Read more about the article About Me
About Me

About Me

I was born the color of royal blue. My umbilical cord was wrapped about my neck and the British doctor was able to quickly unwind it to enable me to gasp my first precious breath. It happened at Mengo hospital in Kampala, Uganda and I was on my way into an exciting world. Out of Africa My parents moved to East Africa a year before I was born. My Dad was called to the Anglican Church in Mbale, Uganda. My brother and sister also were born there, albeit under less intense…

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March 3, 2014
Read more about the article Why Heatmaps?
Optimal Metrics

Why Heatmaps?

More and more of my customers have the request for heatmaps and usability metrics. While my snide comments of "eye candy" were my own personal thoughts originally, I decided to think and study the use of heatmaps to help improve the customer experience. What Do People Do with Heatmaps? My first real thought was "what do you really do with a heatmap"? A lot of folks in the Search Engine Optimization space use them to check their ad effectiveness. As seen below, the hotter part of the screen (red) indicates where…

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January 10, 2012
Optimal Metrics

Too Much AJAX

In my role as a customer experience consultant (with Tealeaf), I get to research many types of web sites built by a variety of organizations. Focusing on usability issues, I get to analyze web site implementations where the use of AJAX is a big factor today. Alas, too many sites have gone wild and crazy and deliver too much AJAX.

Back in the old Web 1.0 world of ten years ago, developers broke business processes into nice, consumable chunks called pages. It was easy to break down a business form into nice logical pieces that were easy to implement and easy for customers to understand. For example:

  • A loan application. You filled out your personal information on one page, next your financial, next your employment, and finally a confirmation page.
  • Buying a product. A search page, product description, shopping cart, and purchase pages.
  • Booking a hotel. Enter your travel dates, desired location, search, select, and purchase.

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December 11, 2011
Read more about the article Performance Misconfiguration
Optimal Metrics

Performance Misconfiguration

There are a number of performance challenges that many websites find themselves, but nothing worse than the Misconfiguration. Last week, a customer noted that "my site seems very slow." So I fired up Gomez and started testing. The page was very heavy at over 1.5 Mbytes, but still, 70 seconds on average was terrible! I drilled into the data on behalf of the customer and saw swings of excessively long Content Download times, which usually indicates something is misconfigured with the web server. Note the graph showing the oscillation up and…

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March 12, 2010
Optimal Metrics

Performance Dashboards

Back the early Internet age, I was a consultant helping build marketing data warehouses. There were a number of great spokes-persons of our niche industry, notably Ralph Kimball and Bill Inmon. Both published a lot of books and both educated many of us on critical data management issues. A rising star from those days was Wayne Eckerson, who became the Business Intelligence guru. Wayne published a great book, Peformance Dashboards, which really leverage the 1990's wave in data warehousing with the web analytics of this decade, blending the metrics to deploy…

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March 4, 2010
Read more about the article Franconia Ridge Video
Vistas

Franconia Ridge Video

Reading about the Franconia Ridge trail in New Hampshire's White Mountains is okay, but sometimes a video gives you a better idea of what it's all about. This video is 2.5 minutes long. Enjoy!

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September 13, 2009
Read more about the article The Classic Franconia Ridge Trail
Daviid's Ridge Loop
Vistas

The Classic Franconia Ridge Trail

At long last, I finally made the commitment to do the Ridge.  And in summary, I totally recommend anyone to get up on the Ridge and enjoy it for yourself. Little else can be said but “Just Do It”!

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August 29, 2009
Read more about the article Bushwhacking on Giant
Giant Mountain
Campfire

Bushwhacking on Giant

We reached the highest massif of Rocky Peak Ridge and looked outwards at the lunar landscape of Giant’s eastern face, the tarn of Mary Louise, and much further on, the drowsy Champlain valley. We reached the Peak after first climbing Giant from Route 73.

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April 19, 2009
Read more about the article The Pick of the Matter
Tim Broader High Up on Gothics
Research

The Pick of the Matter

An Insight in Ice Technique

Written by Rob Cotter, 1984

“We are Homo Sapiens, the tool users. We earn The name by developing tools to increase our leverage on the world around us … “

So states Yvon Chouniard, master alpinist and dynamic influence in the evolution of modern ice tools.

While many technologies have contributed to the high standards obvious today in ice climbing, perhaps none is so radical as the development of the toothed, drooped pick tools and the arrival of piolet traction to the realm of alpinism. Piolet traction, the placement of these tools by overhand swing so the pick will give purchase in steep ice has placed an almost limitless bound on what ice may be climbed.

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April 19, 2009
Read more about the article India: A New Discovery in an Old World
Research

India: A New Discovery in an Old World

Written by Eric Pfirman in January 1984. Pictures by Eric Pfirman.

In May 1984, three adventurers from Syracuse, New York left for a Himalayan journey. Eric Pfirman and Micheal Rodriguez traveled to Delhi with Pankaj Jain, a native of India. Their goal was to travel and absorb India’s culture and her mountains. They traveled to the Shivling region, and climbed Kedar Dome, as well as a few minor peaks. Eric and Micheal were introduced to Pankaj’s India and now Eric lets us all in on a few of his discoveries.

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April 18, 2009
Read more about the article The Top Ten Adirondack Peaks
Research

The Top Ten Adirondack Peaks

The following descriptions concern the discovery, naming, and first ascent information for a few of the Adirondack High Peaks. All of the data and drawings in this article were taken from Russell M. L. Carson’s book, Peaks and People of the Adirondacks, published by the Adirondack Mountain Club in 1927. For all those interested in mountain history, this book is priority material!

As one shall discover, there will always be a debate concerning the actual “first” ascent or “the” accurate name of these mountains. Since both red and white man have inhabited this region, it is certainly a dilemma in choosing between either nations’ claims. As to the nature of things, the conquering nation usually assumes control over recorded history.

Fortunately, some men back in the 1870’s had the insight to record in history both cultures, so that today, we can reflect back and learn some of the truth and history of our Adirondacks.

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April 18, 2009

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