Ludger Sylbaris

2011-12-04T01:29:00.002-05:00

Song List

I have the uncanny ability to forget many things that I've done in my life, good and bad. Part of the impetus of this blog is to remind me of what I was doing at the time. This entry is to remind me of where my band Porter was in regards to our repertoire. We will be playing Loplops Friday, December 16 and New Years Eve at Searchmont.

Porter Originals (29)

All the Bottles Downed
As Luck Would Have Us
Breathe
Broken Hearts and Auto Parts
Close Your Eyes Dear
Country Road Flowers
Cry Baby Cry
Crow Jane
Daddy’s Truck
Dementia
Down Slow
Feat of a Heart
Five Dollar Bill
Gwendolyn
Hilton Beach
How Long
Kickin' Stones
Last Will
Lulu Baines
Regretful Lover
The Ruled By Blues
Stop
Stuck On This Mountain
That Park Downtown
The Way the Money Goes
The Writings On the Wall
Time to Fight
Tomorrow Can’t Wait
Undiscovered

Covers (15)

ACR 69 - Stompin' Tom
Blue Christmas - Elvis Presley
Canaan Land - Traditional (We found it in the Movie "Elmer Gantry")
Come Back To Me - Jon Rae and the River
Fairytale of New York - The Pogues
Hard Way to Fall - Ryan Adams
Houses on the Hill - Whiskeytown
Hey Porter - Johnny Cash
Looking At the World Through a Windshield - Del Reeves
Mama Tried - Merle Haggard
My Old Drunk Friend - Freakwater
Older - Band of Horses
Ruby - Kenny Rogers
Ramblin' Man - Waylon Jennings
Sloop John B - Beach Boys
Tougher than the Rest - Bruce Springsteen

2011-09-24T15:21:00.010-04:00

Everything Old is New Again

When I was a kid my grandmother (Nonna) gave me one of my deceased grandfather's watches. You can probably see where this is going - young boy with an object of great sentimental value. Well, I lost it. You can also probably imagine my dread as I was riding my bike through Bawating field when I realized it was gone. I spent the better part of an hour retracing my tire-tracks and searching that field to no avail. I still get hints of that sinking feeling in my stomach when I think about it.

Well, I was thinking about this the other day when I remembered that I had taken one of Nonno's pipes from Nonna's house and left it sitting on top of my parents fridge forever. I decided that I would try and restore it so I went over there and retrieved it. To restore it I would need to get rid of the charring around the rim, ream out the carbon build-up inside the pipe, buff the bowl and remove the oxidation from the stem.

I figured I should do a trial run before I attempted the real restoration so after a little pipe research, I found a style called the "Canadian". This appealed to me in two ways: 1) I'm Canadian so a style of pipe with that name should be pretty cool and 2) the stem of a Canadian is short compared to other styles (don't tell the ladies, nyuk nyuk) so there wouldn't be as much sanding involved. I managed to find a nice Wally Frank brand sandblasted Canadian from the 50's or 60's for $13 bucks on eBay. The picture doesn't really show the greenish oxidation. You can see it a bit near the silver band:

A nice looking pipe, eh? Here are some shots of the grain:

Good stuff.

I didn't take pics of the process but after watching YouTube videos and reading "how to's" here's what I did.

First I soaked the stem in OxyClean for about 3 hours then used pipe cleaners (yes, they're really for pipes! who knew?) and alcohol (Stolichnaya vodka - most pipe smokers use rum) to clean out the air passage. There was some puss brown crap that came out for a while but now it's spic and span. Then I sanded it with sandpaper (400, 600, 1500 and 2000 grit) left over from my guitar refinishing endeavors. After that it soaked in vodka for a few hours and was pipe-cleaned again. Finally, I used the Dremel set I received as a gift and first buffed in 3M's Finesse It II then Carnauba wax into the stem.

Not a bad job:

It's a good thing I had a test pipe because if you look closely you can see some indentations. This is because I had the Dremel on high speed and instead of buffing, it wore away the vulcanite. My basement smelled of burnt rubber for a while. Laura was not pleased.

On to the main attraction - a London Made "Commander Birks". A Google search of this pipe brand turned up nothing. I think the shape is called an "Apple" with a "saddle bit" stem.

This is the only pic I have as a before shot. I had already begun the sanding process but you can see the original colour of the stem at the wide section with the tiny "B" on it as I had yet to sand that part.

And here's the final product. Pretty freakin' good, eh? Now you can see the reflection of the screen in it where before it was a dull sickly green colour. Cool.

Here's a shot of the bowl after I buffed it with Carnauba wax:

This is a pic to show the nice grain on the pipe:

This isn't a pipe that would go for big bucks on eBay (you can see the pits in the pics above and the spit and elbow grease didn't really remove the charring from the rim - not pictured) but it does have a lot of sentimental value and I can guarantee you it won't be lost in Bawating field.

2011-06-20T00:11:00.005-04:00

The World on a String

Playoff hockey is over two months long. This two months of sitting in front of the television is not very productive. My parents gave me some furniture from my sister's old bedroom and in the drawers of the vanity was a loom. I decided I would learn how to do beadwork to keep my hands occupied and constructive. Here's what I accomplished:

I found a whole bunch of free patterns at this site.

This is the first one I tackled and it was the hardest one I did. It was for Laura's birthday so it was worth the headaches it gave me.

Here is the pattern. You can see the rows being checked off:

This is a close-up in progress:

I sewed felt onto the back:

The finished product took me over a week (hours and hours):

My second attempt:

I was thinking of the Vancouver Canucks with this one. The purple border may have jinxed them:

I wanted to try a more traditional pattern (top) and I'm not too pleased with how the bottom one came out - you can barely see the shape it makes and it reminds me of blood - Being somewhat squeamish, that is not a good thing. (If you want it leave a comment and I'll send it to you):

Another pattern from the free site:

I made this pattern for my guitar strap. Porter is the band I'm in. We're an alt-country/70's country cross so I was going for the Old West style font. It was too long for the little loom I had and too wide for the little needle I was using so it's in two parts and is a bit wonky. A tough one to make, for sure:

You don't have to be a pro to see the mistakes I made but I'm happy with most of the final products. YouTube was helpful with a few "How To" videos. It was fun. Give it a shot.

2011-06-06T12:29:00.002-04:00

Hyperinflation Warning for U.S.

Here's an interesting article.

2011-04-17T23:34:00.002-04:00

It's That Time Of Year

2011-02-28T00:26:00.005-05:00

Makerbot

2011-02-13T22:37:00.005-05:00

Short Post

I received many of the gifts posted below for my birthday. Thanks everyone. Here's a gift Laura bought me:

When The Books released their latest album I purchased the record version with the intention of hanging the sleeve as art but didn't get around to purchasing a frame. When the album arrived I was pleased to see that the release was actually two records and they were very attractive. So Laura bought me two frames. Check it out:

The clear record is in front of the album cover. The white record is in front of the sleeve insert. The sleeve insert is letters that you can stick on the front cover to make your own custom cover. Cool.

On another note, in regards to my on-going search for eccentric internet personalities I introduce you to the silverfuturist. His enthusiasm is genuine and fun to watch.

2011-01-19T10:45:00.004-05:00

Sprouting

I tried sprouting. Check it out:

I picked up some seeds and a screen at the Country Way:

Soak the seeds overnight.

Rinse and drain twice a day.

You can see a few of them starting to sprout:

Getting closer:

After a few days we have fresh, healthy homegrown broccoli sprouts:

2011-01-04T09:11:00.008-05:00

Birthday Presents

I was asked what I wanted for my upcoming birthday and since I haven't posted anything for a while I guess I'll turn this into a blog post. Let me preface this by saying I am a very lucky man who has everything he needs and is blessed with a healthy family, friends, pets and has food to eat and a nice roof over my head.

Having said that here's some stuff you could get me:

My amp weighs too much with all the stuff jammed into the back of it, patch cords, pedals, tuners, harmonicas, kazoos, strings, set lists, picks, batteries, earplugs, pliers, slides etc. so I'd like to get some sort of cool bag to put all this stuff in. Something like a hip bag or lap top bag.

Next on the list would be Lou Nanne's new biography:

Plain t-shirts (Made in Canada preferably, blue, black, white or grey) and black athletic socks. This is a picture of t-shirts for those unfamiliar with them:

And finally, I don't even know if these exist but CCM and Roger Edwards put out vintage hockey sweaters that were supposed to copy jerseys from earlier hockey eras. I have this one, a 1935 version:

And would like to get one like this from 1957 with the white sleeves and red stripe (if they exist - I haven't been able to find them):

That's it for now. If I think of anything else I'll add it later.

2010-12-08T23:15:00.004-05:00

Crash JP Morgan Buy Silver

I find Max Keiser highly entertaining and find his latest gambit one to definitely keep an eye on.

Here is an article that goes a bit more into the whole situation if you're interested.

2010-11-30T22:38:00.004-05:00

Reading List

I was supply teaching in the far east end and had some time to kill during lunch. The only place to do this was the Wellington Square Mall. I haven't spent much time there so I wasn't aware that the Rad Zone not only sells records and CDs but they also sell used books at Hole in the Wall Books for a good price. Losing track of time and cut to 45 minutes later, I've got my foot on the gas, careening around corners trying to beat the bell that will ring in 3 minutes. With my arms loaded with books I just made it back as the bell sounded. Here's what I picked up:

Non-Ficiton

Enemy at the Gates by William Craig - This book is an account of the Battle of Stalingrad, the battle that turned the tides for the West. I've read stories of people resorting to eating wallpaper paste and shoe leather due to the unrelenting siege of the city. Also, a sub-par movie took it's title from this book.

Synergetics by Buckminster Fuller - Looks like pretty heavy stuff. We'll see how far I get into this one.

From Wikipedia: Synergetics is the empirical study of systems in transformation, with an emphasis on total system behavior unpredicted by the behavior of any isolated components, including humanity’s role as both participant and observer.

Babylon's Banksters by Joseph Farrell - Couldn't be my book list without a bit of a conspiracy reading.

From the Product Description on Amazon.com: In this latest installment of his remarkable series of books of alternative science and history, Joseph P. Farrell outlines the consistent pattern and strategy of bankers in ancient and modern times, and their desire to suppress the public development of alternative physics and energy technologies, usurp the money creating and issuing power of the state, and substitute a facsimile of money-as-debt. Here, Farrell peels back the layers of deception to reveal the possible deep physics that the “banksters” have used to aid them in their financial policies.

Cultivating the Energy of Life by Liu Hua-Yang - Seems like good information to know, no?

From the Product Description on Amazon.com:
Here is the Hui-ming Ching , a classic Taoist manual on the circulation of internal energy by means of meditation and the inspiration for many techniques of Qigong. It is one of the few Taoist treatises to describe the landmarks of spiritual development and document the process of spiritual transformation from start to finish.

Life on the Mississippi by Mark Twain - Twain's account of achieving his dream and piloting a Riverboat on the famous river.

Fiction

The Adventures of Huckleberry Fin by Mark Twain - I don't think I need to describe this one. It's one of the classics I've been meaning to get to so I got it.

Rise Again by Ben Tripp - The new AMC TV series "The Walking Dead" has renewed my interest in the Zombie genre.

The Mammoth Book of Private Eye Stories - Hard-boiled private eye fiction with the first story by one of my favourites, Raymond Chandler.

The Man from Skibbereen by Louis L'Amour - Louis L'Amour always guarantees a quick read with plenty of testosterone-fueled action.

2010-11-22T03:43:00.004-05:00

The Fourth Turning

Note: This is my second attempt at this blog posting after having the computer freeze when I tried to open a pdf file. My get-up-and-go got up and went after I had put in the work for this. I don't feel like mustering up much of an effort a second time so this posting will be quote heavy.

Well it looks as if the web bots big tipping point has failed to manifest, which is good for us, I guess. I'm not sure I'd want to be involved in some doom of a magnitude 2 times larger than 9/11. I'll just have to bring that extra bag of rice to the soup kitchen for Xmas.

The next conspiracy theory to be discussed is light on the conspiracy but heavy on the theory. Neil Howe & William Strauss are the generational historians and authors of the book written in 1997 called "The Fourth Turning".

From a review of the book on Amazon:

"This book speaks of the Saeculum, to use the ancient term, the great cycles that stretch approximately the span of one long human life. There have been seven of these in the last 500 years of "modern" history. Each of these large cycles is divided into four parts, or "turnings." Think of them as generational seasons. And then each of these generational turnings is associated with one of the four classical human archetypes (prophet, nomad, hero, and artist.)"

The authors believe that throughout modern history these four archetypes can be found in order. They name each generation throughout history. For example, the Nomad generation from 1822-1842 were labeled the Gilded generation. The Artist generation from 1925-1942 were called the Silent generation. The Nomad generation from 1883-1900 were called the Lost generation and so on.

From the book's website:

Strauss and Howe base this vision on a provocative theory of American history as a series of recurring 80- to 100-year cycles. Each cycle has four "turnings"-a High, an Awakening, an Unraveling, and a Crisis. The authors locate today's [late 1990's] America as midway through an Unraveling, roughly a decade away from the next Crisis (or Fourth Turning).

*The First Turning is a High, an upbeat era of strengthening institutions and weakening individualism, when a new civic order implants and the old values regime decays.
*The Second Turning is an Awakening, a passionate era of spiritual upheaval, when the civic order comes under attack from a new values regime.
*The Third Turning is an Unraveling, a downcast era of strengthening individualism and weakening institutions, when the old civic order decays and the new values regime implants.
*The Fourth Turning is a Crisis, a decisive era of secular upheaval, when the values regime propels the replacement of the old civic order with a new one.
Each turning comes with its own identifiable mood. Always, these mood shifts catch people by surprise.
In the current saeculum, the First Turning was the American High of the Truman, Eisenhower, and Kennedy presidencies. As World War II wound down, no one predicted that America would soon become so confident and institutionally muscular, yet so conformist and spiritually complacent. But that's what happened.
The Second Turning was the Consciousness Revolution, stretching from the campus revolts of the mid-1960s to the tax revolts of the early 1980s. Before John Kennedy was assassinated, no one predicted that America was about to enter an era of personal liberation and cross a cultural divide that would separate anything thought or said after from anything thought or said before. But that's what happened.
The Third Turning has been the Culture Wars, an era that began with Reagans mid-'80s 'Morning in America' and is due to expire around the middle of the Oh-Oh decade, eight or ten years from now. Amidst the glitz of the early Reagan years, no one predicted that the nation was entering an era of national drift and institutional decay. But that's where we are.

Of course with any good conspiracy theory there is always big DOOM involved and according to Strauss & Howe, the Fourth Turning is that doom with the time of Crisis. Followers of the pair can point to the skirmish coming out between North and South Korea, the mystery missile fired off the coast of California and the Fed's QE2 program shaking the financial world up.

So is this the fourth turning?

ummm...meh.....insert some closing here that ties up this posting. This is what happens when your baby wakes you up at 3:00am....you can't come up with a coherent post.

2010-10-29T19:08:00.019-04:00

So, uh....blogging, eh?

Since Isabelle has been born there hasn't been much time nor energy to mash the keys and click the post button but here is an attempt to start a new series on the blog while Laura bathes and puts her to bed.

Previous readers will recall that I am a fan of conspiracy theories, paranormal occurrences and other alternative topics. With that and the time of the year in mind let me introduce you to one of my favourites:

The Webbots.

The story goes that in June of 2001 George Ure, purveyor of the financial advice website Urban Survival.com("This is not financial advice.") received an e-mail from a computer programmer by the name of Clif High (his website) saying that a "tipping point" would occur in the next 90 days. This tipping point would result in a major change in life as we know it. Cue Sept. 11th and the rapid growth of the security-state industry. If I have my facts straight, Jeff Rense, the host of the conspiracy-theory radio show began to have Clif and George on to talk about their findings. After that they made it on Coast to Coast a.m. and have been going at it ever since. Clif is a very interesting speaker with a deep knowledge of a variety of topics. (Interviews on YouTube if interested) I have been following them for a few years now and certain forcasts have made me think twice. I'll get to those later.

So how does it work?

According to Clif, all humans are psychic to a degree. This psychic-ness is expressed in a variety of ways, from thinking of a person the moment before they call you on the phone to the phenomenon of how trains that are in accidents have a significantly lower amount of passengers than normal. Clif believes that this is also reflected in the language that we use and how it shifts. To find this shift he created the web bots to scan millions of forum posts and bring back the data to analyze. (Check either website for a more in-depth explanation) From this analysis he comes up with a report called "The Shape of Things to Come" filled with a forecast of the immediate and not-so-immediate future. The reports are difficult to read at first because they have a structure and a language of their own but once you get it down they are an interesting and fascinating read. The words in brackets are pulled from the data and the rest is what Clif attempts to fill in to make a (not quite) complete picture. Here is an excerpt from one:

"an attack on a site with aspects of (South) with specific references to a place where the (wood) in the (earth) {grows} {upward}. Near by will be an (energy) {plant} filled with {tremendous} (effort/work). The target chosen for the entity has associations with a (vertical wall/ascent) near which is a (low land) or (low lying area) from which there rises (power) and (influence/confluence) . This latter may suggest a site where a power plant sits at the base of a cliff or naturally occurring wall that has the power lines rising to it. "

How right are they?

Clif claims to be better than chance but right only 50% of the time. A few of the hits they claim (and some they impressed me with) are the spill in the Gulf ("oil volcano"), the Banda Aceh quake ("300,000 knocked to a previous age"), General McChrystal criticizing Obama ("general misspeaks/faux pas"), the stock market crash of Oct '08, the eruption of the Iceland volcano ("European travel restricted") and the blackout of 2003 (the above excerpt in italics is one part of the report where they claim to have predicted the blackout - it's supposed to be describing Niagara Falls). There is a message board dedicated to discussing the bots and their reports. There you can see the members bend any piece of news to fit a prediction but there are a few (mentioned above) that are a bit eerie.

Well, what's next?

The bots are calling for a major tipping point (orders of magnitude larger than 9/11) to occur between Nov. 8-11 give or take a few days. They are unsure of what type of event it will be but are leaning towards a major financial disaster (the complete loss of confidence in the U.S. dollar is a scenario they've floated) with effects rippling across the globe. They are advising their readers to purchase a little extra food just in case while the dollar still has value. Needless to say their credibility will take a big shot if there is nothing huge in that timeframe. Defenders claim that due to the nature of forecasting, fear language has a more powerful effect and therefore skews the data to lean toward a more dire reading. "Take the forecast and reduce the predicted effect by 90% and that is closer to what reality will bear out" is what they say.

Do I believe it?

Well, as seen above the reports are written in a style open to much interpretation and can run any where from 50 to 70 pages filled with topics such as conspiracy, aliens and secrets revealed which leaves a lot of room for a claim of accuracy. George comes up with scenarios a few times a week on his blog which could be pointed to if they were ever to come true as being prescient. And they charge $10 bucks a report which come out every 4 months or so to cover server costs. So there's those strikes against them.

On the plus side, I find them highly entertaining with talk of characters coming named Cousin Alexi (an alien caught on video in the background of a man-on-the-street interview), Wild Colleen (an Irish woman said to the give an impassioned speech to the world), the "woman of scars" (claimed a hit by some with this picture - warning somewhat graphic) and the Dog Poet (a figure that will make the masses rally around it - later claimed to be this dog) and other tales of time dilation, ill winds and revolution. There is lot to chew on in these reports and I take them as great entertainment...but I did buy an extra bag of rice the last time I was at the grocery store.

2010-04-07T13:39:00.004-04:00

Pimp My Ride

Hi all. Things have been busy lately hence my absence.

Since this blog has morphed into compiling my latest obsessions I figured I'd show you my latest and most unnecessary one (i.e. my car is working and I am not).

I found this site called Country Classic Cars L.L.C. where you can get one classy looking chariot. My criteria was: between the years 1937 and 1953, four doors, not convertible, under nine grand, runs and drives fine.

These are my faves (in my arbitrarily assigned price range):

1953 Chevy

1950 Plymouth

1950 Chevy

and my absolute favourite, the 1941 Buick. Here's the write up on the site:

Buick 4dr sedan, 60 series, all orig, complete, straight 8 cyl, 3 speed, dual 2 bbl carburators, straight metal and grill, good www tires, runs and drives great.	Green	$8,950.00.

Buick 4dr sedan, 60 series, all orig, complete, straight 8 cyl, 3 speed, dual 2 bbl carburators, straight metal and grill, good www tires, runs and drives great.

Green

$8,950.00.

The dash looks cool but the interior is a bit nasty. What do you want from a 60 year old car.

p.s. my Haiti jersey came in and it looks awesome. Check it out:

2010-02-06T14:26:00.002-05:00

Boy Names

Laura is vetoing all my boy names. Here they are:

Marlowe
Basil
Elcid
Percival
Chandler
Dashiell
Phaedrus
Emile
Fyodor
Dmitri
Nils
Oscar

Any suggestions? If we use one you suggest you'll win a prize.

Also, if you're a jersey fan and wanted to donate to Haiti check these out:

Pretty sweet eh?

When you purchase a *Hockey For Haiti* product, IceJerseys.com will donate all profits from the sale of that item to the Haiti Project, which teams up veteran NHL player Georges Laraque (whose family is from Haiti), the NHLPA Goals & Dreams fund and World Vision Canada to help strengthen Haiti's ability to provide critical healthcare for the earthquake's survivors and affected communities.

You can find the gear here.

2010-01-15T13:10:00.005-05:00

Movie Buffed

Laura bought me a subscription to Zip.ca for my birthday/Christmas present this year. I now have access to many movies the stores in the Soo don't carry and/or I can't find online. Things like Sunset Bvld. (1950), Zardoz (1974) and The Rules of the Game (La regle du jeu) (1939). Right now there are 89 films on my ZipList.

Part of the fun is watching the street scenes of the films and seeing what life looked like back then. In that vein here is a youtube video of a street in San Fransisco in 1905. It reminded me of my days back in India where traffic is much less ordered and much more chaotic. Watch how many cars and horse & buggies cut across the track right in front of the train. I found it fascinating and fun. I counted three people who almost got run over in 7 minutes.

And here is London in 1927...in colour!:

p.s. Porter and Woody Sims are playing Searchmont this weekend. Sets start at 4pm-ish and 9pm-ish

2010-01-03T13:28:00.009-05:00

Holiday Recap

Happy New Year! This holiday break has been action packed with many family gatherings and lots of food and good times. Here's what's been going on:

Porter was scheduled to open for Magneta Lane at Loplops but they hit some bad weather and couldn't make it. So that meant all the lights, monitors and sound men would be entirely for us. It was probably the best gig we've ever played. The place was packed with out-of-towners home for Christmas, Longfellow film crew and our friends. They were really receptive and seemed very into us. It was amazing. Crank sound made us sound awesome.

Rachelle joined us on the keys and was excellent. She is really talented.

New Year's Eve was a surprise 50th birthday party for my uncle.

His wife and kids held it at Tarentorous Sports Club. They put in a ton of work. The place looked great and there was plenty of food and drink.

We had put together a band to perform some of his favourite songs and practiced in Anthony's basement. Introducing "Rebbie's Rebels":

Bridget with the chimes:

Rachelle made us t-shirts for the big night :

Our setlist was "Rockin' in the Free World" by Neil Young, "Wildflowers" by Tom Petty,

"Atlantic City", "Dancing in the Dark" by the Boss...

and "I'm So Excited" with The Pointer Sisters:

Later on Anthony persuaded the bartender to give us the keys to the curling rink. We couldn't find the lights so we curled in the dark around 1:00am. It was a super fun night.

Last night we played Loplops again. The evening was being recorded by Catherine Taddo. Our perfomance wasn't as good as the previous gig so we'll see if she captured anything worth keeping. Porter's next gig is at Searchmont Resort Saturday, January 16th. We'll be doing an afternoon set and an evening set.

Life is good.

p.s. Blogger changed it's settings and my meager html skills won't allow me to resize the pics so if you're wondering why the pictures are all different sizes and over-lapping...well now you know)

2009-12-10T23:15:00.001-05:00

Did you see this yet?

Pretty cool.

2009-11-24T20:28:00.002-05:00

This Friday, Nov. 27 Porter will be playing a fund-raiser at Shingwauk Auditorium, Algoma University, after the Coalition for Algoma Passenger Trains meeting. Come on out to hear the advantages of passenger trains in the north and stick around to hear us play some train tunes. Meeting starts at 7pm. Music to follow. Cash Bar.

p.s. This rules:

2009-10-07T14:44:00.004-04:00

More Things That Are Filling My Head

Hockey is back so I now have a reason to watch the television in the attic again. Here's what I've been watching on the internet in the meantime:

T.V. Ontario has a show called "Big Ideas". It's billed as the only regularly scheduled television show in North America devoted to the art of the lecture and the importance of ideas in public life. They also release the lectures as podcasts. Every year since 2005 they hold a Best Lecturer contest. Arne Kislenko won the first one with a lecture called "WWII: The Soviet Experience". I found it fascinating.

Click here to watch it. It is approximately an hour long.

Quantum physics, crop circles, aliens, the Ark of the Covenant, solar flares, the star of David, black holes, the Kabbalah......all topics tied together by Nassim Haramein. Nassim claims to have figured out one of the holy grails of physics - A Grand Unified Theory or Theory of Everything. Simply put, his idea is that at the heart of every atom is a black hole. His paper "The Schwarzschild Proton"(links to pdf file) won the Best Paper Award at the University of Liège, Belgium during the 9th International Conference CASYS'09 (Computing Anticipatory Systems).

I really enjoyed this 8 hour lecture from 2003. Check it out:

For the conspiracy fans out there I enjoyed the series "September Clues". Here's part A:

And I really had to sneak another plug in for The Moth. They're trying to bring their podcast to public radio. Click here to listen to their first 5 pilot episodes. I highly recommend this!

Oh yeah, I had to fit this site in: http://twitter.com/Shitmydadsays . "It's called Shit My Dad Says". Here's the explaination of it: "I'm 29. I live with my 73-year-old dad. He is awesome. I just write down shit that he says."

2009-08-10T20:37:00.011-04:00

What are you listening to?

A question I pose and am posed often. Lately, I've been listening to a lot of podcasts but I already did a podcast blog post way back in the old "skinny" blog days but here's a quick run down anyway.

I'm listening to Keith and the Girl, Radiolab (two excellent podcasts Tim turned me onto), This American Life, Quirks & Quarks, Old Time Radio Network (old radio shows but only the ones about Sam Spade and Philip Marlowe), The Moth (true stories told onstage with no notes), Furled Sails (sailing podcast), Alan Watts (excerpts from his recorded lectures), The Bugle (British Humour from The Daily Show's John Oliver), The Preparedness Podcast and a few others.

As for music, I've been listening to YouTube a lot lately.

The first two are from a young Australian who calls himself Pogo. He takes sounds from Disney flicks and turns them into songs:

Here is a mind blowing pair from "Kutiman". He takes clips from YouTube and makes music from them. If you click on the video it will take you to the YouTube page with the same song on it. If you click on the right "more info" tab you can see the source of the sounds in his songs. Just amazing!

As for non-YouTube-remix artists, I've been hooked on Fleet Foxes a lot lately. Beautiful stuff.

If you're interested here is the background of this piece of video:

Here's Wilco doing Impossible Germany. I'm mostly paying attention to Nels Cline. He's the madman with the beat up Jazzmaster. Great solo in this tune. Starts at about the 3 minute mark

And finally, some light-hearted fun. Here's Vince with Slap Chop remixed. An ear worm for sure.

Oh and I'm always listening to the Books. "Smells Like Content", my favourite song from their last album, "Lost and Safe"

So what are you listening to?

2009-07-12T14:36:00.005-04:00

Garden Stuff

This is Year Two of our attempts at a garden. We moved the box so Laura could put a swing on the upper-level out-cropping area we have in our back yard. Hopefully the plants will get enough light there. Here is the garden beside the fence:

We planted peas, beans, lettuce, spinach, carrots, radishes, corn, cucumbers and in the pots out front, peppers - (if I recall correctly - we forgot to label everything) As you can see, things are kinda small as we were busy and were a week or two late putting the seeds in the ground.

Also we started our tomatoes from seed earlier than necessary but we left them outside to harden off and went out one day. A huge wind came along and destroyed all but one of them. It's the one in the gray pot in the back:

I restarted them from seed again and are now a few weeks behind on the tomatoes. We did pick up some seedlings for cherry tomatoes from a greenhouse that are doing well. (They're the three in a row up front).

I bought some of this stuff to make up for our late start:

It's supposed to be super-awesome, all organic snake-oil for getting huge delicious vegetables. Only time will tell if that's the case.

Our grape vine is larger than last year:

I don't really expect much from it as I don't think the Soo's climate is optimal for grape production but, what the hey, might as well try it, eh?

This year I put some Goji berries in the ground too:

I just took the seeds out of the dried Goji berries they sell at the Bulk Barn and germinated them. They're supposed to grow on snowy mountain-sides so I think they'll do fine here. I have two other plants to put in the ground but can't decide on a good spot for them. This one is doing alright. Supposedly they take 3 years to produce berries.

And here is the most successful thing I've planted:

Our raspberry bush! It was only 3 stalks last year. This year it's going crazy! Awesome. I am aware that raspberries are easy to grow but I must take take happiness in small victories. Also, Mira loves jumping in the way of my shots.

And one of Leo guarding the garden:

2009-06-10T20:37:00.003-04:00

Comedy Gold

So there are a few things that can automatically make me laugh. The high school picture of Shane and Adam in their Halloween costumes, the memory of Tom T's drawn woodpecker in Gr. 9 art, the Family Guy's "Aaron Neville megaphone" ("We're about to start the sa-ah-ah-ack race.") and now this:

As far as internet clips go, it's an oldie but it's a goodie. The more you watch it the funnier it gets. Thanks Arthur.

2009-06-07T00:04:00.017-04:00

Is This A Dream?

Every day my students are asked to write a journal response to a thought I write on the board. "We must never do evil, even for the sake of accomplishing good." and "Have you ever had or currently have an urge to rebel? What would you like to rebel against?' are two of the entries they were asked to consider. Many good discussions have been started from this. We are now on Journal #72.

"Have you ever had a lucid dream?" is one that elicited much discussion. Most of the students have never even heard of a lucid dream and a few didn't believe me when I told them I had multiple lucid dreams.

The most important thing to keep in mind when striving for a lucid dream is to remember your dreams. You can have ten lucid dreams a night but what good will it do you if you don't remember them? Keeping a dream journal will help this.

Some tips for becoming lucid during a dream is to try and adjust light levels. Turn a light off once in a while. If you can't you're probably dreaming. Also, read fine print. Look away and read it again. If it changes you're dreaming. Jump up in the air. Before doing so, say to yourself, "I will stay in the air if I'm dreaming." If you stay afloat, even for an extra second you're dreaming.

Once you realize you're dreaming you can do anything you want. Make a habit of doing all of the aforementioned in your waking life and eventually you will do it in your dream life. Sure you'll look funny occasionally but it's a small price to pay to be able to do anything you want. (I was once caught mid-air during a reality check. The person was puzzled as to why they caught me jumping for no reason.)

Another technique is to ask yourself multiple times a day "Is this a dream?"

Or you can take the attitude of Pedro Calderón de la Barca. "All life is a dream from which only death awakens us". Assume that you are dreaming at all times and eventually you will take that belief into your dreams.

Once I dreamed I was in Dock's Riverfront Bar and Grill's washroom looking in the mirror with hair on my head. I remembered I shaved my head that day and with a joyous and jumping fist-pump I willed myself to fly through the ceiling into the night sky. Many times I woke myself up due to the overwhelming exuberance that occurs when I realize I'm dreaming.

The reason I bring all this dream stuff up is that life has been a little dream-like lately. Tuesday night Porter opened for Spookey Ruben. (Check out two songs from that night here on our new YouTube Channel) Jay (our singer) is good friends with Spookey (see him 3 minutes into "Daddy's Truck" on YouTube) . A stranger in a large white dog-suit mascot-thingy wearing a black vest arrived at Loplops and danced beside the stage for 90% of Spookey's stellar set. Spookey had no idea who it was and neither did anyone else. Bizarre. I had to ask myself: Is this a dream?

Two nights later on a quiet Thursday the Wings lost 4-2. I decided to clear my head a bit and took the dogs for a walk. Heading down Wellington Street the faint sounds of an accordian perforated the night air. Leading the dogs down a back alley I could clearly hear Eastern-European-folk-song-type-music riding the winds of the night. Someone was sitting in their backyard and playing music. I stood there with Leo and Mira and asked myself : Is this a dream?

It wasn't that time. But maybe it will be tonight.

2009-05-30T10:21:00.009-04:00

A Few Things

1.) Porter, (the country band I'm in) will be opening for Spookey Ruben Tuesday June 2nd at Loplops. Check out our myspace page here. Cover is $5. It's got three of our songs on it. Here's a Spookey Ruben song:

2.) We were told living downtown would be dangerous. Little did we know...

We received our first death threat last week. Luckily we survived the night.

"you are goning to die tonight if you wont to live let me haw all your money your nobor"

Those suits at McDonalds are ruthless!

Graham, our neighbour received one too. His said "die nobor" and there was a loonie with it. We didn't get any money with ours. Just a (child-size) handful of our driveway stones holding the note down.

3.) Woody Sims played another gig at Coch's Corner. Here are some pictures:

We had beautiful back-up singers:

And dreamy lead singers:

Three Toms:

Havin' a laff:

My very first guitar I refinished in pink. I'm thrilled here:

GDH closed out the show. We played as a three piece because Jake didn't want to succumb to the Spinal Tap-like curse bass players experience when they play with us:

Anthony sporting the winged-wheel:

4.) And some dog pics. Leo, Mira and Danny playing:

Leo roaching:

2009-05-25T23:28:00.001-04:00

Video of the Galactic Center of the Milky Way
(48 seconds long)

2009-05-15T18:54:00.005-04:00

2009-03-29T01:11:00.003-04:00

F%&#'N UP and GDH

Apr. 3rd, Coch's Corner

Prepare yourself for Neil Young by coming out to the NY coverband F@#$'n Up. They're playing songs off his current tour's set list.

The ever-changing line-up of GDH will push the air entering your ear drums in such a manner that your neurons will dose your brain with just enough dopamine to leave your body feeling joyous and euphoric. Careful, too much could lead to schizophrenia-like symptoms.

Some band named the Road Rockets will also play.

2009-02-03T22:20:00.002-05:00

We know that a song that you can't get out of your head is called an earworm. What's a song that you listened to at least 8 times in a row called?

2009-01-27T22:03:00.002-05:00

Random stuff

1) The other night I had a million-dollar-idea in a dream:

BACK TRADERZ.com!

Trade the books you no longer want with others on-line. (Get it? Paperback....trading.....BACK TRADERZ!!!) Sorta like eBay. I haven't figured out how to make money from the idea yet but if you do, you owe me a dollar. (Oh yeah and take that silly 'z' off the end and replace it with an 's'.)

Okay, I'm back from the actual site backtraders.com who apparently are a rock band comprised of portfolio managers in Europe. I guess the 'z' stays.

2) Anyone know anything about sailing? I want to learn to sail and buy a boat. I'm considering selling a couple guitars to go towards this endeavor.

3)Wanna buy a guitar? Specifically the blue Gretsch and the brown Telecaster. Let's talk $!

You can hear them here:

and here:

4) I have FINALLY managed to produce a decent loaf of bread.

Attempt #1. Fifteen minutes is not enough time for dough to rise. Try 1h, then 30min then another 1h. Here's attempt one:

Bwahahahaha! A couple of sad little turds there. Didn't taste too bad but they were tough and dense.

Here's attempt #3 with Mamere's recipe (my deceased French-Canadian grandmother):

It's starting to resemble bread. Scrawled handwriting is hard to follow. And "half a handful"...my hand or her's? Probably her's, eh?

And finally after 2 months, 5 attempts 2 recipes and 11 loaves, we have....

...BREAD! It's light as a cloud, as tall as it should be and the proper colour...(I'm talking about that looker on the end there...ignore those other two loaves in the background)....The right yeast is important.....Now I just have to fine tune it for optimum taste output and I'm set.

#5) I haven't posted a pic of the dogs lately so here's one of them waiting for a walk. Leo thinks if he sits we'll leave faster. He's right. Mira hasn't figured that out yet.:

2009-01-01T22:24:00.006-05:00

After the After Christmas Party

Happy New Year! Coch's Corner was pretty full for the event. Optimistically, I'd say the evening was a 2/3 full glass of beer. The Octoberists were up first. We provided quite the challenge to mic as all our instruments were either feeding back or too quiet to rise above the din of the bar. We played very well but didn't sound great as a loud bar isn't our natural habitat. We'll have to get a gig at a coffee shop, the art gallery or the library again.

Woody Sims played well this night. We only messed up one song which Tom promptly scratched from the line-up permanently. Here he is with his stern face:

Terrance was in fine form with his beautiful guitars and tasteful effects:

John belted out the tunes with his powerful voice (and powerful shirt - haha):

Scotty kept the bottom solidly under us with some sweet grooves:

And I hung on for the ride with some meedeelee-meedeelies:

The crowd was into it:

We even had a semi-reunion of the Road Rockets:

Here they are jamming on John's Original "Jimmy":

Overall a great night. Thanks to family and friends for coming out. Thanks to Rob for the pics.

2008-12-23T15:04:00.001-05:00

After Christmas Party

The Octoberists

Woody Sims

Coch's Corner

Saturday, December 27th. 10:00

2008-12-10T11:08:00.007-05:00

Current Fixations (Part 5)

Film Noir/Hardboiled Detective Fiction

"It was a blonde. A blonde to make a bishop kick a hole in a stained glass window."

I've been on a huge Film Noir/ Hardboiled Detective fiction kick. Dashiell Hammett, Raymond Chandler and Ross MacDonald have been pretty much all I've been reading/watching latley. I'm loving the triple crossing, the femme fatales and the snappy dialogue.

"The minutes went by on toptoe, with their fingers to their lips."

There must be many other film noir/detective novel buffs here in the Soo because the public library has a large collection of films and novels (most of which are out or missing when I initially go to borrow them).

"The big foreign car drove itself, but I held the wheel for the sake of appearances."

A list of my recommendations from WATCH/READ NOW to pretty good to don't waste your time:

The WATCH/READ NOW!!! section:

The Maltese Falcon - by Dashiell Hammett (both book and film recommended) Among the top of the list for me. Detective Sam Spade must find a priceless statue. Check it out...you can even buy a Maltese Falcon statue on ebay! Awesome!

The Big Sleep by Raymond Chandler (both book and film recommended) - Another great pair. Philip Marlowe helps an old retired General with a blackmail case. In order to explain a few things that couldn't be shown on film at the time (pornography, homosexuality), a reading of the novel is helpful to get what's going on. As an aside, "The Big Lebowski" was loosely based on this story.

Farewell My Lovely (novel by Raymond Chandler) a.k.a. Murder My Sweet (movie) - Jade necklaces, Psychic consultants and sanitariums, it's got it all. This one is more "READ NOW" than "WATCH NOW" but still highly recommended.

Red Harvest (novel by Dashiell Hammett) The Continental Op is called to a small town threatened by competing gangs.

The Drowning Pool (novel by Ross MacDonald) Lew Archer is hired to find out who is sending slanderous letters to a California wife

The Pretty Good section:

The Blue Dahlia -(film) Raymond Chandler's only original screenplay. Said to have "more twists than a pretzel" The Blue Dahlia's plot has a man returning from the war to find his wife's been cheating on him. She is later murdered and he's the prime suspect.

Chinatown (film) - Roman Polanksi's modern take on film noir. Jack Nicholson is great as Jake Gittes, hired to tail a supposedly cheating husband.

Pickup on South Street (film) - Secret government info is stolen by a pick pocket.

Panic in the Streets (film) - a deadly virus is let loose on New Orleans. Contains many actual residents as extras.

Hammett novels:
The Dain Curse
The Glass Key
The Thin Man

The Don't waste your time section:

The Set Up
Crossfire
The Postman Always Rings Twice
Detour
The Hitch Hiker
The Scar
Poodle Springs

The Still Need to Watch/Read section:

I'd like to see Robert Mitchum's version of "Farewell, My Lovely" and "The Big Sleep".

Hammett:
The High Window
The Little Sister
The Long Goodbye
Playback

MacDonald:
The Way Some People Die
The Ivory Grin
Find a Victim
The Barbarous Coast
The Doomsters
The Galton Case
The Wycherly Woman
The Zebra Striped Hearse
The Chill
The Far Side of the Dollar
Black Money
The Instant Enemy
The Goodbye Look
Sleeping Beauty
The Blue Hammer

2008-11-06T13:12:00.008-05:00

Current Fixations (Pt. 4)

Canning

Four weeks ago I attempted to make some pickles. Here they are quartered and soaking in coarse salt and water for 2 hours. The plates on top hold the cukes under water.

This is the liquid they'll be boiled and sitting in. If I recall correctly it's vinegar, sugar, mustard seeds, dill seeds and water.

Here are the lids and the mixture that goes in the jars. It's green pepper, garlic, and dill seeds.

Boiling rapidly for 10 minutes under at least an inch of water. (Different foods and altitudes require different boiling times)

Let them sit for 4-6 weeks and voila:

I just cracked open the first jar today. Overall, I think they taste good. They're a weird combination of sweet and sharp (sour). I'm hoping more curing time will mellow them out. I'll need a second opinion on the taste and Laura's at work right now. They aren't very crispy either but not bad for a first attempt.

A few weeks later, I also made some salsa.

We opened a jar right away and it wasn't very thick but tasted good (although a bit vinegary). Once again, I'm hoping more curing time will smooth the taste out and thicken things up. Does anyone know if that's true?

I'd like to try canning chili but you can't just use a boiling water canner. You need a pressure canner (which I don't have) but maybe will find somehow.

2008-11-03T21:54:00.016-05:00

Current Fixations (Pt. 3)

Conspiracy Theories.

I enjoy a good conspiracy. JFK, the Philadelphia Experiment, 9/11, Roswell, Secrets of Fatima, I've read 'em all. They may be as silly as the latest reality t.v. but they're more interesting and more fun to chase. My latest fixation revolves around a man by the name of Reinhardt. He's constantly updating and taking down the info on his site. Right now he has a few days worth of posts up (which is a lot for him).

This video sums the story up (till Oct 4th):

The video was released on Oct. 4th. Reinhardt advised "not to wait till the 6th; sell by Oct. 1st."

On October 6th the Dow fell more than 700 points.

Here's a poster ( road4@gmail.com) from the google finance forum:

"well, I for one am very much intrigued by reinhardt

his call "sell by Oct 1, don't wait till Oct 6" was proven to be spot
on which could be lucky ... except ...

he called the March crash in Oct 07 (to the day)

and the Sept crash in July (to the day)

reinhardt knows things the rest of us don't"

I know next to nothing about the stock market. Add to that the fact that Reinhardt speaks in riddles and uses his own terminology to do so, it makes it difficult to understand what he is telling us. I rely heavily on these two threads at AboveTopSecret and GodLikeProductions to decipher what he's saying. Occasionally he'll release these large jpgs of info he's been keeping for a while. He numbers them NT-34, NT-35 etc.

Here's NT-103 (excuse the crappy formatting):

Smarter people than I have taken the information in all the NT's and put it together with the postings on his website and on the finance message board, and have come up with a theory. Here's a summary from a poster (sy5551) on GodLikeProductions:

"So far this is what I've gathered from R

Timeline:Local Economies
-There's a boom period following a recession
-A select group of industries are inflated beyond their capacities (the next big thing), at this point the money is flowing into the stock market because times are good (and supposedly 'here to stay')
-The growth period/boom lasts for two or three years where the economy does steadily better and certain companies grow exponentially in certain industries (Enron, HealthSouth, Wellcare)
-Now once the bubble has inflated to a sufficient size (through deregulation and other leniencies)it is ready to be popped
-A few major players in the inflated industries go down, taking with them all the stock holders money
-Now the stage is set for a 'panic, mania' and the economy enters a downturn
-A few more companies go bust, shaking consumer confidence, and the market falls
-About now there is a distracting event in the media (morality plays, lewinski, anthrax)
-Now they are stealing the peasants money and laundering through various avenues (Legatus & the Vatican)
-Once the money has been laundered and the checks have been 'written' there needs to be a war to destroy the paper trail (the fog of war)so they need and event to set off the war(stage we're in now)
-if multiple countries economies are down, it will be a global war (each country fighting with it's favourite enemy)
-At this time the financial sector will air it's laundry, and we'll start hearing about frauds and accounting errors
-This will lead to federal bodies (FINRA) bringing cases against the scapegoats (Skilling and others) and we will have show trials with show judges (Crater, Landis)
-The trials will bring justice to the 'rogue conspirators' and that's that, the rich people are laughing all the way to....well wherever rich people keep their money, Vatican Bank? Global Custodians?
-Now the war will kick start the economy and money will start flowing through the system (about now is when they will come out with a bill preventing corruption, to show that they did learn from last time, I wonder why they can never remember 4 years from now)
-Now the stage is set for the next boom period and the next bubble (possibly clean tech?)
The sectors that always seem to be manipulated are Energy and Healthcare in America. Anyone notice why the price of gasoline is always so much higher during summer driving season than winter? It's a scam to keep us buying gasoline in the winter, and make incredible amounts of profit when everyone needs to drive during summer, all of the Energy sector is heavily manipulated (where enron comes in), same with the numerous examples R has provided us with health care.

Globalization:
-These rich people are always looking for a deal, and to get it they outsource jobs. To outsource jobs there needs to be an infrastructure in the country you're outsourcing to.
-A bunch of American companies are contracted to build 'public works' projects in the country of choice (Cisco, Tyco)
-Before all the public works projects are completed there is a debasement to pay for the projects with investors money because it was 'lost' during the stock market crash or crash of the companies stock
-Now the projects are paid for, the companies get their money and the country gets its infrastructure for their people to work jobs cheaper than other people in America will work them
-Eventually people in this country will get tired of the jobs, and the greedy rich people will look for a new land to outsource to
-The completion dates coincide with debasements

So far this is what I've learned.

Add as you feel necessary"

Here is another poster's take on what R is saying. This poster must be pretty close 'cause R posted this graphic on his site.

Also on his site, after an article about how tens of thousands of factories in China are going under he posts this:

Did That Article Say “Tens Of Thousands Of Factories..

Are Going Under”?

And We Are Going To Get Out..

Of This Without A War?

No Way

Anyway, the main thing he's been hinting at is something big in early February (9th-ish). We'll just have to wait and see.

p.s. Just as I was putting this post up Reinhardt's site went down. Coincidence or conspiracy? dun-dun-dah! If you want to check out a sample of his site now that it's down, google enterprisecorruption.com and click on the "cached" part.

p.p.s. It's back up now. Mini-conspiracy averted.

2008-10-30T21:26:00.000-04:00

Saturday's Show at Searchmont is Cancelled.

2008-10-23T23:43:00.008-04:00

Current Fixations (Pt. 2)

Music.

This Saturday, Oct. 25th I will be filling in on guitar for Tim, (who recently left for Korea) with Woody Sims. We'll be playing three sets at Coch's Corner (the old Cellar Tap) across from the Essar Centre. Described as: "LIVE ORIGINAL MUSIC POP/FOLK/ROCK.UPBEAT LIVELY MUSIC"

This Sunday, Oct. 26th I will be reuniting with the Octoberists (again) to play at the Sault Ste. Marie Public Library. I think we'll be starting at 2:15/2:30ish.

Next Saturday, Nov. 1st I will be playing again with Woody Sims at Searchmont Ski Resort as a fund-raiser. We'll be playing with Bruized Orange. Event described as: "oysters . roast pig . cocktails by campfire light . dancing under the stars . live entertainment Saturday, November 1, 6pm . call 781-2340 for tickets ."

click (most of) the colours to visit the links.

2008-10-21T19:43:00.013-04:00

Current Fixations (Pt. 1)

Refinishing

Work has been slow lately so here's what has been occupying my time.

I had one last guitar available to me to paint - my 1989 MIK Squier II Stratocaster. This was my first ever electric guitar purchased from Arnill's Music. Using money I made from doing yard-work at Aunty Rita's house and with Ernie topping off the difference I finally had this black beauty. I loved that guitar so much I memorized the serial number (still know it!) and made a glass case for it. (Nerd!) Check out those cool stickers I made with some sign vinyl and an xacto knife in grade 9. haha

Notice the broken E tuner. I found a new set of tuners from a guy on offset-guitars.com. Got a good deal on them but they were too large for the existing holes. Enter Uncle Evert who widened the holes for a perfect fit and routed out the body cavity for the new pickguard too.

Here it is taken apart:

And sanded down:

And taped up:

Six weeks later...right after sanding and sanding and sanding and buffing. This is my best paint job yet. No sand-throughs! I was extremely happy.

Krylon's 'Fairytale Pink':

Indoor lighting:

And outdoors:

And now the sad news. I tried using a cheap type of gloss and a week or two after I did the final buffing these weird scratches and a 'fog' of sorts began to show in places. I'm not redoing it so I'll just pass it off as a 'relic'. haha

For those of you not familiar with the idiotic guitar market, to relic a guitar is to take a perfectly fine guitar and scratch it up with a belt sander, age the parts in muriatic acid, sit it in the sun to fade the paintjob, stuff it in a box of lit cigarettes and wear the fretboard down in an attempt to make it look like they used the guitar for decades in smoky dives. In a word, Dumb.

I don't mind the look of a well played guitar, but get that look from PLAYING THE GUITAR! Anyway, enough nerdy talk. What has been keeping you busy?

2008-10-01T10:47:00.006-04:00

Mira and Leo

We adopted two new greyhounds. Here's what they looked like on the adoption website:

Their racing names were "Bally's Lori" and "I'm Jimney". We looked up their racing information at greyhound-data.com and found out that Lori (now known as Mira) only raced 6 races and Jimney (a.k.a. Leo) didn't race at all. In contrast, Rosa (Rosa Martina) raced 156 times and Al (Nita's Rowdy) had 55 races under his belt. Rosa and Al were both 5 when we adopted them. This time Mira and Leo are both 2.

We were unsure of how they would deal with each other in a confined space so we muzzled them. They got along pretty well - a couple of growls but nothing major. This time the drive was much more pleasant than when we got Rosa (no speeding tickets - two last time!, no van filled with diarrhea and the drive was 2 hours shorter.)

This is Mira. She's tiny. She is so sweet. She wraps her body around you when you pet her.

She is stubborn and will definitely be trouble. Here she is learning about windows.

Here's Leo. He's small too (compared to Al). He is very chill. He's very food motivated and already learned to sit.

Here he is doing what greys do best. Also, we'll have to fatten him up.

You can see the baldness on Leo's back thighs from "crate rub". Al had it too but it grew in nicely. Also check out the chunk of ear missing from Leo.

They've learned stairs - good thing because our house has a lot of them. It's nice to have dogs around again.

Here's some video:

2008-09-24T16:02:00.002-04:00

How to make a Vacuum Tube

Check out this video. It's 17 minutes long but pretty interesting.

Fabrication d'une lampe triode
Uploaded by F2FO

2008-09-21T14:01:00.010-04:00

Gardening Returns

Despite all my rookie mistakes ("What's this 'pruning' you speak of?"), we ended up with a pretty good haul. Our only casuality was the corn. It didn't make it. Who knew you were supposed to fertilize? Anyway, here's some shots of our harvest so far.

Carrots. They're extremely sweet. In the background on the right you can see my grape vine and the left is the raspberry bush that did pretty well this year too. I was going to try and plant a hazelnut tree from the one at the camp but didn't get around to it. I'll have to learn more about them first - next year, I guess.

Some cukes. I didn't find that huge one for a while (obviously).

Our tomatoes are still not ripening so we picked a bunch today to ripen inside.

We left some out there for on-the-vine ripening. Cherry tomatoes:

I would like to attempt to can some tomato sauce (from scratch) and some salsa. We'll see if that comes to fruition. Canning is another skill I have no idea how to do. But I did buy a book and have two new buddies. David and Andrea at Canning USA have a video called "If I Can, You Can" that will show me how to do it. I love these guys! Check out David's smile at the beginning and Andrea is so wooden. haha love 'em!

Here's our basil and mint. The mint is out of control, like almost every plant we have but it's delicious in mojitos.

And here is the beginning of my wolfberry bushes (aka goji berries). I just took some seeds from dried wolfberries purchased at the Bulk Barn and planted them. Six out of 8 attempts sprouted. We'll see how many survive to one day bear fruit.

The spinach and lettuce were growing like crazy, so we pulled them out and ate them all. It took a while to get through all that lettuce. The beans and peas came out well too, but I didn't take any pics of them.

So for next year, I'd like to learn how to prune and fertilize properly and maybe even learn how to 'seed save'. (Maybe I can still do that last one. There is so much to learn.)

2008-09-06T09:40:00.002-04:00

Yesterday on the GRACanada website a posting was made by the gentleman who runs the adoption agency:

MESSAGE FROM BILL

Every fall there is a desperate need for Greyhounds retiring from the seasonal tracks in the northeast USA. This year is no exception. We have been asked to help out again with dogs from New Hampshire.
Last fall I took 104 retired racers in Sep/Oct, but that resulted in far too many dogs in the kennel. I offered our help again this year, but will not take more than 50 in the kennel at one time.

Everyone can help by promoting Greyhounds as the wonderful pets that they are. Arrange a "Greyhound Awareness Day" at a local store or business. Have your local paper do a "Human Interest Story" which features your Greyhounds. If talking to anyone who shows an interest in adopting then throw them in your car and bring them to GRA. If we all work together we can resolve this problem and move all these wonderful dogs on to their very own couch.

PLEASE REMEMBER "NONE OF THESE RETIREES WILL BE PUT DOWN"
THE TRACKS ARE COMMITTED TO CARING FOR ALL DOGS UNTIL THEY
MOVE INTO ADOPTION GROUPS.

Listed below are the names of 24 Greyhounds I have offered to take this month.
You may check pictures here..........http://nhgreyhoundadoption.com/PlacedDogs.html

GIRLS
PJ's Final Cut Prime 2 LtBd
PJ's Princess Princess 2 Bk
WW Piperstone Red 2 Rd Sis to Tonto & Cabbie
WW Citi Card CityGirl 2 RdBd
RS Punk Punky 2 Wt/Bd
Coral Sky Coral 3 Rd
Tocomic Beauty Aggie 3 Bd Sis to Dixie
Wapawung Lady Dixie 3 Bd Sis to Aggie

BOYS
WW's Tonto Tonto 2 RdBd Bro to Red & Cabbie
Running Bamboo Bamboo 2 Fn
Cagin Brock Harry 2 Fn
Bally's Dawson Dawson 2 DkBd
JJ's Waterproof Waterproof 2 DkBd
Independence 2 Fn
Explosion 2 Wt/Fn
Favourite 2 Wt/Bk
Fonzy 2 LtBd
Sean 2 Wt/Bk
Crystal B Nemo Nemo 3 Wt/RdBd
Crystal B Oscar Oscar 3 Bk Bro to Brat
CTW Road Ranger Ranger 3 Rd
Red In The Head Rebel 3 RdBd
PJ's Razor Sharp Al 3 Bd
Inlove Withme Chucky 3 Bd

Click here to see who GRA has now.

2008-09-02T18:24:00.021-04:00

Please press play on this while you read this entry. Don't feel the need to watch the video.

Some Things Last A Long Time

Today I killed my best friend.

This friend I have known longer than my wife. This friend would be with me for many years, supporting me every step of the way. Helping me through good times and bad, watching my every move, looking to me for approval, eager to please and ready to do what made me happy. This friend was my greyhound, Alagash. ("Al" for short)

Years ago I was shopping in a second hand book shop on Queen St. (I forget the name of the now-closed store). There were many paintings by local artists on display. I distinctly remember one offering of rocks on a beach - you know, your typical Lake Superior scene. Lying in the middle of the shop was a dog, a giant beast; a Newfoundlander tolerating the customers who were infringing on it's territory. I was struck by it's easy-going attitude and it's acceptance of my enthusiastic rubs.

When I got home I did an internet search for "Newfoundlander" and "rescue". I've always been a fan of the larger breeds. After reading a bit about the breed (I noticed Newfies came with a lot of drool and a lot of hair which was not my cup of tea) I scanned further down the "search results" page and there were a few hits about rescuing retired racing greyhounds.

I learned they were one of (if not the) oldest breed of dog in the world. The only breed mentioned in the bible, they were on the higher end on the scale of intelligence and the lower end of shedding, barking, and activity - 40mph couch potatoes.

During the Black Plague they were saved by monks who took it upon themselves to preserve the noble beasts.

In 1016 the Canute Laws were written and enacted in Parliament. The 31st law makes reference to the Greyhound:

"No meane person may keepe any greyhounds, but freemen may keepe greyhounds”.

Being (what I consider) a nice person and definitely not mean, this law appealed to me.

Also, greyhounds were the only breed I knew of who smiled!

But I would have to wait. After graduation, I lived at home with my parents (who were kind enough to put me up for a year and a half) while I saved money to travel the world. I made it to Adelaide, Australia where the generous family who boarded me learned of my interest in greyhounds. They took me to a racing track where I met an enormous black male.

I was sold.

Eventually I moved to Sydney where I attended the races every Monday and Saturday. I never placed a bet but I did hang around the kennels to admire the beautiful creatures in my "Soo Greyhounds" ballcap.

After about a year of traveling, I returned to Sault Ste. Marie and decided to move to Toronto to experience big city life. After two years in T-dot and I found myself back in the Soo. My grandmother ("Nonna") needed a roommate and I was finally ready to be settled in one place long enough to own a dog.

Aunty Karen needed a rental car driver to Southern Ontario for a business trip and that's where I came in. I dropped her off at her meeting and swung down to GRA Canada where I met Bill. He had a couple hounds ready to go home. I was hoping for a black one (actually I was really hoping for a grey one - which in greyhound circles was known as the colour blue - but they were beyond rare).

Initially, I took a beautiful black male out for a walk but he was scared of his own shadow. "He's going to need a lot of work." Bill said. Next up was a fawn coloured male - my least favourite colour. "Nita's Rowdy" sprang out of the kennel and jumped up on Bill's van. "Whoah. This guy is feisty.", I thought. As a first time greyhound owner Bill advised me to take Rowdy. "He'll be better off as an only dog." And Rowdy it was. (Later I would change his name to Al.)

Al was there when my grandmother died - misguidingly protecting her from the paramedics.

Al and I got along great. We went for many walks around the neighbourhood; Fort Creek, the Boardwalk, Top Sail Island, Hiawatha, and Sinclair Yards. Eventually I had Al taking a lady I had an interest in on walks.

This lady would eventually become my wife who I later talked into getting a greyhound of her own. A nightmare drive to Southern O. and back in one day yielded two speeding tickets, a van full of diarrhea and our beautiful girl Rosa. This summer, Rosa died unexpectedly doing what she loved most: running like mad with my brother's boxer Danny.

November 2007 was when Al was diagnosed with cancer. His limping had caught my attention. We brought him to the vet for some x-rays where I was shocked to learn that it was bone cancer. He was given 2 to 4 months to live. A week later he broke his leg. He would use 3 legs for the rest of his life.

This brings us to the present, ten months later, Al had lost a lot of weight, was having a lot of trouble breathing and the cantaloupe-sized tumour on his leg was bleeding uncontrollably (mostly at 2am). I agonized the entire long weekend. Should I bring him in or should I wait till he gave me a sign? I had decided to make the appointment.

Al was the toughest dog the vet had ever seen. They might have just been trying to be nice but they mentioned this 3 times. After they had injected him with the entire contents of the needle, he was still breathing, still hanging on. Dr. D had to go and get more "medicine" to put him down. You could imagine how this made me feel. "Maybe he had more life in him. I made the appointment too soon."

Every time I had ever brought him to the vet he would be straining at his leash towards the exit. Today he gave me the sign I was looking for. Straining to go to the operating table.

Our house is quiet now. We're not dog owners anymore. It's been a sad summer.

Some Things Last A Long Time
Your picture is still on my wall, on my wall
The colors are bright, bright as ever
Red is strong and blue is pure
Some things last a long time
Some things last a long time

Your picture is still on my wall, on my wall
I think about you often, often
I won't forget all the things we did
Some things last a long time
Some things last a long time

It's funny, but it's true
And it's true, but it's not funny
Time comes and goes
All of the while, I still think about you
Some things last a long time

Your picture is still on my wall, on my wall
The colors are bright, bright as ever the things we did i can´t forget
Some things last a lifetime
Some things last a lifetime
Some things last a lifetime

I am aware this is a cheesy and corny and self-indulgent but isn't that what blogs are for? And if you don't like it, well as my UK friends say, you can git tae!

2008-08-11T23:45:00.004-04:00

Final Jazzmaster Installment

I was having trouble getting the JM wired up. I followed the diagram to a T but it still wasn't working. Finally, I took the guitar out to my supa-smart uncle and he figured out the problem. The lead switch was wired wrong. I couldn't find any good pics of what was going on there and the diagram was confusing (to me), particularly this part:

I didn't know which wire should attach where in the middle. My uncle figured it out and now everything works right. So without further ado here is the final product:

Click for full size

You can see my one major sand through here. I'll probably fix that later:

Here it is with my Ocean Turquoise Jaguar:

Here's a colour comparison between the Ocean Turquoise and ReRanch's Sherwood Green. Pretty close. It depends on the angle you look at the Sherwood. The metal flakes are much larger in the SG than the OTM.

And in honour of the Wings, I found this patch on ebay and sewed it on my strap:

I'll probably do a video demo of the sound once I figure out what song I want to play.

Next up, my very first electric guitar, a 1989 Squier II Strat, MIK. I had lent it to Bryan for a couple years but I've got it back now and am going to paint it. Right now it's black. Wait'll you see what colour I'm going with.

2008-08-08T12:50:00.001-04:00

Check out this video:

Super-Slo-Mo Lightning

You won't be sorry.

2008-08-07T20:02:00.000-04:00

From Russel Targ's autobiography "Do You See What I See? Lasers and Love, ESP and the CIA and the Meaning of Life - Memoirs of a Blind Biker":

"It is also interesting to note that the aircraft that flew into the Twin Towers on 9/11 were unusually empty. I specifically checked to find that all the high-jacked planes were carrying only half or less, of the usual number of passengers. Perhaps one unusually empty plane could be explained away, but all four? Similarly W.E. Cox (at J.B. Rhine's Duke University laboratory) found in the 1950s that railroad trains that crashed or derailed on the East Coast had significantly fewer passengers on the day they crashed than the same trains on other days - even taking weather into account. These data show that people can indeed use their intuition to save their lives."

2008-06-21T12:28:00.004-04:00

Jazzmaster Project

The body is on day 29 of a 45 day curing process. (I just randomly chose 45 days) While I was waiting I figured I would finish the neck so here it is:

I used the ReRanch neck amber. At first I thought it was too yellow but it's grown on me and I like it now. I sanded with 600, 800, 1500, and 2000 grit then polished with 3M Finesse It and Scratch X. Flamey:

I had a couple sand throughs that I sort-of fixed. Lookit that mirror shine. Much better than my Tele Deluxe practice job.

Looks pretty good right? Do you foresee any problems? I didn't. (Obviously) Take a closer look:

The string tree covers the decal. Dammit. While not a major problem on function, aesthetically it looks dumb. And with my extreme frustration of putting in all that work on the neck only to have it come out not how I wanted I wasn't paying attention and screwed in the string tree right into the finish. Bah! On the plus side, look how sparklie it came out.

I also put the tuners in.

2008-06-16T22:09:00.002-04:00

Ladies and Gentlemen...CAMERON C!!!!!

2008-06-12T22:32:00.004-04:00

Whacked Out English

Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo.

James while John had had had had had had had had had had had a better effect on the teacher

2008-06-05T11:24:00.001-04:00

YEAH!!!!!

2008-05-27T14:05:00.004-04:00

Square Foot Gardening

Laura took a one night course on Square Foot Gardening at Sault College a little while back. This weekend we put our garden together. Here it is in our backyard. It doesn't look like much now but hopefully it'll be teeming with life, (or more specifically vegetables) later on. Laura planted corn, beans, cucumber, tomato, carrots, lettuce and spinich. We built the box out of wood left over from the fence I built last summer. It's eight feet by three feet.

We've also started a compost. (behind the shed)

Keeping in the vein of gardening, I bought Laura an AeroGarden for her birthday. Here it is in operation. She's planted Red Basil, Dill, Parsley, Basil, Chives, Thyme, and Mint. You can also see our tomatoes started.

We made sure to buy Heirloom Seeds so that we can seed save and have some for next season. We found this place on the net.

I also plan on learning how to can/preserve and found this thing that pickles in 4-5 days instead of the regular wait time: The Picklemeister (scroll down)

Any experienced gardeners out there have tips for first timers? (well, a first timer...Laura already has gardening experience)

p.s. The Red Wings are seriously dominating the Pens. Two shutouts. In a row. In the Stanley Cup Finals.

2008-05-18T23:32:00.006-04:00

Guitar Update

Those of you who aren't guitar nerds...bear with me as this will be over in about 3 months (two of which will be devoted to curing). The painting process has begun (without the co-operation of the weather - The humidity has been too high so I moved the painting from the shed to the basement at the detriment of my little family. On the plus side I am enjoying the sweet apple smell of nitro lacquer. No one else is.)

Anyway. I had to disassemble the entire guitar and was worried about scratching the headstock trying to get the tuner bushings out. I remembered reading about an old trick. Heat 'em up and they'll pop right out:

I used an entire can of Sand&Sealer for the body (which was way too much according to those in the know - but that's what it took to get it right)

Used an entire can to primer it (which was way too much according to those in the know - but that's what it took to get it right) and put bondo in the places I missed:

Spraying metallics are different because they contain a "flop agent" that keeps the little aluminum flakes standing at random angles which result in all teh pretty sparklies. If the paint goes on too wet it overrides the flop control and it's not as sparkley. So being overly cautious I sprayed super light. This was my sixth coat:

After some good natured ribbing from the ReRanch message board ("Were you spraying from across the room?!?!?!) I moved closer and things started looking better. The next coat:

I also started on the neck. In pictures it doesn't look too bad but in real life it's really yellow. I used ReRanch's aged amber to simulate the look of a neck aged from the '50s but it didn't turn out how I envisioned. Who cares?

Taped up:

After gloss:

Also the colour wasn't quite what I had in mind. This was what I was hoping for:

This is what I ended up with. Notice how close it is to the factory finish Ocean Turquoise Metallic I have on my Jaguar:

After I moved on to some clear coats it did darken somewhat:

Next I will spray two more cans of clear then let it sit for 2 months. Then sand the crap out of it till it's like a mirror. (Notice all that "orange peel" I'll have to sand out)

2008-04-22T23:23:00.003-04:00

This Olde Guitar

Last week I routed the neck pocket to get the standard 25 1/2 inch scale, got the neck on straight without stripping any screws (finally after 4 attempts), mounted the pickguard, strap buttons and tremolo. This thing is starting to resemble a guitar. I couldn't resist trying it on.....NERD!:

This is the nut I ordered. Notice it's wider than the hole it's supposed to sit in. It also runs over the binding.

A little trim with the dremel gets it to fit:

This guy showed me how to cut the nut (which I haven't quite finished yet)

The pencil is for marking how deep to file the string slots. It lines up with the frets.

These aftermarket pickguards aren't too good. Exhibit A:

I routed out that large chunk in the bottom and enlarged the holes for the bridge posts.

These aftermarket pickguards aren't too good Exhibit B: Check out the gap it left at the rhythm switch:

A drive out to Pointe Aux Pins and Uncle Evert to the rescue. He made this little patch for me. I glued it in and traced the outline of the switch that will sit in the rout:

Here it is with the gap fixed. You shouldn't be able to tell once it's painted. Also....STRINGS!:

I played it today for the first time!!! The action was all whacked and there were no pickups but acoustically it's friggin' loud.

I also installed the string tree. (No pics of that) All that's left is to wire it up and paint it. Sooooo close yet so far away...

2008-04-14T12:16:00.006-04:00

Build Detour

I had originally planned to do this after my JM project was done but I came across these pickups/pickguard/pots on ebay for super cheap and snatched them up. I think they were cheap 'cause the guy wanted a money order only and no one was willing to take the chance. (Ebay doesn't cover money lost if you pay by money order. They do if you pay by PayPal.)

I never realized how huge those Wide Rangers are compared to the Squier pups.

The pickguard had to be squeezed in in order to get it to fit.

Here you can see where I'll have to do a bit of routing.

I routed the body by hand with a dremel borrowed from my uncle:

Used Jeremy's multimeter to figure out which was the bridge and which was the neck pickup because the guy didn't label them. The values were 8.5k and 8.3k respectively.
Took some finagling but managed to solder and fit the gigantic WRs in there:

Posed shot:

The only downside is that they didn't come with screws and springs so I can't set the pickup heights (and actually use the guitar) until those come in the mail. It was nice to actually do something right the first time as the JM project has been giving me great difficulty for a while now. I may have to redrill the neck holes a fourth time.

2008-04-07T23:20:00.007-04:00

Build Update

This weekend I went out to the camp to get the holes drilled for the neck. My first attempt was ugly so Uncle Dennis gave me a hand this time. You can see my first attempt (the dowels). Hopefully this one works out.

The electronic components arrived as well:

Pots, switches, jack, roller knobs:

Wires and wiring diagram:

I also started to install the tuners. They're the first thing I've done on this project that I didn't screw up the first time. I shouldn't talk too soon though as I haven't quite finished them yet:

I'll have to enlarge the holes to get the collet to fit.

Up next is: buy a neck pickup, wire it all together, test it out, take it apart, paint it, wait a month for the paint to cure, put it all back together and finally play it.

2008-04-03T13:06:00.000-04:00

2008-03-30T23:33:00.000-04:00

2008-03-12T10:19:00.005-04:00

Bottom's Up Leap Day Gig

Once again, thanks to our supportive friends we brought the Bottom's Up Lounge to capacity. It was a rollicking good time. I ended up playing in all three sets because the Road Rockets needed a bass player (Jake was in Chicago). The Neil Young cover band F*!#In' Up was super fun! And GDH was a blast too. Thanks to Rob for the pics.

The Road Rockets:

Rob on the skins:

C-dogs rockin' it!

Anthony and Dave laying down a solid foundation for F*!#In' Up
Shane and his trusty tele:
Joe and his trusty rawk stains
After a good setup the (fake) Tele Deluxe played amazingly well:

Adam buys me the best t-shirts:
Awarded best in Show:

Rob even took some video of us playing Built to Spill's "The Plan":

2008-03-06T22:10:00.003-05:00

My Jazzmaster Project

My birthday gift from my parents this year was money to buy a neck for my as-of-yet-unnamed guitar project.

Thanks to the tutelage and encouragement of More Cowbell from ShortScale.org I decided to attempt the blocks and binding thing. Here are some pics from the process.

M.C. sent me the measurements of the blocks on his Fender Coronado. I measured and taped off the appropriate sizes:

I borrowed a Dremel from my uncle and bought a router attachment off eBay (5 bucks!) to do this:

Used that saw in front to cut the mother of pearl I eBayed and sanded them down to (for the most part) straight sides:

Slopped some plastic wood in and squished the MOP down:

This is before any sanding is done. You can see the raised edges at the bottoms of most of the blocks. Before grinding:
Grinding, then sanding with 220, 320, 600, 800 and 1500 grit. After that I stained the plastic wood with walnut stain (yellow marker above)

It's definitely not perfect but I'm happy with how it turned out. Here is the final product:

Next up is saving up money for the electronics, wiring it all up to the pickguard, then waiting for the appropriate weather to paint. Yeah!

2008-02-18T22:21:00.007-05:00

Friday, Feb. 29th

Bottom's Up Lounge

The Road Rockets, GDH and F*!#In' Up.

I'll be playing bass with the RRs since Jake will be in Chicago. F*!#In' Up is us doing a bunch of Neil Young covers. Don't expect to know most of the songs unless you're a big Neil fan. Come out and enjoy the music anyway.

Thanks to whoever made the pic above.

2008-01-29T21:48:00.000-05:00

Seen on this week's Post Secret:

(I didn't send it in.)

2008-01-23T10:13:00.000-05:00

2008-01-22T10:26:00.000-05:00

Birthday Present

Laura bought me an ipod touch for my birthday. It's pretty neat. WiFi internet, pics, video and of course music. When sideways the screen automatically flips sideways where you can scroll through all your album covers.

2008-01-21T22:57:00.000-05:00

Bad Astronomy Blog Top Ten Astronomy Pictures of 2007

Some neat shots here.

And this from NASA's STEREO ( Solar Terrestrial Relations Observatory) - 3D pics of the sun with the moon moving across it.

p.s. Here's 50 Things We Know Now (That We Didn't Know Last Year)
and the 2006 Edition.

I used #2 a lot on my students last year.

The part of the brain that regulates reasoning, impulse control and judgment is still under construction during puberty and doesn't shift into autopilot until about age 25.

2008-01-16T13:05:00.000-05:00

Walk About

A couple weekends ago I walked down to a matinee. I decided to snap a few pics on the way to document a regular day.

Oh yeah and COMING SOON - GDH and The Road Rockets at Bottoms Up Lounge, Feb. 29th, 2008.

2008-01-13T14:44:00.000-05:00

Guitar ReFinishing

I belong to a message board where one of the members makes guitars for people. He offered to make bodies for members at a super cheap price (a quarter of the going rate). I decided to try and put together a Jazzmaster. By the end (hopefully this spring) it should look like this:

In order to learn how to refinish a guitar I purchased a cheap Squier Telecaster Custom and decided to turn it into a (fake) Fender Telecaster Deluxe.

Here's what I started with way back in October:

An inexpensive neck was purchased off ebay:
(not actual neck pictured)

The body and headstock were sanded down:

Primer was sprayed (poorly - lookit all those runs!):

More sanding (more mistakes):

Many products were purchased:
(most of them not needed, like these for example)

Sprayed the paint on (Krylon's Honeydew green).

Then F#*&*ING WalMart took seven (!) weeks to get Deft Gloss Clear Coat in. I went every Sunday after hockey for Seven Weeks (!). Every week the first words to Laura when I got home was "F&*&^ING WalMart!" (I know, serves me right for shopping at WalMart. In my defense they were the only place that sells it. I went to 6 other stores first.)

Applied the decal to the headstock:

Played a kick ass show with Barker:
(notice women's underwear thrown at us hanging on mic stand)

Sprayed the gloss and let it sit for a month.

Finally yesterday I wet sanded with mineral oil from 1:00 pm till 7:00 pm (minus eating time), working my way up the grits (320, 400, 600, 800, 1200) then polished it with 3M's Finesse It II. This is what I ended up with:

It's not as shiny as the guys at the ReRanch Guitar Refinishing Forum but it's acceptable for a first time.

Things I'll do differently for the Jazzmaster:
1) Use even finer grit sand paper (1500, 2000 etc) to get it like a mirror finish
2) Be more careful sanding on the edges. There are a ton of sand-throughs there.
3) Fix any sand-throughs.
4) Use the good masking tape. I used the cheap kind and it left a bunch of residue.

2008-01-07T14:59:00.000-05:00

The City Cat

This is neat. I haven't looked through their website yet but sounds like a good idea.

The MDI Air Car.

2008-01-03T23:58:00.000-05:00

Happy New Year.

Coch's Corner was a blast. Everyone sounded really great and the place was packed. Coch told us we had it almost to capacity (which is around 210).

We added Steve-o to the brass section:

Sarah helps out with some BGVs:

We recruited a new bass player (our fourth), introducing Dave:

Barker joins the Road Rockets for a couple tunes and gets the crowd out of their seats:

The Woody Sims Trio in the groove:

A twelve cornered stone in South America - part of a wall held together with no mortar. How'd they put this thing together?

I forgot my camera so thanks to Rob and Rhonda for these pics I lifted from Facebook.

2007-12-12T22:42:00.000-05:00

Hey Everyone,
Saturday, December 22nd will see us on stage at Coch's Corner (A.K.A. The Cellar Tap). Mr. Gagnon's Gr. 10 class (GDH) will be performing "Away in a Manger" on Benjamin Franklin's Glass Armonica. Mr. M. Dunne's Gr. 6 class (The Road Rockets) will read "the Night Before Christmas" and Mr. Walker's Spec. Ed. class (Woody Sims Trio) will try not to cut their gums on the candy canes. There will be guest appearances by Prof. Barker, holiday cheer and stories to last you at least until Smarch. Damn Smarch weather!

Anyway, come on out and have some fun!

p.s. The Octoberists are playing Thursday at Eargasm opening for This Guy

2007-10-31T21:01:00.001-04:00

OH MY GOD!!!!!

GO OVER TO JOHN KILDUFF'S MYSPACE PAGE RIGHT NOW!!!!

CHECK OUT HIS PHOTOS!!!!

YES!!!!!

If you forget who John is:

The host of Let's Paint T.V.

2007-10-21T01:31:00.000-04:00

The Octoberists in October at Loplops

Friday night was a mixed bag. On the positive side, the place was packed and full of energy, Amber and Cliff sounded excellent (as always), many friends came out to cheer very loudly and Jacob and Lily were very entertaining.

On the not-so-positive side I had a rough go of it. We had a tough time getting the mix right, a lack of practice left me ill prepared for the evening and during a favourite song of ours my guitar was seriously out of tune. Oh well, I still had fun.

Don't forget about November 3rd at Bottoms Up. Carl is still playing but Shane had to drop out due to his being out of town. I think Tim is going to step in to fill the empty set. Laura and I will be playing many instruments (8? 9?). It should be a logistical nightmare to pull off. Crash and burn or soaring high, it will be entertaining nonetheless.

p.s. Thanks to morningjane for the video. (ie: screen cap above)

2007-10-08T13:29:00.000-04:00

A few random things.

1) The other morning I awoke to the sound of delayed rhythmic banging downstairs. Laura was at work and the dogs were in view so I was puzzled as to what it was. As I reached the bottom of the stairs something quickly flew by and into the window. Somehow a bird had gotten in our house. I closed all the drapes and opened the patio door and eventually corralled the bird outside. My sister tells me it is a harbinger of bad luck. Uh-oh.

2) Back in early August I revived my dormant desire to be able to lucid dream. I tried a few years ago but ended up losing interest after having 2 lucid dreams. Well, so far I have been able to have two more. The first one happened the day after I shaved my head. I dreamed I was looking in a mirror and had a full head of hair. "I just shaved my head....I must be dreaming. I'M DREAMING". I shouted and spun around with my hands victoriously in the air. I got so excited I woke up. The second one was last night. I ended up flying through a window and around my grandmother's old house.

3) I read somewhere that a small amount of acetone (the 100% pure kind - found at drug stores) will increase your fuel mileage by 35% or more due to the fact that it reduces the surface tension that inhibits vaporization of some fuel droplets. They recommend you try it for a while, then stop and see the difference it makes. I will test this out.

4) I have a whole bunch of gigs coming up.

The Octoberists will be opening for Jacob and Lily at Loplops Friday, October 19th.

Laura and I will be doing an acoustic set at the Bottoms Up Lounge Saturday, Novemeber 3rd. Shane and Carl will be doing a set each, as well.

According to my brother GDH will be playing the SpeakEasy soon. All date are tentative.

2007-09-26T14:46:00.000-04:00

The Revue

The Octoberists show was a good time. I have no pics and for some reason I just can't get the video to split or even get vid caps from it so you'll just have to take my word for it.

Mark played about four songs (extended versions) including my request for "Rocket".

Lindsay fit in a set of beautiful slide blues on a National guitar before he had to go to a gig at Loplops.

And we played for about 45mins. We did pretty good considering we hadn't jammed in years (4,5?). I would like things cleaned up a bit before the gig we are hoping to get at Loplops sometime in late October. The crowd was small but made up of well wishing friends. Thanks for coming out.

2007-09-12T16:25:00.000-04:00

Craig made us a poster for Friday's gig:

2007-09-10T00:38:00.000-04:00

THE RETURN OF THE OCTOBERISTS!!!

Friday, September 14th at Eargasm Records/Arcadia Coffeeshop the Octoberists will be performing a set of classics for the first time in I-don't-know-how-many years.

Lindsay Pugh will be starting the evening off followed by the Octoberists, then Mark Dunn will end the night. Cliff Alloy will be returning the next night.

Also, The Woody Simms Tree-oh will be playing the Bottom's Up Lounge on Saturday.

So get off your couch! There's plenty of time for that when winter rolls around.

2007-08-24T12:50:00.000-04:00

Laura and I were married on Friday:

2007-08-03T01:41:00.000-04:00

Meet Tay Zonday

Rock Version:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GrwrI4fkEEM
Drum n' Bass Version:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aOH-ebtCdFk
Darth Vader Version:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_gDGXI2ZjGE
The Old Nintendo Version:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=caIBKOztlAo
Catholic Nun Version:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=09gUaK8Lxrw&mode=related&search=

2007-07-30T17:34:00.000-04:00

Friday Recap

I would consider the Bottoms Up Lounge show to be a success.

I couldn't play a guitar solo to save my life that night but my singing was good so I'll take the trade off. The rest of the band and all our guests (Laura, Sarah & Carl) were spot on.

It was the first time we ever had people in a line up waiting to get in. (I know, the B.U.L.'s capacity is around 60 but it's still cool that people will wait in line to hang out with you and possibly listen to the music.) We received many compliments on the music and judging from the comments the volume level was perfect for our set. (see my worry from the previous post). We covered "Hanging on the Telephone" which went off pretty well. Anyway, on to the pics:

Anthony with the set list shirt:

Shane multitasking:
GDH band shot:
Singing:
Shane works the crowd:

The Road Rockets had their own special guests:

Three fifths of the Woody Sims Tree-o rocked out to a surprise version of "Cortez the Killer":

So thanks to the Bottoms Up Lounge for having us and thanks to everyone who came out.

2007-07-21T11:32:00.001-04:00

Friday, July 27th at the Bottom's Up Lounge

GDH is playing with the Road Rockets. We'll probably tone it down a bit so as not to bring the walls down. It's kinda small so we'll bust out the acoustic and banjo for some tunes.

(p.s. New pickguards!!!)

2007-06-30T01:14:00.000-04:00

http://www.zeitgeistmovie.com/

2007-06-19T20:12:00.000-04:00

RRCDRP*

Friday night was the *Road Rocket's CD Release Party. (You wouldn't know it though 'cause they pretty much refused to let that fact be known). GDH opened for them. I won't say too much about it except that Anthony and the Animal (who played the entire set with us) were both spot on and the RRs played one of their better sets. Here's some pics:

GDH stands for Goddam Hairless according to Anthony's co-worker

Playing the guitar I accidentally won on eBay. I don't look too upset about it, eh?:

The angles go, "How long till you can see her?" (see video post from 19/05/2007):

Shane belting one out:

Arrr!
The Animal fake playing. (Just an excuse to post another pic of the g5127):

Rob gettin' rowdy:

Jake and T table dancing:

Guitar solo:
Road Rocket's Band Shot:

2007-06-18T22:17:00.000-04:00

2007-06-17T01:04:00.000-04:00

This is very cool. Go here and watch it.

2007-06-12T23:04:00.000-04:00

2007-05-26T02:06:00.000-04:00

We are playing at Foggy's on Saturday (TODAY) with The WoodySimsTreeoh.

2007-05-25T20:45:00.000-04:00

I think we're playing Saturday at Foggy's with The Woody Sims Tree-oh. We'll be playing some old originals and some new covers.

2007-05-19T18:52:00.000-04:00

Dear Producers of "28 Weeks Later",

Next time you feel the need to make a movie I have a proposal for you. I will go to Galaxy Cinemas in the Station Mall, pay my nine dollars and fifty cents and you can literally shit in my eyes. It will be a lot less painless than the two hours I spent in the theatre with your soul sucking garbage.

thanks,
ludger

On a more positive note, when I lived in Toronto I went to see Julie Doiron play - later on Rick White got up on stage with her for the first time in years! It was cool. But back to my story.

Opening for her was a skinny bearded guy from France. He played his silly love songs on ukelele as he wandered through the audience with no mics. The audience was transfixed. Well, I found him on YouTube doing his thing. Enjoy!

2007-05-07T21:59:00.000-04:00

the other night i was searching for camp caribou websites while laura was trying to put her fist in her mouth.

2007-04-28T14:48:00.000-04:00

"True Love Will Find You In The End"

Well, I finally got a long term occasional position (which means full time work for me). I'm teaching a grade 9 science, gr. 10 science (for low functioning students) and a gr. 12 religion. This means that my internet time has been severely encroached upon and postings will be slowed. In that short time I did manage to find this interesting article from Psychology Today. Here's an excerpt:

"All people are born alike—except Republicans and Democrats," quipped Groucho Marx, and in fact it turns out that personality differences between liberals and conservatives are evident in early childhood. In 1969, Berkeley professors Jack and Jeanne Block embarked on a study of childhood personality, asking nursery school teachers to rate children's temperaments. They weren't even thinking about political orientation.

Twenty years later, they decided to compare the subjects' childhood personalities with their political preferences as adults. They found arresting patterns. As kids, liberals had developed close relationships with peers and were rated by their teachers as self-reliant, energetic, impulsive, and resilient. People who were conservative at age 23 had been described by their teachers as easily victimized, easily offended, indecisive, fearful, rigid, inhibited, and vulnerable at age 3. The reason for the difference, the Blocks hypothesized, was that insecure kids most needed the reassurance of tradition and authority, and they found it in conservative politics."

2007-04-21T00:36:00.000-04:00

Wow

2007-04-15T11:29:00.000-04:00

"God is a word and the argument ends there."

Here is a large and rambling e-mail I once sent. It is tangentially related to this post here about the Catholic Church. As you know, occasionally I imbibe a few drinks and e-mail drunken screeds to people kind enough to read them and still be my friend. This is one from last summer and it has a bit of some spicy language in it, but we're all adults here. Anyway, it's where I was at the time. A sort of religious snapshot. So without further ado:

"Hey Timmer,

I really wanted to talk about a book I read called The End of Faith by Sam Harris where he argues that we should not be tolerant of religion. Religious tolerance is retarded! There is no real (as in reality) basis to do so. We don't tolerate other beliefs with no real world basis.

Flat Earther's? Laughable! We don't give the time of day to people who don't believe in gravity. An Earth centered model of the universe was dumped into the ashcan of history with the findings Galileo.

The gist of Harris' argument is thus: People act on their beliefs. Beliefs should be formed by experiment. What is the consistent outcome of repeated actions? What happens EVERY time? What is observed? We should act on and be responsible for the predictable outcomes of our actions.

Anyway, beliefs are what a person acts on. Right? So Harris goes on to list FOUR (4!) full pages of quotes from the Koran saying shit like kill-everyone-who-won't-convert to Islam sort of stuff. That is the text that millions of people are following. (The bible doesn't fare much better in this regard.) These texts are forming the beliefs of millions of people.

He also argues that the Inquisition is actually the logical outcome of Christianity if you follow the bible to the letter. Moderate Christians are the problem. They are wishy-washy on things they're not comfortable with. If they would take a serious look at what they believed and followed what the bible says they would see that they're being hypocritical and stop propping up this destructive belief system. How many Christians have read the bible from cover to cover? Tortue people who won't accept Jesus as their saviour! They'll thank us when they're in heaven. It's for their own good. That's what the bible says! Quotes like Jesus saying shit along the lines of "I came to bring a sword to fuck everybody up" should have christians murdering non-believers in the streets.

He had this quote that I just loved (minus the swears). Something along the lines of "Imagine that in 2000 years people were claiming to defend with their lives that a certain movie was made by God or God coded a certain computer program like Windows 95. It would be laughable to us if it weren't the cause of a shitload of humankind's woes today ...a fuckin' tragedy."

Like I mentioned, I wanted to talk about this book I read but I'm still wrapping my head around the concepts presented to me. I won't be able to do this without throwing out poorly constructed paragraphs with little connecting them. I've had a bit too much to drink to be coherent. That and the fact that I'm listening to (Smog)'s brilliant "A River Ain't Too Much To Love" makes piecing together sentences that make sense that much harder.

Oh man, you should rent The God Who Wasn't There. It's kinda amateurish and can be misleading at times but it is well worth your time.

Or read something by Earl Doherty ( specifically The Jesus Puzzle or Challenging the Verdict which was a response to this best selling christian book The Case for Christ) if you're interested in the origins of Christianity and the extremely shaky ground it's been built on. Check this out:

Jesus was claimed to have existed from approx. 3 A.D. to 35 A.D. right? The first Christian writings from the bible come from St. Paul (let's be generous and say 30 years later). He never mentions anything about the actual life stories of Jesus apart from his crucifixion and resurrection - None of the stories of Jesus' life.

And when it would benefit St. Paul to mention Jesus' teachings from his life-story to win an argument he is having about church doctrine, he never does!

Doherty proves that his crucifixion and resurrection took place in a mythical realm similar to the one where we put the heroics of Hercules. We don't believe the exploits of Hercules to have existed in this world, right? Why would we believe the same about Jesus?

The first gospel to appear is Mark which is written anywhere from A.D. 70 to 110. At least forty years after Jesus was supposed to have lived. Matthew and Luke can be shown to have been based on Mark. They're called the "synoptic" gospels 'cause they're so much the same. John is just waaaay out there from the other three. Forget him. Follow me here I'm getting to the payoff. There were other saviour gods that were being preached. Applonious of Tyana, Dionysis, Mithras, Baal and many more...all these gods who had eerily similar lives who were worshiped BEFORE Christ was supposed to have walked the Earth. Born to a virgin on Christmas, crucified, hung on a tree or cross...the similarities are striking.

And guess what the Catholic church's explanation of this fact is (take note they don't refute their existence).....Satan went back in time and created these gods to test the faith of Christians. How weak is that?

It was written (if I remember correctly) by Justin Martyr, an early father of the church around 150 A.D. or so. And guess what - that's the explanation that still stands today!!!! The Catholic Faith is based on the premise that the Devil went back in time and planted stories about saviours that lived lives shockingly similar to Jesus' just to test the faith of the followers of Jesus. Wow!

I like Tom Harpur's take on the whole Christ thing in his book The Pagan Christ:Recovering the Lost Light. The story of Christ is one that we all go through. "The Jesus story can become a profoundly spiritual allegory of the soul, he says."

Whatever. Now I'm listening to a bootleg of the Books live in Toronto. As you know, Alan Watts was a bad mother fucker. The Books took a lecture of his and spliced it into one of their songs when they played the ElMo. It took me an hour to transcribe this shit. It's pretty striking stuff and has even more impact when floating over the Books music. I'll leave you with it.

"And now you go to kindergarten. That's a great thing because when you finish that you get into first grade. And then c'mon, first grade leads to second grade and so on and then you get out of grade school. You go to high school and its' revving up, the thing is coming. Then you gotta go to college. By Jove, and then you get to graduate school and when you're through with graduate school you go out to join the world.

Then you get into some racket where you're selling insurance and they've got their quota to make and you're going to make that and all the time the thing is coming. It's coming. It's coming. That great thing, the success you're working for. And then when you wake up one day about 40 years old you say, "My God, I've arrived. I'm there." and you don't feel very different from what you've always felt.

And there's a slight let-down because you feel there's a hoax. And there was a hoax, a dreadful hoax. They made you miss everything.

But we miss the point the whole way along.

It was a musical thing and you were supposed to sing or to dance while the music was being played."

p.s. Harris summed up the bible and koran as this (and pissed off a lot of people by doing so): "God wrote a book." Makes things a little ridiculous when put like that, eh?

p.p.s. Watts was relating an old Buddhist story: Someone was asking the Buddha "where did we come from? How did we get here?" And Buddha's answer was "if you were bit by a poisonous snake that slithered away, would you waste all your time trying to catch the snake to find out what kind it was? Or would you attempt to treat yourself of your wound?"

2007-04-05T20:43:00.000-04:00

Who are you going to believe? Me or your lying eyes?

Humourous:

2007-03-14T00:38:00.000-04:00

I have a new God and His name is John Kilduff.

John wears surgical gloves and a paint splattered suit while painting, running on a treadmill and fielding calls from Los Angeles gang bangers who hate his guts. He usually adds another dimension to his show - playing chess, eating pie, frying pickles, building a sushi gingerbread house, all while being plagued by technical difficulties. He mixes his metaphors, rambles on and sweats buckets. And throughout it all his unbridled enthusiasm and positive attitude shine through.

I have just completed watching all his posted videos at YouTube and my stomach is sore from laughing so hard. I featured him below in my "what-am-I-watching-on-YouTube -posting" with a clip from his show "Let's Paint, Exercising and Blend Drinks".

To attend weekly mass just go to:
1)http://www.letspainttv.com for his website
2)http://www.myspace.com/letspainttv for his myspace
3)http://www.cafepress.com/letspainttv to purchase stuff from his Cafe Press store
4.http://letspainttv.blogspot.com/ for his blog
and
5)http://stores.ebay.com/John-Kilduff-Fine-Art to purchase his paintings

The Gospel according to John Kilduff:

"We live in a multi... multi-faceted kinda operation here in this lifestyle that we live in today and I'm trying to just show it to you. How we can still persevere with all the factors of these things coming down. It's okay!"

The mass is ended, go in peace.

2007-03-12T15:22:00.000-04:00

YES!

I have received the "new" Books recording. It's an odd little thing called "Music for a French Elevator and other Short Format Oddities by The Books". It's only 15 minutes long but it is wicked awesome! Here is their website description:

"In early 2004 we were asked by the Ministry of Culture in Paris, France to compose four short tracks for their new elevator. No joke! It also includes several 'classic' spoken word tracks culled from our sample libraries."

2007-03-10T14:28:00.000-05:00

Twang King vs. Fatbody

I put some new pickups in my tele. The DiMarzio Twang King in the neck and the GFS Fatbody in the bridge. The wires in the Twang King were mislabled so they were out of phase and sounded like crap. I couldn't figure out why until the good people over at http://www.shortscale.org/forum helped me out and they now sound EPIC!

Before:

The Twang King on the right:

The Fatbody on the right. (Lookit those huge pole pieces!)

Installed:

I'd put some video up but the batteries in the camera died after all these pics.

2007-03-08T23:03:00.000-05:00

By Request

I've been asked to share some videos I've been watching on YouTube. Are you sure?

Here we go:

We'll start off with a classic - Nintendo 64 kid.
The original:

The remix:

Here are the 7 Most Insane Moments from Cable Access TV. I recommend 2,3,4 and 6. Holy Crap! (Number 1,5 and 7 suck.)

http://www.cracked.com/index.php?name=News&sid=1649

An excerpt: Number 2 - A tv show called "Let's Paint, Exercise and Mix Drinks". How insane is this show?

Crispin Glover on David Letterman. WOWSA!

The latest Dance Moves: Chiicken Noodle Soup. (yes it's spelled with two "i"s)

Ghost Ride the Whip! - This is an interesting new craze. Get out and dance while your car is still moving.

And here is one gone wrong:

Here's the best fight scene ever.

Corey Haim - this one is filled with classics - "I'm really into Japanese funk." "I enjoy dibble-dabbling at the keyboards" and many more.

Well that should keep you busy for now. Are you sorry you asked?

2007-03-05T10:26:00.000-05:00

One Of Those Days

Well Friday turned out to be one of those days. I broke a light in the gym of a school I was supply teaching at. Fluorescent bulb shards raining down on children below. I was trying a full court buzzer beater. Luckily no one was hurt. (Obviously I didn't make the basket.) On the positive side the kids loved it.

On to the gig at the Canadian - I wanted to use my Garnet Rebel Reverb (early 70's vintage amp) so I put the head on the hood of my car as I was loading up. (Stupid, I know.) It slid off and smashed one of the 6L6 tubes in it. I had it replaced yesterday with a new one but it just doesn't sound as awesome as the vintage one did. It might just be my imagination though - I'll have to listen to some old recordings to compare.

The turn out was pretty good. The place was by no means full but it was far from empty. There were probably about 50 people there (which would look full in say, the Downbeat but the Canadian is much bigger.) So thanks to all of them for coming - and sorry for what they would be subjected to at the end of the night.

The Road Rockets opened the night with a roaring set despite the less-than-stellar mix (sorry Sound Guy - the master was too loud as were the drums. The guitars were inaudible and when I went up to play banjo with them you didn't even turn my mic on. WTF?)

Rob got to play his brand new kit:

T got to play his brand new drumstick:

Carl belting it out with Jake in the background:

I forgot to give my camera to someone for pics so there were none of GDH's set. I had a great time during this set and we sounded pretty good despite having only jammed once since our last gig in January.

After that Anthony BEGGED me to let his friends come up and play a Tool song with him. I resisted but finally consented and sat in on bass. I had no idea what I was doing but it ended up pretty good (if you like that sort of music).

And then "The Train Wreck" occurred.

We decided to cobble together a bunch of cover songs the Canadian regulars would enjoy - "Dancing in the Dark" by Bruce Springsteen, "The Hockey Song" by Stompin' Tom, the theme to "The Golden Girls" tv show, "The Weight" by The Band, "Purple Haze" by Hendrix, you know, killer stuff!!!

If you take a look at the following pics it looks like we're rockers. Well, looks can be deceiving. We got all the rock poses down but we failed to learn the songs.

We played 7 or 8 songs and managed to seriously f*&% up all but two of them. I'm not talking about those flubbed notes that people don't notice. We had major breakdowns in almost every song. It was the worst musical presentation I have ever had the misfortune of being involved in. I was seriously embarrassed and pissed off. On the positive side, we were pretty entertaining in the "must look at this car crash" sort of way.

Ah well, "live and learn" or some other such trite cliche.

Saturday night had the Road Rockets playing the first and third set while the Woody Simms Trio was sandwiched in between. The crowd turnout, the sound mix and the musical performances were a bit better than Friday night.

Woody Simms sounded excellent (as usual) and I had more than a few people tell me "I really like these guys". The new tunes came together nicely.

Oh and I forgot my camera so no pics. And the weather prevented Professor Matt B. from making it all the way from Wisconsin.

2007-03-01T16:09:00.000-05:00

Quick Correcton

The line up for Friday and Saturday night will probably be shuffled up a bit. GDH and the cover band may not be playing Saturday. Come out on Friday to see us play YOUR favourite song! You can sing along like this:

2007-02-27T12:30:00.000-05:00

We Are Playing Music

Friday, March 2nd and Saturday March 3rd GDH, the Road Rockets and Woody Simms Treeo will be playing the Canadian. Friday it will be GDH, RR's and a special cover band of all songs the Canadian crowd would enjoy. Saturday the Treeo will play as well as GDH and RR. We couldn't play a gig without a friend from out of town so this gig will see Professor Matt B from Madison, WI come up and belt out a few tunes. Should be a good time!

Here is us rehearsing:
My heart loves you.

2007-02-20T11:31:00.000-05:00

Behind the Mask

I've played hockey since I was 5 years old. I've played ice hockey, ball hockey, table hockey, quarters hockey, mini-stick hockey, hotel-hallway hockey, air hockey, bubble hockey, and roller hockey. Never once (that I can recall) did I ever play in goal.

Well, Sunday I finally strapped the pads on. Shane bought some used equipment with the extra money from the ice time in case a goalie didn't show. And a goalie didn't show.

A quick recap:

1) I had a shutout going for about 35mins. I only had about 8 shots in those 35 minutes because the opposing team tried to pass too much, my defence blocked everything and the teams were a bit unbalanced with our team being the stronger of the two. Here is some video footage summing up my performance with Shane as commentator:

2)Do not try to play goalie in regular skates. There is no lateral movement. People can just deke you out left and right. Here is me with perfect form, square to the shooter waiting to stop the puck:

3)At times, goalie is a boring position.

4)At other times it is very frustrating. I would get seriously pissed off if someone scored on me.