About

This site’s name, mtritter.org, relates to a goal of mine that I completed in 1999, namely climbing my eponymous peak in the eastern Sierra Nevada range in California.

There are several sections to this site, each dealing with a different facet of my varied interests.  The entries in the pulldowns to the left point to detailed pages about those interests and activities. This blog is a fairly recent addition, an experiment to see whether I like the blog concept instead of the old “intro” page from which much of this “about” information is derived.

Another long-term goal (shared with my son) is to reach as many as possible of the geographic highpoints of the 50 states.  (As of September,  2008, I had checked off 42 of the 50 state highpoints.)

In addition to heading “up”, I also like to explore “down”…that is, under the sea.  To date, I have logged in excess of 150 dives in the Caribbean Sea, Atlantic, Pacific, and Indian Oceans.

When not under water, I can often be found under the hood…of my 1986 Fiero SE.

As my son grew through his Cub Scout  years, we developed a certain expertise at building winning Pinewood Derby cars.  For an explanation of our techniques, spend  some time on the Pinewood Derby page of this site.

A certain wanderlust afflicts both my wife and myself, so our travels have taken us to some of the more   interesting and out-of-the-way corners of the world.  The Travel pulldown has stories and photo albums from several of these trips.

Obviously, photography plays a major role in many of these activities.  One technique that I discovered after starting to shoot mostly digital images is the production of full-spherical panoramas using fisheye images and appropriate computer software to generate composite image files formatted for a Java applet panorama viewer.  For samples of these and further information on their production, take a look under the Panoramas pulldown.

Home base for all of these activities is just west of St. Louis, Missouri.  St. Louis is known for its variable weather…10° below zero in winter (-23° C), and upwards of 100° above in the summer (+38° C). Current conditions are reflected in the image below.  Click on it for a detailed five-day forecast to see what sort of meterological fate is befalling me at the moment.