This weekend we went to Whistler; even spending just a single night it was a memorable trip. If you’ve only been to Whistler in the winter, it’s definitely worth a summer visit.

The Sea to Ski Highway is spectacular on a clear summer day and we scarcely felt the drive. Even more stunning were the views from the mountain after taking the gondola up… alpine lakes and meadows with wildflower, the Canadian rockies still covered in snow.

There are hikes for just about every difficulty level; some with minimal elevation gain, one that goes all the way to the summit.

There were an eclectic range of activities going on. This happened to be the weekend of a major mountain biking festival called Crankworx so there was an abundance of live music and competitive events, not to mention full body armor and mountain bikes that cost more than some cars.

The crowd was international, more so than the typical Seattle tourist crowd. A much larger representation of Brits and Austrialians, for instance– probably that’s partly due to the Commonwealth effect, and partly due to– ahem– other factors that have cropped up in the past few years in the US.

At the same time we were able to enjoy restaurants like Araxi, whose tasting menu I highly recommended; pictured is the leek and cheese souffle.

We stayed at an Austrian style B&B called the Durlacher Hof, which I also recommend. The hotels in the village are nice but tend towards to blur together into a theme-parkish sameness. At the Durlacher Hof there were some surprising idiosyncracies– like being asked to remove our shoes when we entered– but also great hospitality, quiet, large rooms with lots of warm golden pine, and a deeply satisfying breakfast (European style breads and cheese, apricot pancakes, fresh fruit, and much more.)

Erika, the owner, mentioned the business climate crisis currently troubling Whistler. It was a bad winter, the US dollar is weak, and so much energy and expense went towards winning the 2010 Olympic bid that little is left over for cultivating current tourism. I imagine this is only a temporary situation, but it does create opportunities for good deals for visitors in the summer seasons and especially in the fall shoulder seasons.

Lots of cool Sony PSP hacking going on.

Here a nice hack that turns a Playstation Portable into a linux system monitor

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And here’s Josh Bancroft of Tiny Screenfuls posting to Blogger.com from the Sony PSP.

Certain devices, even if they aren’t perfect or fully baked, are good playgrounds for software experimentation and good proxies for future technology. The Blackberry is a good stand-in for future devices that will combine ubiquitous though slow network access with a keyboard and decent screen. The PSP looks to be a similar stand-in for a portable, cool wifi device with a high quality screen.

Vishwa Srinivasan has been a busy guy. He’s created a native Windows Mobile 2003 version of Smart 411, his Berry 411 client for smartphones. Vishwa reports that this version is more reliable and usable than the MIDP version running on the same phone, so use this one if you’re running a Windows flavored phone.