Blogged Et Animam Levavi

Real-time(-ish) beeping out of the explicit lyrics

2012-05-16T17:40:18Z

Would it be nice if you could push a button on your Walkman (or whatever kids are listening to their tunes on nowadays) and turn the songs into their clean versions automagically without having to download (if you’re a listener) and distribute (if you’re a publisher) multiple versions of the same tracks? (Thanks for keeping me company till the very end of that sentence!)

Since even the actual Walkman is now a digital music player, you don’t even need to bake any complex functionality into the player itself. The publisher would just embed the tags marking the explicit parts of a song in the track itself. The Walkman then would see a dirty word and mute the sound - Bob’s your uncle!

The Edge

2012-05-10T23:40:14Z

I experienced The Edge in May of 2008, and I still remember everything as if it had happened last night. Every time I walk by a cedar tree and catch a whiff of the wood, I am immediately reminded of my solo night that I spent in a shelter made of cedar bark. I realize that after the Camp I became more aware of the surroundings and began to notice things around me that I failed to see before.

The first part of the Camp was very educational and also great fun. We practiced starting a fire, learned how to build a shelter, how to find water and food, and everything else we needed to make our solo night more comfortable. In the meantime, along with the food for thought, we were fed a very nutritious and healthful diet consisting of brown rice, steamed veggies, and loads of fruit and nuts. If you don’t mind me sharing, by the end of the Camp whatever left my body was light brown in color and virtually odorless. I felt amazingly light on my feet and full of energy. Our survival meals were also memorable. Where else could I have learnt that a lizard tastes exactly like chicken? I only wished the little critter had had more meat on its bones!

Of course my favorite part of the Camp was the solo night. Let me tell you, there is a huge difference between sleeping in a tent and spending a night lying on a pile of pine needles two feet away from the fire listening to a bear walking by. You see everything around you (well, as much as the night time allows you), you smell everything, you feel the breeze - all of your senses are sharpened by the Edge! By the end, I felt empowered and confident of my ability to survive in the wilderness. But boy, did I appreciate every ounce of the four huge Angus beef burgers that I devoured at the feast following our solo night! I am very grateful to Mark and Celeste for everything, and I can’t wait to join them for another adventure!

Ham Radio

2012-05-10T23:38:45Z

I got my license (W6CLB) in August of 2011. My initial motivation was to get a radio for climbing trips and emergency preparedness. But wouldn’t it be cool to also build a Ham Radio Controlled quadcopter that beams Amateur TV down to the ground for scouting climbing routes and whatnot? I think it would!

Having more things means losing more things

2011-07-25T19:52:35Z

I’ve been doing this thing for a while - stashing multiple quantities of things I need or want to have handy at different times and in different locations - and I am happy to report that it’s not only wasteful, but it also doesn’t work. It sorta works for things like power bricks that are semi-permanently attached to a place (e.g.: you sit on a couch and there is a power cord for your laptop there.) But it doesn’t work for things like eye glasses, notebooks and headphones. They either slowly all end up in the same place or just get lost one by one - having more things means losing more things.

I remember a tale I’ve heard as a child. It was about an ancient ruler who decorated his worrier’s swards and shields with precious stones so they wouldn’t lose them and leave them behind fleeing a battle field. And that’s similar to the new approach I’m testing - acquiring the best pair of eye glasses money can buy and hanging tight to them. This, I noticed, creates a deeper emotional attachment to a thing so I end up carrying it around and caring about it more. And I hope it leads to a less cluttered life - the proverbial “less is more.”

Is rock climbing bad for you?

2011-07-22T23:11:23Z

Nah! It’s awesome for you! Climb on!

There's no privacy, there's no freedom and there's no spoon...

2011-07-19T22:32:40Z

Well, maybe the spoon does exist. But the privacy and freedom - the lack of which people so love to whine about - are neither the state, nor the right. They are both relative conditions proportionate to the amount of fight we put up. We fight harder if we want more and we lose them if we stop paying attention.

Leaving

2010-09-22T00:51:41Z

Leaving is never easy. Be it leaving your parents’ house to go to college, or leaving a city your grew up in. It’s not easy to leave a girlfriend of 1 year or a spouse of 11. And it’s not easy to move to another country on the opposite side of the globe, with the different language, customs and culture. Leaving is hard and it hurts.

Sometimes it’s bittersweet - it’s the end of something good, but also the beginning of something better. Though regardless of whether it was good or bad, it takes time to adjust to your new life. Time heals all wounds, they say - I suppose it’s true to a degree. But it always takes work to truly move on. If you’re lucky, all you need is a good song - “Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da” helped me get over a break up with my girlfriend in college. “Life goes on, bra,” I reminded myself, when my spirits took a steep dive. Other times you will go through a painful withdrawal - crying feats and everything.

It doesn’t matter if the thing you are moving away from was bad and leaving feels more like escape - emigrating from a poor country or divorcing an abusive husband - what you often leave behind and have to mourn for properly is a dream that will never become a reality. Not in that country or with that person, anyway. You might have spent years working on your dream and now it’s time to move on.

But the new life presents its own challenges. You might find yourself trying to fit your old square ways in your new round life. Keeping an open mind is crucial.

And if you’re depressed and can’t see the obvious? Ask for help. A friend who would listen or a professional therapist - if you think you need help, ask for it - that’s what friends are for.

How to be happy: a very simple recipe

2010-09-17T16:45:12Z

We have little (if any) control over things. But we have a lot of control over how we feel about things. Forget about this and you’ll sink deep into a depression, because nothing is really and truly the way you want it to be. But if you keep an open mind and try to learn from any experience then you’ll be as happy as a sandboy.

How To Rock Climb (And Really Enjoy It)

2010-09-09T05:09:51Z

I'm sitting in a quiet cafe, on the second-floor terrace of the Borders store, sipping italian soda, soaking up the distant sounds of a spicy Mexican band, broken foot propped on a chair. And I can't help but wonder if I'll ever bicycle to work again. Don't get me wrong, I love biking a lot and my gas-hog of a car being totally awesome for outdoors is not so good for a 3-mile daily commute. But being grounded for two months because of a silly accident that didn't involve climbing is just too hard to process. Despite the reasoning being completely broken - an injury is an injury, climbing-related or not I'm still grounded - this is a welcomed turn of mood, however.

I started climbing exactly two years ago and I've never been sidelined by an injury in all this time. I slowly progressed through the grades and was inching in on the coveted 5.12's. The last project I was working on before the accident was a short, negative and pumpy 5.11d. I attempted to redpoint it five or six times and was getting closer to sending it, but I was peeling off the same second-to-last move. The frustration with my lack of progression and inability to learn grew bigger with every failure. Because I was not getting results, I was starting to dread doing something I supposedly loved. How did I get from the shivers of excitement to the dread of anticipating a failure without even noticing it?

A couple of months ago my girlfriend and I visited Squamish - a stellar climbing destination in British Columbia. Fantastic cracks, mind boggling slabs and plentiful bouldering - a dream destination. On our first climbing day we decided to try an unknown crack at the base of the Chief's Bulletheads wall. I didn't know the grade of the route, but but it looked within my range. We swung by the wall, I quickly racked up and Adrienne took me on belay. The first moves were solid and I proceeded to jam a few feet before stopping to place some gear. The crack was dirty and my pro felt sketchy. The next section was too wide for jamming and required a transition from solid secure jamming to strenuous and precarious laybacking. But I kept my feet high and moved past those few feet to a good stance with perfect hand-sized gear placements. But then the following ten feet were too wide for pro and too runout to afford a fall on a slabby wall below. I spent a few minutes getting enough courage to climb that section. But when I reached the next solid hand jam and placed a cam, my enthusiasm evaporated completely - directly above me was a bolt, but the hanger was spinning like an Aspen leaf in a light summer breeze. And the bolt itself was moving quite a bit. This is where I needed to think clearly and I wasn't. All I could think about was how crappy that bolt was. I was picturing myself falling and pilling the bolt out. In a haze of frustration my decision was to place a nut, equalize it with the bolt and lower to the ground, cleaning on the way down. And so I did.

But the bolt was unnecessary - I was sitting in a perfect hand crack with plenty of potential for bombproof gear placements. I just needed to place a couple of pieces and move on to the roof traverse. However, earlier looking at that lengthy traverse from the ground, I decided that if I found it too hard, it would be okay to leave some gear and bail.

So how did a beautiful climb within my range turn into a disappointment so quickly? The answer is simple - it didn't, it was doomed from the start. I made a prediction and then worked hard to make it true. Our mood, our emotions are not created outside of our brains. The way we react to things is influenced by the language we use to think and talk about our experiences. (Have you noticed that great climbers call scary climbs "exciting"?) It's hard to enjoy a dirty crack with insecure stances and sketchy pro. But it's an entirely different experience when you think of the same route as a pristine, adventurous one, with thin gymnastic stances and creative pro. When you fail the same impossible move twenty times in a row - it's no fun. But when you learn something new and interesting about your body and mind every time you fall - you can do it all day long and never get bored or discouraged.

Raw and pugly

2010-09-05T22:22:31Z

All three and a half of you still following my blog might have noticed that I'm not writing much here lately. The reasons are plentiful and I might write about some of them later. But one that is relevant here is that I used to spend a significant amount of time writing my posts. I'd dump everything "on paper" in a matter of minutes and then spend the next few days editing the piece. But starting today and until further notice I'm gonna try a new thing - no more editing of any kind. Just a pure unstructured stream of raw and pugly consciousness.