About

Hi I'm "Lucky Hat" from Ontario, Canada. Known as Alessandro in my normal life.
I'm an experienced Full Stack Web Developer available for hire.
I have a technical/personal blog if that's more your thing.

I live to be outdoors, and can often be found hiking/biking for months on end.
This website is about me sharing that passion.


For Your Consideration

The Double Life - Don Blanding
How very simple life would be
If only there were two of me
A Restless Me to drift and roam
A Quiet Me to stay at home.
A Searching One to find his fill
Of varied skies and newfound thrill
While sane and homely things are done
By the domestic Other One.

And that's just where the trouble lies;
There is a Restless Me that cries
For chancy risks and changing scene,
For arctic blue and tropic green,
For deserts with their mystic spell,
For lusty fun and raising Hell,

But shackled to that Restless Me
My Other Self rebelliously
Resists the frantic urge to move.
It seeks the old familiar groove
That habits make. It finds content
With hearth and home — dear prisonment,
With candlelight and well-loved books
And treasured loot in dusty nooks,

With puttering and garden things
And dreaming while a cricket sings
And all the while the Restless One
Insists on more exciting fun,
It wants to go with every tide,
No matter where…just for the ride.
Like yowling cats the two selves brawl
Until I have no peace at all.

One eye turns to the forward track,
The other eye looks sadly back.
I'm getting wall-eyed from the strain,
(It's tough to have an idle brain)
But One says "Stay" and One says "Go"
And One says "Yes," and One says "No,"
And One Self wants a home and wife
And One Self craves the drifter's life.

The Restless Fellow always wins
I wish my folks had made me twins.
Reply to the advice of the pompous ass - Don Blanding
Your way is your way and my way is mine.
Mine is the foolish way, and your way is fine.
You follow your way and get what you're after.
I'll get nothing but sorrow and laughter.
You'll be wealthy, filthy with money.
You'll get limousines and not count the cost.
I'll have adventures tragic and funny.
And I'll get nowhere except maybe lost.
You take the highway, the strait-narrow highway.
You'll get to heaven in a slow sure climb.
I'll shun the highway for paths that are my way
And I'll go to Hell but I'll have a fine time.
John Muir
I only went out for a walk and finally concluded to stay out till sundown,
for going out, I found,
was really going in.
葉隠 1:79
There is a lesson to learned from the downpour of rain. If you get caught in a sudden cloudburst, you will still get a drenching even though you try to keep dry by hurrying along and taking cover under overhangs of roofs. If you are prepared to get wet from the start, the result is still the same but it is no hardship. This attitude can be applied to all things.
葉隠 1:138
There is no point in one's training in which one reaches the end. The instant you think you have finished, you have already strayed from the path. Realize that nothing you do is perfect until you have taken your last breath; then, when you are dead, you will be seen as having completed the Way. Purity without excess, and focusing single-mindedly on one thing is difficult to achieve during one's lifetime. If the purity of your training is diluted, then it cannot be called the proper Way. Strive to follow the Way of service and samuraihood as your singular pursuit.
অপুর সংসার
I don’t know where I’m going but I do know why.
I want to be free.
Breathless
I don’t know if I’m unhappy because I’m not free, or if I’m not free because I’m unhappy.
Dune
We lose our senses of purpose if the waiting is prolonged
Dune
I must not fear.
Fear is the mind-killer.
Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration.
I will face my fear.
I will permit it to pass over me and through me.
And when it has gone past, I will turn the inner eye to see its path.
Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain.
Taylor Swift
I'm intimidated by the fear of being average.
銀河英雄伝説
It's good that you don't get to be bored as long as you're alive.
Unknown
It's necessary to challenge yourself to do something extreme to measure yourself at least once in your life.
Noah Kahan
You're not alone, the world is small and I am sick of all the talk of finding purpose.
@simonsarris
If you don't like things, you should try to build things you do like
Chester Louis Karrass
You don't get what you deserve, you get what you can negotiate.
The Master
Come and join us. Leave your worries for a while, they'll still be there when you get back. And your memories aren't invited.
The Centipede's Dilemma
A centipede was happy – quite!
Until a toad in fun
Said, "Pray, which leg moves after which?"
This raised her doubts to such a pitch,
She fell exhausted in the ditch
Not knowing how to run.
William Ralph Inge
There are two kinds of fools. One says, “This is old, therefore it is good"; the other says, “This is new, therefore it is better."
The Shockwave Rider
Your past is far more intriguing than either your present or your future. Both of those are completely programmed.
The Shockwave Rider
In an age when we have more choice than ever before, more mobility, more information, more opportunity to fulfil ourselves, how is it that people can prefer to be identical?
Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus
A Sand County Almanac
All conservation of wilderness is self-defeating, for to cherish we must see and fondle, and when enough have seen and fondled, there is no wilderness left to cherish.
Lady Eve
I suppose the fact is, I love feeling free inside even better than I love you.
Say Anything
Get in a good mood. How hard is it to decide to be in a good mood and be in a good mood?
Henry David Thoreau
I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.
Henry David Thoreau
Not till we are lost, in other words not till we have lost the world, do we begin to find ourselves, and realize where we are and the infinite extent of our relations.
All Light Everywhere
Nothing ever ends. But there are always other places to begin.
RRR
You have every right to work but not to expect the result. Let not the result be your motive nor your attachment be to inaction. I don't care about the result. I will be moving towards my goal until my last breath.
The Eight Mountains
Only you city folk call it nature. It's so abstract in your minds that even the word is abstract. Here we say forest, meadow, river, rock, path. Things you can point at. Things you can use.
Vision - Earl Sweatshirt
Magic is only make-believe and our children do not need to grow up in a make-believe world. You need to tell them the truth and help make them feel proud of who they are. The magic of truth is much more powerful than magic of make-believe
Sada
Sada: Can you see into a person's heart?
Dad: Smile.
Sada: What?
Dad: Smile big, Sada. There, I see it now. Your heart is smiling. Your heart smiled just now. You see. When you smile, the hills, the trees, the air, the rain, everything will smile back. That's how you see into a person's heart.
Whakataukī Māori proverb
Whatungarongaro te tangata, toitū te whenua
People pass on, but the land remains
The Red Shoes
You asked me a question to which I gave a stupid answer. You asked me whether I wanted to live and I said yes. Actually, Miss Paige, I want more, much more. I want to create - to make something big out of something little.
Younger & Dumber - Indigo De Souza
Sometimes, I just don't wanna be alone
And it's not 'cause I'm lonely
It's just 'cause I get so tired of filling
The space all around me
True Mothers
Sunsets seem similar, but they're different every day.
Albert Einstein
Problems cannot be solved at the same level of awareness that created them.
Scener ur ett äktenskap
I don't possess much self-knowledge, and I know very little about reality, despite all the books I've read. But I believe this catastrophe is the chance of a lifetime.
Robert Louis Stevenson
For my part, I travel not to go anywhere, but to go. I travel for travel’s sake. The great affair is to move; to feel the needs and hitches of our life more nearly; to come down off this feather-bed of civilization, and find the globe granite underfoot and strewn with cutting flints.
Remorseless - billy woods
I’m not concerned with generational wealth, that’s it’s own curse. Anything you want on this cursed earth probably best getting it yourself. See what you’re worth.
Walter M. Miller Jr.
To minimize suffering and to maximize security were natural and proper ends of society and Caesar. But then they became the only ends, somehow, and the only basis of law — a perversion. Inevitably, then, in seeking only them, we found only their opposites: maximum suffering and minimum security.
Blade Runner
I've seen things you people wouldn't believe. Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion. I watched c-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhäuser Gate. All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain.
Manifesto: The Mad Farmer Liberation Front - Wendell Berry
Love the quick profit, the annual raise,
vacation with pay. Want more
of everything ready-made. Be afraid
to know your neighbors and to die.
And you will have a window in your head.
Not even your future will be a mystery
any more. Your mind will be punched in a card
and shut away in a little drawer.
When they want you to buy something
they will call you. When they want you
to die for profit they will let you know.

So, friends, every day do something
that won’t compute. Love the Lord.
Love the world. Work for nothing.
Take all that you have and be poor.
Love someone who does not deserve it.
Denounce the government and embrace
the flag. Hope to live in that free
republic for which it stands.
Give your approval to all you cannot
understand. Praise ignorance, for what man
has not encountered he has not destroyed.

Ask the questions that have no answers.
Invest in the millenium. Plant sequoias.
Say that your main crop is the forest
that you did not plant,
that you will not live to harvest.
Say that the leaves are harvested
when they have rotted into the mold.
Call that profit. Prophesy such returns.

Put your faith in the two inches of humus
that will build under the trees
every thousand years.
Listen to carrion – put your ear
close, and hear the faint chattering
of the songs that are to come.
Expect the end of the world. Laugh.
Laughter is immeasurable. Be joyful
though you have considered all the facts.
So long as women do not go cheap
for power, please women more than men.
Ask yourself: Will this satisfy
a woman satisfied to bear a child?
Will this disturb the sleep
of a woman near to giving birth?

Go with your love to the fields.
Lie down in the shade. Rest your head
in her lap. Swear allegiance
to what is nighest your thoughts.
As soon as the generals and the politicos
can predict the motions of your mind,
lose it. Leave it as a sign
to mark the false trail, the way
you didn’t go. Be like the fox
who makes more tracks than necessary,
some in the wrong direction.
Practice resurrection.
Marcel Proust
The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes.
Denis Belya (friend)
That’s what I love about making mistakes! You never forget what to do next time!
Grapes of Wrath
The quality of owning freezes you forever into “I", and cuts you off forever from the “we".
The Asra - Heinrich Heine
Every day at eventide
The sultan's daughter fair
Wandered by the fountain,
Where the white water purls.

Every day at eventide
The young slave stood by the fountain
Where the white water purls,
And every day he grew pale and paler.

Then one evening the princess approached him,
And suddenly spoke:
"Your name I wish to know,
Your homeland and your kinship."

And the slave spoke: "My Name is Mohamet,
I come from the Yemen that I cherish,
And I stem from tribe of Asra,
From those who, when they love, they perish.'
Past Lives
Hae Sung's Mother: Why would you leave that all behind?
Na Young's Mother: If you leave something behind you gain something, too?
John Zahorian
Thruhiking isn’t really about what you bring. It’s about wanting to be out there.
The Fellowship of the Ring
He used often to say there was only one Road; that it was like a great river: its springs were at every doorstep, and every path was its tributary. "It's a dangerous business, Frodo, going out of your door," he used to say. "You step into the Road, and if you don't keep your feet, there is no knowing where you might be swept off to."

Questions? Comments? Contact me directly!