More drone clips, set to an uptempo French soundtrack of course. The 4K video might take YouTube a day or two to render.
Category: Humanity
Drone bill
And so it begins!
Big thank you to Representative Keith Ammon for submitting this Legislative Service Request (LSR) for me. LSRs get converted into bills by legislative staff. This will be a bill in the 2022 Legislative Session.
Bullet-proof canoe
My parents picked up a kevlar Ranger canoe yesterday near Squam Lake. I had never been to the village of Holderness before and was thoroughly impressed by the Squam Lake Marketplace. We got panini sandwiches and lime zest cookies. The store had many high-end local-themed souvenirs, such as: loon floats, artisan cheese, and New Hampshire home decor. This might inspire me to watch “On Golden Pond” (1981), which was filmed on Squam Lake.
The summer is flying by. I have been taking plenty of drone shots, but I haven’t been able to dedicate much time posting the photos and videos yet. I have been in touch with an NH state legislator to submit a drone bill that would allow drone pilots to fly in state parks without being hassled. A regulator decided this past year to create a rule banning drones in NH state parks, which not only goes against the ethos of NH, but is also nonsense. Far more dangerous activities, such as hunting and driving automobiles is allowed in state parks.
Blog SEO and Keene travel guide
Oh the art of search engine optimization! It’s taking me well over two months to get listed on Bing, which will also get me cross listed on DuckDuckGo, one of my favorite search engines for privacy purposes. It would be nice for people to find this website in more places than just Google.
I wonder how useful this site will be for people in the future. Ironically, one of my coworkers asked me recently for travel recommendations for Keene, NH. I used a lot of the same info that I used in my post about Walpole.
Other highlights about the Keene area:
- Mount Monadnock. The 2nd most hiked mountain in the world after Mt Fuji. I recommend parking at Monadnock HQ. They are pushing for reservations now (see website) Wikipedia Page
- Kimball Farm – Jaffrey. No hike up Mt Monadnock is complete without a burger and homemade ice cream at Kimball’s
- L.A. Burdick Chocolate and French Restaurant. In Walpole (25 min north west of Keene). Best Hot/cold chocolate ever! Restaurant is very good. They also have a cafe in NYC
- Other interesting stops near Walpole
- Pho Keene Great
- There are also a number of highly-rated breweries in Downtown Keene. I haven’t been to any recently, but those are usually pretty good and micro-breweries are very popular up there
- Sam’s Outfitters in North Swanzy. My parents always like to go to this hiking/outdoors store
The power of the pen
A coworker asked me this week to write him a letter of recommendation, which got me thinking about all of the things that I’ve accomplished in the last 5 years of being in the post-college working world.
I’m going to try to be more proactive about writing on here even if it is short, because it’s a good mental exercise.
Jordan Peterson is right on the money about why we really need to write. The ability to write and the ability to reason go hand-in-hand.
Breakneck Ridge Hike
Destination: Walpole
The longer I have lived in New Jersey, by far the most densely populated state, the more I have appreciated under-the-radar destinations over crowded Instagram hot spots.
In a region with destinations like Acadia, Provincetown, and Newport, it’s easy for plenty of fantastic places to get drowned out by the big players. I’d even argue that the whole state of New Hampshire is the unsung hero of New England. The reality is that Americans in other parts of the country have trouble pointing to NH on a map. “Oh it’s one of those little states up there”, they say.
Walpole, NH, population 3,734, fits the bill of the path less traveled even for New Hampshire. You could probably count all of the shops in the center of town on one hand. However, the crown jewel of Walpole is the flagship location of L.A. Burdick Chocolate, home of the best hot chocolate in the entire world. Burdick’s annex locations in Manhattan’s trendy SoHo and Boston’s Back Bay have become famed cafés.
Every summer as a teenager, I would make a point to drive my grandmother down to Burdick’s in Walpole for lunch. The restaurant is home to some of the best Franco-Swiss food for miles. In a state where the largest ethnic group is French/French Canadian, it is deceivingly hard to find many French dining options, but Burdick’s will not disappoint. My drink of choice is the dark hot chocolate, which can also be served iced, perfect for Burdick’s Bastille Day lunch on a hot July day. The croque-madame, an open-faced French grilled cheese and fried egg sandwich, has gone on and off the menu through the years and is one of my favorites.
After the pursuing the two other stores in town, a trip to Walpole is not complete without a scenic drive around the hillside farmland, which provides excellent views of the Connecticut River Valley. Great stopping points include: Alysons Orchard and Walpole Valley Farms.
Lake Sunapee kite skiing
Lake Sunapee is frozen solid every winter and is a destination for kite skiers 🪁 🎿
Destination: Amish Country
Took a quick trip out to Amish country this past weekend. I had to keep reminding myself that they weren’t paid actors.
- Amish Village – It’s like a visitor center, and I didn’t do the bus tour. Learned quite a bit from the short house tour. I didn’t realize that Amish were OK with electricity for certain off grid uses, such as LED headlamps.
- Railroad Museum of Pennsylvania – Very nicely preserved trains from the early steam era up through the diesel era. There is a replica of the first American steam locomotive
- Strasburg Railroad – oldest continually operated rail line. Very pretty views of Amish Farms (photo above)
- Town of Strasburg
- Town of Intercourse – pedestrian village area (closed Sundays)
Everything Amish-related is closed on Sundays, including the town of Intercourse, however it’s great to drive around on Sunday because the Amish were walking around enjoying their day of rest. Don’t bother driving through the city of Lancaster, stay in the countryside.
Interactive population graphic
Click here to view the interactive version of the graphic!
I could stare at maps for hours. I don’t think there is anything more elegant that conveys more information than a map. I’ve long had a fascination for geography and cartography.
This was originally inspired by Reddit’s r/peopleliveincities, which contains maps intended to show certain statistics, but in reality just show that those stats are associated with high population densities.
On a technical note, I used a very cool Python library called Streamlit to make the map interactive and host the widget. It’s amazing to me that in 2021 it’s possible to make a simple web app with less than 50 lines of code. This widget and graphic also heavily leverages a shapefile generated by NHGRANIT, New Hampshire’s GIS clearinghouse. In theory, maps like this could be generated with any state, but most states only publish data on a county-level. Kudos to NHGRANIT for publishing a shapefile that works well out of the box with Geopandas.