Felton Jam House: The official blog of feltonjamhouse.com

Google Adds Pictures to Business Search Results

2007-10-29T22:07:00.001-07:00

So, I see that the pictures and verified business information is starting to show up on Google. They advertised that position a while ago, and now it is implemented.

New Apple Store in Los Gatos.

2007-09-04T18:33:00.000-07:00

Apple just sent me a email that there is a new Apple Store in Los Gatos. Maybe the Fake Steve Jobs will be there, or the real one. Of course Apple would open a store in Los Gatos. I don't think they will be opening one in East San Jose any time soon. Anyway, this is a post about the Los Gatos Apple store. This post contains nothing of interest to say whatsoever. Please leave a comment. Unless it is spam. or bacn. Or a bacn rapped spam sandwich with meltled cheese. Yes, I said rapped yo because I am hip with the urban vernacular that is used by today's youths.

Who does not like the iphone? I do!

2007-06-29T20:54:00.000-07:00

Yes, today is the day that the iphone was released. Apple actually sent me an email to let me know, just incase I had not heard or something.

I am not into it. Only plays ipod video, even though there is like six video file types floating around the net.

I don't like rabid mac fans either, so this hype is making me ill.

Whatever, soon it will be old news.

New Sketch Up blog!

2007-06-07T19:21:00.000-07:00

So, I have started a new blog! Yes, I know I need to update the ones I already have, (like this one). But the new blog is very specialized, which is a good thing.

The new blog is all about Sketch Up Buildings. Sketch Up is the free software that you can build 3D buildings in and insert them into Google Earth.

Anyway, check out the new SketchUp blog.

SketchUp Buildings Blog

Jeff Meldrum to visit Santa Cruz!

2007-04-21T14:09:00.000-07:00

World famous bigfoot researcher Jeff Meldrum is going to be visiting Santa Cruz.

Here is the ad from the bigfootdiscoveryproject.com

The Bigfoot Discovery Museum in Felton, CA presents:

BIGFOOT DISCOVERY DAY

Saturday, June 30, 2007
Felton & Santa Cruz, CA

Featuring a presentation by Dr. Jeff Meldrum
“Sasquatch: Legend Meets Science”
A one-hour lecture followed by a short question & answer session And a full hour to meet & greet Dr. Meldrum and fellow bigfooters after the talk.

6:00 – 9:00 p.m.
Louden Nelson Center, 301 Center Street, Santa Cruz, CA

Tickets: $10/adult, $7/museum members, students, seniors, $5 children 12 and under

For ticket reservations please contact the Bigfoot Discovery Museum
Weekends from 10 am – 6 pm pst at
(831)335-4478
Or email
Michael Rugg at mike@bigfootdiscoveryproject.com

Payment may be made using Paypal to: mikerugg@sbcglobal.net

Or send a check or money order to:
Michael Rugg
Bigfoot Discovery Museum
P.O. Box 153
Felton, CA 95018

The museum will have special activities and displays during the day. We plan on having Dr. Meldrum available for an hour in the early afternoon for a book signing at the museum. He will also have footprint casts available for sale as well as copies of his book, “Sasquatch: Legend Meets Science.”

We hope you can make it! It’s the first big event for our local bigfoot museum! You probably already know someone who is a member…we’d like you to come and join us for this special gathering of bigfooters on June 30th! Make your plans now to be here for this special event!

Google Earth Building.

2007-03-05T09:06:00.000-08:00

I made this building for Google Earth! Now I am testing the code to embed in on a webpage.

Hey, that looks cool... Click on it to download?

Web 2.0 accomplishments

2007-02-27T19:03:00.000-08:00

So, I have a couple of Web 2.0 accomplishments under my belt now. These things are no big deal, but then again, I think they are kind of cool. These are things I had thought to myself "It would be kind of cool if..." at one time or another and they just kind of happened.

Thought #1... Wow, it would be cool to get my picture taken by the photographer of Web 2.0, Thomas Hawk. This happened last year at the Vloggies.

Thought #2... Hey, it would be cool to get on VallyWag. This happened yesterday, when I nominated myself for the Hot Vlog contest. Valleywag has brought a bit of traffic to gregsvideoblog, so hopefully people will come back.

If you read this blog in time, you can go there and vote for me.

Picture of a Flower

2007-02-24T17:20:00.000-08:00

I have not posted in a while. Here is a picture of a Magnolia flower that I took while in San Francisco at the Botanical Gardens.

I am "The Star"

2006-12-08T10:49:00.000-08:00

Ok, I did this Tarot Card test. I tested as the "Star". Ha! star of my own video blog maybe...

You are The Star

Hope, expectation, Bright promises.

The Star is one of the great cards of faith, dreams realised

The Star is a card that looks to the future. It does not predict any immediate or powerful change, but it does predict hope and healing. This card suggests clarity of vision, spiritual insight. And, most importantly, that unexpected help will be coming, with water to quench your thirst, with a guiding light to the future. They might say you're a dreamer, but you're not the only one.

What Tarot Card are You?
Take the Test to Find Out.

My new blog.

2006-12-01T12:34:00.000-08:00

Ok, I made another blog. This one is called "The Eighteen Hundred" and it is a video blog show. The premise is that I find cool videos and post them to make a "show". Each "show" is Eighteen Hundred seconds, or 30 minutes.

Anyway, check it out and let me know your thoughts!

The Eighteen Hundred

favorite New Wave videos.

2006-11-15T20:35:00.000-08:00

Ok, so I saw this post on Boing Boing about the 7 best punk songs from YouTube.

I did not realize that YouTube had all these videos, so I decided to look myself and see what obscure New Wave hits I could come up with. These are my picks for today. I have a feeling that I will be posting more soon.

1) Blancmange: Living on the Celling. I loved this song when it first came out. It really brings back the memories.

2)Ian Dury and the Blockheads: Hit me with your Rhythm Stick. Check out the baseline!

3)XTC: No Thugs in Our House. I liked these guys and Will has gotten me back into them with his vinyl he gave me.

4)Men at Work: Land down Under. Not the best Men at Work song, but I like the video.

Special bonus Punk song.

5)The Dead Milkmen: Big Time Operator. These guys are totally awesome. I am glad I got to see them live when they were still around.

HD and the PS3

2006-11-14T11:51:00.000-08:00

Here is an interesting email I got from my buddy at Dolby.

He was talking about how he might get a new Play Station 3, just to hook up the streaming HD video to his TV.

I said "Dude, you can already get stuff that streams stuff from your computer to your tv, why get an PS3?"

I just hooked up my computer to my TV... With an s-video cable, which I found out is not HD capible.

Here is his answer about why the PS3 is cool. I thought it was good info, so now I am posting it.

-----------------------------------

I know all that technology is nothing new, but there is a huge difference between the types of wireless and streaming technology and the other components you need to make good use of it. I will give you just one example since you brought it up and the example is your own setup at home.

Yes you are connecting a "S" video cable to your HD TV, and yes you can get HD content streamed over the internet. However, "S" video cable is not capable of sending HD content. Unless you have an HD video card in your computer you also will not be able to see HD content in HD on your computer or when sent to you TV. WiFi is not capable of HD audio or video content at this time either. Now if you have a sound card like a Sound Blaster with a digital output capability then you can at least send HD audio to your stereo system, but you still have the lower quality video going to your TV.

What the PS3 puts together is the HD decoders and cables required to take that content from any source and keep it in the correct format, so in other words you can use your computer to download or send streaming content from the computer to the PS3 and the connections on the PS3 will now allow you TV to be in HD and the audio to be in HD to match. Yes there are other devices that would allow you to do this as well, but the cost is about the same and about the only real way to make it work is putting a computer with the right video and audio cards hooked up to the home entertainment set up.

It has taken me five years of working at Dolby to understand all the differences in content and that is why I can say the PS3 is a very interesting package with all the right components nicely put into one box.

Don't get me wrong though I do like what you have done with your home setup, and think you are further along than most people, but your thinking mistakes regarding connections is very common. In fact I just read another article yesterday talking about the new TV's and all the HD content, but people making the mistake of using the cables that come with their dvd/TV/CD/Computers and missing out on all the HD content because usually the cables that come with our devices are all the lower quality connection. Same thing goes for when I got the HD satelite.
---------------------------------------------------------

So, there you go. Sounds like the PS3 is good for all, not just the gamers.

It also sounds like this HD stuff is a bit more complicated than I thought...

Second Life down

2006-10-14T07:42:00.000-07:00

I am a resident of Second Life. I don't know if you have heard of Second Life or not, but it is this whole Virtual World, where people interact. This world has commerce, music, and "anything you can imagine, you can build" type of rules. It is kind of a trippy place.

Some people are totally into it and have invested lots and lots of time and energy into this virtual world. I have a little bit of time invested in it. I am still trying to figure everything out. I have like $40 "Linden Dollars" and a bunch of crazy crap I won at "The Matrix" club/casino.

Anyway, every time I want to get onto Second Life, I have to download an "update". Every single time I have to do this, because I only log onto Second Life every couple of weeks or so. (Your "Avatar" just hangs out somewhere while you are gone, it is creepy). The only time you don't have to download the new version is if you log on in the next few days after you downloaded the new version. It seems that each version of the software is only good for about a week or so.

So, I just downloaded the newest version the other day, so I thought I would jump in world and "hang out" for a bit...

But now the system is down for maintaining. That totally sucks.

I am glad I don't have anything invested there. Then I would be totally bummed.

Tags:Second Life down

YouTube + Star Wars = Cool!

2006-10-12T22:49:00.000-07:00

I keep forgetting how cool YouTube is. I swear, a person could get lost in that site for hours and hours, just clicking on videos.

I just did that! Whew, I saw some weird stuff and caught up on all the videos I "should have seen" like the Ok Go video.

I saw a totally funny video series, Chad Vader Night Manager! You have to check it out! Even if you don't like Star Wars, it is very funny.Ep 1, Ep 2, Ep 3, and Ep 4

Then I ran across this totally killer Weird Al song where he talks about Star Wars episode 1, sung to the tune of American Pie. I love Weird Al. I remember when he was just a struggling artist pitching his wares on the Dr. Demento Show. I loved his song "Yoda", but this is just as great of a song. The video blows it away. You have to check this out!

And last but not least, in the totally amazing fan film category.. We have Star Wars Cops. This is cops, but they are stormtroopers. The costumes and location are amazing. You have to check this one out too.

I swear, YouTube is really the most amazing thing ever. I hope the Google deal does not wreck it.

Veggie Car: Post about my filtering process.

2006-10-06T10:17:00.000-07:00

I am just about ready to send off an email to the vegoilfuel yahoo group and I thought it was interesting enough to put on my blog. Veggie cars are getting more news these days, so folks might be interested...

Here is the text of the email...

----------------------------------------------------------------

Hi.

I have been bag filtering to 1 micron for about 15,000 miles now. It has seemed to work pretty well for me. I don't really know how accurate the bag filters are anyway. My filter bags hang down with the only support being at the top, and I am sure they stretch. I think there are some kind of cages that you can buy to support the filter or something, I have never taken the time to check.

Anyway, I have a large Racor "18 Wheeler" filter that is supposed to be changed every 10,000 miles. I can go about 8500 before it starts to get clogged. I have a vacuum gage installed to the veg line, so I can monitor it. You can watch a video of me changing my filter on my vlog at

http://gregsvideoblog.blogspot.com/2006/07/
video-blog-21-replaceing-my-veggie-car.html

The 1 micron Bags do get clogged, but my gathering/settling process is not optimal. I had been living "hand to mouth" with the veggie oil and had not had time to have it settle properly, so I think even 10 micron bags would have clogged in my case.

I have had no problems with the car since the conversion. I have been pretty diligent in my de-watering (Heating the oil and letting it sit and not taking from the bottom, etc).

While I have not monitored the wear of the engine by getting compression tests, the car still starts right up in the morning and runs like a champ. I know that is not scientific, but it is just what is going on with my car.

My Car.

I have a 84 Mercedes 300D non-turbo. It is a two tank system. I have a neoteric six port "switcher thing" (I forgot the proper name right now). I have a veggie therm. I have a large Racor filter for the veggie oil. I also have a small finned heat exchanger. The theory behind this is that is puts lets strain on the veggie therm. Have no idea if this is the case, but that is what I have.

Anyway, I really enjoy the discussions on this list, so I thought I would contribute.

Greg.
----------------------------------------------------------

Tags: Veggie Car WVO Vegetable Oil Car

Cover of Newsweek 6 years late.

2006-10-03T19:51:00.000-07:00

I got the new issue of Newsweek in the mail today. It had a big headline, "The Price of Denial, How Bush & Rumsfeld deceived Themselves, and Us, about the war in Iraq".

Wow, it took much longer than I ever though, but the Main $tream Media have finally opened there eyes and reported what I have known for six long years... That Bush is not a good President. He got lucky. He was a poor manager and business leader and that has transferred straight across to his Presidency. The guy sucks. Always has and always will. He is still just that little boy that likes to blow up frogs with firecrackers.

Anyway, who really cares? Obviously, the American people don't really care. I know I stopped caring that the guy was a punk ass chump when he got re-elected. I went into "lock-down" mode, put my head down and just slogged along. Waiting, just waiting till that moron was termed out. I knew impeachment was way to much to ask for, so I am just waiting.

Looks like the new day is starting to dawn. We still have a way to go, but this Newsweek article reminds me that we are getting closer every day. Looks like the "Ra Ra Ra" attitude is fading.

Ray "Whip Ass" song is really good!

2006-09-23T13:59:00.000-07:00

I watch ZeFrank everyday. He is very good. Anyway, I noticed that one of the Sports Racers had created a really cool mix of the Whip Somebody's Ass song. While I was busy listening to it over and over, I guess Ze mentioned it on the show and he likes it just as much as I do. This is a killer, killer song! I have a feeling it will be played in the clubs of New York very soon.

Anyway, do yourself a favor, and go download the song!

Tags: Ray ZeFrank Whip Sombody's Ass

Cool Drawing of Bigfoot.

2006-09-23T13:27:00.000-07:00

I was reading the BFRO and saw this crazy picture. I had been wondering how long it was going to be before a good artist had a scary encounter and drew what he saw. I guess the time has finally come. Go read this sighting and see the picture for yourself. It is a pretty good one.

Tags: Bigfoot Drawing

Welcome Joaquin!

2006-08-29T21:29:00.000-07:00

Joaquin was born at 1:11 am on Friday August 25th, 2006.

He is healthy and happy and pretty good lookin' to boot!

We are totally stoked. Of course, Joaquin has his own on-line space where you can check out all his pictures.

Click here for Joaquin's blog to check out more pictures..

Anji and I are so grateful he is totally fine and dandy.

Is YouTube maturing?

2006-08-11T12:40:00.000-07:00

I have noticed that the YouTube community is slowly starting to change it's culture. YouTube is known for its totally useless videos, from car crashes, to high school girls dancing in their pajamas and singing Madonna.

This it seems to me is starting to change. While totally stupid videos still are the majority of clips at YouTube, it seems that actual video blogs are starting to become more prevalent.

For example, I came across this very interesting video from someone that calls himself "Renetto". It seems that Renetto was a bit of a YouTube celebrity because of his totally silly and annoying character that he did. Well, Renetto got sick of his character and has confessed that he is really not like that. Now he wants to harness the true power of YouTube and he has some very interesting thought on the YouTube culture. I hope this is a preview of what is to come from everyone's favorite TV alternative.

Another user that has just started posting is geriatric1927. This guy from England is 78 years old and addicted to YouTube! Now, he decides that he can make a video and post just as easy as anyone else. You have to see this old man. He is great! He is really into the "youth culture" and wants to be a part of it.

This I feel is a very exciting use of YouTube. People are actually starting to post their thoughts and feelings on everyday life. It is very inspiring to see geriatric1927 start to post and hear what he has to say, as he is a member of the senior demographic. It is great to see how warmly his videos are received by the kids on YouTube. Where else in today's society are seniors and the youths "hanging out" in the same space, learning from each other?

Congratulations YouTube community, I think you are finally onto something good. I think if this attitude spreads that YouTube could actually change the world. Seriously. Lets hope this trend is here to stay.

Tags: YouTube Video Renetto Geriatric1927

I heard a strange howl.

2006-08-08T13:55:00.000-07:00

I heard this really strange "howl" on Saturday night. Actually it was Saturday morning at 4:52 am. It woke me and Anji up.

This was the weirdest animal noise I have ever heard. I could tell it was far away, and I could also tell it was very loud. At first I thought it was a person yelling, but the sound was repeated exactly the same way, three times in a row.

This was a very creepy noise, and it actually freaked both me and Anji out. It totally got my heart beating!

The next day I asked my neighbors if they had heard the noise too. One of my neighbors heard it, but the other ones did not. I also called Mike Rugg, the proprietor of the BigFoot Discovery Museum to see if they were "Call Blasting" that night. He said no. I told him that I thought that the noise came from the direction of the quarry. He said that a woman had come in a few months ago and reported seeing some very strange "eye shine" of some kind of animal that was about 8 feet off the ground on the quarry road a while ago. Hmmmm, that is interesting for sure!

I am not saying that the howl was from Bigfoot, but it sure was weird. If the howl was not from a Bigfoot, then I don't know what else it could have been.

All I know is that is was the strangest thing I have heard and it was very scary and creepy too. Also, after the howl, there was no dogs barking or anything. Everything in the neighborhood seemed pretty freaked out!

Tags: Bigfoot Howl

New Yowie footage.

2006-08-02T15:25:00.000-07:00

The Yowie is the Australian version of Big Foot. Someone got some footage of an alleged Yowie in Australia. Pretty good footage. If this is a hoax, it is the best one yet! Check the link.

Tags: Bigfoot Yowie Video

vlogger jailed in San Francisco.

2006-08-01T15:50:00.000-07:00

This is not good news.

Josh Wolf has been jailed for contempt of court. He has refused to hand over footage he took of a protest in San Francisco. Big Brother is watching... What are you going to do about it?

Read the story here

Tags: Josh Wolf Vlog

News story on illegal immigrants

2006-08-01T11:31:00.000-07:00

Here is one for you...

WATSONVILLE, Calif. (AP) -- Fruit and vegetables in northern California are being left in the fields because farmers can't find enough workers for harvest.
Farmers say there are up to 20 percent fewer workers available to pick the strawberry, raspberry and vegetable crops in Santa Cruz County. One says it's the worst labor shortage he's seen in 30 years.

A lot of farmers blame the lack of workers on tightened borders. The Western Growers Association says illegal workers may handle 80 percent of the agricultural work in California.

--------------------------------

Where are all the white people at? I thought that if you got rid of all the illegals, then the jobs would be filled by all those white folks out of work...

D'oh!

I'm #1 on Google!

2006-07-26T16:00:00.000-07:00

Looks like I am #1 on Google for my video blog! Pretty neat! Just type in "Greg Video" and I am #1. Looks like SuperGreg has some competition! (Oh wait, SuperGreg is soooo 1998). I am on my way to internet superstardom.

Getting closer to proving Bigfoot is real.

2006-07-21T13:22:00.000-07:00

I am a believer in Bigfoot. My buddy said to me "Dude, you seem like an intelligent person, why do you think Bigfoot is real?". I answered him that there is lots and lots of legitimate evidence that points in the direction that this is a real creature, but you never hear about this evidence. Once you start to read about the stories, you see that it is possible.

I came across a story out of Texas today. Seems the local TV station sent out one of their reporters on a Bigfoot hunt. The reporter of course was a skeptic when he started the hunt. However, it seems that there was a Bigfoot in the area where they were searching. This is what the reporter has to say..

"For me there was an uneasy sense of eyes being on us. Limbs crashing down in the distance. I was skeptical before tonight, but after seeing the footprints and the scratch marks and dig marks and seeing something that I think was very big and moving at a high rate of speed through the woods, I may have to rethink that. "

I find that pretty interesting. Obviously something happened that was real enough for the reporter to change his tune. It takes a lot for a "legitimate" news reporter to say what he said, that there is a possibility that these creatures are real. This is a HUGE statement in my opinion.

Kids, we are getting real close to having some real proof that these creature exist. It is an exciting time.

Tags:
Bigfoot Sasquatch

I got a "five star" rating on youtube!

2006-07-20T15:36:00.000-07:00

Wow, I got a "Five Star" rating for my video on youtube. I did a stupid dance for the techno remix of the Ted Stevens net neutrality speech.

Check it.

I usually don't post my videos to YouTube, but I figured that this one was pretty funny and it might drive some traffic to my site, gregsvideoblog.blogspot.com. We will see if that happens.

Tags: Ted Stevens Tangled up Tubes YouTube

Robert Scoble needs a Custom Fountain.

2006-07-16T21:08:00.000-07:00

Well, here I am posting to my blog again. It has been awhile. I have been reading Robert Scoble and been very inspired. Inspired by a Geek... That is funny.

Writing about one's personal life is what makes a blog good. (At least that is one of the things I like about Scoble's blog). Writing about one's thoughts and feelings make it interesting. Putting your last name on your blog posts takes a bit of faith. Faith that someone wont' track you down and beat you.

My last name is Rose.

Robert says in his blog that "If I can't find you on Google, why would I hire you?" or something like that. I guess I need to start to get my name out there... Not that I am looking for a new job... But it is good to be known?

I got my Dad to sign up for a blog today. I am going to be his "blogmaster". It is a business blog about his custom fountains. Go check it out at fountainsunique.blogspot.com. Once again, Robert Scoble says that business blogs are a really good thing. Well, Robert is moving into a new house, so maybe he can order one of pop's great designs at FountainsUnique.com

Speaking of family, me and my wife Anji are going to have a baby! This is going to happen in like the next four weeks or so. We got a stroller/infant seat today. That seems to be the one thing about getting a baby. Lots of Gear. This stroller is pretty bad ass, you know, for a stroller.

Oh yeah, don't forget to check out my vlog. Greg's Video Blog. Lots more action going on over there than here.

Hopefully my lack of posting the written word will change soon, at least that is what Eric Rice recommends we should do.
It is the new 2.0 way. Gotta get your name out there.

Tags: Robert Scoble fountain baby Personal Thoughts

I now have a on-line shirt store!

2006-06-11T17:33:00.000-07:00

So I decided to sign up for CafePress. They are an on-line shirt store for people that want to sell shirts on-line.

I went and uploaded some of my original designs and put them on t-shirts.

I think they look pretty good, and I am even going to buy one or two for myself.

check out my CafePress Store!

Maybe you even want to buy something...

Largest Crystals ever!

2006-06-06T12:38:00.000-07:00

Whoah, just came across this story about a cave filled with giant crystals! You have to check this out!

Giant Crystals are here!

Greg's Video Blog Week Continues!

2006-06-01T20:44:00.000-07:00

It is crazy! Another day, another video. This video is of my Datsun Roadster that I am trying to start.

Check it out!

Video Blog Week, Day 2!

2006-05-31T20:00:00.000-07:00

Dont' forget, it is still video blog week on Greg's Video Blog.

This episode is a crazy backpack trip to the Little Sur River.

Check it out!

Video Blog Week!

2006-05-30T17:30:00.000-07:00

In celebration of Vloggercon 06, I have decided to make this "Video Blog Week" on my vlog, Greg's Video Blog. I am not sure if I am going to vloggercon, but I thought I would post about it anyway.

My first video is about my Veggie Car. I was invited by David Dudas, co-founder of eyespot.com to be a part of a "Mobile Vlogger Team" or something like that, and create a vlog just using a cameraphone and the mixing tools on their site.

With all that said, and all the name dropping and plugging of the site eyespot.com, I am not sure if I like the video. Cameraphones are great and all but the quality is poor. I think they should only be used to capture breaking stories when a video blogger has no other tools.

While poor quality, I hope you find it to find it interesting and informative.

Did I peak your interest? Well, then click here to view the video

New DSL= Lordi, Lordi, Lordi.

2006-05-22T21:50:00.000-07:00

I just got DSL for the first time ever. I really like it. Dial up was very slow. Now, I get to watch videos on-line! I still have not found a videoblog that I really, really, like. I however, posted a new vlog on my video blog page.

So anyway, I was playing with my new DSL, checking out YouTube. I happened to see the video for the newest sensation from Finland, Lordi! These guys make Gwar look like The Cure. I guess they just won some kind of show in Europe or something. There were a bunch of videos posted on YouTube from the show Eurovision that is playing right now.

I did not really like Lordi, but their costumes and makeup are pretty crazy. Actually, the audience was the craziest, waving the flags and whatnot. It looked like some kind of soccer game or something.

But really this post is about trying to get on the Lordi bandwagon and pimp some traffic from Technorati. Oh, and also to plug my video blog page.

Technorati Tags: Lordi Eurovision vlog

Spreading myself too thin?

2006-05-19T13:18:00.000-07:00

Ok, it seems I have not posted in a week, so it is time for a post.

Well, I have not posted at this particular blog, but, if you have been checking out my videoblog page, you will see that I have been posting there.

Now that I have the video blog page, it is so much more fun to create posts over there than just typing, like I do here, so this page is a bit laggy (is that a word?)

Also, it is fun to add music to the video posts, even though I am sure I will get "busted" sometime by the RIAA or something. I guess if I don't use Metalica music, Lars won't come after me and I will be ok.

Another reason I have not posted is that I was out of town in Minneapolis Minnesota for a short vacation.

Minneapolis is a pretty hip city, for being in the Midwest. They have the world's largest spoon there. The spoon is really a sculpture that is in the Minneapolis sculpture garden, outside the Walker Art Center. The Walker Art Center was very cool, with lots of modern art. I like modern art, even if it is a bit strange sometimes. Anyway, the Walker has a good collection and if you ever go to Minneapolis, you should check it out.

Minneapolis also has the World's Largest Mall, the Mall of America. I did not think the mall was that big, even though it employs close to 12,000 people. The "footprint" of the mall did not seem any bigger than other malls I have been to, but the deal is that it is four stories high. That is where it gets you.

All and all, it is good to be home.

If you want to see images from the trip, you will have to go to my video blog, as I will be posting video from Minneapolis this week.

Technorati Tags: Walker Art Center World's Largest Spoon Minneapolis

OK, oil 'er up

2006-05-12T13:30:00.000-07:00

I was informed by many folks of the article in the San Jose Mercury News today about a Veggie Oil story.

I read it and found it somewhat confusing. I really had a problem with one line that said..."All she needed was a biodiesel conversion kit she had installed for about $700."

See, there is no such thing as an onboard biodiesel conversion kit, unless of course you make a large trailer to drag along with you.

Sheesh, more wrong information provided by the "NEWS".

Anyway, I emailed the author of the story, Mike Cassidy and let him know that he got his facts wrong.

Well, to make a long story short, he ended up changing the on-line copy to this...

"All she needed was a veggie-oil conversion kit she had installed for about $700."

Yeah, progress!

So, in conclusion, it is not a "Conspiracy of Disinformation" at all, but just that a reporter got confused by all the jargon.

Good job Mike! We all appreciate the effort in trying to get it right, because you gotta spread the news about the veggie oil.

Don't believe that he changed the story because of me? Well, here is a transcipt from the email string...

-------------------------------------------------------------------

Sorry the story wasn't clear to you.
Good point on the "biodiesel conversion'' line. I was trying to carefully
distinguish among biodiesel, vegetable oil and waste oil throughout the
piece, but took my eye off the ball on that particular phrase.
She has one tank. I can understand why that's an important detail to you.
I'm not so sure it's important to the majority of readers.
I think I deserve at least a C, but I'm biased.
Cheers,
Mike

Mike Cassidy
Columnist
San Jose Mercury News
408-920-5536

-----Original Message-----
From: gregory@surfnetusa.com [mailto:gregory@surfnetusa.com]
Sent: Friday, May 12, 2006 9:11 AM
To: mcassidy@mercurynews.com
Cc: gregory@surfnetusa.com
Subject: OK, OIL 'ER UP- comments

Hi.

I just read your article on "OK, OIL 'ER UP".

It seems that you got your facts wrong. I think you need to do some more
research.

See, I too drive a veggie benz over the hill from Santa Cruz to SJ everyday.

The problem that most reporters have (I have yet to see any of the media get
it right) is that they mix the terms "biodiesel" and "Vegetable Oil". These
are two completely different things. You mixed up the terms yourself in the
article...

" All she needed was a biodiesel conversion kit she had installed for about
$700."

What is should have said was... "All she needed was a veggie oil conversion
kit she had installed for about $700." Or "Waste Vegetable Oil" or
"Vegetable Oil" or "WVO". ANYTHING is better than using the term
"biodiesel" when mentioning the conversion kit. This just confuses people.
I know, because I talk to folks all the time about my veggie car and the
general public never has the correct facts.

Also, you did not mention if she had a "one tank" or "two tank" conversion.
I am guessing that she had a two tank conversion, since you keep mentioning
biodiesel and WVO. However, I will never know since you did not bother to
give out the correct facts.

But hey, I give you an "A" for effort, but a "D" for execution.

Also, I thank you, because now I have something to blog about. It will go
nicely with my post about "Darly Hannah, disinformation agent"

(http://feltonjamhouse.blogspot.com/2006/05/daryl-hannah-disinformation-agen
t.html#links)

Anyway, just thought I would let you know my thoughts on the matter.

Thanks for your time.

Greg.

P.S. While I was writing this email, I got a call from a friend (hybrid
driver) who just read the article and was complaining to me about how it was
not very clear to him either.

*I also got this reply from Mike*

...we've corrected the column on the Web. If you link to it from your blog,
you might want to note that.

Mike Cassidy
Columnist
San Jose Mercury News
408-920-5536

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Technorati Tags: Veggie Car Biodiesel Mike Cassidy

The Price of Gas

2006-05-08T20:30:00.000-07:00

Gas Price.jpg

I saw this today when I was going to work. I stoped off to get a few gallons for the Veggie Car and this is what was on the pump.

I just had to take a picture. I have not seen the gas tank price this high in a long time.

I have seen a pump get to $100 before, but it was usually out in the desert at some kind of truck stop or something.

Somebody had a great Monday morning...

Technorati Tags: Veggie Car Price of Gas

My New Video Blog Page!

2006-05-07T11:57:00.000-07:00

Ok all you loyal readers. (Are there any loyal readers?)

I now have a video blog! It is called Greg's Video Blog.

I have even made a new video entry for you to view.

Surfing at Steamers Lane, Redwoods at Fall Creek and a Jimi Hendrix song too.

You must go now and view it.

Click here to view my Video Blog!

Daryl Hannah, Disinformation Agent?

2006-05-05T15:19:00.000-07:00

So,I was reading this article the other day about Daryl Hannah and her biodiesel El Camino.

First of all, I did not know that there was any such thing as a diesel El Camino. Then I googled it and found that yes, they were made from 1982-1984.

Ok, so that part of her story checks out.

The article on sfgate was talking about Daryl drinking biodiesel, so I watched her "Video Blog" about it. You can see it here.

Yes, she does drink the biodiesel. Not a big swig, but a little taste, so that part of her story checks out.

The problem I did have was with some of the definitions she used. For one, she called her car a VEGGIE car. Ok, she does not drive a VEGGIE car. I drive a veggie car. Daryl drives a El Camino that is powered by biodiesel. There is a huge difference.

A veggie car runs on straight (or waste) vegetable oil. There is no conversion of the fuel needed, but you do have to do some modifications to your car. Therefore a veggie car is much better for the environment than a regular biodiesel.

Why you ask?

See, another thing Daryl fails to mention in her video, is that to convert vegetable oil to biodiesel, you need to use a chemical that is kind of nasty. This chemical is called Methanol, and it is poisonous. Also, I have no idea on how "dirty" the manufacturing process is for methanol, but I am sure the factory that makes it puts stuff into the environment.

Another misrepresentation she makes is that it is easy to make the biodiesel out of waste vegetable oil. Well, she does not really say it is easy, but she does not explain the process, and that leaves the viewer with the impression that this is no big deal.

Well, it probably is no big deal to Daryl, since she buys the stuff from "Her Friend" (who we see in the video blog). Daryl does not have to go and collect the waste veggie oil, nor did she make a backyard still to brew it, nor did she ever have to come in contact with the raw methanol.

All she does is buy biodiesel from someone else that makes it.

Big whoop-de-do. What you want, a cookie?

However, by not explaining the process and making the distinctions between biodiesel and the use of waste vegetable oil (WVO), she ends up muddying the concept.

Muddying a concept, so the public becomes confused on the subject is also known as disinformation.

That girl has to get her facts straight.

Technorati Tags: Veggie Car Biodiesel Daryl Hannah

Day without an Immigrant.

2006-05-01T19:15:00.000-07:00

Well, today is a "Day without an Immigrant". Seems like there is much protesting about. I think the solution is pretty easy...

Make a very easy "Guest Worker Pass" type thing, that is very easy for anyone to get. If you have a Guest Worker pass, you pay %5 more in taxes than citizens. This pass has to be "reviewed" every year. This review process consists of seeing if the owner of the Guest Worker pass has gotten in trouble with the law. If they are in trouble with the law, no more Guest Worker pass.

See, who wants to have to cross the desert, just to get to work. Therefore people stay here, even when there is no work. If they had a pass where they could go home and then come back easily, then people would go home and there would be less migrants hanging out, since they could just go home.

Then once it was easy to get the Guest Worker Pass, then you would bump up enforcement. You would make it legal for local police to turn over illegal immigrants to the INS for deporting.

Seems easy to me.

Anyway, here is a video of the immigration protest from last week that took place in San Jose. I have added "Flight of the Doodles" by Tennessee Ernie Ford. I don't know what this video is supposed to "mean", but I submit it to you anyway...

Technorati Tags: Day without an immigrant Immigration Videoblog

The Vortex is spinning faster.

2006-04-26T19:46:00.000-07:00

So, awhile ago I read this story that I found on one of my all-time favorite web pages, Rense.com (I don't really read Rense too much anymore, because it gets me so angry and sometimes it is easier to live in the dark.)

This story was full of "New Age" stuff and Mayan Calendar 2012 info and the Great Cross at Hendaye. It was an "interesting" story and I liked it. One of the main points is how we are spiraling down to the "singularity" that will happen at 2012 and everything is going faster and faster and getting crazier and crazier.

I am not doing a very good job at explaining it, so why don't you just read about it here.

The main thing that I got out of the story is that everything is going faster and faster and getting more and more crazy. I think this is very true and it can't go on forever before something has to give.

Soon, it will be physically impossible to shove any more bad stuff into a day. I mean, have you seen the headlines lately? They are crazy! Can we really fit more bad news into a day?

That is why I liked the article, even thought it is talking about some crazy ideas, they are still rooted in the truth - that things are getting crazier every day.

So, when I read this blog that was on the huffingtonpost.com, I found it very cool and I totally agreed with the author.

The title of the blog was called "Click! I Quit" and the first line is "More. Faster. Louder. More. More. Faster. Louder. More." It seems that other folks are feeling the pressure and noticing that shit is piling up pretty quick these days. It seems that this person too is feeling the spin of the vortex.

So yes, now we have proof that the spinning vortex is a real phenomenon, because we have two articles on the internet about it, so therefore it must be true.

Now that you know this, what are you going to do about it? Well, knowing something is half the battle. Once you realize that things are getting more and more crazy, and the days are going by faster, just prepare yourself mentally for it. Know that you have to get things done today and try to keep up on your responsibilities. Because if you don't shit will pile up faster than you can handle, and then you get behind and that is no good.

Technorati Tags: Vortex 2012 Tom D'Antoni

Coming to a Blog near you.... My Comments!

2006-04-25T18:02:00.000-07:00

So, I was reading a blog post today and it mentioned leaving comments will increase your readership.

I am still thinking in the old web 1.0 E/N way. You know, have a page, find some other pages that are "E/N" and then send the webmaster a note that says "Wow, I think your site is really neat-o. Check out mine and pretty please link me." This of course was "back in the day" when stileproject.com was actually cool, and not just porn, like it is today. (some will argue, that stileproject was never cool) One of the old originals is still around it seems. Chimptopia.com is still alive and kicking I see. Chimptopia was one of the few sites that linked my old site back in the day. He was cool.

Where was I?

Oh yeah, back in the old days, you had to beg for links. Now, in the new "blogger world", all you have to do is leave a comment and you get an automatic link back to your site!

That is super keen and is what I am going to go do right now.

I wonder how many I can do...

Another post about Bigfoot.

2006-04-24T22:00:00.000-07:00

The internet is truly amazing. It is so vast, there is never anyway somebody could see it all.

The answers to life are printed somewhere on the internet, you just have to find it, and that is the difficulty.

There are some things that you might not have seen, and others that you might have. I don't know what camp this next link falls into, but I thought it was cool, so I thought I would pass it on.

I think you should read this "Identity Production in a Networked Culture: Why Youth Heart MySpace". I found this essay very interesting and I highly recommend it. I found the link when I was surfing and came across this post. Like I said, there is so much stuff. Some of it is interesting and some of it is not. I guess the object is all about finding interesting stuff and blogging about it.

Speaking of interesting stuff, I read something that I thought was very interesting. Well, it was interesting to me and it was about Bigfoot.

The first book I read about Bigfoot was "50 Years with Bigfoot: Tennessee Chronicles of Co-Existence". This is a story about a man that made friends with a Bigfoot in Tennessee. This story is very controversial in the Bigfoot world for many reasons, the least of being it claims that the Bigfoots have a language. I found this to be interesting, and it seems plausible to me. I mean if you believe that there are giant hairy hominids running around in the dark that have not been seen or caught, or accepted by science, then how hard is it to believe that they have a language? Well, I guess it is taboo in the bigfoot research circles. This article also looks at the possibility that bigfoot is psychic. This is very, very controversial and most bigfoot researchers think that this is total bunk.

However, every once and a while you read about someone that has a psychic experience, as this BFRO sighting reports. Sometimes you even hear about a Bigfoot trying to talk to someone.

I read an article today on cryptomundo.com that looks at both these possibilities, and it was quite interesting.

That is, if you are interested in bigfoot and have read the "50 Years with Bigfoot".

Anyway, check it out

Is Manimal More Man Than Animal?.

Technorati Tags: Bigfoot MySpace.com

Let's blog politics-NOT!

2006-04-21T14:23:00.000-07:00

I have noticed that so many blogs are about politics.

I used to blog about politics and how George W. was a punk ass. I used to "Bush Bash" about him back when his rating were 70%. Don't believe me? Well, you can check out my old website courtesy of the "Internet Way Back Machine". Here is the archive for my old page. (Make sure to find the "Space Burger" design, remember that?). I even had a nice nick-name for Bush... Drinky McDumbass. (See the 1/24/00 post here)

9/11 did not even stop me from "Bush Bashing" (check out my posts just after 9/11)

During that time, I also started to follow the "conspiracy" websites. Now remember back then, 9/11 was thought of as nothing more than 19 terrorists with a box cutter. Now, 5 years later people are actually looking into some of the inconsistencies that happened that day.

My friends all thought that I was a fool to read these "conspiracy" sites. Especially such writers as Sherman Skolnick . I always thought Sherman spoke the truth, and was way ahead of the curve when it came to finding out the dirt on our politicians, no matter how bizzar his stories were.

I knew that "time would tell", and of course, I was right.

For example, Sherman reported long ago about pedifiles in Washington. Well, low and behold, he was right. The head of Homeland Security was arrested earlier this month for sending a 14 year old girl porno. Seems that Sherman was right.

Anyway, to make a long story short, I have blogged about politics and did my share of Bush Bashing for like three years, way before it was "the thing to do". I am now over it. I have moved on, because I am an "early adopter" and Bush Bashing is old news. Well, at least for me it is old news. Seems like everyone else out there is just finding out what a complete waste of human flesh GWB is.

Now, it will only take another two years for people to get off there butts and kick him out of office, but by that time he will be termed out.

I however have moved on and will not talk about Drinky McDumbass anymore.

I saw what was coming a long time ago... That is why I drive a veggie car.

Technorati Tags: Bush Bashing Politics Sherman Skolnick

Michelle Malkin

2006-04-20T18:56:00.000-07:00

Well, remember a couple of days ago when I just at random mentioned Michelle Malkin's blog? I don't know if you went there that day and read it, but she happened to be talking about some kind of flap with UC Santa Cruz students. I did not pay much attention, even though it is news from "my backyard". (for those that don't know their geography, Felton six miles from downtown Santa Cruz). See, I live here and I know how easy it is for the UCSC students to get mad and protest something. As a matter of fact, there was just some "SUV vandalism" last week, so I am used to somebody protesting something.

Anyway, I just did a technorati search and it seems that Michelle Malkin is the number one search. I guess she is some kind of "right winger" (*gasp) and people are all up in arms about the UCSC flap.

Bloggers are even posting her phone number.

I don't really care, and I am not even sure what it is about.

I just want to pimp some traffic from technorati.

Technorati Tags: Michelle Malkin Santa Cruz

Video Blog #1

2006-04-19T13:47:00.000-07:00

I found this new web 2.0 site called eyespot.com It is a video editing and sharing site. One of the cool features it has is the ability for a person to upload video taken from their phone and mix the clips.

Well, I had to try it out

I have created a "Video Blog" by using the video capture option on my cellphone. I had to do it in a bunch of little clips, as the phone only records a few seconds of video. Anyway, check it out. I think it is kind of neat-o, considering it is my first ever movie. I will be making more.

Oh, the most amazing thing is that I created everything using my dial-up connection. So what we have here is a total low budget film. Filmed with a cellphone and mixed on the web using a dial-up connection.

Anyway, here is the video blog.

Technorati Tags: eyespot.com web 2.0 Video Blog

Off Topic?

2006-04-18T12:01:00.000-07:00

I was reading somewhere on the web the other day that your blog should stay on topic.

"They" were saying that a blogger must be "on-topic" 80% of the time and 20% is off topic.

Then it occurred to me... I don't have a topic for my blog. Should I have a topic? My topic is whatever I want to write about. If that is my topic, then I am always on topic and then I win. (or something like that)

Speaking of blogs, I was also looking at the "Top 500" blogs as ranked by Feedster. I don't know how these blogs get so popular. I went to a few of them and I was not impressed. For example, this Michelle Malkin person is at blog #8. I have read her blog, but I don't see the big deal. Especially for being at the #8 spot for all blogs. I am not saying that my little blog here is any better (or is it?), but I would think that the #8 blog out of the 20 something million current blogs would be better.

That is of course, if you had any faith that people had enough sense to pound sand in a rat hole. However, I am finding out that is usually not the case. People are lemmings and will do whatever the masses will tell them to do. People say that Michelle Malkin's blog is the 8th most popular, so it must be good. Then more people start reading it and it becomes more popular.

All the while the blog does not get any more interesting, it just kind of becomes... blah.

Of course, if people did not have to struggle all the time to create posts that were "on topic", then they might have the freedom to post about whatever they wanted.

And it just might be interesting.

Technorati Tags: 80-20 Off Topic

Cool things I saw this week.

2006-04-13T19:08:00.000-07:00

Ok then. I just wanted to post a quick post to share with you some cool things I have seen this week. Hopefully, you will like these "news stories", but who really knows anyhow? Not me.

Cool thing #1
Santa Cruz school buses have just started to run off of biodiesel in the grade of B99.

B99 means that it is 99% biodiesel and 10% regular petrodiesel. This is really cool, and gets them most of the way off of petrodiesel. See, not all biodiesel blends are created equal. Most of the commercial grades (such as Bio-Willie) are only B20, which is 20% biodiesel and %80 petrodiesel.

These new Santa Cruz buses get their fuel from our own local Pacific Biofuel, so not only are they helping to lessen their dependence on fossil fuels, but they are helping the local economy. Now that is pretty cool.

Cool thing #2
You might not find this as cool, but I think it is pretty keen, and the first peek of the future of the web. What I am talking about is Frank Taylor's post over at Google Earth Blog. He talks about how a user has created a link between Wikipedia and Google Earth.

What this means is when you are flying around in Google Earth, an "active link" searches a part of the Wikipedia database and displays the 80 best entries in your view. Therefore, Google Earth is not just a cool thing to view your house in anymore. No! Now, it is a geographically based learning tool. This means that in Google Earth, you are able to view the difference between Cape Horn and False Cape Horn, and it becomes clear how sailors could have gotten the two confused. When you just read about them, it is much harder to get the full extent of both of these features.

I think this is the future of the web, because I see geography being another way to search for information. Just think if you could go to any city in Google Earth and be able to zoom in and be able to find stuff. Things like commercial services are starting to appear on Google Earth now, but I see in the future, everyone having their own piece of virtual "real estate", and that being their on-line profile. So, you could zoom over to another country and find some one's webspace.

See, it would be like a MySpace, but instead of doing a text search for the people that live in "Santa Cruz", you would fly over Santa Cruz in Google Earth and all these points would show up that would link to folks' on-line profiles.

It is the future, you just wait and see.

Technorati Tags: wikipedia biodiesel Google Earth

Still Raining, Still dreaming...

2006-04-11T18:44:00.000-07:00

Will the rain ever stop? I don't know where you live, but where I live, we have been getting records amount of rain. How exactly much do you ask? Well, you can check out the totals, at the Bonny Doon rain guage page. It did happen to stop raining for one day and that day was Saturday. So, where do you go when it sunny? Well, if you are the administrative team at feltonjamhouse.com, you go to Big Sur.

Here are some pictures. As is the case for these trips lately, they were taken with the cameraphone. These pictures were taken April 8th.

This is some random cove on the Big Sur Coast.

As you can see, it was a nice day. You would never know that it started raining the next day.

This is McWay Falls. This was our turning around point for the day.

A random shot of the Big Sur Coast.

Looking north from the McWay Falls overlook.

Of course, my photos are pretty good of McWay Falls, but if you want to see some really good ones, check everybody's pictures at Flickr.com of McWay Falls

Technorati Tags: Big Sur McWay Falls Rain

Feltonjamhouse.com Session 6 Posted.

2006-04-11T15:39:00.000-07:00

I have posted the "lost" session. Well, it was not really "lost", it was just that I had forgotten about it. This session is from 11-11-05. Anyway, go check it out and download all the songs.

Technorati Tags: Free Mp3

Pandora.com

2006-04-04T09:57:00.000-07:00

I just found this really cool site. It is called pandora.com It is a "Music Discovery" site. Basically you type in an artist or band and the good folks at Pandora (who created the music genome project) find other music that is just like the song or band you entered and create a "radio station" based on your tastes. This thing is really, really, really cool and I very highly suggest it for all you folks out there that like to find new music (you know who you are).

I created a "Ray Noble" station that is pretty neat-o. You can check out my Ray Noble station here.

Technorati Tags: Pandora.com Music

Last.fm

2006-04-03T14:07:00.000-07:00

So, I have been reading up on all these new Web 2.0 sites. They are springing up faster than... Well, I don't know what, but they are springing up faster than I can keep up with them. All I know is that I am signing up for the 2.0 sites that I see and I like. The latest one that I just found today is called last.fm. I don't know all the stuff that it does, but I decided to sign up anyway cause it looked cool. Go view my profile here. Basically, the site tracks what songs you are listening to on your computer and then shares it with the world. Then it compare it to other members and then recommends songs and bands you might like. I think you can actually listen to songs too. I have not tried that feature out yet as I have so much music to listen to I don't have enough time as it is. One of the coolest things is "the chart". You can see the chart posted right above, there in the header. The chart lets all the visitors to this blog see what music I am listening to. See it? See all the cool music I listen to?

Or, as Ignignokt of theMooninites would say..."Bow down to the list of good music from beyond the moon" or something like that. Then Err would say..."Yeah, bow down bitches"

Technorati Tags: Last.fm Music Mooninites

Mendocino Road Trip

2006-04-02T20:03:00.000-07:00

This is a test. I read the web 2.0 article in Newsweek and it was mentioning Flickr.com. The article said that you could blog pictures with one click of the button. Anyway, now I am trying it with a picture of the beach at Russian Gulch State Park. I am sure I will come back and post more pictures in this post, but I wanted to try this "blog this!" thing out.

See, I am writing this entry at flickr.com, and not at my usual blogger posting page. Some might not think that is exciting, but I think it is kind of cool. Especially after reading the Newsweek article. (Ok, I just tried it and it works..., but now I am back at blogger adding more picts.)

So, anyway, just got back from a three day roadtrip to Mendocino. Followed Hwy 1 all the way up. It was nice as these pictures show. Even thought it was supposed to rain, there was still patches of sun. Mendocino is a great little town and it is even better when the weather is bad and nobody is there.

Russian Gulch State Park- This is a view from the beach. Hwy 1 is right above you.

Fern Canyon, Van Damme State Park

Point Arena Lighthouse

Sonoma County Coast

Glass Beach, Fort Bragg- This was a very cool beach. I guess it used to be a dump in the 1940's. Now all the garbage is gone, but lots and lots of glass is left. Most of the white specks in this picture is beach glass.

Speaking of Fort Bragg, check out the view from the room. The North Cliff Hotel is super nice and pretty reasonable considering what you get. It is a great place to kick it and watch the storms roll in. If you can't tell, that is a fireplace next to the window... Swank!

As always, you can view all the pictures at my flickr.com account. Just look for all the pictures that were uploaded April 1st.

Technorati Tags: Road Trip Mendocino

Badges? The veggie car don't need no stinkin' badges

2006-03-30T12:16:00.000-08:00

Here in California there is a new law. It seems that if you drive a hybrid car, you can buy a sticker that allows you to drive in the carpool (diamond) lane. Well, it turns out that the sticker is kind of ugly and that hybrid owners are a bit anal. This combination adds up to a bunch of cry-babies. Will forwarded me this very funny string of hybrid sticker bitchers.

Seems like most of these foolios live down in SoCal, where the traffic is really bad and they don't like to muck up their precious hybrids with a ugly sticker. Oh boo-hoo! I guess you folks aren't as "green" as you think, since non of them actually carpools. See, if you carpool you don't need a sticker. Wow, what a concept!

Well, the veggie car does not need any sticker! That is because I drive a few folks to work most everyday. Today there was a total of three people in the car on the way to work. However, even though I had three people in the car I did not drive in the carpool lane. That is because there is no carpool lane on Hwy 17, which is the way I get to work everyday.

I also don't subscribe to the "Ass, Gas, Grass or Cash" policy, because everyone rides for free!

I guess I have something in common with the SUV drivers... I also think most hybrid drives suck. (Except for Will, he is cool)

Technorati Tags: Veggie Car

Virtual Podcast

2006-03-29T13:59:00.000-08:00

I have always wanted to do podcasting. However, I don't have a fast connection, or a newer computer, so I have not done any yet. I was going to get a new computer and DSL and I was looking forward to doing podcasts. I wanted to share "my music" with all you out there. I had read in Rolling Stone how "They" weren't cracking down on people posting music in podcasts. Well, I guess times have changed, as you can read from this podcaster. Seems that "They" are now suing folks, so no more podcasts of cool music. That is a shame, because I wanted to do it too. I have only just recently looked for podcasts and I actually found some. I downloaded one and listened to it... It was lame. These guys were talking and talking. By the time they got around to playing music, the song they played was "Highway to Hell"... Lame.

Anyway, I have decided to do my own podcast, without recording anything, like me talking or whatnot. Just music for you to download. So here is my podcast, broken down into individual songs. I have found some good songs from bands I like and have put them in a list, just for you. Download them and play them in order and now you have my podcast... It is just split up into individual songs and I am not doing any talking. Just songs.

Podcast #1 Jam Bands
Bazooka Speaker Funk- Keller Williams
The Elevator- Particle
Devon 2000 Space Jam Live-Dr Didg
Pipe Bomb-Vinyl
Pudding- Jessica Lurie
Breath- Keller Williams
Eighty Cylinders- Yonder Mountain String Band
Square Dance Messiah- Hypnotic Clambake

Technorati Tags: Podcast Music Free MP3

Big Sur, like two weeks ago.

2006-03-26T20:10:00.001-08:00

Went to Big Sur again two weekends ago. It was a nice day. We went down and had lunch at Nepenthe. Nepenthe is a very cool resturant, located on a cliff above the Pacific Ocean. While in Big Sur, we also stopped off and saw the waterfall that is in Andrew Molera State Park. I bet you did not know that there was a waterfall in Andrew Molera, but there is.

Check out the views from Nepenthe

Here is the waterfall in Andrew Molera State Park. Kind of small, but it is there.

The sun going down over Point Sur

The view south from the Bixby Creek Bridge

Technorati Tags: Big Sur Nepenthe

The Jessica Lurie Quartet

2006-03-23T09:43:00.000-08:00

Went and saw Jessica Lurie last night at Don Quixotie's (click here for mp3's). There were not many folks there at all, but I saw Aric, so that was cool. You might know Jessica from her last project, Living Daylights. I saw the Living Daylights play at the High Sierra Music Festival a few times in the past.

It was a really great show, and Jessica is singing now and sounds great. I bought the CD and it is most excellent. I guess Jessica is living now in Brooklyn, but still has one foot in Seattle. I of course had to do some name dropping after the show and said I know Marc Fendel. I asked her if she had heard his new project, Swampdweller yet. She said no, but had just done a improv recording with him for some big band stuff, so that was great to hear.

Well, now you know the inside scoop about musicians you never heard of. Make sure to follow the links and download the free mp3s! Free mp3s are cool.

Technorati Tags: Jessica Lurie Music Free MP3

Runnin on Veggie (Runnin on): Tales of the Veggie Car Part II

2006-03-20T12:44:00.000-08:00

I got a comment left by someone that liked the first installment of the adventures of the Veggie Car. Anyway, here is a short bit I wrote for the employee newsletter that will be coming out this week... At work, where you won't read it.

Since I am lazy (and want to keep you up to speed), I just thought I would repost it here so I don't have to write anything.

Check it out...

Runnin’ on Veggie.

I commute 60 miles everyday, but has not paid for gas in four months. How do I do it? I converted my 1983 Mercedes 300 D to run on Waste Vegetable Oil that I get for free from the back of restaurants.

How does it work?

The short answer is: “Surprisingly well”.

The longer more technical answer with some history follows:

The Diesel Engine was first displayed for the public in 1900 at the World Exhibition in Paris. This new engine design amazed engineers and the public because it ran on peanut oil. Rudolph Diesel was a forward thinker, as you can see from his quote from the early 1900.

"The use of vegetable oils for engine fuels may seem insignificant today, but such oils may become, in the course of time as important as petroleum and the coal tar products of the present time."

Approximately 80 years ago, the petroleum industry created a gasoline fuel for these engines and they were nice enough to name the new blend “diesel”. Since that time, the original use of peanut oil was all but forgotten.

The use of vegetable oil in the diesel engine was re-discovered in the 1970s, and people started experimenting with this new “old” technology. Over the course of the past 30 years many people have experimented with veggie oil in their cars and have come up with a practical way for it to be used in today’s diesel engines.

Now that you have a bit of history, I will go into the technical details of the car itself. The theory behind this technology is you start the car on diesel, and when it is warmed up, you switch it to veggie oil. A few miles before you get to your destination you switch it back to diesel. Switching it back to diesel purges the fuel injector system of the vegetable oil, so when you go to start up the car the next time, it is not gummed up with cold veggie oil.

To get any diesel car or truck to run on veggie oil, you just need to install an extra fuel delivery system that can be switched on or off, that delivers hot veggie oil to the engine. One also needs a filter for the veggie oil and a way to heat the oil up before it goes into the fuel injectors. That is it! No internal modifications to the engine are needed. Just get that veggie oil hot and filtered and it can go right into the engine. Hard to believe, but it is true.

Burning veggie oil instead of diesel is also better for the environment and better for your engine. Vegetable oil is a natural lubricant, so it extends the life of your engine. Also, burning veggie oil has less particulate matter and burns no sulfur (burning sulfur creates acid rain). All in all, running vegetable oil in your vehicle is much better for the environment than even conventional gasoline engines. When you use vegetable oil, you are also reusing resources and saving them from the landfill. (Actually, the waste vegetable oil does not always go in the landfill, it is usually collected by a tallow company and fed to livestock-Yummy!)

Not only is it better for the engine and the environment, but running on waste vegetable oil is FREE! Yes, you heard that right, it is possible to get the waste oil for free from most restaurants. Restaurants have to pay a tallow company to haul their waste veggie oil away, so they are usually happy to let someone take the oil, so they don’t have to pay for removal.

Once you have a source of oil, you pump it out of the barrel into some kind of container and take it home. At home you need to filter it. The setup uses a 1 micron sock filter that drains into a 55 gallon barrel. Also, it is best to heat the veggie oil to burn off any water that might be mixed in with it, since water is very bad for your fuel injectors. The barrel has a hot water heater element installed in the 55 gallon barrel that the filtered oil is stored in. You just turn it on and the oil heats up and the water evaporates. After that it is just a matter of putting the oil in the gas tank and driving away.

The whole conversion cost $3,000. ($1,500 for the car, $700 in parts and $800 in labor) and since it has been converted, there has not been any repair costs, or gas costs. The costs involved, after the initial conversion are the purchase of sock filters to filter the oil. These cost about $3.50 a piece and last for at least 20 gallons of filtering, and usually they last for more. The car runs just as well as it does on regular diesel fuel with no loss of power and the gas mileage is the same. The only way to tell the car uses vegetable oil for fuel is the exhaust smells like BBQ chicken!

Technorati Tags: Veggie Car

Local Bigfoot Sightings

2006-03-17T10:45:00.000-08:00

Being a member of the Bigfoot Discovery Museum, I get the inside scoop on any local sightings here in the Felton area with the best documented sighting being this one. That being said, I always like to hear about sightings from the BFRO. The BFRO just posted a new sighting from the Ventana Wilderness. You can read about it here. I have been out that way, but have never seen a bigfoot. However, I do have pictures from the area this sighting took place. Check them out.

From the description of the BFRO sighting in the Ventana Wilderness, I am pretty sure that this shot was taken right in the general area of the sighting. You can see the brush is pretty thick.

Here is a shot of the Carmel River.

As always, you can view more pictures of the Carmel River in the Ventana Wilderness at my Flickr Account I also uploaded at Flickr all my pictures of Round Lake if anyone is interested, you just might have to poke around the site to get them all.

Technorati Tags: Bigfoot Ventana Wilderness

Felton Jam House session 5 posted.

2006-03-15T15:24:00.000-08:00

Yep, we finally have another Feltonjamhouse.com session posted. Served up hot and tasty for your listening pleasure. Go there right now and download them all. Don't forget to expierence my great singing on the song, Le Monstray. It is a song about a shirt that is about some wine.

technorati tag:Music mp3

Irresponsible pet owners should burn in hell!

2006-03-15T12:41:00.000-08:00

Well, it has been a sad day here for the last couple of days as our cat "Mayhem" has been missing. To make a long story short, it seems that a neighbor's dog got out, ran the neighborhood and ended up attacking and mauling our cat. Luckily, we have other neighbors that are very nice and saw the whole thing happen. They rescued our cat and took it to the Vet and paid $800 out of their own pocket to pay the Vet and save our cat. We just got Mayhem back yesterday and he is pretty tore up. All kinds of stitches, and now he has three "drain tubes" in his chest and belly. Also, it looks like some permanent eye damage and possible brain damage. The cat is seriously messed up, and it still might not live. He is under 24 hour watch and the vets are coming back again today to check on the poor guy.

The owner of the dog does not seem to care (We know who it is) and has not tried to contact us. Looks like I am going to have to write him a letter to see if he will take responsibility for the actions of his pet. The guy is a complete dumb-ass so I doubt if he will do anything. If not, it will be my first time suing anyone. I was raised not to sue anyone, but people have to pay for their mistakes and take responsibility for their animals.

Of course, he could have skipped all this drama if he actually took the time to train the dog not to run the neighborhood when it escapes, but that obviously did not happen.

I just want the cat to be ok. We are so glad that Mayhem is back home because we were going crazy not knowing where the cat was or what happened to it.

cat Dog Attack

View From the Summit.

2006-03-12T21:29:00.000-08:00

Went on a small drive on Saturday. Ended up on Highland road up on the summit in the Santa Cruz Mountains. I took a couple of pictures.

Here is a view from the summit. That is the Monterey Peninsula the distance. There is snow on top of Mount Caramel, but you can't really see it the picture.

Also saw a cool waterfall.

Did not see too much snow, but people were blogging about it, because it did snow on Friday night.

You can check out other people's pictures of the Santa Cruz snow at these links. Here is a picture and another one here (Check out the gnarly pict of Hwy 17!) Here is another picture of snow and here are a few more.

Snow on Hwy 17

2006-03-10T19:32:00.000-08:00

There was snow on Highway 17 on the way home from work today. I have never seen that much snow on the summit before. Luckily I had my trusty cameraphone and was able to take some shots. Here they are.

I am glad I had the cameraphone. That thing is fun.

In other blogging news, I have added a section on the right of all my on-line profiles, so you can check it out.

Make sure to check out flagr.com It is a brand new website where you post your favorite places on the earth. The idea is to fill it up with all kinds of insider info on what is good and where to find it. Very Web 2.0. Anyway, it has only been on-line like five days or so. Hopefully it will become very popular. I signed up for it and you can see my two posts when you check my profile in the right hand box, or just click here.

I also made my bloglines RSS feed reader public (also known as a blogroll). Now you can check out the RSS feeds I view. They are on the right, or you can check them out here.

Snow Santa Cruz

Whoa, funny blog here.

2006-03-09T22:17:00.000-08:00

So I have not really looked around and found any blogs that are good. I have found many blogs that are ok, but none that I think are really good. I don't know if I think my blog is any good, or if anyone reads it, but that is besides the point.

I was surfing around the net and found this blog, dad gone mad

It is a very well written blog and reading it I actually laughed out loud.

Now that we have that understanding, how about some pictures?

This is round lake. We went backpacking to this nice lake in the Sierras last summer. This view is actually from our campsite. If you ever go to round lake, make sure you look for this campsite. It is up on the hill a bit, but it sure is nice.

This is Bryce Canyon. We went there last spring. This is part of a longer trip that we took to Utah. If you visit my flicker photo page, you can see more.

Backpacking camping Pictures

The Meat Puppets rock and so does the internet.

2006-03-09T14:55:00.000-08:00

I was just listening to the Meat Puppets. They are a really great band that I have been a fan of since the early 90's. I have bought most of their albums and they really are a talented bunch of LSD taking fools. I think I heard somewhere along the line they take LSD, but who really knows.

I just like to keep the myth alive.

I wondered if other bloggers were talking about the Meat Puppets, so I checked on Technorati but not too many folks are interested in the Meat Puppets, and the ones that are, mostly know them because of the Nirvana unplugged album. However, when I was snooping around, I found Derek Bostrom's webpage. He is the drummer of the Meat Puppets. While I was there checking out his page, I found out that the band had been broken up since 1996. I had no idea, but hey, I am getting older these days and don't really keep up on my favorite bands anymore. I have a poster from 1994 I got at a Fillmore show that has been hanging on various walls at many places since I got it.

Here is a picture of the poster that I just took with my cameraphone and then emailed to my flicker account. The wonders of modern science.

Even though the Meat Puppets have been broken up for like 10 years, they still have new product. Just recently I bought a Meat Puppets DVD that has a bunch of poor quality video of various shows they played. I really like the DVD, even though the video quality is crap. The sound quality is fine, and the video rocks in general. I also like the interview with Thurston Moore from Sonic Youth. He tells this great story about the first time he heard the Meat Puppets (Sonic Youth was opening). All the "Punks" kept yelling at Sonic Youth to "Play Faster" and then the Meat Puppets came out and played so fast that the kids were blown away. At least that is what he said in the video.

I remember the first time I saw them was at the Universal Amphitheater around 1991 and they were opening for the Violent Femms. I had never heard them before, and by the end of the set, I was hooked. It is rare that I instantly like any band, but these guys were rockin'. I really liked the harmonies, the "country" sound and the fast beat.

If you want to hear their set, here is a link to a Fillmore show that was from the same tour that hooked me when I first saw them. Check out the free mp3's of the Meat Puppets live set from 1991.

I think the Meat Puppets were one of the great underground bands that stayed underground till the end. That is cool for the fans, but it kind of sucks for the band, since they never "made it big". Rock and Roll is a hard business and you have to give them props for getting out there and playing all the small clubs and gigs. I just think they were a good band that was unique with their own sound. The Meat Puppets were a group of very talented musicians that hold an important place in the history of Rock.

Music Meat Puppets

Butano State Park

2006-03-04T19:39:00.000-08:00

Went to Butano State Park today. It is a nice State Park, even though it is small. I took some pictures with my cameraphone. That thing takes surprisingly good pictures. Here are some of the better ones.

This is some Turkey Tail mushrooms

These were looking good. Rumor has it you can eat them and they are not only tasty, but good for you. I am not going to try.

This Flower was blooming.

I am not sure what kind of flower this was, but there were a bunch of them around. It looks like things will be looking really good in a couple of weeks or so.

Little Butano Creek

This is Little Butano Creek. It was running a bit muddy, and I did not see any fish. The picture is a bit blurry, but still looks ok when the picture is small.

Another shot of Little Butano Creek

This tree looked good in the sunshine

I am always a fan of moss on trees. As you can see, the sun came out for a bit today. It has been raining and raining for the last week or so, and will rain some more next week.

The Forget Me Nots were blooming too.

This was a good excursion, and it was not very crowded. I highly recommend Butano State Park for either a short visit, or overnight camping.

State Park Redwoods

My First Google Earth Post.

2006-03-03T14:54:00.000-08:00

Hey there. Well, I thought I would post my first Google Earth file for you all to view. That is if you have Google Earth. This is a flyover of one day of our honeymoon. This area represents the "back road" from Vancouver to Kamloops Britsh Colombia Canada. To view this flyover and have it look good, you have to change the settings. Go to "Tools" then "Options" then the "Control" tab, then click the "Advanced" box. On "Driving Directions Tour Options" put "70" in the "camera tilt angle" and "1500" in the "Camera Range" box. Then press play and kick back and relax. Check it out because it is "just like Beggars Canyon back home". You can download the file here. Note it is a zip file because I could not figure out how to post a klm file.

Vancover to Kamloops

Technorati tags: Google Earth

Weekend Update.

2006-03-01T14:46:00.000-08:00

Ok, three posts in one day, some kind of record. How about a weekend update? This weekend was, as always, too short. I took the day off on Friday and I worked in the yard. I transplanted some plants. Actually, they were primroses. I planted them like three years ago, and they keep coming back and flowering. So I decided to round them all up and plant them in one space. They look pretty good, and I did not have to pay for the flowers which is always good.

Also, I got the numbers from my tax return back. I am now rich.

Saturday we decided to go to IKEA and get some stuff. Bought a Tunheim Shelf and some kind of bench to sit on that stores your shoes inside. Saturday night we went to a party. It was a combo birthday party for a 1 year old and a 40 year old. It was pretty mellow. Then we came home and I started to put together the IKEA furniture. That always takes some time, but I was able to build the stuff. Note to self: IKEA furniture that has hinges always take longer to put together than IKEA furniture that does not have hinges.

Sunday, we went to a brunch that was also a party for Amy. You can check out her myspace profile here. That was fun. Then came back and worked on more IKEA furniture, and then moved said furniture around. It is still a mess and today is Wednesday, but we are figuring it out. Sunday afternoon we went to Cirque Du Solis, "Corteo" in San Jose. I have to admit, it was very cool. Quite the impressive production. Totally worth the $85 a ticket.

We also watched some movies. We watched:
1) "A Perfect Man" with Heather Locklear and Hillary Duff. It sucked.
2) "Broken Flowers" with Bill Murray. It was pretty good until the end. The end sucked.
3) "Elizabethtown" with Orlando Bloom. This was a totally terrible movie.
4) "Alone in the Wilderness" with someguy. This was really, really great. It was a documentary about a guy that moved up to Alaska and built his own cabin with hand tools. The whole thing he built himself with just handtools. Then he lived there for 35 years. It was really great!
5) WalMart-The High Cost of Low Prices. This was totally good. I already hated walmart, but now I hate them even more. Highly recommended.

Some of the other movies we have seen in the last couple of weeks include...
1) Paradise Lost: The Child Murders at Robin Hood Hills. This was pretty good. I think the weird looking father did it.
2) Turtles Can Fly. This was a movie made in Iraq that was kind of disturbing. Foreign movies are always strange.
3) Speak. This is an excellent movie. I thought Mr Neck was great.
4) Female Trouble. This was a John Waters movie and it stared Divine. Divine was a good actor, and the movie was pretty funny. Now I like to call people "Dawn Davenport" because I think it is funny. They don't know what I am talking about, but who cares if I think it is funny.
5) Wedding Crashers. It was ok. There has not been a really funny movie made in a while I think.
6) Crooklyn. A Spike Lee Joint that I had not seen. I was not impressed. His other movies are better.

Spread between those movies were some episodes of the L Word and Little House on the Prairie.

Ok then, how is that for a post?

Some really cool Unique Fountains

2006-03-01T14:14:00.000-08:00

Ok, this post is about fountains. Not Fountains of Wayne, but very nice, custom fountains that you can afford. Of course, I don't know if you want the fountains, or if you even have a house to install them in. I just think they are great designs and so I am providing a link. Did I mention that these fountains are designed by my very own Pop? Yes, it is true, so check out the tallent that runs in the family. Click here to view the Unique Fountains.

technorati tag:Fountain

Felton Jam House Session 4 is posted.

2006-03-01T12:27:00.000-08:00

Yep, that is right. Session 4 of Felton Jam House is posted for your download pleasure. I hope you like it. Check it out, right here.

technorati tags:music mp3

When in doubt, post some pictures.

2006-02-21T20:42:00.000-08:00

I tried to think of something interesting to say, but then I remembered I had some pictures posted on flickr.com and so I could just post those. Anyway, check out some random places.

Pinnacles National Monument

Hearst Castle

Big Sur

My very first webpage.

2006-02-20T09:37:00.000-08:00

So, I was just poking around and found my very old skateboard web page from the year 2000. It is an old geocities page and you can see it here. There is actually a very cool dogtown sticker picture on the site. Who would have known at that time that dogtown would have been so big. I collected most of the pictures from ebay. The page is actually a pretty good skateboard history page.

I invited Will to be a poster here on feltonjamhouse.blogspot.com, so now we have another team member. It also seems that Will got himself a blog and is posting also. You can check out his page here. He has posted a very interesting story about the Baltimore Train tunnel.

I also got the address to Nate's page. It seems that a few of the feltonjamhouse.com folks have an on-line presence. Anyway, check out Nate's page here.

Skateboard Longboard

Good Bigfoot stories.

2006-02-15T19:48:00.000-08:00

I am a believer in bigfoot. I think they are real and living in our forests, unseen. My friends ask how I can believe such an outlandish thing, but I have read a lot of sightings. I think these people are telling the truth. Not everyone is telling the truth, but I believe some people are. Here are some of the better stories that I think are true. If these folks are lying, they are doing a good job, and anyway, it makes for some good reading.

Check out these stories from the BFRO, hand picked by me.

Guy is so scared of bigfoot he sells his business.

Professional Woodsman has lengthy sighting.

Bigfoot seen next to only know pictograph of Bigfoot in California.

Is this guy lying?

Person and pack-goats have close encounter.

So, what is the deal? Are these people just lying, and "making up a story"? What about the Indian pictographs? Maybe that is just a Hollywood set or something? Yes, just keep saying that to yourself over and over and everything will be ok...

tag:bigfoot

Tuck & Patti

2006-02-14T21:20:00.000-08:00

Just got back from Tuck and Patti. Wow, was that ever an amazing show. Tuck plays guitar and Patti sings. Simple, but very powerfull. We saw it at the Kuumba Jazz Center in downtown Santa Cruz. It was also a dinner show, so we got dinner and then the show started. The songs I recognized were "Fools Rush In", you know, the same one Elvis covered. Also, Al Green's "I'm Still In Love With You", was another one I recognized. They are a husband and wife team and have been playing together for over 27 years. We were so close to the stage, I could have spit on them. I would not, but I could have. That is how close we were. It was really great to see the interaction between the two and how they communicated about the song changes. Truly amazing. If you want to listen to some of their mp3's, check out this link.

Hey, this flickr.com thing is pretty cool. It is easy to post some pictures, so let's do that eh?

Here is sunset at Prewitt Ridge in Big Sur. This is from last year when we went camping in Big Sur.

Here is the sunrise from the same spot.

Pretty neat eh?

Weekend Update-Big Sur and Alba road.

2006-02-13T21:23:00.000-08:00

Well, it is another weekend gone. Loverboy said it best you know. Or do you know? What, you don't listen to Loverboy? I don't either, but I know what they said... "Everybody's Working For the Weekend". That is what I did, and now it is over. I did not think that it would be interesting to write about the weekend, but then I saw this blog, and it seems that this guy talks about his weekend, so I figure it is ok. Well, it is only ok to talk about the weekend if it was exciting. Considering I am getting over a cold and I gave it to Anji, it was pretty mellow. We did get to get out to Big Sur for lunch on Saturday. Big Sur is really not that far from the house. Only like 1 hour and a half. The Pebble Beach golf thingy was going on, but that did not really bother us. They seem to have good traffic control for that event and it was smooth sailing down past Caramel. By the time we got to Caramel Highlands, the road was pretty much empty. That was strange, because it was a really sunny day. Anyway, we made it down to the River Inn and ate lunch outside overlooking the river. I took a picture with my cameraphone. I need to get some kind of flicker account or something so I can start to post pictures here, so as for now, you can't see the shot. It is nice thought. At the River Inn, there was some cool art. This artist had taken pictures of the Big Sur area and then printed them on canvas with some kind of paint stuff. They were very well done and cool looking. After that, we came home.

On Sunday it was another nice day. I worked in the yard. I transplanted primroses. Yeah. Later that day we went up to the Boulder Creek Brewery to get some chow. That place is pretty good, and the beer is tasty. On the way home we decided to take a new road that we had never been on. We took Alba road up to Empire Grade. Then we followed Empire Grade all the way down to UCSC. It is funny how you can live somewhere and not see specific places unless you make the effort. We were only a couple of miles from our house, but since Empire Grade is "out of the way", we had never been on it.

Sometimes it is fun to play tourist in your own backyard.

Oh, I just signed up for flicker and figured out how to post my cameraphone picture. Let's see if this works...

Felton Jam House session 3 is posted.

2006-02-10T15:42:00.000-08:00

Yep, that is right. We have the third session of the rockinest "non-band" on the net posted. This is a very good session and marks the first time you get to hear Angel on guitar. This session consists of Angel on guitar, Will on bass, me on drums, and Anji singing. Aric also plays some drums on the songs that I sing on. He is also playing some keyboards on various songs too. I know I have the dates all wrong, but whatever, at least they are posted. This session has my very favorite song, Tomorrow Never Comes, with me singing like some kind of heavy metal star. Another good song is Furiously 80's with the great lyrics by Anji. Don't forget now, that these songs are made up on the spot, so when the lyrics come together it is pretty cool. Anyway, go check it out.

Movies I have seen in the last week or so...

2006-02-05T22:13:00.000-08:00

Hi there.

Well, looks like I have been on the web long enough to show up on technorati.com. I guess that is cool. Now maybe someone will find the site and read it. My goal with my original un-named site was to have strangers read it. In all the time I had the page, I am not sure if any strangers read it. I had lots of readers, but they all either knew me, or had a friend that knew me. I don't think anyone just randomly stumbled upon the page and became a regular reader. That was however before this whole "blog" thing got popular. Now maybe strange people will read my stuff! Ok strange ones, here is my reviews of the movies I have seen from netflix in the last week or so.

Deal: Let's Make a Deal documentary.
This was a lame documentary about a subject that I love, the gameshow "Let's Make A Deal". Since the subject matter to me was interesting, I would say the documentary was "ok", even though it was not made very well. I will give it props in trying to educate the viewers on the evils of TV. The documentary was made in 1978 and "exposed" the fact that the show was nothing more than a half an hour commercial for products. These products are pitched to housewives, who at the time, was the market that bought the most stuff. This show was designed to showcase stuff that your averge american family would want to have. By giving these products away, the station was able to circumvent the rule of minutes dedicated to commercials (the actual rules were a bit complicated and I did not quite understand them) Anyway, there were somekind of rules for advertising products that they were able to get around by using them as prizes.

All and all it was interesting as a successful marketing study. Speaking of successful marketing, we also saw the very, very excellent...

Merchants of cool
Whoa Nellie! This was a very excellent documentary, even though it was only an hour. It was a PBS Frontline documentary about marketing to teens. They are tricky. Basically the housewives market has been replaced with the teen market as the market that has the most money to spend. This is a great documentary about how the teens are tricked out of their money. Highly recommended.

The Pink Panther
This was the original from 1964. I had not seen it in so long, I did not remember any of it. Boy, it was not that funny. I can only imagine that the new one will be even worse.

End of the century: The Story of the Ramones
This is a must see for any fan of music or punk. You have to know your history. Watch Spinal Tap first and then this and trip out on the similarities.

Saving Face:
Yeah, hot Chinese lesbians that are nakked and making out. Oh, the rest of the movie was good too. No seriously, it was very well written and funny and cute.

Grizzly Man:
Freaky manic depressive gets eaten by grizzly! This movie is so bizarre that Len thought it must have been made up. It isn't, but it could be.

From Ape to Man:
This was a cool history channel show that was about the folks that dug up our prehistoric relatives.

Also, look at how popular bigfoot has been in the last 360 days... This chart is from technorati.com. Bigfoot is in the news and in the blogs.

English posts that contain Bigfoot per day for the last 360 days.

Get your own chart!

feltonjamhouse.com-Session 2

2006-02-01T14:19:00.000-08:00

Ok, I just posted the second session of “Feltonjamhouse.com”. I am pretty sure it is the second session, but I am not sure. In this session we have Will on guitar, Dave on bass, Anji singing and I play drums. We do mix it up. For example on the song “I’m a lot like you” Dave is on the drums, Will is playing bass and I am on guitar Even though I can’t play guitar, I am still playing guitar. The songs I like on this session are “Little Things” and “Imagine if you sucked”. I like the “imagine” song because it is the first time I tried to play drums and sing at the same time. I think it is pretty good, but what do I know. I think you should download it and decide for yourself

I like craigslist...

2006-01-31T13:50:00.000-08:00

I like craigslist. I really like craigslist. I used to check out craigslist everyday to see what kind of stuff people were selling. Now I don't look at it anymore. I just post things for sale. Everything I have and want to get rid of, I post on craigslist. I just sold a piece of furniture this weekend and now there is more space in the front room, and I got money in my pocket. Cash money paid and space to boot, can't get much better than that. You usually don't even need to leave your house. People come to you and pay you money and take your unwanted things away. It is truly amazing.

I think the wierdest thing I have ever sold on craigslist was the old range hood that goes over the stove. This thing was from 1956 I am pretty sure, and it had not been cleaned since at least 1988. I sold it for $20. The guy who bought it wanted the "squirrel cage" out of it, which is the fan. They are much better than today's fans, don't you know. No, seriously, they are. The guy even told me so.

I've sold three bikes on craigslist, hotwheels, a CD tower, sheets, my 68' VW van, a wetsuit, a snowboard, chairs, a Nordic Trac, a giant cabinet thing and an acoustic guitar.

Things that I bought/bartered or services rendered I found on craigslist include: my diesel Mercedes and I found a local guy to do the conversion to veggie, my pocket PC, slot car track, and the caterer to my wedding. The list is not quiet as long as the selling list, but I have found some quality things on craigslist. I highly recomend you go to craigslist and buy some stuff.

Woah! This just in, I did a Technocrati search of craigslist, and I came across this crazy post about the great dog debate on craigslist. Check out this blog.

FeltonJamHouse.com is now downloading fine

2006-01-26T13:58:00.000-08:00

Well, since this is the official blog of feltonjamhouse.com, I guess I should give you some updates.

I got word from Aric that the songs were not downloading. I tried it, and he was right, they weren't working. I sent a email off to the techs and it seems to be working now.

So, that means you need to go there right now and download our songs. These songs were all made up on the spot. Even the lyrics. We just start jammin and hit the record button and record what comes about. Some of them are pretty good. My favorites from the first session are...

Rosalinda
Feel it in the Air
In the Morning

Anji sings on Rosalinda, but I sing on the other two. There are more songs on the website that Anji sings on, so download them all. These songs get better towards the end of each song, as by that time we start to get into the groove, so give em a chance.

Bigfoot Discovery Museum Blog and Movie.

2006-01-25T19:28:00.000-08:00

I stopped by the Bigfoot Discovery Museum today to return the "Bigfoot Man or Beast" video. Mike said he had changed his blog address. It is now hairybiped.blogspot.com You should check it out if you are interested in bigfoot. While I was there I also checked out "Myths and Monsters" that is five episodes of "In Search Of" that deals with bigfoot/yeti. Someone on eBay had packaged the five episodes with some kind of cheezy cover. Anji and I will watch it tonight and see how it is.

I also have a movie review for you...

Me and You and Everyone We Know

This movie was pretty good and a bit different than the normal fair. It is about a couple different people and the way their lives interact in strange and weird ways. It is also about one of the characters kids. I liked the scene where the teenage kid had to choose which girl gave the best blowjob, but the rest of the movie is good too. The woman that wrote and directed is also the main star. We did not realize this till the end, but it makes sense. This main character is very artsy in a wacky kind of way, and it shows in the vibe of the movie.

We had to rent it at the local movie rental shop, because we are getting throttled by Netflix.

So Much Things to Say Right Now, ya got so much things to say- the tails of the veggie car: Part 1

2006-01-23T21:00:00.000-08:00

Yes, I do, I have many things to say and since it is so easy to post, I think I will say them. Ok, first of all, I drive a veggie car. This is a car that runs off of waste vegetable oil that I get for free from the back of restaurants. I actually put "vegetable oil vehicles" in my interests in my profile. I was adding stuff to my profile and I figured out that blogger automatically links your interests to all the other bloggers' interests in a hyper-link search. Anyway, I noticed that I seem to be the only person that has an interest in vegetable oil vehicles(i.e. I actually have one) in the whole of blogger.com. I find this hard to believe, but I will post about the car anyway. Right now, I am sitting here waiting for my veggie oil to cool, so I can put it in a plastic "cubie" and pour it into my tank for the commute tomorrow. See, I have heated the oil to burn off all the water, so none gets in the motor and now it is cooling. This is just one step in the glorious practice known as "sticking it to the man", or veggie car motoring. I guess I should start at the beginning and explain the gathering of the oil. In all seriousness, this is the most important thing to know about before you decide to convert your car to run on waste vegetable oil.

Who will help me gather the oil?
Ok, first and foremost you need to find a good restaurant. A good restaurant is one with clean oil. Generally speaking, the restaurants that have the cleanest oil are Asian food restaurants. Think Chinese take out. Now that you found a good restaurant, go find another and then one more. See, restaurants only use about 6-10 gallons a week, and I need 15 gallons a week. Therefore, you need to have more than one restaurant. Trust me on this, you gotta have a back up. Now that you have scouted out your restaurant, go inside and talk to them. The person acting as the host/hostess usually has the best language skills, so begin your speil there...

"Hi, how ya doing? I have kind of a funny question. Can I have some of your used vegetable oil in the barrel out back? See, it goes in my car." This is usually meet with a bit of confusion, as the person thinks that you actually want that crappy, smelly oil in the back. Once you explain, that yes, you really do want that used oil in the back, they are more than glad for you to go back there and get out of the way of paying customers.

Now that you are out back, with permission to take the oil, now what do you do? This is the part that you bust out your trusty pump. This pump has taken up countless pages on the internet with people's ideas and thoughts and visions and products, and everyone thinks their pump is best. I have seen some special pumps just for pumping veggie oil that run over $250 US dollars. I don't really know about that. I will tell you what I use. I use a Napa 730-5028 drill pump that I bought for $10 dollars from the local autoparts shop. A lot of folks will tell you that drill pumps don't work. Most don't because they are designed for water. The Napa drill pump is especially designed for pumping crank case oil out your dipstick tube. However, both ends fit a garden hose nicely, and one end goes in the barrel and the other end goes in the "cubie". Pull the trigger of your cordless drill, and you are pumpin oil! Fill up as many cubies as you can and get on out of there. Ignore the people in the parking lot that look at you funny. They don't exist... they don't exist...

Ok then, now you take your oil back home and dump it into a 55 gallon barrel and let it sit for two days to two weeks. This settles most of the food particles out. This step of the process is very important and will make your life easier. Unfortunately for me, I have not quite gotten this step down and I usually go from the cubie to the next step...

Filtering the Oil
This is the most important step, as it leaves you with the clean, recycled "liquid gold" that gets you to work on time and for free. You need somekind of filtering barrel. I will describe what I have, your results might vary. I have a 55 gallon barrel with three 6 inch holes cut in the top. I put bag filters in the holes so they are hanging down inside the barrel. These bag filters are 1 micron in size. People say that filtering the oil to anything finer than 5 microns in size is wasting your time. People can go to hell, as I filter my oil to 1 micron. I buy my filters at McMasters.com, part # 6835k11. Once the oil filters thru the bags, I heat the oil as to burn off any suspended water that is in the oil. This magical filtering barrel I have also has a built in hot water heater at the bottom. I plug it in and the hot water heater and it heats up the oil and burns off any water. After that, I have to let the oil cool.

This brings us to where we started this post, the cooling of the oil. The oil has to cool in the barrel, This takes a little while, and that is what I am doing right now, waiting. Soon, I can open the small faucet that is also built into the magic barrel, and drain the filtered oil right into the cubie. I take the cubie and, using a funnel, pour the vegetable oil right into my tank.

Wanna know how the whole thing works from there? Well, that is another posting, for another time.

veggie car

Weekend Update.

2006-01-23T11:50:00.000-08:00

Well, here is the second post. Considering it is Monday, I guess we could start out with a "Weekend Update". Weekends these days seem to go pretty fast and aren't quite as exciting as they used to be when I had more motivation and energy. Being married has nothing to do with it, it is just times change and motivation leaves...

We (me and the wife, Anji) went to check out a new area to hike. It is called "San Lorenzo River Redwoods". I had never heard of it, but we had a map of the trails in the area, so we set off, up Hwy 9. We found the trail and parked on the side of the road. A ranger stopped by and told us not to pick any mushrooms. We said we would not, even though last weekend we went to the Fungus Fair and learned that there are lots of yummy mushrooms that you can eat that grow in the Santa Cruz Mountains. We learned about "Turkey Tails", "Witch's Butter" and others. "Witch's Butter" is very easy to spot and Anji used to call it "Alien Poop". Anyway, here is a link to the area we were at. We did not pick any mushrooms.

I also helped out Mike at the Bigfoot Discovery Museum. I help him out with the webpage and we posted some back issues of the newsletter. I also had him sign up for a blog at Blogger.com. Since it was so easy, I decided to get my own and here it is. Since I am a member of the museum, I have access to the DVD library. I checked out "Bigfoot Man or Beast". It was pretty good.

I also saw some movies this weekend. I will review them. I have a feeling there will be lots of movie reviews, since I seem to watch lots of movies. I am a Netflix subscriber and we watch a movie a night. This weekend we watched two...

My Date With Drew- This was really good. Very inspirational in a weird and cheesy way. An average Joe decides he wants to try to get a date with Drew Barrymore in 30 days. He decides to film his attempts. He has no money, so they go to Circuit City and gets a video camera. Circuit City has a 30 day return policy, and they return the camera after 30 days. This movie is surprisingly good. It won a lot of awards at film festivals. Make sure to watch the extra feature. The extra feature is very, very interesting and almost better than the movie.

Wide Awake- This is M. Night Shyamalan's first movie. It stars Rosie O'Donald. This movie was just ok. Anji liked it, but I thought it was just ok. This move is about a fifth grader who goes to Catholic school and tries to find god.

Been a long time since I posted a blog

2006-01-22T17:47:00.000-08:00

Microphone Check. Testing, testing. Is this thing on?

Well, this is the first post. It is kind of like the highest part, but not really, because the highest part is the pinnacle. Since we just started, we have a way to go. This is my first blog, because... (insert grampa Simpson voice here)

"Back in my day, we didn't have bloggs, we had to do everything ourselves. We had to buy a domain name, design it, and FTP the completed page eeeevvvvrrryy daaaaaay. Maaaaattttloooocccckkk!"

So, yeah, I used to have a web page like three years ago and it was named my real-name.com. Boy, that was a bad decision. I like to be anonymous, so here I am. I'm back, but since you didn't read my old page, I guess you did not miss me.