Slovenia « havebootswilltrek.com

July 6, 2009

Austria: Not quite there yet! And musings and ramblings…

Filed under: Hiking, VSX — Tags: DSL, Hiking, Slovenia, Via Alpina, Via Alpina Red, VSX — @ 11:05 am

I haven’t quite made it out of Slovenia yet. To be honest: I’m not sure I want to. I like it here! Yesterday was a glorious day and the hike from Trento Valley up to Vsice and down to Tamarju hut via Grol was awesome. On the map it looks like a second-class hut, isolated, but surrounded by fields. It’s not!

Looking down on Tamarju Hut from Grol. Over the edge is one hell of a scree descent!

The hut was very busy which implies it’s a sociable place. I can’t be having that! So I walked out towards Ratece and stayed at the first quiet place I found.

Hiking is one of my favorite passtimes. My other is shrouded in geekiness: programming. When I get some time between hikes I am working on a code generation infrastructure. I have been using code generation for about four years but the entire infrastructure and generation process was hand-crafted because I could not find third party tools do what I wanted. The DSL Tools are now at the point where they either do what I need or can be moulded to do what I need.

I am trying to take everything I have learnt and put them into an infrastructure for generating my classes using the DSL Toolkit and T4 in Visual Studio 2008. I figured I will always need classes so I should be able to use this as a foundation for wherever I end up writing code in future [I had been working with this on and off for months before I started blogging; any new technical issues I encounter I will try to blog about]. I really wanted to do this with VS2010 Beta 1 but it is currently a bit slow.

So here’s my Class DSL so far:

A small part of the Canon SDK modeled using my DSL Class Editor

It looks like very little but the technical issues have been solved (those that work with DSL and VS2008 will know how fun this is to do!): the diagram has been rehosted in a custom control; the repository consists of numerous models (which I will replace with the “Model Bus” in VS2010, I guess), cross-referencing and cascading deletes/renames works across models and so forth. It’s just the user interface that’s tat. I loathe UI work!

So if it seems I am spending a long time getting across the Alps it’s because I am living my ideal life at the moment. I get to spend all day outdoors getting soaking wet in the regular downpours and scared sh*tless by the daily thunder storms, and the rest of the time coding away on stuff like this. If I find somewhere I like I stay there for a few days. Switzerland is my target but I think my ego will cope if I don’t quite make it that far! I am in the fortunate position of being in no hurry to get anywhere at all

One of the problems I have with the current DSL Tools is that it’s difficult to separate the domain model (what) from the code that you generate (how). Take for example the Class diagram above. I would argue that whether an attribute – such as OwnerName – is ReadOnly or Calculated is a property of the generation process and not of the DSL itself. For example: if I was generating that code for firmware in C++ it would need to be read/write. If I was generating the code for a UI/Web-presentation it would only need to be ReadOnly.

It always seemed a bit strange to me that having adopted modeling to raise the level of abstraction you were forced to tightly couple how you wanted to use the model with the model itself. Unfortunately, there is currently no way to easily separate the two so I am having to roll my own using a mish-mash of TypeDescriptor and PropertyDescriptor (yes: those beasts!) and extension methods. That way, the model and the code generation parameters appear in the same Property Grid and provide a cohesive environment for the user even though they are persisted in different files.

The stuff in the red box should not be part of the DSL.

I got the whole idea for this approach from this article on using Extension Methods in T4 by GarethJ some time ago.

I am happy to roll my own at the moment but when I migrate to VS2010 I am hoping it will provide the infrastructure that I can build on: namely, DSL Extensions. I haven’t investigated them at all yet but I am thinking that decoupling code generation parameters from the underlying DSL (by simply “extending it”) is one of the things they can be used for. I could be wrong: I’ve no idea yet!

Adios!

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July 4, 2009

Austria: 2 Days Away

Filed under: Hiking — Tags: Hiking, Slovenia, Via Alpina, Via Alpina Red — @ 2:28 pm

Pulling myself away from Lake Bohinj was hard work. With Pizza on tap, I could easily have stayed there for a few weeks but didn’t want to lose my fitness. I had a good purge of what I was carrying: away went the sleeping bag liner, the pasta, the stove fuel, some books, maps and a few other bits and pieces I did not absolutely need. So my backpack is now 2 kilos lighter and I can feel the difference already. In their place I have stocked up on nuts, chocolate and energy bars which are more than sufficient to keep me going if I need to camp wild for one night.

Unfortunately, said foods make excellent snacks, so I tend to have to restock every day.

I can feel myself getting fit now and it’s quite easy to go up and down 1300m each day without feeling too tired. The problem is: the weather. It has been a bad month for Slovenia and it is fair to say the weather has been dire. Of course, as on most mountains, the weather forecasts are useless. You can be standing in sunshine on one side of the valley looking at an impressive storm on the other. Sinister clouds pass overhead, distress you, and then deposit their load on the other side of the mountain. You just have to go with whatever the day presents you with and these parts of the Alps are known for their daily storms (I haven’t had a day without one, yet).

I am a little paranoid about the weather after an incident on Porezen a week earlier. It was a brutal hike up through the forest and I was just about to go out onto the ridge when a storm hit. I’ve seen lightening before. I’ve heard thunder before. But I’ve never heard the hiss that lightening makes when it strikes close by. And I never want to hear it again! The thunder was right after the flash and deafening; it shook me to the bone. Fortunately I was still under forest cover but I took it as a warning anyway.

The hike up from Lake Bohinj connected with Koca pri Triglavskih jezerih:

The mountain hut is in the middle left… awesome place!

Unfortunately, the hut at the end of the next stage of the Via Alpina (Dolicu) doesn’t exist anymore. It was destroyed by an avalanche, so instead I went straight to Zasavska koca na Prehodavcih which has staggering views all around. Of course, I didn’t take any pictures, until a marmot appeared out of nowhere. I stood around, watching it for about 10 minutes. As soon as I got out my camera and turned around it had vanished. Annoying! The day was closing in by this time so I took the view with the best visibility from the mountain hut. Here it is:

Accidental view from Zasavska ko?a na Prehodavcih

Shot from mountain hut as the weather was closing in

The hut is perched on the precipe and you see Triglav off in the distance (not in the photo above). Apart from the unsettled weather, the snow is a problem: there’s lots of it still around. Approaching this hut meant crossing snowfields several hundred metres across which is an utterly stupid thing to do when you are hiking on your own even if you are following footprints made by others. When I approached the peak on the left I had the same kind of snow fields to deal with. All very unpleasant really!

Unsettled weather has made getting through the Slovenian Alps slow going but I can live with the weather if the terrain is like this! I do think that weatherwise things can’t get much worse which is a good sign!

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June 30, 2009

What’s next?!

Filed under: Hiking — Tags: Hiking, Slovenia, Via Alpina, Via Alpina Red — @ 10:24 am

I was going to blog about the last five or six days of the trip. The weather. The rain. The uber-tough, 10-hour ascent up Porezen. The thunder storms. But then realization dawned: who cares!

So I’ve been thinking ahead and pondering what kinds of things I can write about in my travel blog over the next three months. And the thing is: not a lot comes to mind!

My days consist of rising, eating, hiking up a mountain, hiking down a mountain, eating, and sleeping. That’s it! There’s lots of trials, tribulations, pain, breathlessness and hard work in between but that’s it in a nutshell. There’s very little I can do to make that sound more exciting to you than it isn’t. When you’re hiking across mountains, you know that every one is a different beast. But to anyone looking at their photos, they all look the same. So I won’t bother posting many mountain photos

To those not on this trip, it probably sounds like a chore. The irony of leaving a daily routine at work to embark on a much tougher physical routine at play! I suppose those that are new to the Alps, perhaps those from the USA, might be fascinated by everything they see here in Europe. Old churches. Old ways. Culture. Castles. Thin people. But, I”m sorry to say, I’ve been here so many times, I’m not.

So instead, I’ll use this blog to just tell you where I’m at now and again. Today, I’m at Lake Bled. It’s pretty, but not Lake Zurich: I think I’ve been spoiled by Switzerland!

I’ve tried taking photos and… I just can’t get into it Maybe it’s because I’m in Europe and I’ve seen everything a hundred times before. Maybe it’s the weather (wet, cloudy, grey). Or maybe I just don’t like it. Either way, you’ll have to make do with second rate pictures until I get completely bored of point-and-clicking in which case you’ll have nothing to look at

On Thursday, I will start trekking towards Austria where I should arrive by the middle of next week. Tchau!

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June 21, 2009

Via Alpina Red: Six Days In

Filed under: Hiking, Uncategorized — Tags: Hiking, Slovenia, Via Alpina, Via Alpina Red — @ 5:36 pm

The first days out of Muggia have been very pleasant. Temperatures in the high eighties, with clear blue skies and with nothing more than rolling hills to contend with. Perfect. Whereas the GR20 in Corsica beats you down with Thors hammer as soon as you step out of Calenzana, the Via Alpina is much more gentile and gives you a chance to build up your fitness and develop your blisters at a much slower pace. At the start, it’s more like the English Lake District with rolling hills on a hot summers day than mountain terrain. I am now somewhere around Predjama having just horsed one’s ample arse over the first real mountain along the route: Nanos (or Plesa) at 1200m.

Slovenia Telecom seem to provide *FREE* WiFI access everywhere! Well, in the Hotels at least, where you feel obliged to buy a drink to use their connection. If I had any desire to browse for niche material, this is where I would do it…!

The cost of the Via Alpina has caught me a bit by surprise. So far, there have been no campsites at all along the route which means having to stay in hotels, inns and other hideously expensive establishments. This is particularly galling because I am carrying a tent with me.

And sleeping mat. And stove. And stove fuel. And food. And sleeping bag. Ok, you get the point! My backpack weights in at over 21 kilos, or about three Kate Moss’s.

The way marking for the Via Alpina is confusing or non-existant and it is quite obvious the trail maintainers have a macabre sense of humor. It is not uncommon to arrive at a four way junction with way markings going off in different colors and different shapes in all different directions with no signs telling you where to go or how long it will take to get there. Clearly, having a route across the Alps is not hard enough! I think it’s quite fitting that at the moment I am reading In Search of Schrodingers Cat by John Gribbon, a fascinating book about quantum mechanics. I have just got to the point where they are discussing alternate realities and different worlds.

This is appropriate, given that what the Via Alpina website says, and what the maps say, have no basis in our reality!

Slovenia has crazy place names. HTF do you pronounce CRNI VRH?! When you ask, the locals just look at you as if their livestock have uttered their first words. Then you show them on the map and they pronounce the name… convinced, CONVINCED, that that is how I pronounced it!

Fortunately, like all civilized people everywhere, many of the locals speak English, especially those under 30 so asking for help isn’t that difficult. For those that don’t speak English, lots of arm waving and testiculating (talking bollocks) usually works too.

My next stop and update will be in Lake Bohinj and Lake Bled (with pictures!), two places I’ve wanted to see in Slovenia for years. Infact, they are one of the reasons for doing the Via Alpina, so if they’re rubbish I’ll be gutted and will declare eternal war on this tiny, Slavic nation. The Via Alpina doesn’t go there directly, but it’s only a few hours walk from one of the stages next week. I want to spend about a week there camping, and to hike in the area and to help balance out the budget a bit. A Triglav ascent might be on the cards, too.

You’ll notice there aren’t any photographs of the terrain or the hike thus far. That’s because I can’t be bothered to get my camera out and take photos when I’m hiking up a steep mountainside, my heart beating so hard that my eyes are being forced out of my head and the lining of my lungs being ejected into my mouth. So you’ll have to excuse me on that one!

Slovenia has to be Europe’s most underrated hiking destination. It’s AWESOME!

Tchau!

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