Kung Fu Brew

I have never owned a video camera, but I have often used the video function of my digital camera to capture the nuances of time and space that sometimes eludes two-dimensional photography.  Having a video often gives the sense of 2.5 dimensions.  In recent history I had been fine with simply shooting the video and archiving it unedited believing that the raw footage was somehow better.  Something has changed and now I feel compelled to convert my perfectly good memories into more artistic visions.

Unfortunately, I find that while I’m a creative problem solver when math, processes, and electrons are involved, this does not necessarily translate into the arts.  A few years ago I was very interested in audio creation and production and became versed in the ways of Audacity, Sound Forge, Garage Band, Fruity Loops, Pro Tools, and Reason to name a few.  While I know know an incredible amount about how music is created and produced using these programs, under my direction, bad techno is still bad techno regardless of whether I’m using an intro program like Garage Band or and advanced tool like Reason.

Now comes my new found interest in video production and editing.  Currently I am trying out several different programs.  The first post from yesterday was done using Avidemux and VirtualDub (both open source and free).  Today I created a similar video using iMovie just to compare the processes and workflows of the programs.  While iMovie is definately easier to handle, I feel the options lost (and the fact it requires a mac) limit it to only certain basic tasks.  So welcome everyone to my amateurish films, hopefully with time they will become more intriguing and complex.  Along the way I hope to share why one thing worked and another one didn’t.

Now to continue yesterday’s theme of hitting the open road, here is some old footage of a drive through southern Australia on the Great Ocean Highway from Melbourne to the Twelve Apostles.  Pardon the pixelated and choppy nature of the video, it was shot with a 8 year old Sony camera in which high quality mode was 320×240 @ 15fps.

I like to think of myself as a green individual – I recycle, I use low wattage light bulbs, I ride my bike when it makes sense, and I strive to do much more.  That said, I cannot give up a purely recreational drive.  When the ignition turns and an unknown stretches of coiled road lay before me I get a giddy feeling in the sub-cockle region.  I have often jumped in my car and headed to no better place than “around”.  For example, I was fortunate some years back to travel to Australia and for one entire day I rented a car and drove along the Great Ocean Highway only stopping for coffee and gas. It’s the views and the open road that get my heart racing, not landmarks and opera houses.

In Austin, “around” was in the hill country on the west side of Capitol of Texas Highway.  One of my favorite routes was to start at Mopac and 2222 heading west, take a left on City Park Road and follow it all the way down to the river.  Toward the end, City Park forks and you take a left on Pearce Road, which winds in a big loop back to City Park Road.  I cannot condone speeding, but the more rubber burnt the better.  After eight years of trekking around Austin, I had run out of roads that would interest me, but with the recent relocation to Colorado I am presented with a much greater wealth of curving asphalt to explore.

This past weekend I decided to drive to Winter Park.  On this particular journey I did have a destination in mind – to go snowboarding, but really the drive was just as fulfilling as cruising on powder.  It better be because a day trip from my house to Winter Park results in equal parts time spent driving and snowboarding.  I must recommend that you take some time for this.  It’s one of those “smell the roses” activities.  Of course if you are just too busy, join me on a road trip at 6x normal speed.

Well I’m back, and I’m broken.  I think my picture from the last post pretty much sums it up.  Tomorrow I run (and probably walk).

May be it’s the nice weather, maybe it’s my squishy body, but something has given me workout fever.  An unused membership has been repeatedly charging itself to my credit card reminding me that I’m paying for my ill health.

Today that changes – although my plan is not as you might expect.  I am driving down to the gym, working out, and…wait for it…canceling my membership.  No longer will I pay to be unhealthy.  Instead I’m doing this Balboa style.  It’s time to run through snow up mountains, escaping communists and building lung capacity.  It’s time to hang from the rafters and do ab splitting sit ups and there’s nothing Dolph Lundgren can do to stop my montage worthy workout.

It has been almost a year since I exercised in any serious fashion, so most likely I’ll just end up like this:

This is how I'll feel in about an hour

Wish me luck, I’m going to need it.

There are those moments in life when time reveals itself and you suddenly feel its passing.  Usually time only causes minor ripples evoking comments like “seems like time is flying by” or “could this day last any longer”, but occasionally time becomes more of a crisis and evokes more than just idioms.  For me these time crises come on birthdays.

This weekend was my birthday, so the usually flurry of emotions involving time passing arose: have I done enough with my life, where am I headed, damn I’m old, etc.  This weekend in particular was crisis worthy due to a wedding of high school friends – that are younger than myself.  It was an amazing wedding for two people who are truly in love and I wish Amanda and Dan luck even though I don’t think they need it.

Amanda and Dan with Josh presiding

Among my friends I am probably ahead of the curve when it comes to analyzing if your success is on track with your age, but when compared to my minds eye, I’m behind.  I have a steady job, but I’m not on the fast track, I have a fantastic girlfriend, but I’m not married, and I haven’t lived in a foreign country.  Some of these could be deemed positives depending on circumstance, but since I’m grading myself on what a young John would have thought, I’m failing.

Now the real question, do I care that I’m failing?  Ironically…no.  I worry myself on these days and then I move on.  Over and over again I was asked when Meaghan and I plan on tying the knot, but I don’t have a good answer for them.  I tell them that we’re not concerned about getting married, which then prompts them to ask why that is and I give some bull about neither of us having a high opinion of marriage, but the truth is I have no idea why.  I just know that both of us are happy and don’t want to rock the boat.

In talking with Dan on the night before his wedding I articulated the response in a new way that encompasses the feeling correctly.  I enjoy waking up and knowing that the person beside me is there without obligation and without contract.  That person could leave at any time but doesn’t because this is exactly where they want to be.  At this moment in my life that’s exactly what I want – to be wanted.  There will be time down the road to choose security over self-esteem.

This road may not be what young John had envisioned, but when I go to sleep, it’s calm and peaceful sleep.  If my parents are concerned that I’m a 27 years old without a college degree, unmarried, and without children then too bad, because I learned it from my dad.  He always told me “you can grow older, but you don’t have to mature” and I was always taught to say yes sir, yes ma’am, and mind your parents.

This past week has been great.  For the first time in four weeks I didn’t travel to Portland for work.  So last week I actually got some down time because I wasn’t busy tracking down materials, making calls, and catching up on sleep.  That meant focusing on my next project, my Halloween costume.  I had decided on making a Pac-Man costume and hopped on Google’s image search to find some examples of how others had accomplished my favorite yellow man.

…a full 3 hours later I had my design.  This isn’t because finding pictures of Pac-Man costumes is difficult, in fact they are on the first results page, but there are just certain things you do on the internet that prompt you to click a link, and then another link, and then another, until you’ve gone so far down the rabbit-hole that you can figure out how the page you are currently at even relates to where you started.  Google image searching is one of them, Wikipedia is another, and of course the best-of-class time sink, StumbleUpon.

On this particular rampage I started with Pac-Man and ended up with reading about the life of Chuck Taylor.  The link from Pac to Chuck is through Thundercats (Hoooo!).

I blurred his bits...it was disturbing

After seeing my childhood hero in chucks I got to thinking how many times I’ve seen these shoes in movies, or on musicians, etc and started looking around. Of course with a broad search topic like “converse in movies” you can essentially kiss a few hours goodbye. Toward the end of that string I hit this site: The Chucks Connection.

Elijah Wood has worn chucks in more movies than any other actor

This site’s creator has donated a lot of time to researching Converse shoes.  For 10 years he was been collecting information about chucks in movies and TV, along with personal stories and shoe lacing guides.  It’s really quite amazing how much time he has devoted to one item and it’s pretty interesting (well if you’re on the nerdy side, but lets face it, most people who don chucks are, self included).  I had no idea that chucks were so pervasive in media.  The Chucks Connection is what finally led me to the Wikipedia entry for Chuck Taylor where my time sink ended…for now.

All in all it was a pretty good day.  The Pac-Man suit got finished, a pretty incredible Halloween party followed, and I now know enough information about chucks to maybe come in hand someday on Jeopardy.  What is Charles Hollis Taylor? FTW!

I suddenly feel the need to eat some fruit

Making the move to Colorado was the most drastic thing I’ve done in my life.  Not to say that I haven’t made more “interesting” travels, but never have I removed myself so completely from my usual safety nets.  When you think of your life and the various forks that the path takes along the way, many of them are small diversions that can easily be looped back, but moving 1200 miles across the country affects everything.

I had been coasting through life in Austin.  I’ve had the same friends and same job for long time.  My life was more like a river that I was just tubing down, enjoying the view with a cold one in hand and an occasional rapid to keep things interesting.  Now that I’m on Mountain Standard Time I find myself realizing that everyday actions are shaping my future.  I thought, like many, that moving would provide a clean slate from which to build the perfect existence.  I’ve got the clean slate but the idea of rebuilding a group of friends and finding a new job is too daunting.  The idea that meeting someone new or getting a new job could irrevocably change my life prevents me from making new friends and finding a better job – what if I don’t like where it’s all headed.

Fortunately there have been enough distractions to not have to worry about all of this too much.  I’ve spent a month and half of the last three traveling for business and two of the weekends have been filled with people from Texas coming for a visit (more come please).  This last weekend Meaghan’s parents came up and we showed them around town.  It was a little difficult to be tour guides when we are still tourists ourselves.  While we may not know the best restaurants or shops, you can rely on the mountains to entertain guests.

On Sunday we drove over to Estes Park and then up into Rocky Mountain National Park.  The park contains the highest highway in the US and it goes straight up to the tundra above the tree line.  With Meaghan’s Mom in the backseat gasping at every winding corner, we drove up into the mountains to breathtaking views.  While it may have been 75F at the foot of the mountains, it was in the 30s at the top and windy.  It’s amazing that anything manages to live up there.

The ruggedness is what makes it so appealing.  I know that when it gets a little colder and the snow a little thicker, I’ll be wanting the challenge that the tundra provides.

So what does this all mean?  It means that currently I’m happy to distract myself from finding new friends and from finding a new job in order to get to know myself better and discover what challenges Colorado has to offer me.  I think I’ll be perfectly content with snowboarding, backpacking, cayaking, and rock climbing and hopefully along the way, direction will find me.

Yesterday was worthless, I can’t seem to get back into the grind.  I figured more coffee would be the cure only to end up so jittery that I couldn’t think straight.  During one of my distractions from actual work I read over some of my old diary entries.  It was strange to read a few of them, I have always thought of myself as being an independent person, not really following or idolizing anyone in particular, but I must say that looking at my entries, my bookshelf, my netflix rental history; one person dominates above all others…Henry Rollins.

If you liked Black Flag, or have seen his spoken word DVDs, then you absolutely must read some of his books.  The Black Coffee Blues series is a good place to start.  While I don’t recommend that anyone follow the Tao of Rollins to the T, the way he attacks life is inspiring.  If I could incorporate even a pinky’s worth of Rollins I’d be benching 250, finishing my first novel, and on a plane to Okinawa right now.

After a long hiatus, I’m back…we’ll see how long this lasts. I started this blog as more of an excuse to play with using a CMS than to actually blog.  Once all the buttons had been pressed, various CSS edited and plugins added, a nerd like me becomes bored and thus no more posts.  So with that, onto the first topic, why even blog…

Recently I have found my self inspired.  Slowly micro-blogging sites like twitter (ithangover) have gotten me accustomed to the idea of sharing my thoughts publicly and other blogs like Chris’, and various podcasts have made me want to take advantage of the free press that is the Internet before it becomes overly censored.  Plus, as long as everyone else is allowed to spew their mind garbage onto the intertubes, then I’ll do my part to end traditional writing and journalism.

May 1, 2008

I don’t know what it is about traveling that compels me to write or better yet regular life that prevents me from writing, but here I am again on another business trip journaling. Alaska this time. I was almost a little scared when I first heard of this trip. Where I’m going is just another city, but that’s not what you think about when envisioning Alaska.

The name conjures up visions of the last American wilderness from lame spotted owls to fierce wolves, grizzlies, and polar bears, oh and the highest suicide rate.

Unfortunately I’m only going to be there for 24 hours. Of course 19 hours of that will be daylight so I’ll probably just push through and try to see as much as I can while I’m here. Tomorrow I have to perform a site survey for company a. Should be easy, schmooze some old company b manager, scan a bunch of equipment and hopefully three hours later – I’m out. I have a rental car, and I plan on testing the “unlimited in town mileage”. Currently my record stands at 900 kilometers for a 24-hour rental.

I’ll have to do some research this evening while sitting in my jacuzzi tub and find out what to do. Alaska has always one of those places I wanted to go, but not to do anything in particular. I don’t find whale watching interesting and I don’t find cold beaches interesting for very long. And yet, this is a place I have always wanted to visit. Maybe I’ll start south around Anchorage or Juno and just start heading north until I can’t take it any more. My idea of an ideal vacation in Alaska is more like a Jack London novel – camp with wolves, befriend one who later saves my life, and then eventually leave after having been challenged and learned valuable life lessons.

Or…I’ll see what bars in northern latitudes are like.

View from hill above Anchorage, AK