Hit the Road, Zach

Some non-critical updates for you.

A Technical Update

At the suggestion of my good friend Matthew Campagna, I have begun integrating Shadowbox, an excellent standards-compliant media viewing solution, into this blag.

Presently it seems to be working on the home page, but not individual post pages, although the page code is identical. ????

Check it out on this scenic scene we got driving to Vermont:

Hopefully I’ll get it working completely (or someone will) before I die.

A Descriptive Update

This update exists to provide more opportunities for you to see Shadowbox in action. It’s just some “on the road” type shots.

Let’s start with a dynamic action shot.

The carputer has mostly been working well. There were a few issues (one with the battery terminal bumping the frame of the car, shorting things and causing the carputer to reboot. I couldn’t figure out what was happening until we were driving at night and every time we hit a bump, sparks came from the engine compartment!) The GPS software also decided it wouldn’t load anymore, so I thought I was stuck until I discovered I still had the install files on my recording data hard drive. A fresh reinstall fixed the problem. Then the music stopped playing. Some weird setting with Roadrunner’s interface with Winamp was glitching. A manual run of Winamp to readjust the volume solved that problem.

Here’s a shot of the carputer actually working.

Yeah, there are over 12K songs in the playlist now and things seem to be working. Except for that one time when it wouldn’t recognize the keyboard. Turns out it had come unplugged, and plugging it back in was not working. I’m not going to point any fingers, but I’m not the one sitting on the passenger seat… haha. Anyway, JH was a trooper and helped me fix it while we were driving.

When the carputer is working normally (which thankfully, is most of the time) we are free to enjoy nice scenes, such as the beautiful mountainous territory of Vermont.

NEXT: The beautiful mountainous territory of Vermont.

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I’m pretty awesome at keeping my word. Every time I say “NEXT: blah blah blah” at the end of a post, I always deliver in the next post. If anyone cares to make me a trophy, perhaps saying “Internets Teaser Satisfying Champion” or “2008 Promised Topic Delivery Leader” or something, I’m pretty sure it would rival Stephanie’s leg wrestling trophy. (And if it’s better, then I get to make myself a “Best Trophy” trophy. Sweet.)

Anyway, as promised, here is a post about Niagara Falls (and can’t get up! haha!).

We looked all around both the American side (great!) and the Canadian side (better!), and even managed to get JH back into the US. Yay paperwork!

I’ll let the pictures tell the rest of the story.

I would like to make this an awesome collection of bad Niagara Falls (head over heels! haha!) puns similar to the ones in this post. If you can think of one, please post it below. Thanks.

NEXT: another awesome post where I deliver on this promise.

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I promised you something exciting, and I’m about to deliver.

Buffalo! Amazingly, the origin of the name of this city is unclear — there are a number of contesting theories, with no clear winner. Also interesting is that the fictional Gotham City was modeled after Buffalo, with its abundance of Gothic architecture.

The drive to Buffalo from Pittsburgh was beautiful. It was a wonderful day and the scenery did not disappoint.

I even passed some Amish dudes driving their carriages but didn’t get a picture. Instead we waved to each other. I did manage to get a picture of one of the signs warning drivers to watch out for them though (a bad picture at that).

Next thing we knew, we were coming up on Buffalo (we didn’t know anything for several hours evidently).

The first thing we did is hang out with a Couchsurfer I’d met for lunch in Omaha on one of his stops, a flight attendant by the name of John Crandall. John is a cool dude and gave us the grand tour of his area; we walked all around, ate some nice burritos from a great place called ETS in the park, and had generally great times.

John was also helpful in finding a host and people to record. Unfortunately the dude who I’d planned on recording in the evening lost his keys while biking somewhere and had to spend the remainder of his evening hunting for his keys in the dark. Not fun.

So instead I met a girl who likes donuts!!

This picture was taken the morning after hanging out with her and our host Justin and several other awesome peeps (including another Couchsurfer who was also staying there that night) late into the night around an outdoor fire.

We stayed up late chatting and somehow she got on the subject of donuts, and we realized that it was important that we wake up early in order to eat some donuts. So we did.

As an aside, I’m suddenly curious if the “bon” in “bonfire” means “good.”

“I was curious about that too!” interjects Attractive Girl. “So I looked it up on the Online Eymological Dictionary! It says:”

1556, from M.E. banefire (1483), originally a fire in which bones were burned. Johnson mistakenly derived it from Fr. bon “good.”

Thanks, Attractive. So the answer to my question is no. But at least I can put the blame for my erroneous guess on Johnson. Darn that Johnson.

And, that was that. No one got recorded in Buffalo, sadly, but we did have a great time, eat some good donuts, and… see Niagara Falls.

NEXT: Niagara Falls. Don’t stay on the edge of your seat though, it’s not good for your posture. Also don’t bate your breath, just breathe normally. You’ll feel better that way.

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The next stop was Pittsburgh. I promise not to make a single joke in this post about anything being “the pits.”

Pittsburgh has terrible traffic/roads, a great feel, beautiful countryside, and a handful of these cool yellow bridges:

We drove around downtown a little bit looking at stuff.

We saw a huge amout of people hanging around, using public transport, smoking, etc. Pretty cool that a non-huge city would have such a high proportion of foot traffic.

By this point I was becoming accustomed to the hilliness of the terrain, narrowness of the roads, and speed of the traffic on this side of the US. To get to our host I had to experience a considerable bit of all of the above.

Speaking of our host, his name is Andy Lehmann and he’s pretty awesome. He put us up on short notice and let us commandeer his basement for a night. Thanks Andy!

Next morning bright and early (8:15!!!) I was off to record with another old college bud of mine, a multitalented bloke who goes by the name of David Santistevan (because that is really his name). He is working as a music director at a church, so we headed over there to record.

David plays all kinds of instruments with aplomb. I had him lay down some piano for me, then we set up for recording his guitar rig

and recorded Dave’s awesome textural electric guitar playing on several tracks. Dave was pretty easy — I just kind of set him loose and he did his thing and it was good.

Awesome!

NEXT: Something else awesome!

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