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 fulfill 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.

The Road Not Taken - Robert Frost

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

All Light Everywhere

Nothing ever ends. But there are always other places to begin.

Questions? Comments? Contact me directly!