Road tripping guide part 1

I've learned a few things on this trip, and i thought it would be useful to start writing them down. So here goes the first installment: Road Boredom

1) Get an MP3 player.

The first thing you realize on a long road trip is that 12 hours of driving in a day is excruciating without something to listen to. I was lucky enough to acquire an iPod shortly before leaving on my trip, and I don't know what I would do without it. Even a nano would be enough to hold a day's worth of listening, and if you have a laptop with you and a wireless interent connection, you can always download more content overnight and load new stuff every morning. Burning MP3 CDs that will hold 10 hours and can play in the newer car CD decks would work, too.

2) Mod your MP3 transmitter

If you have a car without a tape deck or an iPod-in jack, you'll have to buy a radio transmitter that turns your iPod into a weak radio station, allowing you to tune-in your iPod through the radio. The trouble is, FCC regulations require that commercial devices be crippled to prevent interference with commercial airwaves. What this really means is that whatever transmitter you buy, its going to suck. You'll get static constantly, and the audio will sound muddy and crappy most of the time. The good news is, its easy to de-cripple most any transmitter by cracking it open and soldering a long wire where the (embarrasingly short) stock antenna is. By adding a wire about 35 inches, transmission in the lower area of the radio band will be drastically improved and will even reach the surrounding cars. Just look for a contact point on the circuit board labeled "ANT" or if there is no such area, just turn on the transmitter and touch one end of a 35 inch wire to various spots on the circuit board until the signal gets stronger. Here are some links for the more popular transmitters:

Belkin Tunecast II: http://www.makezine.com/blog/archive/2005/07/how_to_modify_t.html
Monster iCarPlay: http://www.ipodwizard.net/showthread.php?t=7496 (download the zip file attached to the post)

3) get some music.

A few weeks prior to leaving, rip as many of your favorite CDs as you can. This is a good opportunity to rip some of your less-favorite CDs, too... you know, the ones you've always wanted to get into, but never found the time to. Thats the nice thing about road tripping: You will have nothing but time. Its kind of like prison...

4) Get spoken-word audio

After 30 hours of listening to your hand-picked music, you'll start to realize your music selection is narrower than you ever knew. In fact, your taste in music sucks. Hard. The perfect antidote for this temporary self-loathing is a change of pace. Audio books are a great way to kill a huge chunk of driving time, entire days, sometimes. The problem is, they are super expensive on CD and on Audible.com. There is a small selection of pirated MP3's on torrent sites (just google "audio book torrent." Youi'll need a BitTorrent client software to download them), but its usually pretty sparse and the download speeds are less than blazing. A better idea is to go to the local public library or university audio-visual archives and check out their audio book stock. Take five or six home, rip them with i-tunes, and go back for more. They usually have a pretty good variety of cheap paperback fiction, self help, and comedy. Not exactly Shakespeare, but distracting, at least. Speaking of Shakespeare...

A great (and free (and LEGAL!)) alternative to ripping audio book CDs is downloading radio broadcasts. One of the best radio broadcasts in history was Orson Welle's The Mercury Theatre on the Air radio show. Many old hollywood stars got their start here, re-enacting classic works of literature (yes, Shakespeare, too), including the infamous "War of the Worlds" broadcast. They're all available as public domain for download: http://www.mercurytheatre.info/. Also, NPR and a number of other news sites make their broadcasts available free as iTunes podcasts. The NPR Talk of the Nation: Science Friday podcasts was my favorite pick, and the NPR Top Emailed Stories of the Day is always a good hour of content. Other popular web blogs have podcasts, too, like Slashdot.com, Make magazine, the Onion and US Senator Barack Obama. Some content requires paying, but $45 for a year's worth of This American Life seems worth it if you can afford it(available on Audible.com).

Thats all for now...

montana/wyoming

I'm sitting in a campsite in Gillette Wyoming. And let me say, a man can get better. This campsite is funny, because its in the middle of the city, right off the highway, with a gigantic gas station on one side and a mexican food restaurant on the other. And right now, I'm using their free wireless internet. Not exactly roughing it.

The night before last, I stayed in Rock Creek, Montana, the home of the Annual Testicle Festival. Every september, Thousands of college partiers flock to this town, which cosists of a bar, a restaurant, and a handfull of houses on ranches, to eat bull's balls. At the bar, I struck up a conversation with what mightbe the only socialist in town (maybe the county). He's the maintenance person for the bar and the surrounding land, cutting grass, cleaning, organizing junk for $6 an hour. He was about 55 years old, and told me stories all night about the 60s and 70s. The conversation really started taking off when we got to movies, and when I learned that he is a shakespeare freak (also probably the only in the county). As I learn more, i find out that he's read EVERYTHING, and whats more, he was accepted to the PhD program at Kent State in the 60's but turned it down because he was pissed off at the world at the time. Oh yeah, and his name is Wolf. But thats not the most crazy thing about this gray-bearded, camo-pants-wearing old guy...

He won a Pulitzer Prize.

Yep, it seems he was tending bar in Kansas City on July 17, 1981 when the Hyatt collapsed, killing 175 people. He was the first on the scene as he called the paper and dictated everything he was seeing. Eventually, the team that the paper sent over to cover the story arrived, the team that ended up winning the pullizer prize. Down in the fine print of the prize under "contributers," you can see his name, and he got a plaque for it with his name.

He was camped out behind the bar, and said that I could set my tent up free for the night. After the bar closed, we went out back and drank beer and talked until 4:30 in the morning. He says if I'm ever in Kansas City, I can go to the bar he used to work at and "Tell the owner Wolf sent you." Do I smell free beer? KC is pretty close to wyoming, right?

Gettin' hot...

Man, its hot in Seattle.

San Diego Pictures

Sorry for no updates lately. Been soooo busy. Big update soon, but in the meantime, heres some San Diego pictures:

More pictures soon!

Day 1-2

L. and I arrived in San Diego last night and the weather is great. We (I) got super lost last night trying to meet up with Adam on Mission Beach. I was so tired and I couldn't figure out where the hell I was. Eventually, we just went home and went to sleep.

We've only seen Andy for about 15 minutes and David not at all so its kind of weird hanging out here at their apartment. We're having dinner together tonight, but then I'm leaving tomorrow morning early for LA and Santa Barbara. I just wish I had more time to hang out before I left, because I haven't seen them for over a year. I'm getting the feeling that time scarcity is going to be a common theme on this trip. I might actually be spending more waking hours driving than not.

I checked out UCSD today. The campus is amazing and the engineering department looks pretty good. The graduate advisor actually knew who I was, which freaked me out. It seems I accidentally emailed her last week, thinking i was contating the UCS-B (UC Santa Barbara) advisor. Doh! She didn't seem to catch the mistake, though. After I got there, I realized I was woefully unprepared for the meeting, confirming that, indeed, I have no idea what I'm doing looking for grad schools.

UCSD: "What can I help you with?"

ME: "I'm looking into applying to the Engineering Grad program..."

UCSD: "What area of research?"

ME: "Well, I'm not really sure yet. I graduated in computer science, but, um, i was looking at your flyer and Robotics, Nanotechnology, and Signal Analysis look pretty cool."

UCSD: "Hmmm. Okay... Do you have an appointment to meet with any of the professors?"

ME: "No."

UCSD: "Do you have any specific questions for me?"

ME: "Um... "

Luckilly, L. was there and she knew all the right questions to ask.

It pisses me off that I really have no idea what I need to know or find out for this. I don't even know what area I want to get into. I think I'm just mad at how little ASU prepared me for graduate education. Little/no research opportunities, and painfully brief introductions into specific areas of engineering, so I have no idea what area most interests me. And that where this college search all starts. Once I know what I want to spend the next 7 years researching, the I can look for schools that have strengths in that area, and i can contact professors doing research in those areas so I can meet them when i visit those schools. Since I don't know that, its a crap shoot at this point...

I think my plan at this point is to check out the campus and the culture surrounding it and see what vibes I get. I guess its a pretty retarted strategy for planning my future, but setting really is one of the most important things to me. I can't do good work unless I'm enthusiastic about it, and I can't be enthusiastic if I'm depressed because the campus is ugly, or there isn't a movie theatre for 30 miles or I can't get a beer without being assaulted by horrible music or if I can't get a beer at all... So i guess its not so retarted after all.

Mmmmm. Beer...

Pictures soon.

Tomorrow: LA, Santa Barbara

In utah

I'm in utah, family trip.

I come home late tomorrow.

I caught a fish. Numerous fish, actually.

I get to see laura when I get home and I am excited.

I get to fix guitars when I get home and I am excited.

I get to finish the robot when i get home and I am excited.

Mark made it to Kalamazu and I am excited.

Marks moped did not make it to Kalamazu and I am forlorn.

I got robbed for $300 from my bank and I am forlorn.

I got robbed for $40 from my cell phone company and I am forlorn.

27 days until trip departure and I am excited.

I need to plan my trip.

I need to clean my old apartment.

I need to get a haircut

Brian Eno and David Byrne released 24 track masters of two of their original songs under the creative commons licence and are encouraging people to sample and remix them. I am excited.

I need to plan my trip.

--Kyle

New Blog

So, this is my travel blog. I'll be posting to this as often as possible throughout my trip. The cool thing about this is that I can make audio blogs by calling a phone number from anywhere and it will record it and post it automatically. So stay tuned...