Tara called me a nerd — and I am — but I’m not the one with dozens of hand-written organization helper DVR recording strategy charts now am I? No, no I’m not.

I’ve acquired a few gadgets recently and this week they were all put to use so I wanted to share them in true Brotherhood of Nerds style.

Podcasting

Tara and I have been thinking about starting a podcast for shits and giggles since we left TWoP and earlier this week we finally launched the first episode of what we are calling Overwhelming Positivity. I’ve always been a relatively well-rounded computer nerd but I never really got into audio stuff before — it just never came up. The episode is pretty rough because there was six people in one room sharing one mic but I’ve already learned a lot from it.

A lot of the advice on the net about podcasting hardware says the same thing — that you don’t need to spend a ton of money on hardware but there’s value in spending a bit on getting something in the tier above shitty headsets you get for $15 at Walgreens. I would agree with that wholeheartedly. I splurged a bit and got the Samson C03 and a pop filter to stop those annoying PFFTs from breaking the listener’s eardrums.

I recorded the audio within Garageband which is really easy to use and comes with a useful library of copyright-safe jingles, effects and songs. I also edited the podcast in Garageband bringing the running time from 1:45 down to 0:38 and adding transitions, music and effects where needed. As I mentioned there are some lousy bits of low audio in the podcast and I did my best to raise the levels in Garageband at those points but it didn’t do much to help. In true Murphy’s Law style the day after we published I found the magic bullet for cleaning up audio levels — a magic program from beyond the stars called The Levelator. I don’t truly understand how it works but it does. I’ll definitely be running episode two through this first. The other thing we’ll be doing next time is using more than one mic so that not only everyone has a better chance on coming in clearer but that each person will be recorded on their own track in Garageband which will make editing the whole thing much easier. If they are not able to record with us locally there’s a way to get great audio using Skype.

Geotagging

I wish I made this purchase before we went to Hawaii in April. It’s a tiny little GPS doodad that once turned on tracks your location once per second and writes your latitude and longitude to a log file on the device. That’s all it does. It does not give you directions or tell you where the local Starbucks is. It’s useful to add geotags to photos you take while the device is tracking your location. With some dedicated software that uses various types of magic to sync the tracker’s log file and your photo time stamps you can add the location data to each photo’s metadata.

With each photo now “geotagged” there’s a lot of programs and websites that can use it. You can see one example on my Flickr map where all my geotagged photos from a marathon walk from the Upper West Side to Williamsburg are plotted on map. You can also upload this data to Google Earth and even show your route path and other nerd-fun.

Filming

Ever since we saw Maria Bello work her Jedi mind tricks on a bat-shit crazy passenger on a plane I’ve been thinking I’d like to have a camcorder and specifically one I could pull out and use at anytime. I decided on a Flip Video Ultra since it’s about the size of a last-generation digital camera and it was pretty cheap at $170.

It also fits perfectly in my jacket’s front pocket so I can just walk around and shoot whatever without too much fuss. Check out the Dominican King of UWS:

And this guy on a break in the Bowery getting ready for a turf way with those bastards from SoHo: 

Photo by Kim.

We’ve launched a podcast!

Our first episode — Space Quakers — featuring Adam Sternbergh, Linda Holmes, Kim Reed and Jim Durr is now up! As this is our first episode you can look forward to shitty sound quality in parts as we had six people trying to share one mic and I barely know what I’m doing in Garageband to put it all together. If you can listen with headphones do that.

Hopefully we’ll do one of these a week!

Check it out at Overwhelming Positivity.

Quality Wii titles have been few and far between in my opinion. Wii Sports was great and a perfect pack-in to sell the system to the Wii’s new audience (that’s to say non-gamers for the most part). I wasn’t that into Super Mario Galaxy — great design but it just never grabbed me like Super Mario Bros. 3 or Super Mario World did (bring on New Super Mario Bros. 2!) and Super Smash Bros. Brawl casts a very wide but very shallow net when it comes to gameplay.

I got my Wii back from loan to Kim and Jim and picked up Boom Blox today. Wow, this is a fun game. It’s all done up in cutesy-poo graphics but at its heart it is a game about destruction and demolition. If you ever built a lego castle as a kid just so you could destroy it then this is right up your alley. There’s a few different games including throwing for maximum carnage, throwing to create cascades, throwing to send blocks into point multipliers, a jenga-like tower game (with excellent physics) and even a castle siege mode that looks like it was inspired by one of my favourite childhood games Rampart (or if you ever played the lego-inspired Crossbows and Catapults in the 80s).

It makes excellent use of the Wiimote and of all the swingy-tossy games I played the control in Boom Blox feels the most ‘right’. My only real problem with the game is the crappy “Blast” modes which are just shooting mini-games and really could have (ok, let’s say shouldn’t) been on the disc. That said, Boom Blox is an excellent party game that can accommodate eight people in some modes. I’ve yet to play solo but I can easily recommend this on multiplayer alone.

I had to buy a couple blank t-shirts at American Apparel today for a last-minute photo shoot for Glarkware so I took a walk up to their Columbia University store near Broadway and 105th. Along the way I walked through a small parkette where a couple streets merge and spotted a older guy rocking a giant purple and gold sombrero just chilling and smoking a cigar.

I was trying to figure out how to get a shot of him from the front without bringing too much attention to myself when he starts yelling at me “TAKEMMAPICTURE! IAMBOOTIFUL!” Score!

Then after I snap a few pics of him, his sausage-fingered super-smoker friend asks me to take his picture. I’ve never seen fingers so nicotine stained. We are talking orange. I think his real hands might have been trapped under a half-inch of pure nicotine. Impressive stuff.

They seemed pretty pleased with the pictures I showed them in the viewfinder. I almost asked them if they’d like a copy emailed to them because I am retarded (and they definitely were not the computer types).

There’s a new social network site in beta right now called BrightKite. Basically it’s like Twitter except you tell everyone where you are instead of just what you are doing. So, if you start now, get in early, and make a lot of friends you can keep tabs on when they are away from their homes and rob them. It’s an excellent idea for a website. 

Speaking of being away from home… we still are. We’re in Los Angeles, the city of lip injections and small dogs. We have house sitters though — sorry BrightKite scrapers!

Sadness! It’s our last day in Hawaii today. Each time we come to Hawaii it’s harder to leave. I’m just going to stay here next time.

Went to Hapuna one last time but it was too calm for boogieboarding (the waves are bigger in the winter) and Tara didn’t want to chance another sunburn just lying on the beach so the excursion was relatively short-lived.

So we had an afternoon to fart around so I suggested to drive into Kona and along the way hit the third and final national park of the Big Island – Kaloko-Honokohau. Alas, the park closes early and we would have only had 30 minutes to get in and out so we decided to save it for next time.

We drove on into Kona where the vog, after three days of clear skies had returned with a vengeance. It was charcoal grey and creepy. We ate at Killer Taco which is oddly located in an industrial mall with furniture wholesalers and grommet makers. Tasty stuff and really cheap for the island.

On the way back I pulled over to snap some shots of a lava tube that the Queen K highway bisects. I don’t know why but the highway drive has been absolutely lousy with goats this trips. Goats, goats, goats! At the condo we stopped in the shops and I remembered to take a picture of Kitty Cafe, a cat house that’s part of a catch-and-release spay and neuter program for the area’s feral cats. I wish they didn’t post the notice over the front, it was so My Little Pony and now it’s only, like, Barbie Horse Adventures.

That’s it for this trip. We’re packing up tonight and heading out to Los Angeles for a few days to see the gang out there. If you are going to the Big Island I can’t recommend Hawaii: The Big Island Revealed enough. I wish these guys could have travel books for every place on earth.

Today consisted of:

• Chasing a gecko around the condo
• Going to the beach
• Going to eat

Yep.

Also, this is for Omar, by request.

It was another no-swim day due to Tara’s sunburn so we decided to trek down the coast to Pu’uhonua o Honaunau or “Place of Refuge at Honaunau.” Back in the day if you stood in the king’s shadow or broke any other “kapu” you were sentenced to immediate death. The only way out was to get to Pu’uhonua o Honaunau before the king’s men cut you down. It’s like the original “Oley Oley Oxen Free!”

It’s a restored site and nicely maintained and awesomely lousy with Green Hawaiian Turtles which I have all named Tidey. Of course just because it’s an historic and sacred site doesn’t stop some douchebags from treating it like a playground.

Backtracking towards the highway, we made a pit stop at The Painted Church where some priest in the 1800s painted the inside of this tiny church. It’s colourful with hints of madness — like Catholicism. We were the only people there under 60 and the air smelled like Ben-Gay.

Then it was back to Kona for slunch sandwiches at Buns in the Sun and a quick stroll down hobo-heavy Ali’i Drive. Actually hobo isn’t quite the right word. It was more like old hippies who came to Hawaii with a misunderstanding of how capitalism works. They were selling hats and “flowers” made from fresh palms they’d take from nearby trees. It seemed like one step away from selling you a poem. Stupid hippies. I did see this awesome Return of the Jedi surf board though.

Back at the condo Tara fell asleep so I sneaked out to A-Bay to check out the sunset and passed by the Hawaiians dressing up for the Marriott’s luau and making fun of the midwest tourists. Also, bonk!

We decided to take it easy today because Tara made a rookie mistake at the beach two days ago and is now paying the price. So I did what every loving husband does when his wife is suffering — I went on a long walk and left her to her own devices.

I strolled down to Anaeho’omalu Bay which is more commonly (and mercifully) known as A-Bay in the hopes of spotting some sea turtles instead of just kicking them in heavy surf. Success! I spotted a young boy with a crap load of fish he caught on the beach (like at least a dozen) and while chatting realized that there were four sea turtles patrolling the water about 3 feet from the rocky shore. They never came ashore but I don’t blame them. There was a lady nearby sitting on the beach just knitting and no one wants to be a part of that. These guys were pretty big. I’d say they were a bit bigger than a generously-size turkey platter and twice as tasty.

Behind the beach are a few brackish pools — both natural and man-made — which fill up with occassional rainwater and angry surf. There’s a kapu symbol warning sign in front of these pools so you know you can’t swim in these filthy green slimy containers of disease. Well darn.

Also been watching a lot of Scrubs while we chill at the condo. I would like to say that Dr. Perry Cox is one of the best television characters ever.

At the end of the day I went outside with my tiny pocket tripod and farted around with some long exposure shots around the condo grounds because Tara was watching girlie movies on the TV. The moon was full and bright and the vog was nowhere to be seen. Sweet.

So what happens after spending an afternoon boogie boarding with your goggles on? Goggle-stenciled sunburns that’s what. It doesn’t show up as much in this photo as it actually is but you get the gist. I’m a freak. Edit: Forgot I took another photo in the morning.

Watching TV tonight and saw a version is this which is currently the funniest thing ever (and probably old but it’s new to me).

Not a lot of photos today because we went to Hapuna beach for most of the day and that’s a trip you just bring your towel, goggles, keys and drivers license to. The boogie boarding started off rather lame but then the tide or something angry came in and made in all choppy and moderately bad-ass. Oh — at this time I would like to mention I forgot to take my car keys with remote control fob out of my board shorts while in the ocean. During the bigger waves two cool things happened.

First was that I came into contact with a sea turtle. By contact I mean a wave bowled me and a seven year-old German kid over and we both hit the turtle with our feet on the way down. Sorry Gary (the turtle).

Then maybe five minutes later after successfully catching a fantastic wave I found myself skimming on the beach right along side the same German kid and the conversation was either an impromptu international pan-generational comedy bit or illustrative of his limited and/or polite English:

Me: Oh hello there.

Him: Good day.

Me: A good day to you sir.

Him: Thank you sir.

Me: It was great to bump into you.

Him: Yes, thank you, you too sir!

If he had a handlebar mustache I think he would have given in a twirl at that moment.

Back to the condo for a shower then to Cafe Pesto up the road in Kawaihae for dinner. Dinner was good but the art was better. Fire-breathing penguin with household trash? Sold!

Remember the key? Totally still works!

Up at 8:30am and out the door at 9:30! It’s an April miracle.

Our first stop was Hawi, up in the northern nook of the Big Island. We just blew through it last time we were there and it was definitely worth a stop for the giant tree and the best peanut butter cookie in the universe. Tara bought the homemade “Oreo” cookie. Mmmm.

After that it was a drive up the coast (happy to report the “I regret nothing!” stairway is still the same) to the Hawaii Botanical Gardens on the lush rainy side of the island, just outside of Hilo. The highlight (also seen above) happened about 30 seconds into the visit but catching the big bird at the waterfall with my telephoto lens was a close second.

Then it was in Hilo for lunch at Hilo Bay Cafe (yum, recommended!), a visit to the farmer’s market and an unsuccessful search for Keckler’s pineapple turnovers store. All that and home at 6pm.

Tomorrow? Beach and eating. Awwww yeah.

There’s something about Hawaii that makes you wake up early despite your best efforts to sleep in like a mofo.

We went to the beach for a while and came back to the condo and showered and it was only 1pm. The waves were pretty tame so the boogie boarding wasn’t so great but thanks to my developing Wave ESP I tend to identify which waves way out in the distance are going to be worthy ones when they hit the shore so I managed to catch a few good ones. My favourite part is scaring the people standing on the beach. If you catch a good wave you can slide almost up to the dry sand and they never believe you can do that until you are about 5 feet away and then they do this great panicked, clumsy hop to get out of the way.

After a pit stop at the condo for a shower we had a notion to go to the little town of Hawi but decided to drive into town (Kona) instead and save Hawi for a trip to the botanical gardens and Hilo tomorrow. Here is what I learned today — Hawaiian businesses and especially restaurants close whenever they can get away with it.

We tried to go to a cafe 10 miles on the far side of town but it was closed from 2pm to 5pm. Then we read about a place called Buns in the Sun near the Kona Jamba Juice and decided to go there. Turns out they are open from 5am to 3pm. WTF? So we ended up at Kona Brewing Company again because we were starving and it’s just that good. After slunch we hit the Kona Market. Closed at 5pm. At least Macy’s (home of this signage) and Kmart were open. I love the Kmart electronics section. They actually had those old school black tape recorder decks for sale. I think I also saw a Vic 20 hiding in the corner covered in dust.

Speaking of things covered, the island is covered in volcanic fog (a.k.a. vog) which casts a creepy darkness over everything.

We’re in Hawaii again! It was kinda cloudy today but you know what makes that okay? The best pizza in the world, that’s what. Kona Brewing Company might make great beer. I don’t know nor do I care. Their pizza is so good I want to take it behind a middle school and get it pregnant. I mean goddamnit, that’s good fucking pizza.

The rest of the day (after a last start due to a nice sleep) involved buying Tara a proper boogieboard, groceries, and sundries. We also found time to make bad jokes about Heath Ledger’s chocolate bar empire and a dip in the pool.

Also I’m extremely gassy. Tara asked if I might have eaten a farting dog. I might have. A healthy man doesn’t make this kind of stink.

As a Canadian living in America one of the things I have grown to love about this country is how much you love your flag. You love it a lot. Like a lot a lot. You love your flag so much, you want to take it behind a middle school and get it pregnant.

What I love about how it is seems to be used as the default placeholder for advertising and product packaging. We took bstewart to ASSSSCAT last week and the admission ticket was one of those beer or carnival style tickets you buy in a giant roll at Staples. Right in the middle is a giant American flag waving in the wind. Why is that exactly? I think we can assume this is not an admission ticket to America itself because trust me it’s just not that easy. Might it be a reminder that the event is taking place in America? No, the Acme Ticket Co. designer had a blank space and the go-to thing to put in there is Old Glory.

I see it all the time. The local Ace hardware had boxes of window blinds in the store and on the entire spine behind the name of the product is the stars and stripes. I was at the barber today and the off-brand barbicide jar had an American flag on it.

I’m not knocking it, I just find it interesting. In Canada the flag in generally seen on flagpoles on government buildings, at customs, and of course in the logos of the Canadian divisions of American companies.

I guess no one at Hammacher Schlemmer watches South Park. Or maybe too much.