12 Anchorage-area hikes (Alaska)
By Alvin Alexander. Last updated: June 17 2018
If you’re ever in Alaska, adn.com has a nice list of twelve Anchorage-area hikes.
alaska
Friday Flings in Palmer, Alaska
By Alvin Alexander. Last updated: May 29 2018
Every Friday during the summer months (mid-May to mid-August) in Palmer, Alaska they have a little party/celebration/gather called Friday Flings, which consist of local entertainment, food, Alaska grown and made products, and activities. They were one of my favorite things about living in Palmer, something to look forward to at the end of every week.
First Annual Great Alaska Music Festival
By Alvin Alexander. Last updated: May 25 2018
The First Annual “Great Alaska Music Festival” will be taking place in Palmer, Alaska, the town I lived in during 2010-2011. The population of Palmer is about 6,000 people, and it’s probably most noted for being the place where the Alaska State Fair is held every year.
Chris Robinson talks music and Alaska
By Alvin Alexander. Last updated: May 24 2018
Chris Robinson, former lead singer of The Black Crowes — who I first saw perform in a high school gym in Alabama — and now with the Chris Robinson Brotherhood, talks about my two favorite states in an Alaskan newspaper.
Story of a 78-year-old man who climbed Denali
By Alvin Alexander. Last updated: May 24 2018
The Anchorage Daily News has a nice story about a 78-year-old who climbed Denali, and the life lessons the reporter learned from this man and other elders.
Created a vision board and it all came true
By Alvin Alexander. Last updated: May 22 2018
I created a vision board many years ago during a retreat, and I have to say, everything on the board came true. I was thinking recently that it would be even more true if I didn’t have health problems for several years, and more recently providing financial support for family members. If it weren’t for those things I’d probably be living in Talkeetna or Palmer, Alaska today, writing more books.
A farmer plowing a field
By Alvin Alexander. Last updated: May 20 2018
A farmer plowing a field in Palmer, Alaska on May 20, 2015.
At 10:30 pm.
North to Alaska
By Alvin Alexander. Last updated: April 16 2018
Every year about this time I have to fight the urge to move back to Alaska. If you ever happen to drive up there you might come across this “North to Alaska” sign.
A woman walking down the middle of the road at 5am
By Alvin Alexander. Last updated: April 13 2018
One summer morning back when I lived in Talkeetna, Alaska, I had to leave my little cabin at 5am to be at the Toyota dealer in Anchorage by 7am so they could try to figure out why my RAV4 kept filling up with water every time it rained. Since it was summer, the sunlight at 5am was pretty much the same as it was at noon, which was always cool.
About twenty seconds after driving down the main road out of town — actually there’s only one road in and out of town, so it’s hardly worth referring to it as the “main road” — I came across a woman in a white dress walking on the lane divider stripes in the middle of the road, in the same direction I was driving.
I was reminded of that morning when I heard the song Chevy Van by Sammy Johns just now.
From Drupal 6 to the Play Framework
By Alvin Alexander. Last updated: April 9 2018
As I wrote last week, I got tired of dealing with Drupal 6 (D6) security update issues — especially since D6 is no longer officially supported and the last unofficial D6 security update made my websites unusable — so I wrote a Play Framework (Scala) application to display my D6 database tables data.
It’s still a work in progress, but as you can see from this page on my One Man’s Alaska website, it’s coming along. As far as visitors of the website are concerned, mostly only thing the website needs is some CSS styling and maybe a search field. (I could also add support for comments and a contact page, but my D6 websites are old, and I don’t need/want those things. I probably also won’t put any effort into supporting 10-20 custom “category” URIs I used back in the day.)
As for the specific page I linked to on the One Man’s Alaska website, that’s a favorite memory of getting ready to winterize the car in October, 2010, when I lived in the Wasilla/Palmer area.