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

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Friday, June 26th, 2009
3:56 pm	Just a quick reminder that The Cross Canada Project will be playing Friday 7-9PM in Windsor at The Worker's Action Centre downtown on 328 Pelissier. More information at Bike Windsor. The place is small apparently, so get there on time! This is a free event too, very cool. (Comment on this)
Saturday, May 30th, 2009
12:54 am	Work In Progress, Guitar Amps and Rolf Harris Darren over at Bike Windsor has organized The Cross Canada Project to be shown at Phog in Windsor on June 3rd. I've been told that the movie will be playing around 9-10PM and that the screening is free. I'm sure Darren's site will have some more information about this. I had mailed Darren a DVD screener a few weeks ago, but it arrived broken in half. That worried me, because at the same time I mailed out several other DVD's packaged identically to some festivals and TV stations. I ended up breaking the 3GB disk image into 30 different files and uploading them to my server for Darren to download. The uploading took about 3 days to do on New Zealand "broadband".. ouch. I'm in the process of finishing up the DVD artwork though, and I can't resist the urge to hide little puzzles and secrets. I'm currently working on trying to fit all the journal entries into the packaging. It's tough and so far I've only managed to get 80% of the text in using 4pt font. I think anything smaller and it'd require a magnifying glass. Not that I'm against that. I received word back from the Bicycle Film Festival that they didn't accept the movie. I thought out of all the festivals, I'd be likely to get into something strictly about bicycles and I was pretty bummed when it didn't happen. But last week I saw the list of films they did show, most of them being under 10 minutes. Since "The Cross Canada Project" is over 60 minutes, I can see how they didn't fit it into their programme. I'm still mailing out screeners and press kits though. I started work on another movie a few weeks ago, and the working title for this work in progress title is "Work, In Progress". It's mainly focusing on work. I've been using a small Canon point and shoot camera running CHDK, a hacked firmware that lets me run scripts among other things. I wrote a small intervalometer script that lets me input target frame rate and target length of the video to produce and the delay between shots.. and essentially the camera just sits there taking pictures, which I import as JPEG sequences to do very cool time-lapse shots of people moving in patterns and other "daily grind" type stuff. I still have to pick up some recording gear so I can start interviewing people as well. I think the end product is going to be 20-30 minutes long. I've also bought some music gear, including a nice cheap Squier Telecaster and started jamming with a few guys. I'm hoping we'll be able to record enough improvised jams for the soundtrack of this movie. I expect I'll probably have to spend around $1500 to do this movie, but that's not too bad. Today at work I tried researching what I need to do broadcast quality slow-motion video, but cameras that can do at least 200FPS are NOT cheap and seem to just be specialized for computer vision applications. So the whole movie will probably be time-lapse and done on the $100 Canon. One of the guys I jammed with is really into tube amplifiers, and I had him over last weekend to guide me through the Fender 5e3 Tweed Deluxe schematic. It's amazing how much you can learn just by sitting down one-on-one with someone and asking them questions. It makes me want to do it a lot more often actually. This is an amplifier I've been wanting to build for a while, and intend on doing so once I return to Canada and have access to all my tools once again. So many things I want to build.. I think that's the problem living abroad and in places that you don't expect to be for long-term, especially when most of your hobbies revolve around having access to certain tools. I haven't shot any film since I've been here, since I'm not going through the effort of acquiring equipment and building a dark room (That being said, there is one available for rent nearby). While volunteering at the bicycle workshop gives me access to some tools, most of the wood working tools are far too shitty to do anything well. Still a sweet setup for an anarchist community centre. I've been trying to design a microcontroller controlled panning tripod head, for the "Work, In Progress" movie. But I think the fabrication I'd need to do, to do it well, would require access to tools I don't have here. There were some people talking about getting together a "maker space", but I don't think anything has come about it. In a few hours, Mel and I are leaving for Australia for a week. I'm really looking forward to it because New Zealand is really starting to feel small after 15 Months. We are meeting up with a guy named Vic in Sydney that I met here in Wellington almost a year ago and did a little bit of Urban Exploration with. He brought me down into some storm drains and he's really cool and will be showing us some neat stuff around Sydney that I'm sure we wouldn't have ever seen otherwise. I've also booked Mel and I to climb the Sydney Harbour Bridge, which is something I've wanted to do ever since I saw it was possible on TV years ago. Then the plan is to drive to Melbourne and spend a few days there. I really tried to get a Rolf Harris t-shirt to wear all during this trip, especially after Vic told me that pretty much the whole country hates Rolf. That being said, "Two Buffalos" is the best song about exponentially growing animals. Not much else to report.. I'm excited about this new movie I'm working on, but looking at my bedroom wall behind me covered in post-it notes has me a tad overwhelmed. There's about 50 and each one represents a shot I gotta get, and since it's time-lapse, each one takes 2-3 hours for 20 seconds of video. Now that it's starting to turn into winter, I've been doing a bit more mountain biking. I barely touched my mountain bike all summer, but now that the weather is shit I've been on it lots. Since it gets dark around 5PM, I've been going out with a 10W halogen on my helmet.. lots of fun! Not having done a bike tour this summer really sucked. I may have to plan a small 3-4 day one this upcoming fall. It's almost been a year since I rode the Queen Charlotte Track here, which was a very fun 3 day mountain biking thing. Maybe I'll go do that again soon... Oh yeah, a pharmacy near work has a huge display for "Influenza Pandemic", including masks and alcohol based hand cleaners. I asked the lady if they actually sold any of this stuff, and she said they've "sold lots, especially last week when it was all over the news". I should probably start packing. (2 Comments |Comment on this)
Saturday, April 4th, 2009
5:28 pm	Why walk?? I just saw a woman taking her dog for a walk, while on a Segway. Awesome. "....all of your local transportation needs are met in one modern, balanced, intelligent machine. Completely versatile and consistently enjoyable, the i2 is ideal in more ways than one. Not only does it take you out of rush-hour traffic and away from congested parking lots, it's battery operated, totally wireless, and intuitively moves where your body tells it to." Fuck, and now I can walk the dog without that annoying "walk" part! And for only $13,000. I'm sold. (6 Comments |Comment on this)
Friday, March 13th, 2009
1:12 am	"The Cross Canada Project" movie is done! Finally... The website has a downloadable MP4 and other info. (1 Comment |Comment on this)
1:09 am	Cross Canada Movie Done and more tired Class Struggle Rants For the past 4 months or so, I've been working several hours every night on "the cross canada project" movie. I'm so damn relieved to say that the movie is finally DONE. There's a flash embedded version and a tasty 300MB MP4 to download on the website For the past few years, it's been hard to take on large projects knowing that this one was sitting unfinished. I don't want to think of myself as someone who doesn't get things done, so more than anything I think it was important for me to get this thing done. I'm pretty happy with the end product and I'm glad it's now out. I brought all the footage with me to New Zealand on a pair of hard drives, and it was really interesting going through all the footage again. I'm only in New Zealand right now because I met a girl that I never would have met if I didn't do that ride across Canada. I also would have never rode across California, or gone on all the other little trips I went on after I got home from that first trip. So yeah, it's nice to have it done and hopefully with in a month or so, I will have DVD's available so I can send them to all the people that helped me on that trip by giving me places to stay, etc. I know it's been a LONG time since I've posted anything on here. This is sort of the anti-twitter... where I only write once every 3 months, but I write lots. I'm still in New Zealand and probably will be for another year or so. My original Working Holiday Permit thing has now run out, and I've now been given a regular work permit that allows me to stay here until 2011 because computer stuff is on their "long term skills shortage list". I think the last time I posted, I was doing contract work for the Department of Labour here. After 4 months of doing that they offered me a permanent job, so I took that. A few months after that, we got a foosball table at work.. so I can't complain. I look forward to returning to Canada with new foosball skills. I wish I could say I would be returning to Canada with lots of money too, but the NZ dollar just keeps dropping compared to the Canadian dollar. This is good if anyone wants to come visit! NZ isn't immune to the whole GLOBAL FINANCIAL CRISSISSSSSS. Or at the very least, NZ businesses aren't immune to using it as an excuse to maximize profits by minimizing jobs. A few weeks ago, several hundred employees all got called into a big meeting where they discussed that outside consultants will be coming in to evaluate people's jobs. More and more as I work in an office setting, the more I appreciate the genius of the movie "Office Space". In December we moved into a new apartment, which is pretty cool. I didn't want to spend more money, but I wanted a 2 bedroom place so we could have our own spaces. So we are in a different area of town (a whopping 800M from the old place). Since we've been here I've seen a few drug deals outside my bedroom, a few police chases and the full swat team with dogs and MP5's arresting someone down the street. And here I was thinking that New Zealand didn't have crime.... 2 Bedrooms is solid though, and I have no clue how couples can live without their own spaces. Behind me in my bedroom right now are 3 bicycles, one of them in pieces... One of the bicycles is a touring bike I've been slowly building while I volunteer at the community bicycle workshop. This week, I planned on flying it up to Auckland and spending 10 days riding it 650KM back down to Wellington. About 2 days before I was ready to leave, I got a fucking hemorrhoid that absolutely killed.. so I've postponed the trip maybe until the spring. The eventual goal is to do tours on both the North and South island. In February, I turned 29... now I'm getting hemorrhoids? I'm getting old. New Zealand is an interesting place. It is strange being in a place where the people look exactly like you, but there are all these subtle cultural differences that you can't quantify or explain.. you just feel that they are there every time you interact with somebody. I still haven't gotten over the amount of money that everyone seems to have in this city. I don't know how EVERY person can afford every latest trend... I don't know how people can afford to commute to work on $3000 bicycles wearing $1000 worth of gear. Maybe everyone is secretly in debt? About 2 weeks ago, and I'm not making this shit up... I saw a guy park a BMW in a parking garage, go into the trunk and get out a segway and then ride that segway 100M into an apartment building. Seriously? Nobody actually owns a segway, right? Well they do... This is the 5th segway I've seen in this city. The previous person I saw on a segway was a bald business man wearing a suit riding his segway to work. One thing I've really noticed about Kiwis is that they LOVE to "look the part". There's no point in doing something if they can't get all dressed up to do it. Whether it's going to a party, or going for a bike ride... there HAS to be some sort of expensive costume involved. Unless things have changed, I don't remember people being this obnoxious in Canada. It's like the word "Yuppie" doesn't exist here, or at least doesn't have any negative connotations. Maybe it's the complete lack of low-income families in the Wellington CBD that has people sporting $200 shirts guilt-free to go power-walking. I know I grew up in a working-class shit hole, but I'm very proud of it. Being here with another person from that same working-class shit hole makes me even more proud of the way we were brought up. Don't get me wrong, a lot of my friends have grown up to own giant TV's "because they can" and that's fine. But a lot of people I know back home still see the rewards of buying used clothing and using hand-me-down shit that other people don't need. More importantly, these people don't need to show-up their neighbors and they don't suffer from the Status Anxiety that seems to plague 90% of the people I see in this city. NZ isn't to blame and there are certainly some cool people in this country. These are just my experiences with being plopped into the middle of their wealthiest city. I know when it comes to wealth that the sky is the limit, and believe me, I experienced that when I was in Los Angeles. But even in the middle of Hollywood, there was still the vibe that showing off how much money you can spend isn't cool. Anyways, it is time for me to get to bed! I have to wake up for work in the morning... I still find that hard to believe. (8 Comments |Comment on this)
Sunday, October 5th, 2008
11:06 pm	dumpster diving, sidewalk chalk, identity theft, etc. The first time I decided to check a dumpster behind a local bike shop. My size too. I brought it with me to the shop today, thinking about building it up. But it would require that I also find some nice 700c wheels in the garbage.. the vertical dropouts would also make it hard to make into a single-speed. Maybe I'll just put it on trademe. As I was writing this, a group of girls passed me. After reading it aloud, one girl said "I think that's mean. That's not nice" and her friend said "No, I like it. It's funny!" This pile of CD-R's came from the garbage room of my apartment. Sure enough, they contained the person's resume, a bunch of photos, school projects, poems, essays and scans of their passport. The lesson here should be to break your CD's in half before throwing them out... otherwise nerds like me will be laughing at you. I sold my soul and used the money to buy a used 5th generation 80gb ipod for pretty cheap. I run rockbox on it (rockbox.org), which is awesome. Unfortunately the battery stopped holding a charge. Replacement cost me about $30 NZD and came with a tool for opening up the ipod. (4 Comments |Comment on this)
Monday, July 14th, 2008
3:58 pm	Sardines Being excited to see Brunswick Sardines in the grocery store is a sure sign that you miss Canada. In other news, the kitchen at the New Zealand Department of Labour is now quite stocked with Brunswick Sardines in Mustard Sauce. (2 Comments |Comment on this)
Sunday, June 22nd, 2008
10:32 pm	"Light Bar" completed. I just added a page up on my website about the Light Bar thing I've built. (more pictures on that page as well) The "Light Bar" is an arduino controlled installation consisiting of a 2.5M long strip of 128 purple LED's that visualizes randomly generated numbers in various ways. When I moved to New Zealand in February 2008, I had to leave all of my electronic stuff behind. I didn't even have a soldering iron. To get comfortable with my new surroundings, one of the first things I wanted to do was start on a new DIY electronics project. I had been looking at the arduino for a while as nice way of getting started with microcontrollers, but I didn't know what I could use it for. While sleeping on the couch one night, I was staring at an I-Beam that was half-sticking out of the apartment wall, leaving a nice crevice to stick something in. I thought it would be cool to have a line of LED's from floor to ceiling in this crevice behind the I-beam, lighting up the wall next to it. I measured from floor to ceiling and realized that 128 LED's would fit perfectly, spaced 2 CM apart. I knew I wanted to be able to address each LED individually (have control over each LED) but didn't know how it could be done. That's when I found out about the MAX7219 and MAX7221 chips, which are able to control 64 LED's each and can be cascaded. Perfect. I ordered an arduino to play with and a barebones arduino to be permanently part of this project, as well as a bunch of other random parts to mess with. I picked up purple LED's for about 20 cents each, which wasn't bad at all. I wanted the unit to be portable so I could ship it back to Canada when I move, so I made the whole thing in 8 segments that were able to fold up. I found a plastics supplier in Lower Hutt that custom cut the 8 strips of smoked plexiglass. I snuck off at lunch from my job at the Department of Labour to hop an electroic train to go pick up the plastic, which only cost around $20. I drilled all the holes for the LED's at 128 Abel Smith when I was there volunteering at the bike shop on Sundays. After doing a breadboard test of the MAX7221 and arduino, I started building the actual unit. I wanted the "Light Bar" to display different patterns, so I included a button to advance to the next mode. Over the course of several weeks I programmed various modes that the display runs in, mostly including randomness as part of the display. When the unit first powers up, it goes into a random mode. Some of the modes scroll random patterns downards at various speeds. A few of the other modes turn random LED's on and off at random intervals, some modes do this very slowly where the change isn't even noticeable. A few of the modes also control the brightness of the LED's (which is only controllable in 16 different steps, and only affecting the whole display at once). The first mode I programmed had all 128 LED's slowly "breathing" by slowly cycling through brightness levels. My favourite display modes are ones that emulate gravity, by having an LED "fall" from the ceiling to the floor like a rain drop, waiting a random length of time until the next one. There is also a mode that "shoots" an LED up from the bottom at a random velocity and arcs back down to the ground. The arduino is very cool, and I do intend on using it for upcoming projects. The "Light Bar" turned out awesome and looks very cool at night. It was also a good excuse to buy a soldering iron and some other much-needed goodies. (2 Comments |Comment on this)
Wednesday, June 18th, 2008
8:49 pm	quick update: light cone. I've started a new little project, called the "light cone". It's a few weird translucent plastic cones (that I found in the garbage) with a full colour programmable LED inside. I'm using the blinkM, which is programmed through the arduino. It will be programmed to display random colours in a 120 second cycle. I think it will run for at least a few hours off of 4 AA batteries. The BlinkM and Arduino came from an australian supplier and I've been picking up a lot of small electronic parts at jaycar, which is a 5 minute walk from my apartment. Also visible in the picture is the laptop that I bought second-hand last week for $475NZD off of trademe, which is an NEC L1100. I also put in an extra 1GB of ram since I plan on using it for video editing. I brought all of the "Cross Canada Project" footage along with me on a pair of desktop harddrives, which I bought some USB enclosures for. I didn't want to build a desktop computer since the apartment is so small and I don't know how long I intend on being here... but the long-term plan is to hopefully edit a movie finalllly. (Comment on this)
Monday, June 9th, 2008
4:07 pm	Foose Ball Tables and Secrets to Writing Amazing Love Poems. After a few weeks of sending resumes around, I had my first real interview I had a few interviews at New Zealand temp agencies already and in fact I had one an hour before this interview, so I had to run to get to this one. This was for a "real" job at a "real" web design firm. You know a web design firm is real when they occupy a loft floor of an old warehouse with unfinished walls and exposed cement pillars. And of course no dot-com company is complete without a fooseball table, which was prominently displayed in the center of the room The job was for an "HTML/CSS Programmer" and their office was about 2 blocks from my apartment. Most importantly, they had a Subway restaurant on the main floor. I was taken to the meeting room, which was just a large desk in the middle of the room and thankfully the 6-8 young people were quietly working. The woman I talked to on the phone sat next to me, and the older and overly tanned president of the company sat across from me. At least it didn't feel like an interrogation, unlike my interview with the Wellington Police Department where they sat me infront of a panel of people for an hour and a half. Their webpage at the time was just a landing-page with their address on it, so I asked them what it is they do. They began by telling me vaguely what their company does. That is, design web pages, book covers and even some video content. Very cool. When I asked them why their website didn't have a portfolio, the president explained that they "don't actually do any business in New Zealand. All of our customers are in the States and we operate under a few different names. We try to keep a low profile...". Red Flag #1. Then the woman told me that they "sometimes create hundreds of different sites for the exact same thing". Red Flag #2 When I kept asking questions, the president of the company finally dropped the ball and asked "Are you familiar with the term Direct Marketing?" They got out a laptop and started showing me some of their work. Get rich quick real estate websites, stock tip websites, weight loss pills, etc. They explained that they create hundreds of websites, simply hoping that people enter their e-mail address for more information. They explained how this lets them better advertise products. I asked them "So you guys basically do spam?" The president replied, "It's an honest business! There are quite a few people making a lot of money doing these sorts of things". By this time I knew I didn't want to work for the company anyways, so I explained to the boss that "it might be a business in the respect that people are making money, but I definitely wouldn't call it honest". You'd think that by this time, I'd be shown the exit, but instead the boss kept trying to sell me on the idea of Direct Marketing. He said his business is just as legitimate as television shopping (not knowing that I've spent countless hours watching the Home Shopping Network). I tried to explain to him that selling exercise gear and ceramic nick-nacks to old ladies sitting at home isn't what I'd consider legitimate. This is when he started showing me the books that they've designed. He never actually showed me the books and none of them come up on Amazon or anywhere else. Titles include "Beating the Casino! The secret formula REVEALED!", "Secrets to writing amazing love poems. Write love poems like a romantic!" and "Gnostic Secrets Revealed! Turn On Your DNA & Heal Yourself". You know a book is going to be good when it has exclamation points in the title! I'm convinced that the books don't actually exist and are only used as incentives to lure people to sign up for their websites. In fact, the only website I see mentioning any of these books offers it as a "free gift" if you disable your pop-up blocker and sign up for "more information". That was pretty much the whole interview. I walked out, grabbed some Subway and went home. The company has updated their site with a porttfolio section now, so you can check it out! http://webmediafactory.co.nz/ Thankfully, a few weeks later I got offered this "Web Analyst" contract at the Department of Labour. It's not the perfect job (I don't think there are careers in 10 Hour per Day Sleeping Panzarotti Eating Oral Sex Receiving and Giving), but it could be a lot worse. It's strange working in an office setting. If you've never worked in an office, what you see on TV is true; It is an "open concept" maze of dilbert comic covered cubicles and plastic plants. Older women in wool skirts fiddle around the photocopier copier saying "oh dear", wondering why their reports aren't being printed. My job is to mark-up and publish big ugly reports on the DoL's website. The reports are usually big long boring things that nobody ever reads, but that's the government for ya... it's their job to create useless jobs. It's only a 10 minute bike ride to get here and there are showers available for people who bicycle into work, which is pretty cool. There is also a kitchen with a fridge and stove that we aren't supposed to use because "cooking smells" - WTF?. No fooseball table though. (9 Comments |Comment on this)
Tuesday, June 3rd, 2008
4:01 pm	german girls, $35 cases of pop, plastic money, etc. s 4PM on Tuesday (12PM on Monday in Windsor), and I'm sitting at my desk at the New Zealand Department of Labour. A lot of things have happened since the last update, and I don't even know where to start. A few hours after my last update, Melissa's grandparents came to pick me up to drive us to Detroit Metro Airport. I spent the last hour pacing around the house, wondering why I only have a half-full backback. Now, I pride myself on the fact that I can pack pretty light, but this was insane. I picked up one of those fancy-shmancy "look at me, I'm a backpacker"-type backpacks for $40, which I thought was an amazing deal until I got it home. I spent about 3 hours trying to get the most horrendous smell out of it. I washed it by hand, then washed it in the machine, then washed it in the machine again, then washed it in the machine again with vinegar, then doused it with a bottle of febreze. Even after throwing in my film camera, film, a flash, camping gear, etc.. the backpack still had a lot of room left in it, which Melissa ended up filling with hard-cover books. Melissa had booked her flight months before me, but we still managed to get onto the same flight from LAX to Nadi, Fiji and from Nadi to Auckland, New Zealand. Amazingly, we met up in Chicago because her flight was cancelled. Our flight from LAX to Fiji, the first time I've ever flown over an ocean, was surpisingly easy thanks to sleeping pills. Fiji was very beautiful, but staying at a resort wasn't really my thing. Snorkeling and hiking was cool, and the highlight was watching all the shirtless guys flirt it up with bikini girls by the pool. We were in Fiji for 10 days I believe, the first half was spent in the Yasawa islands, about an hour off the coast of Fiji. I still can't get over how beautiful this place was. We also spent a few days in the capitol, Suva, which was described as dangerous in Lonely Planet, which advised to not be on the streets after dark. I'm not too sure what they were talking about, as Suva seemed very safe and the people generally friendly (and the food generally tasty). The flight from Fiji to Auckland, New Zealand was pretty short. Since Fiji felt like a vacation, I think the whole situation finally hit me on the plane. That is, I'm as far away as humanly possible from everyone I know and I only have a half-empty backpack of stuff (not including Mel's books). She had done this several times before, the whole moving to a weird place. She's also had real jobs, and all the other things that I wasn't looking forward to doing. In Auckland, we stayed with her friend Liz and exploredthe city. It's the largest city in New Zealand and reminded me of Vancouver but with Toronto's CN Tower, which I guess I could simplify as Seattle although I've never been there. After a few days in Auckland though, I was pretty scared. I found the city really boring. Beautiful, but boring. Everyone dressed in the same upper-middle-class way, and I've never seen so many power walkers. I kept wanting to see the "seedy" areas of town, so we were shown K' Road. Entering a store selling used-clothing and that was blaring Band of Gypsies on the stereo was much-needed. After having some renewed hope in the city, we went and checked out some apartments downtown. The one building we went to was the usual cement/glass/stainless-steel affair and a really energetic lady took us and 4 Asian familes around to see the units that were available. She would take us into tiny apartments and tell us to look around and then ask "Okay, is this okay? Who wants it?" Then when nobody replied she'd ask "Well, what do you want? Tell me what you want!". The weirdest part was that water was not included in rent, and she estimated it at being $150/mo. A few days later, we caught an 11-hour bus down to Wellington, which was quite scenic. We had nobody to stay with in Wellington, so we booked a hostel for as long as possible (I think it was about 5-6 days that they would allow us to stay) while we looked for places to live and work. Melissa got offered a job at the first restaurant we went to, and I started to get slightly worried that I wasn't going to find a job. After checking out a few apartments, we finally found a decent one right in the center of the city, which met our requirements (of having a door between the bedroom and living room to slam dramatically during fights), which meant we didn't have to sleep at the hostel anymore. Because our room was so damn hot and the fan broken, we had been leaving the door to the room slightly open. Early in the morning some old guy came in and found me awake.. he quickly asked for someone and then left. A few minutes later, he came back into the room and grabbed something off a chair and exited. A few german girls we were sharing the room with brought back a few lucky dudes that night and one of them woke up and started pacing around, looking for something. I asked him what he was looking for and he explained that he left his wallet on the chair, but now it's gone. So yeah, lock your shit up in hostels. I applied for quite a few I.T. type positions, and kept trying to call temp agencies. Melissa got a temp job at the Department of Education and then scored a Permanent job at Massey University. Eventually a temp agency sent me on an interview with the Department of Labour and called me a few hours later to tell me that I got the job, So that's where I am now. It is for a 3 month contract, which I am already 2 months into. It's a "real job" with cubicles and all.. the first 3 days on the job, I even wore button-up shirts. The good news is that they pay me $35/hr. Last week they asked me if I could work for a 4th month, so I asked for a $10/hr raise and they agreed. I've never had regular income before, and I'm trying my best to not to spend it on stupid shit. I'll admit that I did purchase a Nikon D40 digital SLR and last week I did buy a mountain bike to enjoy some of the awesome trails this city has to offer (and to hopefully get me back into half-decent shape for a potential bike tour in the summer). I also spent a few hundred dollars on purchasing tools and electronic parts, including an Arduino, which I have been messing with. To feel as though my life isn't just a work/sleep cycle, I've been designing, building and programming this cool light installation for the apartment that consists of 128 LED's lined up from floor to ceiling, 2CM apart. It displays random patterns and operates in various modes, almost all of them visualizing some sort of randomness. I'll soon put up a page about the project, as it's one of my favourite to date. I can't get over how small this city is though. It takes me about 10 minutes to get to work on the bicycle I built at 128 Abel Smith St, an anarchist collective/radical social centre that I volunteer at on Sundays, helping people build bicycles for themselves. It's a very old house that's nearly falling down, but they do a lot of cool things there and I'm happy to have found something like this in a city that is otherwise pretty consumed with making money, spending money, being "extreme" and dressing like brats from the 80's. When we started with an empty apartment and had to fill it with the usual crap, any store we needed was within a 2 block radius, including a Salvation Army family store, which helped a lot (My favourite find was a pair of NAD bookshelf speakers for $25). I feel very lucky to live in a city where walking, bicycling and public transportation can get you everything you need. The easiest way to illustrate this is using walkscore.com, which assigns a value to a location based on how close it is to certain things. My apartment's walkscore is 97/100 (you can see the results and map here). Cars are definitely a luxury here, but that doesn't mean they don't exist. Like any city, there are still rich people in suburbs that can actually afford that luxury. It's very entertaining to walk down the street, passing gridlocked cars. It is also dangerous though, as New Zealand has horrible laws regarding pedestrians. That is, pedestrians only have the right-of-way at crosswalks. If there isn't a blinking-crossing-guy, then cars seem to have the right to kill you. This makes walking parallel to any main street difficult, since you don't have the right-of-way while crossing the side-streets. Odd. This city is also very expensive, the worst being a case of pop that cost me $35 NZD. Our rent for our 1 bedroom apartment is $330 NZD/WEEK. For some reason, rent isn't by the month here.. it's by the week. Ouch. Good news is that taxes are included on all prices and that tipping doesn't happen. Is there a logical reason why the prices in Canada do not include taxes? Not that math is hard, but it's nice to actually know that $20 will cover a $19 item, with (suprise suprise) $1 in change! While I'm on the topic of money here... All of the "paper" money here is actually plastic polymer, which means it cannot get damaged by water and cannot be ripped, etc (Mexico had some bills like this as well, which I was thankful for after leaving some in my pocket while going in the Ocean). I really appreciate little smart things like this. Another one worth mentioning before I go is the fact that all the Power Sockets have switches. Now people like my dad no longer have to unplug the toaster when not in use, for fear of it spontaneously combusting. Oh yeah, I've also been dumping a lot of pictures to my Flickr Account. Eventually, some of them will make it to mikebeauchamp.com though. Anyways, it's time for me to leave work. I still stubbornly refuse to use facebook or myspace, but I'm curious to know what everyone else reading this is up to. Shoot me an email (old-school, I know)! (3 Comments |Comment on this)
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 ) (6 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. (2 Comments |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)