Below are the 20 most recent journal entries recorded in mikebeauchamp's LiveJournal:

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Saturday, May 3rd, 2008
1:10 pm	War Relics in Wellington, New Zealand Here are a few war relics that are around Wellington, New Zealand. Most are pretty open and some even have some underground passages, etc. Most of these we found on this site and them tracked down using google earth, or word of mouth. Entrance to Fort Ballance ( more locations after cut ) (4 Comments |Comment on this)
Monday, February 11th, 2008
3:24 am	Almost 6 months ago, I met a pretty cool girl here in Windsor who had a 1-way flight to New Zealand a few weeks later. She moved the flight as far back as her Working Holiday Visa would let her, which was until today. So, it is almost 4:00AM and in 3 hours, I will be heading to Detroit airport with this girl and we'll be heading to Fiji for 10 days and then to New Zealand. The basic plan is to get jobs and an apartment in Wellington. The bigger, lofty plan is to live in New Zealand for a year, teach in Korea for a year, spend 6 months in Malaysia, check out some other countries, hop the Trans-Siberian (or Trans-Mongolian) train to Moscow, do some bicycling around Sweden, Denmark, Germany, The Netherlands, come home. But, one step at a time obviously.. infact I'll be happy if I just get packed. I made the decision to go about 6-7 weeks ago and it's been absolutely crazy since. I've been working tons to finish 13 Electro-Theremins which were boxed up 4 hours ago to be shipped. The job at the radio station has been nuts too, with two important computer's having hard drive failures in the past 3 days. I've done what I can to fix them, but I'm absolutely out of time. As I type this, I'm still packing my bags and burning DVDs of important data. I've been so swamped with getting all my other stuff done that I haven't even been able to think about this whole "moving to another hemisphere" thing. Thankfully, Melissa is okay with having to do the vast majority of the planning, booking hostels, booking buses, etc. Last month, Melissa and I went to Mexico for a few days. Pictures are here. Before I left for Mexico, I organized an NHL '94 tournament at Phog lounge. I lost.. Pictures from that are here. Some things that jump into my mind from the past few months are: - Big Daddy "A" and The Merves 10-year reunion at Chanosos. Insanely awesome show.. 10 years? I'm old. - Got my bicycle fucked up at Transit Windsor's new terminal while in Detroit spending $300 on winter cycling clothing (obviously before the decision to move to New Zealand). Anyways, I should probably hop in the shower... I hope to have internet access in 2-3 weeks. (4 Comments |Comment on this)
Sunday, February 10th, 2008
3:56 pm	Moving to New Zealand Tomorrow... Starting to pack now.. :) If I have time, I'll post more details. (3 Comments |Comment on this)
Saturday, December 1st, 2007
3:35 am	selling some crap @ artcite! I remember going to Artcite's "Doin' the Louvre" xmas sale last year and thinking it was a pretty cool event (a LOT of local art and at reasonable prices), so a few nights ago in the darkroom I printed up 10 of my favourite negatives and tossed them in some frames. They'll be selling for $25 each, with 30% going to artcite. The show opens with a reception on Dec 7th (7:30PM) with free food and continues until the 22nd. The free food pretty much guarantees that I'll be at the opening. (Comment on this)
3:34 am	Home from the california trip! Well I'm home from California and the trip was awesome.. very awesome. I was slightly worried because I put the trip together pretty quickly, leaving certain details for the last minute. But everything worked out great and I don't think a single thing went wrong that I had control of. Earlier, I said I was regretting taking the bicycle along on this trip since it was such a hassle to deal with a big bike in a box at the airport, etc. I still believe it was a bit of a hassle, but after the first day of flying down a mountain on a tight and twisty road, pushing a box around wasn't a big deal. The flight was pretty boring, since it was dark out. Flying over what I knew had to be Chicago was pretty insane though, realizing the size of it. At least, I thought it was insane until we flew over Los Angeles for what felt like 30 minutes. The place is so big and I can't imagine how much it takes just to power the lights I could see. Nevermind the fact that each of those lights is probably a block full of houses, each with several TV's running, computers, washing machines, etc. Just crazy. My cousin Angie met me at LAX and we tossed the bike in the back of her beat up Neon and made our way to her awesome place in West Hollywood. The next morning, she gave me a huge bag of food to bring on the Bus to San Francisco. The bus ride was 7.5h, driving past a lot of smoke from the fires happening Malibu (which I assumed at the time was had to be a controlled burn). In San Francisco, Scott picked me up and drove me to his fancy loft in a former warehouse/factory type thing. We hung out for a few days, walked around the city, etc. Lots of bicyclists in SF, and even more girls carrying around yoga mats. Every grocery store is an expensive-as-fuck health food store (which I'm convinced is just the same as a regular grocery store only packaging colours are limited to brown and green). San Francisco was awesome, and I spent a good day walking around the Mission area going to a handful of used clothing stores to look for souvenirs. A Canadian girl I met on the Greyhound was staying in a nearby hostel, so I joined her and a bunch of Australians (and a German) to go hang out, and we ended up at some bar surrounded in nude velvet paintings where all the young hipsters were playing Bingo. By the end of the night, the German figured out I wasn't drinking alcohol and I never saw a more confused/disappointed man for the rest of the trip. Leaving San Francisco, I biked down to the Caltrain station where they let cyclists bring their bike right onto a dedicated car at the rear of the train. For a few bucks, I saved myself a few hours of riding and a few hours of navigating and ended up in Sunnyvale (where the Atari 2600 was made). I rode through Sunnyvale, and got into Saratoga. This was my first day on the touring bike, and I had to get to Saratoga Springs Campground, which was located on a twisty street according to my hand-drawn map. The twisty road ended up climbing steeply up the mountain that separates the bay area from the coast. I rode as far as I could and eventually stopped, rethinking the whole trip. I sat at the edge of the road, eating my shitty organic peanut butter on overpriced pitas, wondering how the hell I'd make it to the campground. Eventually a cyclist (without 50LBS of shit on his bike) floated up the hill past me, so I flagged him down and asked where the campground is. He said it was close, so I continued on.. finding the campground only 1 Mile ahead. I was at this Campground for "International Rust Fest", a yearly get together of Neil Young Fans in preparation of the Bridge School Benefit concerts (an Annual concert held by and featuring Neil). A few "Rusties" were already there, so I hung out with them and set-up my tent. For the next few days, I chilled out by the fire and years of playing Neil Young songs on my acoustic guitar in my bedroom finally payed off. Everyone just sat around singing and talking, and it was great. On one night, we drove up to Half Moon Bay for an acoustic jam at the Old Princeton Landing (a dive bar where Neil has played under the pseudonym "The Echoes"). I ended up getting on stage since someone didn't show up, and I played "Song X" and "Ambulance Blues". For the second song, my friend Roel from the Netherlands (Who I only knew previously on the internet) jumped up onstage and started playing the harmonica parts on the harmonica he bought on the way up here "Just incase". The next night, we were shuttled off to another venue for an electric jam, which was even awesomer. For the Bridge School Benefit, I got a ride with Kevin Chong, who wrote a few books I believe I've written about on here previously. Neil played acoustic for a few songs, then Regina Spektor played (so cute), Tegan & Sara also played, as well as My Morning Jacket, John Mayer, Tom Waits with Kronos Quartet (which was awesome) and Jerry Lee Lewis. Then Neil came on with a full band, and then Metallica played (but nobody told their drummer the set was acoustic). The next night, we did it all over again.. thanks to Roel who had an extra ticket for me! Before Neil went on the second night, I snuck down to the lower bowl using someone's ticket from the night before (with my conveniently placed thumb covering the date). I sat in an empty seat in row A for Neil's entire set.. very very awesome. The next day after the BSB concerts, I loaded up the bicycle and continued riding up the mountain to the coast. Again, I stopped on the road thinking I'd never make it up the hill. A motorcyclist who was stopped told me I only had several more miles of climbing to go and I managed to get to the top, averaging around 5mph. After that, the ride was amazing. I took some smaller roads I found on a map. Skyline blvd, which narrowed and turned into Summit Rd, the narrowest and twistiest road I've ever rode on.. and easily my favourite. After that it was a long steady descent to the coast. All the campgrounds along the coast had reasonably priced ($2-5) hiker/biker sites except one. The one that didn't, I was able to share a space with a couple who refused to let me pay my share. For a few days, I was camping along with a few Australians who were cycling the whole coast.. very cool. One night the campgrounds were closed due to the fires down south, so I had to camp off the side of a fire road. Riding the Pacific Coast Highway was very awesome. Traffic was pretty light this time of year, so it was pretty damn stress free, except when the road would turn into an express-way and cyclists were forced to exist and navigate through a city or town. Some of the routes were well signed, some weren't but the book I was carrying did give directions on how to navigate anyways. Riding through the Big Sur area was beautiful. I stopped off at the Henry Miller Memorial Library to check it out and use some of the free computers they have outside. A hippie couple was there, with the guy using the computer beside me and his girlfriend laying on the deck giggling at a poetry book. The guy kept asking me how to spell words like "Los Angeles", which I spelled "angeles". But then he said "no, the 'los' part". 10 minutes later he jumped up and said "Babe, we -have- to leave! I just lost my belt buckle.". After 10 days of riding from Saratoga, I got into Los Angeles. Riding through Malibu was crap, since everyone's car is parked right on the shoulder of the PCH, leaving not much room for cyclists. To get to my cousin Angie's in West Hollywood, I drew out a little map of about 20 different little side streets to take to get there. Thankfully, the map worked perfectly and I rode through LA on mostly calm and quiet roads, some even having bike lanes. After almost 800KM of riding, as soon as I got into Angie's, my rear tire started going flat. LA was pretty interesting. Saw a lot of really botched plastic surguries, complete with really crazy pointy breasts on 50 year old women. I did a lot of walking around, checked out the Mutato Muzika building, went and bought a harmonica, etc. Angie brought me to a lot of cool places and fed me lots of great food too! Maybe I was wandering around all the wrong areas, but I have to say, LA made me really miss Windsor people. Anyways, I think the total spent for the trip was around $700-800. (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Tuesday, November 13th, 2007
2:01 pm	Testing the "unlucky 13" thing! I'll be flying from LA to Detroit today (the 13th), in row 13, wearing a shirt with a big 13 on the back. If the plane doesn't crash, consider the whole idea of certain numbers having certain power to be false. (3 Comments |Comment on this)
Tuesday, October 23rd, 2007
12:02 pm	I'm in San Francisco right now, hanging out with Scott Schiller while he's on a conference call to Flickr. On Saturday, I flew from Detroit out to LA where my cousin Angie is living. I boxed up my touring bike the night before, and tossed a sleeping bag and tent in there as well. This was originally going to just be a backpacking trip, but a few people really convinced me that I should have my bicycle down here to ride along the Pacific Coast Highway. Getting around LAX and stuff with a bicycle in a box was pretty hard, especially since I had other bags to carry as well. It makes me wonder if the whole bicycle touring thing is really the "freedom" I think it is, but I suppose that opinion will probably change once I actually hop on the bike and start riding. I know Ken Kifer always promoted the idea of bike touring by leaving from your own house and then returning to your own house, and I do think that's the best way of doing it. Unfortunately, most people (myself included) don't really have the equivalent of the California Coast as their backyards. So after Angie picked me up, we drove to her place in Hollywood then walked around and ate at some cool deli place. I crashed on her couch, woke up pretty early (jet lag corrected my sleeping schedule, so I'm now waking up at normal-people hours) and read a few more chapters of "The God Delusion" (my reading material for the trip) and then she drove me to the greyhound station. After a 7 hour bus ride, which went past some pretty huge clouds of smoke (supposedly there's some hardcore fires happening right now in California), the bus arrived downtown SF. Scott picked me up, and we loaded the bike box into his car and drove back to his loft. Yesterday Scott and I walked around some parts of SF. Went adn checked out the Flickr office where Scott works and then walked up to Coit Tower. The grades that some of the streets are at in this city is so unreal to me, being from a completely flat city. Some sidewalks arent' even sidewalks, they are stairs.. with houses along them. I'd hate to be a mailman around here, that's for sure. Of course, all these elevation changes still don't stop all the hip bike messengers from having fixed gear single speed bicycles. I'm guessing they must stick to the flatter areas of the city. I put my bicycle together today, and helped Scott put some new furniture together for a halloween party that he's having along with some other people that live in the same building. Several of the loft's windows face out into this shared courtyard area, so they're going to have a party out there as well as inside. The plan for today is to wander around to the Mission area and check out some second hand clothing places, etc. Tomorrow I'm going to bring my bike onto the Caltrain and take it to Sunnyvale and then ride to Saratoga, do some camping with fellow "rusties" at the International Rust Fest, then check out the Bridge School Benefit concert (both nights) and then start the bike trip down the PCH back to LA. (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Saturday, October 20th, 2007
1:30 pm	California Leaving for california in 20 minutes. Bike is boxed up and I think I'm packed, I just have to shave so I don't get flagged at the border as a terrorist. I'll be back November 13th (flying in row 13). (Comment on this)
Wednesday, September 12th, 2007
12:52 am	California trip / neil young concert / bike tour Not sure how a little idea of "wanting to see Neil Young play" snowballed into this one, but here it goes: October 20: Fly to LA from Detroit. October 21: Greyhound to San Francisco. October 21 -> 23: Hang out with Scott. October 24: Bike to Saratoga. October 25 -> 26: Camp with Neil Young fans at Saratoga Springs for International Rust Fest 2007. October 26: Bridge School Benefit Concert! October 27: Maybe bridge school benefit concert day 2? October 28 -> November 6-9th: Bike to Los Angeles! approximately 800-900KM, mainly along the Pacific Coast Highway. November 6-9 -> 12: Hang out with Angie. November 13: Fly to Detroit, go home. sleep. There's still a lot of details to get set, like the exact route I'll be taking, etc. But most of them I'm not concerned about. I've been pretty concerned about what the weather might be like in November, but it's California and I can't change the weather anyways! Bringing my bike on the plane is costing an extra $50 US each way, and having to take greyhound up to SF instead of megabus is an extra $40, plus about $20 to bring a bike on the bus. I'm rough guessing that I will spend 10-12 days riding to LA and maybe spending $20 each day. I wasn't sure if I should include a bike tour while I'm out in California to hang out with friends and to see a Neil Young concert (since that's cool enough), but after having talked to some people, I figure for the extra $400 or so it will be well worth it! When I'm in my 50's, I'd rather tell people about the bicycle trip I did down the coast of california, not about the $400 I saved when I was in my 20's. (2 Comments |Comment on this)
Friday, August 31st, 2007
5:55 am	This summer? I've been tossing this idea around for about a month now. Not exactly sure of where I want to go, just that I want to do a bicycle tour around Europe. I don't want to ride another 7000KM, because that was more of a physical test from hell than it was a vacation. This ride would be around 2500KM and I'd have a good 2 months to do it. The problem I'm noticing with Europe is that everything is teasingly close, but not close enough that you can see it ALL on a single bike tour. These countries seem to appeal to me a lot more than going down to Spain and across the south of France to Italy.. although that would be sweet too. Damn! Any suggestions, recommendations or accommodations? (14 Comments |Comment on this)
Sunday, August 12th, 2007
5:49 am	It's almost 6AM and I just got done a 9 hour printing session in my darkroom. I went through 4 rolls of film I think, and picked a few off each one to print. I was really surprised at how this one turned out actually, it's a picture of an eccentric old dude named Jim that lives down the street. He always sits on his porch and waves at everyone that walks by.. a lot of the time he'll wear a hat made out of a yellowing newspaper and has a clothespin where the a missing button on his shirt is. His pockets are usually overflowing with tools and stuff. He's one of those guys that sort of reminds me of myself actually. Last month it was his 90th birthday party and everyone was invited out to the nearby legion to celebrate, so I went and snapped this picture of him. His eyes are closed though, so I'll have to wait until his 100th birthday party probably to try again! Oh yeah, in about 10-15 years, the goggles I'm wearing will be celebrating their 90th birthday party as well. (11 Comments |Comment on this)
Monday, August 6th, 2007
5:58 am	darkroom yo, darkroom So for the past few weeks I've been building a darkroom for myself. I cleared out a crappy room used for storing crap, stapled up some black bristol board over huge holes in the wall and "windows" that went out to the rest of the basement. My friend Sandi had extra darkroom equipment in her basement, so I bought that off her and she was nice enough to drive it over. I rigged up a light, hung a safelight, spent a bunch of time fixing up the enlarger and adjusting it, etc. I got some black fabric at a garage sale and fired up the sewing machine to make some curtains to cover the entry (there's no door, just an opening). Also, Eddy at Smith Signs hooked me up with a filing cabinet that I threw down there to hold stuff (not in the picture). So last week I did my first little printing session and got some good results! Tonight I used the darkroom to burn a huge silkscreen and then processed my first roll of film down there, which is hanging to dry right now! Details for some nerds: The enlarger is a Beseler 23C Series II with a 23DGA colour head and I'm using a Nikkor-EL 50mm f2.8 enlarging lens for 35mm. I just ordered a Nikkor-EL 80mm lens to do medium format. The digital enlarging timer is pretty cool, and I'm really digging the light-table and loupe for viewing negatives before I print them. (11 Comments |Comment on this)
Saturday, July 21st, 2007
7:35 am	Some square pictures. Here's a few from last month's trip to Dearborn to pick up some silkscreen supplies. I shot these with a Ricohflex Model VII camera that was given to me by my friend John. This camera is from 1954! I shot this on ilford delta 400, processed it in hc-110 and these are scans from negatives.. I haven't printed them yet though, as I'm waiting to get my own darkroom setup to do so! Anyways, pictures from the whole trip and the other 10 pictures on this roll are here. (2 Comments |Comment on this)
7:25 am	Since when do I take pictures of people?! Ricki on Pelee Island in her Bakery. Noam Chomsky at the Cleary. Ron Leary at the Cleary. Some dude at Critical Mass. A few pictures from the last 2 rolls I developed (silvertone 400 and silvertone 100). These were two rolls I was shooting at the same time over the course of about a month, lugging them to Pelee Island and around the county and to the Cleary to see Chomsky speak as well as Ron Leary (who was awesome enough to put Allison and I on the guest list) and K'Naan play. These 2 rolls probably had the most pictures of people on it than any other roll of film. (4 Comments |Comment on this)
Tuesday, June 5th, 2007
4:21 am	Some film pictures. The first two pictures were from the night of the "Smash the Glass" festival at the U. I shot this on the way there while riding. After the festival, I went and checked out Ron Leary at Avalon. This is from my last trip to Chicago. Here's the station. This is from Detroit. These are scans of some 8x10 prints I've made maybe 2 months ago. I have another 2 rolls to develop very soon from Pelee Island and such. I finally got a set of contrast filters to print with, so I've been trying to print with a more old-school mid-tone look, instead of a very contrasty print. Oh yeah, these are on my flickr page, not my website. That's where I keep the good ones that don't fit into sets. (4 Comments |Comment on this)
Friday, May 4th, 2007
3:15 am	Talking to highschool kids This is probably too late, but at 2:30PM today I will be taking part in a panel discussion at the University of Windsor for their High School Social Justice forum. The panelists are: 1. Ellen Vanwageningen- The Windsor Star 2. Daryl Newcombe- A-Channel- television 3. Allison Johnson- CBC 4. Ryan Rogers- The Lance 5. Mike Beauchamp- local blogger I didn't realize until now that represenatives for the Windsor Star and A-Channel will be there... That should be interesting, since a lot of my "blogging" relating to this event as been taking Windsor Star articles and pointing out how stupid they are. Time to actually prepare I guess. (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Saturday, April 21st, 2007
2:07 am	Lots of picture related stuff, and other stuff. I remember thinking to myself "I should probably update this thing before the new year", but now of course it's almost the end of April. Woops. On the plus side, a good way to make it sound like you haven't been sitting on your ass is to update your journal once every 4 months. There's going to be a book launch party for a book called "Never Sleep with Anyone From Windsor" by my friend Jon Fleiger. The book is going to have a few pictures by me in it, including the cover, which should be cool. The book launch party is an open thing and it's happening this Sunday (April 22nd) at Pause Cafe (74 Chatham St. W.) at 7:30PM. Since pointing cameras at things seems to be what I've been doing most, there's a bunch of new image sets that are up. Finding Dayus Raceway and Finding Windsor Dragway are both pictures from the ruins of race tracks in Windsor. One was a 1/4 mile straight and the other was a banked oval. The banked oval is weird because it's right behind a strip-mall I've been past a bunch of times, but I never knew in the field behind it was banked paved corners where people used to race cars almost 50 years ago. Finding the Town of Arner was just a little trip out to the county looking for remains of an old town, that only yeilded a near-falling apart house. In February, I went to Indianapolis to meet up with a guy named kevtris, who has been helping me out with electronic projects for years online. I've learned a lot from this guy, and I really wanted to see some of the stuff he's built. I planned the trip about a month in advance when megabus was having a sale and it cost me $1.50. I also got tickets for Allison to meet me in Chicago. We stayed with Ruth, the same couchsurfer I stayed with last time I was there. We chilled out, checked out the museum, ate pizza, etc. There's some pictures up here. About a month or two ago, Dave and I found ourselves in a network of tunnels underneath the University. Pictures of that are here. And last night, I went out and took a bunch of pictures of abandoned/empty stuff on Lauzon Rd. The pics are here. And that's it for picture stuff. Oh, except for the fact that I bought a "new" film camera from Captain Foldback who was down in Windsor fixing my friend's hammond organs. And of course, snapped a bunch of pictures of that, which you can see here. Okay, that's enough photo business. I'm still trying to design a new Electro-Theremin for therevox, which has been going painfully slow. I'm hoping to have something I can build anywhere, so if I move to Victoria with Allison, I'll be able to bring my own business with me. I'm also slowly trying to design an enclosure for a musicfromouterspace SoundLab that I built. I sure wish I had this thing back when I was playing in Revo (The Devo Cover Band), since this thing is going to be awesome for making weird noises. In February, I brought my audio recording rig down to Sky Lounge and recorded Mr. Chill and Greg Cox live. The recording is really awesome, and I'm hoping that Mr. Chill ends up doing something with it. Oh yeah, I had a "real job" last month! I went into a local bike shop and noticed they were hiring for a bike mechanic. I went in the next day for my first day of work, and then quit the next day. While bike mechanic is probably the only "real job" I could picture myself doing, there was a few really crappy aspects of the shop that I couldn't deal with. I also have too much going on right now and suprisingly a lot of offers for freelance work to waste 8 hours a day wrenching on someone's shitty dirty bicycle. A few weeks ago, Allison had her BFA art exhibit where she did a performance that involved shaving all of her body hair off. The strangeness of dating an art-chick never stops! If you've never dated a bald girl before, I suggest you do it! Last week was the CJAM awards party. I went to eat all the free food.. nwwt! I'm hoping to do some work for them during the summer, adding a bunch of cool stuff to their website. Tomorrow I have a meeting with a few people to do some website work for them. Anyways, I have a meeting tomorrow morning with some people about doing a website for them, so I should probably attempt to sleep. (2 Comments |Comment on this)
Monday, April 2nd, 2007
8:21 pm	"The University of Windsor was once home to tunnels that linked every building on campus. However these tunnels existed back in the 1960's, when the university consisted of only a handful of buildings centered around Assumption University. Short underground hallways connected residences with Dillon Hall, Memorial Hall, and the Education Gym, which was once the university's only gymnasium. Not only were these hallways used for student transportation, but also for the movement of electricity and water from the central power plant to each building. As the university grew, more residences were built, and when St. Michael's Residence Hall was levelled into what now exists as Cody Hall's parking lot, the student tunnel system became closed off." ( 2 more ) (6 Comments |Comment on this)
Thursday, December 14th, 2006
8:09 am	pwn3d About a month ago, my friend told me about some abandoned warehouses on the west end so I went and checked them out with him. I had my digital camera with me and snapped some pictures, but couldn't do much without a tripod, etc. So last night we decided to go back, this time I filled my backpack with a tripod, the digital camera, a wide angle lens, the film camera and a few lenses. I also brought the only flashlight I have, which is a 6-D maglight (does anyone want to buy this?) which is probably the least portable flashlight ever. We stopped so I could get some pictures of some large gravel piles near the bridge, where our shoes got totally soaked since everything was muddy from the rain we had gotten all day. When we left that location to head to the warehouses, we crossed these railroad tracks that go across the road at a rather accute angle. Now, the general practice for crossing things like railroad tracks on a bicycle is that you are supposed to cross them perpindicularly. For some reason I didn't and the wet railroad track slid the skinny 700x23 front tire on my road bike in one direction and I came down on the other. It felt like it happened slowly but I couldn't do much.. and my elbow really fucking hurt as soon as I got up.. so bad I thought it was dislocated or something. My tripod was totally busted, but thankfully my digital camera was in my jacket pocket on the opposite side to which I fell. My film camera seems fine, good thing it's made like a tank and already broken anyways. I think about a month ago, I also crashed riding down University in the rain with 3 other people. One girl stopped to my right and I slowed down while a girl pulled up fast on my left and we crashed into eachother and fell slowly. A few months before that I was riding down Grand Marais ditch (really large ditch ala Terminator 2 chase scene style) and decided to try to ride my bike across the flowing water in the middle. I fell and rolled right onto my digital camera.. cracking the screen. Thankfully I found some cool dude in the UK who had the same camera as me that was also busted, and he sent it to me and I put his screen in my camera. Anyways, my point is.. I can ride almost 8000KM from one end of Canada to the other without falling.. yet I've wiped out 3 times in the past 5 months or so. I feel lame. The closest I came to falling during the ride across Canada was when I rode down the Parlaiment Buildings in Ottawa from Gatineau one night. I took this trail and it was so dark I couldn't see anything and managed to crash into a pole in the middle of the path. 10 minutes later, I almost crashed into a deer.. and that was about it. Oh, and once in Ontario when my front wheel went onto the soft shoulder. But I never fell any of those times. As for my elbow, I rode home and stopped off at Allisons to ice it. The ride home sucked and the arm doesn't want to bend much at all now.. the pain is also spreading into my shoulder. Thankfully it wasn't my masturbating arm.. just my everything else arm. So out of the digital pictures I took that night, this is the only one that turned out okay: II'll find out about the film ones in a few weeks probably. I also put up the whole set of pictures up from these locations so far.. those are here: http://mikebeauchamp.com/images/show.php?set=west-end-warehouses I do plan on adding more pictures to this set once my arm stops being gimpish. The Cross Canada "Trailer" has been viewed around 1200 times on youtube now, so that's pretty cool. I've received a lot of feedback from people on bikeforums.net about what I can do to make this a good movie. Unfortunately most of it is pretty contradictory; people wanting me to just show the ride with minimal talking, and people who want it to be less about the cycling and more about the places I'm in, complete with narrated facts about cities, etc. I think sometimes that the more I try to get advice from people, the more confused I get. Most projects I've done, I just go do them.. and I end up pretty happy with the results. Since I consider this movie a "big thing", I've spent a lot of time questioning myself and asking others.. with varying degrees of success. The new batch of Electro-Theremins is going okay, except I spent weeks designing the circuit board in a program that only outputs in a properietary format that only one manufacturer can read. Inconveniently, this manufacturer is nearly twice the cost of another that I recently found. I guess I'll have to bite it on that until I can sit down and learn a more complicated CAD program. (14 Comments |Comment on this)
Friday, December 8th, 2006
3:41 am	Ahhh.. there's nothing like finding paint on your body in the shower to remind yourself that you are dating an art chick! For the past few months, I've been slowly going through all the Cross Canada footage and logging everything I have. I finally got done with that and moved on to cutting a 9 minute long preview type thing, so now I have something to show. This is also the first time I put together the footage with all the music I've been recording for this. You can check it out on youtube here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ixMTu--gB2w I'd love some feedback on this, since I'm still trying to figure out exactly how a full movie of this stuff will flow. Infact, over the Christmas break I'm hoping to hold a little get together with anyone that is interested in talking about this. If you're interested, feel free to email me. Over the last week, I've been archiving all of "The Moon Patrol" (a band I was in from 1996 to 2000 or so) rcordings that I could find. I'm really happy to have this stuff digitized and saved. The first recording we did was released on cassette tape and the only good sounding copy I had of it was a shitty CD that had a lot of buzzing on it. I was able to find the original DAT (Digital Audio Tape) that the material was mixed to and thanks to Scotty Hughes for lending me a DAT deck, I was able to digitally transfer this to the computer. The other recordings all existed on CD, but they were the only CD's of it.. so I'm glad that's all backed up now too. I put up MP3's of all 3 releases and scanned the artwork and some other stuff.. you can check it out and download it here: http://www.mikebeauchamp.com/audio/the-moon-patrol/ I tried to find some of the even older stuff, like the first recordings we ever did.. but all that stuff seems to be lost for good unfortunately. Was definitely nostalgic to go dig through all that stuff. I recently got an old curly guitar cable at Value Village just like I had back then too.. made me wish I had my old nobles dt1 pedal, and the neighbors shitty amplifier again. I also scanned some photographs I took of a band called Huladog playing downtown and posted them here: http://www.mikebeauchamp.com/images/show.php?set=huladog As much as I now enjoy shooting film, it's definitely a slow process to get it online compared to digital. Last weekend Allison and I went and checked out a Windsor Spitfires game, since I figured she should see the inside of the "Old Barn" before it disappears. After that, we were going to go see The Canaries play at Phog since Christina recommended I do so. It was also CJAM's xmas party there, so we went and devoured all the free food that was remaining. The Canaries were really good and their sound was spot on. The local dude that opened up for them made my night by playing two Neil Young songs; "Captain Kennedy" and "Birds", which he had a girl come up and do harmonies with. Very awesome. I also finally managed to finish the bicycle I was building for Allison. I think I'll put up a set of pictures of all of the bicycles I've owned and built, so hopefully I'll have some pictures of it up soon. I've been having dreams about circuit boards, as lame as that sounds. For the past few weeks I've been designing a circuit board to be manufactured for the new generation of Electro-Theremins that I'm going to be making. I've had a few people contact me that were really interested in the instrument, including one guy from Sweden. So I started working on that.. hopefully I can have these done by summer and have some sort of plan for being able to make a lot more of these. The new version is going to be very cool.. I'm trying to do a whole modular design, where they will be able to interface with other sythesizers and stuff. It also means they'll be able to interface with themselves, so one of them can control another aspect of another.. very weird. Watching the Moog documentary was definitely a little inspirational. I went to the WALKerville thing last week, where a lot of the businesses and stuff were open in Walkerville for people to check out. I really wanted to see the Windsor Printmakers Forum, which was pretty damn awesome.. especially since they gave me free hot chocolate. It also was another one of those little things that happen in this city that make me not hate it nearly as much as I always have. The fact that these friendly local places were inviting people in, and explaining stuff to them and giving them free hot chocolate.. and the fact that there's even a printmakers forum. Speaking about free hot chocolate, Allison and I had free hot chocolate at the xmas parade! NWWT! Anyways, I should probably sleep... peace (11 Comments |Comment on this)