Cool Geek Room

I just read this on Slashdot, these MIT students have modified their dorm room to be automated. They can do a whole bunch of cool little stuff, such as close the blinds, change the lights, and even control the whole system through an in-room touchpad, by internet access, or by voice activation.

My favourite part of it all... with the touch of a button, they can tranform their room into a blaring rave in a matter of seconds. Here's a video of the craziness.



Honestly, how cool is this?

Strange Week

The last week has been...well, a little surreal.

So many ridiculous, random things have happened to me. Ill be brief and summarize...

Was chugging Sangria with some Spanish at a lakeside bonfire. Dont remember getting home, I think I was laying in the forest for god knows how long. I woke up without my wallet or my cell phone. After a few hours of mad scrambling, and strange events, I ended up with them back. Although I cant say how it all happened.

Got lost in Stuttgart the other night looking for the last bus home, which i totally missed. I ended up a couple km away from where i was supposed to be. Ran into a pack of drunk girls, one of whom was getting married, one thing led to another, and they were scribbling all over my chest with magic marker. I fell asleep with the sun high and bright that morning.

The other day, I made the 30 second walk from my kitchen to my room. In that timespan, I managed to lose my keys entirely. I tore apart my room, the kitchen, and the path in between. I gave up, started to wonder how I was going to get any food for the weekend, and just then I found them... INSIDE my guitar. The probability of that happening still blows my mind. I just dont know...

And this has all been in the last 4 days or so. In the words of James Blunt, 'my life is brilliant'

Brief Spurts of Homesickness

Yesterday was a fun day.

We started the party early, like 4 pm. Fired up the grill, I brought the guitar, and all was well with the world. I played Beer Pong for the first time last week, its a VERY American drinking game, but I must admit, its pretty fun.

So the day got off pretty normal, some music, some meat, and some drink. But everytime I play music, I always feel there's something missing. That something is the dudes and dudettes from Whitey. I still haven't found that kind of joy here, which is where the title of homesickness comes in. I did, however, find a Frenchman, Charles, who can wail on the sax. He's no Ash, but I'm pretty certain there's only one like him. So anyway, he brought his sax and we went to town. It completely brought me back to my days of busking on the streets of Hess village in Hamilton with the guys. Here's a pic of us, can you notice the sheer joy in my face? haha, its hard to miss...


All in all, a great afternoon/night.

And on the topic of music, a friend of a friend here from Germany was visiting a few nights ago and I was told he loves his music just as much as I do. He also brought his guitar. So after some smalltalk we decided to bust out some tunes. To my complete amazement and astonishment, he pulls out a LEFTY SEAGULL!!!! Now, for most of you who dont know what the hell that means to me, I'll explain briefly...

Seagull is a guitar maker from Quebec, Ive only seen them sold in Canada. Theyre known for having great sound and at a great price. Definitely the best value acoustics one can find. Now, Im a lefty, which is rare enough to meet a lefty guitar player (in fact, I think Ive really only met 1 or 2 in my day). So imagine how blown away I was to see that this random dude from Hamburg had managed to get a Canadian made guitar, in Germany, AND its a lefty!!!!! If he was a girl, I would have jumped her right there and then in a fit of pure lust and excitement. But, fortunately for the both of us, he was male, so I just shook his hand and started to jam.

Now, Ive met some good guitar players here, but no one that Ive really clicked with like with the guys from back home. It was starting to get on my nerves a bit that the only people I meshed with were 8000 km away. But finally, after 9 months, I found one!!!!! This guy was really good, he had his own style, and our style's meshed perfectly. We could both jam out anything, and learn something from one another. Call it fate, call it luck, call it what you please... it was nice.

We then went into the woods, founds a campfire site, and lit a fire. We jammed and danced till 5 am. It was magical. So magical, in fact, that there are tentative plans for me to travel to Hamburg and play with his band. If all goes well, then I will have him come down for my birthday party and play some live music with me here. I will need to take care of alot of logistics for that to happen, but I will try my darndest.

Anyway, the last few days have been great. Despite the rather cold and rainy weather, its been a ton of fun. I can only wish that the upcoming days can come close to matching this.

Bierlauf results!

So we finished the Bierlauf. Heres a good pic of our team the Trojans of Girth. The straw idea was fantastic, we downed the beers in no time. In fact, Im certain that we finished them the fastest, which was a mixed blessing. It was great cause we just had to sprint as fast as we could with an empty case of beer, which wasnt so bad. But it sucked cause i was running with 8 beers sloshing around in my belly the whole way, which became rather painful.

The other guys sucessfully vomited midway, so they had more stamina, but i tried and couldnt. Thus my 8 beers were killing me by the end. But, we made great time, despite some time penalties for various reasons.

The video below is of us starting the race, most people picked up the case and started walking/drinking. We decided to down a couple before even picking up the case, which is what you see here. Unfortunately theres no sound, but you get the jist of it.







What you see here is us almost at the end, our muscles were on fire and we were pretty wasted but we knew it was the final stretch so we gave it 110%.

And.... in the end... we WON!!!!! well, we won for our category, but thats good enough for me. We got more free beer at the end, and won a free dinner at the restaurant who hosted the thing. Not bad for a day's work.

In the end, it was a horrendously painful experience, but I will definitely do it again this October. We had a good strategy and we kept a good pace throughout. It was a ton of fun. Luckily for me, i got to throw all 8 beers up at the end, which felt amazing. I have never been so relieved to be sick.

Anyway, all in all, we rock, and it was a hilarious day.

Bierlauf

Today is the Bierlauf here on campus. I wrote a post some months back describing this event. But Ill sum it up shortly here...

Teams of 3, each getting a case of 24 Becks. There is a course around 5km long going around the campus, with some stations set up, where you have to perform some sort of task. The goal is simple, be the fastest team to circumnavigate the course, drink all 24 beers, and complete all the tasks.

Last time I didnt know about it in time, so I did not participate, but this time, Im all over it. I joined up with some British friends here and we created a Commonwealth team appropriately named 'Trojans of Girth'.

So it gets rolling at 5 today, I cant wait. We have a pretty good plan, that hopefully will place us near the top. We decided that carrying a case of beer, while trying to drink as many as we could, was just a dumn idea. So we chose to bring straws with us, and do what i call 'sharking'. Simply, it involves chugging a beer with a bendy straw letting air into the bottom, avoiding the glug-glug that always ends with that bloating gross feeling. So were gonna try to chug ALL 8 beers each at the start, vomit immediately, then beeline for the stations, and hopefully do quite well. If all this talk of vomiting makes you a little queasy then this is not the event for you. The last time I watched this thing, nearly every team finished the event by finding an area and throwing up 8 beers. It was disgusting, yet strangely entertaining at the same time.

Anyways, so thats whats about to happen in about 5 hours. I will try to get pictures and write a blurb about my experiences.

Quick Update on my Life

So heres the skinny on whats happeinin in my world...

I got a free bike today. I gotta give props to my Canadian Navy and music buddy Ashley for this one. He directed me to a great site, freecycle.org. Its essentially a Yahoo Groups style thing, but with people from your area with stuff that they dont need. Although its called Free Cycle, and, well, I got a bike through it, they also have a boatload of other things. The idea is simple. If someone doesnt need anything, they post a message on the board of what they have, and other people respond. Theres only one rule, everything is Free. Now thats speaking my language.

So heres a picture of my new baby...

Now I know its a girls bike. And I know its a piece of shit. But its MY piece of shit girls bike! and it was free. Its now at the bike repair shop getting tuned up. Ill probably have to pay about 30 Euros or so to get it to be acceptable. But I just cut my commute time by 80% (from 5 minutes to 1 minute, ha, i know Im lazy).

Besides that, theres not alot goin on. The BBQ's are still in full swing. I played some beach volleyball the other day on campus, which was a great time. Im going to Austria in a couple weeks for the weekend, and my mom will be coming the week after. So I should stay pretty busy.

Im off to go drink with some friends. It really is a great hobby ;)

Oh yah, I saw this on my buddy Ave's blog, and it really is hilarious. Im not even a Star Wars fan, but I was laughing out loud, check it out, its very entertaining.

Yup, so thats the newest info in my life. I hope people are still reading this, as I have been quite lazy as far as posting is concerned. But hey, when the weather is beautiful, theres no reason for me to be in my room writing on a blog.

BBQ season is here

well i have been pretty busy this last week. I just had an exam, so ive been studying a bit for that, and Ive been BBQing pretty much every night for the past week and a half. Im quite tired and dont have alot to say, but in short... school's boring. haha, I think everyone already knew that, but its true. Ive just been going to classes like a chump, but it helps alot for the exams, this Ive noticed.

The weather is really nice here, I will be taking pictures of the campus this weekend and hopefully will post by monday. But its hard to get the motivation to sit down and write on a blog when the weather is so damn nice.

Thats about it for me, nothing too exciting, hopefully things pick up soon.