takes longer to do.

    A number of us went back to the west side of the lake to hang out, explore the rocks and have dinner there. At some point I fell off a log and hurt my ankle a bit, so I went there also to wade into the cold water. The kids came too and we checked out the shore here.

    Wading in, the shore was muddy, and weird — at points the shoreline drops off severely, and some treacherous rocks are hidden in it. The mud is sticky and slippery at the same time somehow. I guess that’s normal for mud? But it was of a consistency I find hard to describe, like it should have smelled of sulfur but didn’t. We found a relatively safe part of the shore and the kids had fun getting muddy.

    Fire bans in effect, we boiled water with stoves (e.g. JetBoil) and made our camp dinners. Only staying one night freed up weight for some variety. My wife brought tortillas, cheese, refried beans in a tube and hot sauce. It might have been better if we’d put the refried beans tube into the boiling water, but cold it was ok. Our friends had Mountain House. We had an apple. There were snacks.

    Then we all hiked back to the campsite and pretty much went to bed. Even though we’d hiked a ways past the lake we could hear campers on either side of us. Barclay Lake is popular.

    I found a spot for our bear bag right near some bear cannisters that our neighbors had left out. My branch was not really very bear-proof but I think the main danger here is chipmunks.

    The next day we boiled more water for oatmeal and coffee (note: the Trader Joes instant stuff that comes with cream and sugar is great) and took our time packing up. We took pictures and then left.

    At some point while taking the kids on a walk my wife had hit her head against a fallen log. She was ok too but it’s a reminder that backpacking is not without risk. We had both been injured on this hike, though between wading in the cold water and some Aleve I myself was fine.

    There’s only 500 feet elevation gain to Barclay and the trail goes down and up so you don’t really notice. Kids were much less complainy on the way back and we stopped way less often. We reached the trailhead, found our cars and left.

    Overall I’d say Barclay was a very good option for a first family backpacking trip. We were lucky to have nearly perfect backpacking weather — somewhat overcast so not too hot but also not cold, and while it threatened to rain all that Saturday it really didn’t. Like barely.

  • Daps documentation website

    I posted earlier about my Daps open source project, and now it has its own website at dapster.org. I learned a bit about Astro while making it (or directing Claude to make it, whatever), which is part of why there’s an Astro template for Daps.

    Without AI of any kind, using only my passion for graphic design, I also created a logo:

    At least you can’t unsee it!

  • Book Review Revue Pt. 8

    Wow, it’s been 7 years since I posted a revue. I started this post in 2019 and then didn’t finish it, let’s see if I can finish it now.

    I made a note that I had started a lot of library books that then expired before I finished them. That still happens. I won’t review those.

    Chris Smith – The Daily Show (the Book): An Oral History (2016)
    I think I remember this one. If I recall it was a series of statements or recollections by different people who worked on the Daily Show from its very start, into Jon Stewart’s tenure and through to when he left. In particular I recall it captures how the show changed after 9/11 and became a cultural force. I liked it, it makes you think about what it would be like to write for a comedy show.

    Arthur C. Clarke – Rendezvous With Rama (1973)
    Classic sci-fi novella about an encounter with an alien spacecraft drifting through the solar system. Earthlings are sent to explore it and strange things happen.

    I heard of this story when Oumuamua shot around the sun a couple years ago and folks were comparing it to Rama. I liked it.

    N. K. Jemisin – The Fifth Season (2015), The Obelisk Gate (2016), The Stone Sky (2017) (aka the Broken Earth Trilogy)
    This was just so weird, I still think about it sometimes, the bits I remember: a world with enormous stone formations floating in the sky; people who are born with the ability to move the earth with their minds, and are either persecuted or enslaved for it, or both (I don’t quite recall); how nothing is made of metal because it’s unreliable and inconstant. It was so creative, and yeah weird. I should read it again.

    Jeff VanderMeer – Annihilation (2014), Authority (2014), Acceptance (2014) (aka the Southern Reach Trilogy)
    Reading the first book of this series was such an odd feeling, it was just so weird. The story is weird and the way it’s told is weird, it gives you little glimpses at a time of what’s going on and it takes a while to put a picture together that never quite coalesces while still drawing you in. In short: some mysterious event decades ago on some small coastal area of the U.S. created a world-within-the-world that changes anyone who enters in unknowable ways. I thought it was great, though the second and third books lose some of that mystery.

    Volker Ullrich – Hitler: Ascent, 1889-1939 (2013)
    I picked this up shortly after the 2016 election, put it down for a year or so, then finished it. I remember now reading it on a rocking chair while while my infant son napped on my lap. Fascinating history of Hitler’s rise to power and the historical conditions that enabled it. It’s odd at times as the author clearly admires his subject and has to interject every now and again to remind himself and us that Hitler was bad. I look forward to reading the next volume. I wonder what happens?

    Brian Cox & Jeff Forshaw – Why Does e=mc²? (2009)
    File this under books that help you feel smarter. I loved this one, because it very clearly explained special relativity; building each concept logically onto the next, starting from one observation: that, once scientists were able to measure the speed of light, they kept getting the same number despite differences in velocity between sources and sensors. Pursuing the implication that light actually has the same speed for all observers, given other physical laws, led Einstein to discovering a relationship between mass and energy.

    I recall some concepts toward the end of the book that were harder to grasp, I should read this one again too.

    Michelle McNamara – I’ll Be Gone in the Dark:
    One Woman’s Obsessive Search for the Golden State Killer     (2018)
    I came upon this one back when I read Twitter and followed Patton Oswalt. The author had been his wife, and had died before finishing the book. There’s a documentary series about it. As I recall she gathers much of the available evidence and finds that it points to one suspect, who was charged shortly after the book was published and later found guilty. I remember the book was super creepy. The 70s were nuts.

    George Orwell – Down and Out in Paris and London (1933)
    Orwell wrote this memoir about his young adulthood slumming it in Paris. At least that’s how I remember it. Two images in particular remain with me: dirty, sooty kitchens in the basement of fancy hotels, and the author and some friend of his having to share the same suit in order to keep a job in those kitchens. I think. There was a lot of talk about a suit.

    Scott Pape – The Barefoot Investor: the Only Money Guide You’ll Ever Need (2016)
    I don’t remember anything about this.

    Ben Macintyre – A Spy Among Friends (2014)
    An English spy turns and starts spying for Russia during or shortly after WWII, and another English spy has to catch him. It was good.

    Vanessa McGrady – Rock Needs River: A Memoir About a Very Open Adoption (2019)
    If I’m remembering the right book, the author came off as really unlikeable.

    Ling Ma – Severance (2018)
    A post apocalyptic novel following an American woman of Chinese descent who works at a company importing things from China when a pandemic starts that turns people into zombies. I recall the banality of the woman’s life as the disease spreads but she keeps going to the office, as coworkers and her foreign contacts start dropping out of the picture. They’re not like “braiinns” zombies, more like a person catches the disease and stops being sentient. The story follows her as she leaves the city and finds other people who have been resistant to the disease, and then the story becomes about authoritarianism. I think.

    Rebecca Solnit – Men Explain Things to Me (2014)
    A famous book that’s both funny and eye-opening. Sobering? Naw, I’m not one of those men. Well, actually…

    Manuel Gonzales – The Regional Office Is Under Attack! (2016)
    I don’t remember this at all, even after reading a synopsis on Wikipedia. Maybe I didn’t read it.

    James S. A. Corey – Leviathan Wakes (2011)
    I had to read a synopsis to remember this. Like a lot of sci fi I remember bits and pieces of it, particularly the scenes on Ceres ring a bell. I don’t think I read any of the others in the series.

    Annie Proulx – The Shipping News (1993)
    I remember reading this and thinking it was great, and that I knew more about Newfoundland than I did before. Or thought I did. It’s an enjoyable novel. I think I read Barkskins afterward because I liked it so much. Or it was the other way around? Who knows.

    Tom Hansen – American Junkie (2017)
    This one stayed with me. Partly because it paints a bleak picture of deep heroin addiction. Partly because it involves the deep heroin addictions of some rock stars I like. And partly because the protagonist describes staying at the Bailey-Boushay House, in front of which I used to catch the bus. Also it’s pretty well-written.

    Tom Hansen somehow survived extreme addiction and lived to tell about it, though he died in 2023. Mark Lanegan, who also survived extreme addiction and died somewhat recently, mentions Tom in his memoir. They mention each other in their memoirs, that’s nice.

    George Saunders – Lincoln in the Bardo (2017)
    Another weird but amazing book and the first I’ve read by George Saunders, so now I get why he’s a genius. That said, years later now mostly I just remember it was about ghosts and it was written in a weird way that was very affecting and that I liked it.

    Katherine Dunn – Geek Love (1989)
    Another one where even after reading a synopsis I don’t recall a single bit of it. Either I didn’t read it or I need to write these posts faster or I need a physician.

    Jenna Fischer – the Actor’s Life: A Survival Guide (2017)
    Part memoir, part career advice to actors. She almost quit but stuck it out til The Office. I liked it.

    Alright I did it! Caught up to 2019.

  • I made a thing

    Well me and Claude did. We made this:

    https://codeberg.org/louieoc/Daps

    It’s an open-source framework for managing websites where portability is a first-level feature, so you’re not locked into any hosting provider. It’s called Daps and uses Docker to mirror your local environment to a remote host, and then implements a bunch of workflows to keep your environments in sync.

    Partly I made it so I could move my own websites off of their hosting. For example this WordPress site you’re reading right now was on a shared Linux host for over a decade. Now it’s on a VPS host running Docker, and I’ve switched hosts a couple of times already just because it’s easy (and also for testing).

    I also just swapped out the theme (from TwentyTen to TwentyTwentyFive — you see how stuck it was), which was kind of seamless. I developed and tweaked the site on my workstation until it was looking “good enough” and then synced it to the remote host in about 10 seconds.

    I’m actively developing Daps and will write more about it soon.

    I will also note that something like Daps might have been more interesting before the rise of agentic AI, which makes a lot of development and devops effort obsolete. Personally I don’t want to offload all of my sovereignty to AI companies, and this is an expression of that.

    This does feel similar to a long project I undertook last year, which was mixing some old An Invitation to Love recordings, which for some reason took forever — it was a lot of trial and error. I haven’t released those and might not, but the value to me was in doing it more than it was in getting it done.

    Coincidentally, I just saw this video that talks about this very thing.