Sand between my toes is the cure. 
Taken in Cabo, Mexico.

Last Sunday marked the 2nd monthly hike of the newly dubbed The Urban Hiking Adventure League of Justice Conquistadors. It was planned 3-4 weeks ahead of time, but there were many last minute changes. And somehow with 19 others, it ended up being a successful hike. More details & photos.

The plan was originally to meet at Port Authority and ride the bus together. But the week of, I sent out an email regarding the weather and the idea of renting a van. Then too many people responded with a yes, so the van was out. Of course when some people heard the van was out, they cancelled at the thought of taking the bus. Because of that and some other reasons, more people dropped out last minute. The morning of, I received a call from J, one of the hikers, saying that the bus tickets were double the price than we anticipated. Crap. Van it is. I put my smart phone and friends at work, stopping people from buying their tickets. We luckily ended up with 15 people at the bus station, just at max capacity for the van. I’m glad we did it because it ended up being just about the same price as a one way bus ticket.

Driving the van was also much faster than the bus. We got to the Elk Pen parking lot around noon. We met up with 3 more hikers that drove there and later on 2 more hikers.

Above: Our black ops van.

The trail head is just across the meadow behind the van. The path is not marked, but it has been flattened and easily noticeable.

The majority of the trail is fairly flat. You gain the most elevation in the first mile, but it’s not too steep. The entire trail was well marked and blazed, however at many intersections, there are little to no signs.

We started on the Appalachian Trail.

Above: D entering the Lemon Squeezer.

We took a long break at one of the highlights, a rock formation called the Lemon Squeezer (squeezer? I hardly know ‘er!). It’s literally a rock jungle gym. You get to enter through a short tunnel, then through a wedge (pictured above). Then there’s a bunch of walls you can climb, you can make it easy or harder depending on which way you go.

Above: Left – photo of the hikers; Right – a point of reference of where DY & I climbed to take this photo.

We left the Lemon Squeezer late and decided to go South on the Arden-Surebridge trail, but that is where we got lost. We were suppose to backtrack a little bit to go South. Instead, I lead the group further eastward.

Of course, none of us realized this until we passed:

Above: Times Square intersection.

We were way off course! At this point, we decided to just backtrack since we were at our half way point in terms of distance. This was not all in vain, as some passing hikers told us to go off course a bit more to check out the Pineswamp mine, on the Dunnbar trail.

Above: Entrance to Pineswamp Mine

Pineswamp mine, like many surrounding mines, was an iron mine. They are no longer mine-able, but they are definitely climbable! The side trail to this mine was a bit hidden. You have to climb up a small hill to get down to the base of the mine.

Above: A free climbing the iron stained mine walls.

Above: Looking out the iron mine from the furthest inside point.

So after getting our hands dirty at the mind, we all turned around and returned down the same path. Trails always look different going backwards. At some points I was afraid we got off trail again, but we made it!

We even took a side on the gravel road to get to the edge of Island Pond.

Above: Me & M at Island Pond.

The weather held out, it was chilly, but mosquitoes still managed to hatch and swarm around the pond around 5pm. We were very lucky to have dodged rain!

Above: sunset seen from Elk Pen.

When we all got back to the parking lot, we stretched and said goodbye to the 5 hikers who drove their own cars. The rest of us climbed back into the van, accomplished, and M drove us back to NYC.

Above: View of NYC and NJ driving on the George Washington Bridge.

Above: GPS data from J’s watch

While, we did get lost, this was a successful hike! We hiked about the same distance we would if we had stayed on course. We got to see the Lemon Squeezer and an iron mine – the only 2 sights on our list!

Above: Green – original trail; Purple – actual path taken.

Resources:

• NY-NJ Trail Conference Page for initial hike.
• More info of original trail & pictures from NYC Day Hiking.
• Google Map of nearby bus stop.

Happy Hiking!

The last weekend of February I participated my first hackathon – Photo Hack Day 2. About two weeks prior, some of my developer colleagues, who are all hackathon veterans, told me about the event. Still slightly confused about what a hackathon is, or what I was expected to accomplish, registration was free, so I signed up and told M, also a developer, who quickly signed up. Little did we know what we were getting ourselves into.

So what exactly is a hackathon? By the sound of it, yes, it’s very nerdy. But don’t say it like that’s a bad thing! Hackathons are events with a set time for typically developers to collaborate, concept and develop projects.

Photo Hack Day 2 is (obviously) a photography themed hackathon, sponsored by Aviary. We had 24 hours to create a hack, app, website, product, whatever, related to the theme, with options to use various sponsors’ API. Also, it was a contest, so there were a lot of incentives to create things using certain APIs and platforms.

The days leading up to the event, we exchanged quick emails with various ideas. On the website was a list of various ideas from sponsors. None of them seemed to stick.

The morning of the event finally came. I almost didn’t go because of a headache (okay, hangover), but M managed to drag me out of bed and into a taxi to General Assembly, in time for sponsor API demos and free bagels. (Oh yeah… did I mention FREE food at hackathons?!) M’s friends and colleagues, C & N, whom I have also worked with in the past, joined us. After API demos were over, we brainstormed.

We contemplated using just one API to go for one sponsor prize. We contemplated doing novelty gag apps. M kept bringing up an idea, ‘Sup, a Foursquare based mobile app that is map based where you can see which area is most popular based on stylized dots and where the venue pages would list the most recent photos from users from various social media platforms. C & N saw that as practical and something achievable in 24 hours. Soon lunch was served and I started to dread the conversation… it just sounded like work, as if we were creating an app for a paying client who wanted what was already out there.

Then I came up with the idea of creating an Augmented Reality display.

At first my idea was not warmly welcomed. None of us on the team has developed anything close to AR before. So no one was confident that it could be done in such a short amount of time. So I was blunt, if I’m going to give up an entire weekend to design and develop, with no guarantee of a paycheck, no stakes, no care for winning, let’s make it fun, let’s do something challenging and new.

Now the ball was rolling… we thought of an even better algorithm for ‘hotness’, incorporating distance, tweets, time and other social media mentions. We decided to add the ability to check in and to add and edit your own photo, which will increase a venue’s score, and in turn promotes photo sharing. We also somehow came to the name ‘What Is Up’… from ‘Sup to What’s Up? to What Is Up.

We split up, C stayed behind and M, N and I seeked quieter work places. M worked on back end, C on iOS, N on API integration and me on UX design and front-end development. It was quite exciting to design for an experience that has yet to become mainstream.

We reconvened for dinner and an insightful fireside chat with Alex Ohanian, Reddit co-founder, Ben Huh of Cheezburger and David Karp of Tumblr, moderated by Aviary’s own Avi Muchnick.

The rest of the night was a blur. We ran into some bumps in the road. I think I finally got to bed around 5:30AM… M found C sleeping on the floor in the office around 8AM. When I got back to General Assembly in the morning, I was the only one from my team there. I started to frantically type, with caps lock, to M asking if we were going to meet the deadline! My share of the work was done and I had to be patient. I was able to fill the wait time til the demo by trying to create some buzz online via Twitter and Facebook.

Finally the guys got here, excited to show people the app. C turned on the app on his iPhone and showed me my designs fully implemented in AR. I was ecstatic! Even if we don’t win, we just created a really cool app that’s fun to play with and that we are more than happy to share with people.

The night before we decided to use an AV adapter for the iPhone to present our app live. C gave me the adapter and I made sure in the morning that they had HDMI input on their projector. Everything was good to go.

Mountains of pizza boxes came in and demos was off to a start. It was so entertaining and inspiring to see so many demos. Many of them were hilarious and some even touching.

Here are some of my favorites:

• People Exif
• RoboVJ
• StoryMap
• PicTune
• Rotobooth

Soon the mobile demos began. We were around #49 out of 58 hacks. The guys got up to demo, while I sat in the audience to record and tweet.

Then, bad news… we found out that HDMI was no longer working for some reason. How were we going to show the audience what was going on our screen? Luckily, the sleep deprived C had his iPad. The screen was at least large enough for the judges to see. They also had a webcam to projector set up on a table for apps, but we needed to be able to move our device around to demonstrate AR. C worked the iPad, while N followed him with the webcam and M presented.

Above: M presenting with C’s iPad on the screen. Photo from Mason Du

They had 2 minutes. And they did a wonderful job! Watch my recording here (sorry in advance for the poor quality…)

Above: from left to right, M, N & C presenting. Photo from Mason Du

There were a few demos to go. I tweeted about our demo, hoping for some feedback from other audience members. We were unsure of how people would respond. We didn’t hear much until the judges were away and the audience began to vote for people’s choice. A man sitting behind us tapped M’s shoulder to ask what the name of our app was. We weren’t expecting any prizes since we didn’t focus on one API or generate a room full of laughter and applause. But when that gentleman asked us for our app name, we were really thrilled to know that someone was interested!

Sponsor prizes started shortly after. There were a lot of surprise winners, and some that took many awards home. Including 1st place, Synviary, which also won People’s Choice and an Aviary prize. Soon 3rd place was announced and the team members of Rotobooth went up. 2nd placed was announced and M & I jumped up. We glanced at each other… we heard that correctly, right? What Is Up? Second place? In retrospect, I am a little embarrassed of how fast I got up to the front. I was way too excited!

Having created an AR app was exciting enough. Winning 2nd place and a cash prize made us even prouder of the work we accomplished in such a short amount of time.

It’s been a little over a week since What Is Up was announced second place. We’ve had a bit of press since then and will be presenting at New York Times soon. We’ve also decided to further develop the app and will be releasing it in the App Store this month. Visit the website and sign up to be notified! Let us know what you think.

Above: Some of my designs for the app.

A special thank you to Aviary, sponsors of Photo Hack Day and the judges, Jason Black of Nokia, Jason Morrow of Betaworks, Jamal Fanaian of Flickr, and Jim Estrin of The Lens Blog/The New York Times!!!

This was how my first hackathon went. I believe this may be the start of an addiction habit.

This odd winter has given me so many amazing weekends to go outdoors. M and I took advantage of a Google offer from December for a chartered trip from Gear to Go Outfitters. We decided on the Escarpment trail in the Catskills, since it was a hike we wanted to do since November. The trail head is in Hunter, NY and looped around North & South lake, offering breathtaking views that have inspired the Hudson River School.

One of our guides, Brent, picked 6 others and us up in a van and drove us to Gear to Go Outfitters’ store front in Park Slope, Brooklyn. There we met 3 more hikers and our other guide and owner of Gear to Go Outfitters, Kevin. The ride was about 2 hours long, but I don’t remember most of it because I was asleep… Moving vehicles make me sleepy!

The total hike was almost 8 miles and completed in about 5 hours. It was a fairly easy hike, there were some steep areas, but nothing like rock scrambling. The toughest part was hiking over snow and ice, for which we were provided micro spikes (there’s a photo for that later).

Above: View of South Lake frozen over. There were some men ice fishing in the distance.

Above: A carving from generations by the Kaaterskill Hotel Site

One of the many side trails our guide took us on was to the base of where the Kaaterskill Hotel used to be. They housed many wealthy people and many of the artists of the Hudson River School.

Above: M & I at the edge of Artists’ Ledge.

There were many scenic views that our guides took us too. For a good portion of the trail going North, we were walking parallel to the Hudson with exposed breathtaking views. Even though it was winter and there was a lack of greenery, it was still beautiful. The clouds cast well defined shadows on the fields below and you can see where one farm ends and starts.

Above: A piece of snow that got my shoe’s imprint! It was too detailed to not miss!

Above: Bad Man’s Cave, a point of interest and our lunch site.

We took a lunch break here and our guides shared hot cocoa and even more stories. Brent had hiked the entire AT and had a lot of quirky stories about his past hiking and camping experiences. Kevin, the owner of Gear to Go Outfitter, was very knowledgeable and passionate about hiking and the outdoors. He even so graciously gave us detailed advice for a future hike I wanted to do!

Above: Micro spikes that went over our hiking shoes.

Gear to Go Outfitter provided everyone with micro spikes as a lot of the trail was covered in snow and ice. They really came in handy! Of course, that didn’t stop M’s bad knee from slipping a few times…

We hiked all the way up to North Point, one of the major intersections of the Escarpment trail. This is the view from about 2800 feet elevation. You can see North and South lake from here. So gorgeous!

Going down and back to the trail head, the trail became flatter, but less even. There were a lot of huge rocks and it was hard to see what was just a frozen puddle.

Going down also meant we encountered many frozen waterfalls of all sizes! Of course they were not completely frozen. If you go up near any of them you can still hear water streaming, just trapped under the ice.

I would love to do this hike again in the summer to compare the scenery!

Here’s a quick highlight of our route!

Resources:

• Gear to Go Outfitters – official site
• NY-NJ Trail Conference – official trail page

It exists. My dream library from Beauty and the Beast and all its Baroque goodness can be found at the Admont Abbey monastery library in Austria. New travel destination added! Read more about this magical place at Wikipedia.

I decided to organize monthly urban hiking for friends. There’s so much accessible hiking from NYC and it’s great to see so many city dwellers out here with me! Here’s the scoop on the first trip to the Giant Stairs at Palisades Interstate Park in New Jersey.

Above: Bunker standing on a rock by the beginning of the Giant Stairs.

Above: Matt, Angela, and some other hikers taking a break during the rock scramble thru the Giant Stairs.

Thirteen of us took the 9W bus from Port Authority Bus Terminal in NYC to the higher end of Alpine, NJ and Palisades Interstate Park. We missed our first intended bus because of gate/door confusion!!! Also, I should know to look for updated schedules! The entire bus trip took about 40 minutes, cost about $7~ each way.

We got off the stop right after route 9W crossed under the Palisades Parkway overpass. There’s a sign for a college and Old Route 9W started right there and lead us on a short walk to the State Lookout where we used the restrooms and met up with two more hikers who arrived by car.

Right by the lookout are a few areas create for sightseeing. There are great views of the Hudson and the town across – Hastings-on-Hudson, NY. We were also very lucky to see some large birds, most likely turkey vultures & a hawk.

The goal of our trip was to go through the Giant Stairs, a one mile section of rock scrambling on the Shore trail in Palisades Interstate Park. We decided to do a loop trail – first going through the ski trail A to the aqua blazed Long Path, with a quick steep descent of ~520ft on the black & white blazed Forest View Trail. We made a left to go North and onto the white blazed Shore trail which consists of the huge 1 mile rock scramble! That was definitely quite the workout. There were also parts that was right on the Hudson.

Above: An almost frozen Peanut Leap Cascade.

At the Northern most point we came to the Peanut Leap Cascade, a small waterfall, nearly frozen by the 30F weather. You could still hear and see some water trickling under the ice, it was such a treat to see after so much rock scrambling. At this point, we have crossed the NJ/NY border which was marked by a rusty fence.

Immediately after the falls, the Shore trail made a sharp left and we had a short but very steep ~500ft climb through the forest back to the top where we proceeded onto the Long Path. We took a short lunch break, complete with music and a scenic view at the High Gutter point.

Soon, we were back at the State Lookout for some hot tea. We decided to not go back the way we came, but another way down the Forest View trail, past the Women’s Federation Monument (a castle), which took us to a bus stop by a scout camp. This way was more of a workout than taking the Old Route 9W back, but it was definitely more scenic!

Overall, we hiked just under 7 miles. It was a great group! We even had participants who were new to hiking! Now to plan March’s hike!

Above: GPS map & data from Jerlyn – read more about the hike at her blog!

Last Sunday I was obsessively creative. I returned to a childlike state, I could not stop drawing, painting, creating — trying my best to capture everything I experience. As M said, I “broke myself down and started from a blank slate”, no preconceived notions, seeing the world again for the first time. I want to share this set of watercolor paintings I created that day. They are how I see poppies – straight down into them so I can smell them. Read on for more paintings.

Above: Orange & Red Poppies

Above & below: More poppies, ranging from pink to red to orange to purple.

I see a future pattern evolving from this.

Lucid Poppies by Emily ! Duong is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.
Based on a work at emilyduong.com.

The day after Thanksgiving I went for my last hike of 2011 in the Catskills with M, C, F and A It was rather spontaneous, I first proposed the plan that Sunday to M, still itching to make use of newly purchased camp gear from our Arizona camping trip earlier in November. We decided on camping 2 nights and hiking a combination of 2 trails – the Wittenberg-Cornell-Slide (WCS) and the Phoenicia East Branch (PEB).

This combination made a convenient loop back to the parking area. We parked where the PEB ended and the WCS started. It wasn’t very well marked, but after a few minutes of looking, we found the trail sign for the end of the PEB. We arrived in the early afternoon and made our way southeast with intentions on going off-trail a bit to camp out at Terrance Mountain.

We found the lean-to just as the sun began to set (first image). It was such a clear sky! I remember everyone sighting their own shooting star, with the exception of me of course!

At the first of 3 peaks – Wittenberg Mountain. A refreshing view for a water break!

M climbing up the Cornell Crack, about a ~15ft, which after an accidental rock scrambling detour, was no challenge!

Sorry Mochi, we have one more peak to get past, and it’s the highest!

Here we are at the end of a successful hike!

Can’t wait to return to the Catskills!

Resources:

• Maps for this area from NY-NJ Trail Conference
• A very informative blog article of the same trail by Mountain Visions

The route we took highlighted:

Recently, I’ve returned from an amazing trip from Las Vegas, Nevada to Phoenix, Arizona, stopping in Supai, Grand Canyon and Sedona. It was my first time to all these places. I have so many photos and insights to share, but first here are some panoramas I took with my camera.

Lake Meade

After Vegas, M and I stopped at Lake Meade. I never realized how many sections there are to this lake. I could spend more than a week camping around the entire lake.

Download Lake Meade Panorama

Hoover Dam

Hoover Dam was just another few miles away, so of course we stopped by! This is a view from standing on stop of the dam, looking at the Mike O’Callaghan – Pat Tillman Memorial Bridge.

Download Hoover Dam Panorama

Grand Canyon

After backpacking in Supai on the Hualapai Indian reservation, M and I drove to the South Rim of the Grand Canyon, camped with snow in 7 degrees Fahrenheit and woke up at the crack of dawn to catch the sunrise!

Download Grand Canyon Sunrise Panorama

Tempe, Arizona from Hayden Butte

The last stop of the trip was in Phoenix. When we got into town we checked out Tempe downtown and took a quick hike up the Hayden Butte trail. I had mixed feelings about this trail – it offers an amazing 360 view of Tempe and out, but was a bit run down and from afar just looked like a landfill. My favorite part of this view has to be seeing all the solar panels on top of the so many buildings!

Download Tempe Panorama

 Phoenix, Arizona from Camel Back

Our last hike of the trip was to Camel Back. It’s in the middle of a residential area in Phoenix. It was encouraging to see so many locals out there so early in the morning. It was a very steep but short hike. The views offered a glimpse into the lives of some of Phoenix’s most luxurious houses and also some of the farms bordering the outskirts.

Download Phoenix Panorama

All these panoramas were taken with my Canon S90 and stitched together using Hugin then touched up using Photoshop.

While in Florida this October, I stopped by Crestview, to visit S, one of my closest friends since high school. Crestview is a small Air Force town, sitting right on the outskirts of Eglin Air Force base, so I did not expect much as far as tourism goes. Her husband, Danny, suggested we check out the Armament Museum on base, I thought it would be a huge snooze-fest. I knew next to nothing about jet mechanics and history of aeronautics. Fortunately, S is a former jet mechanic for the Air Force (yes, a female jet mechanic) and lucky us bumped into the museum’s director on the way in, who generously gave us an enthusiastic exclusive tour! What I thought would be a quick 15 minute fly by turned out to be a very thorough walk through. It makes such a huge difference when you are able to learn first hand from people who are so passionate about their field!

Above: S nerding out over an F-16 model, which she has worked on in the past.

Above: S posing in front of the First Lady – the first C-130 ever built.

Above: terminals from the 50′s.

Above: In the cockpit of the First Lady. We were able to act like children and play and push aaaall the buttons we wanted!

Air Force Armament Museum – Official site.

My road trip to Nashville, Tennessee ended with a high note – a trip to Hatch Show Print! This print shop is renowned in the print world, it is the oldest running letterpress shop in America. The front serves as a gift shop, the back as a studio and print shop. My friends and I were also very lucky to get a small private tour of the entire space by the manager, Jim Sherraden! Read on for more photos!

Jim started by giving us a run down on history of shop. The shop opened more than 120 years ago, and they have been at their downtown location since 1992.  They are primarily in the show poster business and have had the privilege of working with some of the most iconic stars such as Johnny Cash and Dolly Parton.

As you can see they have an extensive library of blocks and plates, all made onsite. No block is thrown out, it will most likely be reused. It does look messy, but we were assured it was an organized mess.

Above: view of the long, vast shop from the front.

Jim holds up one of their oldest large scale plates, carved out of wood and still stained with red ink from the last run. He talked about their different styles as he showed us various current projects, including those from their internship program.

All their printing is done in house. They have so many presses, including a large scale one that prints 41″ by 30″ plates. They also have a rotary in the back to create plates from digital files.

I left with some many posters!!! Such a treat! And aside from posters, Hatch Show Print also has a lot of cats wandering in the front!

Hatch Show Print – official site.