Manufacturing Content

Musically Contained

The age of the iPod has its pros and cons.  The pros are easy to come by: cool device, good sound quality, the ability to carry your whole music library with you.

I can deal with most of the cons.  My biggest beef with the iPods is that you have to digitally compress your music, which can lessen the quality. 

If you want to know what I’m talking about, try listening to a store-bought music CD (not a burned CD) with real, studio quality headphones, or an awesome stereo system.  Listen to the sound of the drums, and pay close attention to the symbols and hi-hats.  Then, listen to the same CD after you’ve ripped it onto iTunes, or Winamp (do people still use that?) or whatever.

There’s a huge difference there, which is why I still buy CDs when I know the production quality will be worth listening to.

But I digress.

My current beef, however, is that for one year, I won’t be able to change the songs on my iPod. 

Last time I left the country for a year, way back on 2000, I only brought about a dozen CDs with me, and came back with about twenty.  And I survived, somehow – with the added unexpected bonus of being able to recite the Deftones’ White Pony album in its entirety.  I guess I’ll find a way to survive with the 170 album capacity of my iPod.

Albums are a dying art form in the world of popular music.  Bands like Radiohead and Beck are already breaking down the medium.  But, for my money, a well crafted album is much more rewarding that a single tune.  And, let’s not forget the concept-album, a-la Pink Floyd’s The Wall (also on my list of best albums).

I’ve spent endless hours refining the 11 gigs I have left (after downloading all of the LOTR extended edition movies – boo-yeah) into the ultimate collection of albums.  Part of that quest has been finding the best albums I don’t yet own.

Suggestions are welcome here, but my current favourite finds are:

Return from Cookie Mountain by TV on the Radio – This is a kick-ass album of moody rock and roll.  Good for long bus rides, and sleepless nights while on safari.

Yankee Hotel Foxtrot by Wilco – An excellent piece of post nine-eleven commentary, which kind of sounds like The Weakerthans with a moral conscience and a bit more country.  I’ll be listening to this when nostalgia for simple home-life rears its head.

Untrue by Burial – Electronic of the highest quality, good for running, lounging, and waiting in airports.

D.

Putting it all together

It’s no secret that guys like to take stuff apart.  I’ll admit that I can be a bit impulsive about this.  I can’t even pick up a pen without unscrewing it and playing with the little springs.

I’ve let this urge slide recently.  I’ve been trying to build a guitar from scratch for the past 10 years, which, while technically the opposite of taking something apart, does apply many of the same principles.  I chalk this up to a lack of access to that most coveted of male work spaces, a garage. 

Maybe it’s because we’re about to take this big trip around the world, which is in some ways a process of taking your life apart and putting it back together, but for whatever reason I’ve started to take things apart again.  Any excuse I can find.

Lately, it was my old iPod Mini, which needed a new battery.  Sure, I have a fancy new Touch, but that extra 1000 songs I can carry around on the Mini just might save my sanity while we’re gone.  The iPod was a piece of cake to take apart, especially since I cut my teeth on a much bigger project.

Just before Christmas, I had gotten fed-up with my laptop computer.  The wireless doesn’t work anymore – which defeats the purpose of a portable computer – and the damned thing would overheat and shut down even if it was sitting on a table.  For the past year, I’ve had to elevate it on four stacks of CDs, and during the summer, I had to point a fan directly at it if it was on for more than ten minutes.  I was stuck with a laptop computer that wasn’t portable, and couldn’t it be placed on your lap.

With only a Swiss army knife and some instructions from some random website, I sat down and took apart my laptop, cleaned the fans and heat sinks, and put it back together with only one extra screw, and one non-working LED.

Good as new.

And Mom and Dad, in one month, when I start to take my life apart, the laptop is all yours.  Proof that anything can be put back together.

D.

Slightly freaked

So, we are officially 38 days away from leaving.  On paper, cutting-and-running seems like an easy thing to do.

Step One:  Give away all your furniture
Step Two:  Buy a plane ticket, a backpack, sunscreen and some water purification pills
Step Three:  Fly away

However, reality has a way of getting all caught up in practicalities, so we’re mired in a slew of paperwork, research, and logistics.  Luckily, K is a logistics Queen.  And, after a few cracks of the whip, it turns out I’m at least a Prince, maybe a Duke, or a local Magistrate?  Something less officious and powerful than Queen, anyway.

But, as she said, by focusing on one thing at a time we’ll get through the list in no time.  This can be tougher than it seems.  Boo-urns to those who say “getting there is half the fun” because this stage, this pre-planning, is not “getting there” in the traditional sense of the term.  The trip is one whole year of “getting there”, where the actual destinations are secondary to the experience.

I can’t wait for the real “getting there” to start, because it will be more than half the fun.

Today, for example, I can only focus on the event horizon, when the pull of the unknown is far too great to turn back. 

When the paperwork is all done, and the goodbyes have all been said. 

When our accumulated junk has been safely stowed in my parent’s basement, our cats safely lodged in a townhouse in Bowmanville, and all of our remaining worldly possessions safely checked at the Pearson Airport. 

When she sips her first airport Caesar (her travel drink of choice – a great combination of veggies and alcohol) and I sip my first whiskey (my travel drink of choice - sophisticated and concentrated), and we are the only two people left in the world.

That, my friends, is when the real journey begins.

D.

That’s it – I’m outta here!

(or: an ode to my bikes)

The best way to learn the tough lessons of downtown bike ownership is by never actually buying a bike.  I’ve gone through three since first moving to Ottawa, and poor Kimu has also had a loss.

Bike number one is by far the best story.  About seven years ago, my good friend M borrowed his parents’ Buick station wagon (complete with beaver-panels) to help me move up here for university. 

At about two a.m., we were driving through Perth when an eighteen-wheeler, driving the other way, knocked my bike clear off the roof-rack.  In the interest of full disclosure, it should be noted that said bike was initially being held on by a complex series of bungee-cords and a thick length of rope. 

However, when the car’s fan belt snapped – at about one a.m. – M did some McGuyver-esque maintenance with the thick rope. 

Lesson learned: four bungee cords will not hold a bike on the roof of a car traveling at 100km/h when faced with the oncoming turbulence of a truck traveling at 120 km/h.

Bike number two was bitter.  I bought this one at the Stittsville Flea Market for about $20.  It was too small, and too rusted out for me to care too much about, so I rode it into the ground for a year. 

When I moved from my high-rise apartment (at which I safely stowed my bike on the balcony) into a brownstone in the dodgy end of the student slum, I didn’t have a lock, so I left the bike outside. 

After one night, the bike was still there, so I didn’t bother getting a lock.  By day three, the bike was gone.  The lesson here was an easy one: lock you shitty bike to something, dumbass.

Bike number three was the worst loss yet.  I bought this one from a friend who had it sitting in her apartment for about a year.  She bought it from a friend who “found” it, slightly dented and with one warped tire, somewhere in town. 

By this point, I had learned my lesson.  I locked it up every night and never tied it to any vehicle’s roof.  I only paid $10 for it, but I spent about $100 each year on repairs and maintenance, and it paid off. 

Then, in November, a snap snowstorm iced it to the “no parking” sign it was chained to in front of our house.  No problem, I figured, I’d be leaving town before the spring anyway.  I’ll just leave the key for someone else in need of a bike, and they can unlock in with the spring thaw. 

I hadn’t planned on having my bike, and the sign, be chewed up by a sidewalk clearing machine.  After the attack, the bike was still salvageable, but when the city came to repair the sign, thus freeing my bike, they ran off with it. 

Of course, I blame this one on our “Rock Star” mayor.  The lesson learned: don’t trust the city to preserve your property, especially if it is “illegally” locked to a street sign, and is almost bent in half.

D.

Off to a good start

For many years, my New Year’s resolutions were comprised of two or three “buzz-words” that I would strive for throughout the year.  Of course, this was met with great success, given that the reporting and monitoring variables of said goals were wholly impossible to measure.

How do you tell if you’ve actually “actualized, initiated and streamlined” any aspect of my life.

This year, I’m going full circle.  My goal is to work out at least four times a week and to write more blog posts - goals were chosen because they will be a cakewalk.

In case you are living under a rock, or just not reading my wife’s blog, we’re a little more than a month away from skipping town (AAAHHH!!!!).  For some parts of our trip, I’ll have no choice BUT to exercise seven days a week (please see: the thirty day hike along the Way of St. James, or the back to back Everest Base Camp and Annapurna treks). 

And even during those long weeks we plan to spend on beaches in South East Asia, I can’t wait to get up and run along the water’s edge in the morning sun.  And maybe do some yoga while I’m at it.

This new commitment is in part due to the personal trainer I signed up with in November.  Now, being a dude, I’ve always been of the “bah, I know what I’m doing” school of working out.  Boy was I wrong.  Turns out, the only way to really know what you are doing is to listen to someone who really does know what they are doing. 

I’ve seen such a change in the last two months, and I can’t wait to apply this new ethic to a whole year. 

Bring on those piddly little Himalayas. 

And the writing?  Well, when I first started writing in earnest, I was, coincidently, traveling around Europe.  There’s something undeniably inspiring about being on the road, in a constant state or renegotiation with your surroundings.  I only hope it translates well to the blog, as my previous writing escapades were done in the four to five notebooks I carried around with me.

I am blogging today, but I missed the gym this morning.  By all accounts, this might have been a good thing.  As besides, it was, like minus-30 this morning.  The bed was too warm.

D.