In the summer of 2023, I went on a hike to Pointe Noire de Pormenaz. I had tried a few times before to reach the summit, but the paths I chose were not quick enough so I gave up. That summer, there was an early bus from Saint-Gervais so I made another attempt. On the way up, I took an alternate trail that I had scoped out during a previous attempt. On the way down, I walked to the Servoz train station.
Last year, I went on a hike to Pointe des Aravis and Aiguille de Borderan, on the north side of Col des Aravis. I had already been to Pointe des Aravis, starting from the village of La Clusaz. This time, I continued to Aiguille de Borderan.
Some stray cats playing in Montmélian.
I submitted that photo as my shot for “Your Best Shot 2024” on Flickr. It became my most popular photo of 2024 (a testament to how little my photos are viewed …)
Last winter, starting from Aillon-le-Jeune, I went on a hike to Mont Céty and Miradou, in the Bauges mountains. I used the winter shuttle serving the Aillons-Margériaz ski resort to get there, but, since there was no snow, it was ideal for hiking.
Recently, I had a need to overlay 2 PDFs in Go.
Some background: I had a semi-complex PDF generated off-line with a Python program and I needed to overlay some simple drawing on top, on-demand using some parameters sent from a website. Since I wanted to deploy on Cloud Run (free for my low-traffic app), in order to avoid issues with cold start, I decided to develop the server in Go. The drawing part was simple: I used fpdf, which worked well.
However, I had a bit of trouble to find a way to overlay the generated PDF on top of the complex pre-generated PDF. Also, when I asked Github Copilot, it kept referring me to the Unidoc library, which is not free. At some point, I realized I could simply use pdfcpu and its watermark feature: It supports both images and PDF so it worked for me.
Last summer, I went on a hike to Porte des Aravis, a pass located between Les Parrossaz and Aiguille de Borderan in the Aravis above La Clusaz.
In autumn 2021, I went on a hike to Montagne d’Hirmentaz and Pointe de Miribel, in the Chablais mountains near Bellevaux.
A few weeks ago, I went on a hike to Roche Blanche above Thônes. There are a few mountains called Roche Blanche (or some variations like Rocher Blanc) in the area and I have been on a quest to climb them. I couldn’t find a guide online about this mountain but it was easy enough to get there (there were a few hand-made signs showing direction). On the way, I also visited Crêt Couturier.
Here are some photos I took in April.
Above, in Cirque-du-Fer-à-Cheval. I had been there many years ago, in the fall. I wanted to come back when the snow was melting: The buses that went there from Cluses stopped running at the end of April so I waited for both the paths to be walkable and the temperature to be high enough so I could see the waterfalls at their best. Unfortunately, there was a cold spell by then but I still went. It was pretty cold but some of the waterfalls were still flowing fast thanks to the sun.
