My Life – My Travels

Andrew Zimmern

About 6 -8 months ago I had given up on TV. I canceled my cable and gave away my TV to someone who actually watched it. My life improved dramatically. I vowed never to watch TV again.

Now that some time has passed, I realized that not everything on TV is utter crap. I have found a few shows that strike my interest and if I’m lucky, I might learn a thing or two. Some such shows are Survivorman, No Reservation, and last but not least Bizarre Foods.

I hope to one day (soon) travel the world and see amazing things. Guys like Andrew Zimmern are the thing of envy. All personal feelings of envy aside…Bizarre Foods just doesn’t help motivate me in my conquest to tour the world but it can be quite hilarious to watch him eat some of the stuff he eats.  I know I’d have trouble stomaching half of what gets put into his gullet. The other have just looks so damn good!

I hope the folks at the Travel Channel and Discovery keep up their great work on educational Television. Even though I don’t own a Television I always find a way to keep up on the latest of Bizarre Foods and a few other choice programs.

Andrew’s personal site: http://www.andrewzimmern.com

Totally rad rap video. I knew I should have been a rapper. Nerd rap is a totally untapped market.

“Wanna burn a disc? How bout’ a DvD?”

That’s right boys and girls. I have not been a good little boy. I guess I know what I’m getting for Christmas. Nothing but a lump of coal. I guess the good people over at HBO don’t take to kindly to people taking full advantage of their high speed cable connection.

I recently spent about a month living down in California and just couldn’t go without a decent cable connection. I did what anyone would do and ordered internet from Charter Communications. Since they are so kind as to not limit how much bandwidth I use (unlike the nice people over at Bend Broadband) I go crazy. Downloading anything and everything I might like. By that I mean all the latest linux distros, watching shows on Hulu, and many other various forms of LEGAL bandwidth consumption. (continue reading…)

It has been about a week or so since I have made any steps to becoming a minimalist. I have narrowed my clothes down 2 business outfits, 2 business casual outfits, 2 pairs of regular pants, 1 pair of shorts, swim shorts, and 4 pairs of underwear and 4 pairs of socks. Two of the pairs of socks are Smartwool. I also continue to sell of items on ebay and craigslist.

As I sell some things, I buy others. Some to get ready and some because I use them in the mean time. I recently bought a new backpack. An Osprey Atmos 50 backpack. (continue reading…)

I took a hike the other day up to some water falls I’ve never been to before. Let me tell you, they were awesome! Well…1 out of the 3 were. I went to Squaw Creek Falls outside of Sisters Oregon about 10 miles or so. The directions I have say…

The waterfalls of Whychus Creek are located just nside the Three Sisters Wilderness Area, located south of the town of Sisters. From Highway 242 in downtown Sisters, turn south on Forest Service Road 16, signed for Three Creek Lake (do not follow FR 15, signed for Whychus Creek, west of town). After 7 miles, turn right onto FR 1514, and proceed just under 5 miles to FR 1514-600, immediately before crossing Whychus Creek on a large concrete bridge, and turn left. Road 1514-600 is very rough, but passable for passenger cars with decent clearance. Follow this rough road for another 2 miles to a T-junction and bear left, reaching the trailhead in another ½ mile. From here, follow the Chush Falls trail for an easy mile to canyon-rim views of Chush Falls.Officially, the trail ends here, but it continues on as a plainly
obvious route. The Cascades are encountered ¼ mile further. (continue reading…)

The minimalist lifestyle sounds great doesn’t it? No debt, no house payment, being able to pick up and move at a moments notice, etc, etc. Some people call it downshifting, some call it being an urban minimalist, and some call it being anti-consumerist. I call it being smart and getting back in touch with what I personally think life should be about.

I got laid off from work about 6 months ago. I was in IT and that is one of the worst markets to be in at this moment. I’ve had a few odd jobs here and there but nothing of any real value. I poked and prodded at my savings to get me by so I can eat and pay the important bills. (continue reading…)

I plan to write a multi-part post about living as a minimalist. This will hopefully document my journey up to my current point and map out the rest of my path to living a minimalist lifestyle.

What exactly is a minimalist lifestyle you make ask. This answer will differ from one person to another but to me it is simple. And the answer can be summed up into one word. Simple.

I used to a bit of a pack rat. I learned that skill from my mother. I read that one of the reason people are pack rats is due to fear. We fear that we may need that item in the future. I might need that spare keyboard even though mine works great and has zero problems. We also grow an item we own and don’t want to get rid of said item because it has been with you for so long. We has a people have come to fear change. (continue reading…)

I ran across Zoto in quest to find a decent and cheap online backup for my all my photos. I love to take photos and a lot of my photos are in in RAW format, so they can take up a lot of room.

I started reading about Zoto and it seemed like it might fit the bill for all my JPGs and I was ok with that.

Turns out that Zoto wasn’t exactly what I was looking for but it turned out to be pretty cool never the less. Some say a Flickr wanna be but I say so what…who cares?

Zoto allows you to create folders and upload as many photos as you like. Share or make them private. They can handle photos up to 20mb in size and they offer a pretty cool interface. There is a lot of technology that you’ve seen before like a lightbox but they do it well and it looks good.

There is also a simple uploader you can put on you computer and all you have to do is drag and drop the individual photos or a whole folder. I would have liked to seen the folder structure be keep instead of just uploading into a “all photos” folder. It creates a lot of extra work in the name of organization.

All in all I think Zoto is a fair opponent to Flickr if you take into consideration the unlimited storage.

Zoto gets a thumbs up for me if I want to share photos with friends but as photo backup it just doesn’t cut it.

Then again, it’s not trying to be a backup service.

I’ve been reading a lot about bigger web companies laying of 10% or 25% of their staff in both reactive and proactive strategies to lower costs to make up for bad economy. This brings up some interesting questions, one of which tends to make me worry.

Are all these free web services we use everyday going to make a jump to paid services?

Things like Gmail, Pandora, Mint, etc, etc. (continue reading…)

A few weeks back I was playing PGR 4 on my Xbox 360 and this song came on while I was racing and it caught my ear. I wrecked 2 times trying to find that song again. It turned out to be “blah blah” by Lady Sovereign. Once I had that bit of info I started up my Zune Marketplace and started to download the album. I then started doing some research to find more of this hypnotic music.

I hadn’t been this taken in by a specifc genre since I got in Drum and Bass.

After several hours of reading about Grime I found some great stuff. To name a few…

• Dizzee Rascal
• M.I.A.
• Kano
• Mr. Slash
• Roll Deep
• Tinchy Stryder

Those just a few that I found.

It’s great. It’s rap, but not American rap. No 50 Cent or Nelly bullshit. I don’t feel like I should sag my pants low and turn my hat to the side. I don’t feel guilty listening to it because I’m not black.

Short post I know, but I figued it was worth a post since it has consumed so many hours of my ears time.