Category: media

Me and my internet.

As you might have predicted, I’m not using the vast opportunities of the having high-speed internet to take any  interesting life changing courses but instead I’m mostly consuming a steady diet of trash TV sprinkled with videos of animals being funny.   I have a theory that all roads will lead you to the same place anyway.

I did find this course by the “Iceman“.   He teaches you how to swim in ice-water and climb Everest in your underwear.    The course cost 200 dollars.  It requires a printer to print out the handbook and a shower, which I have neither.    He has a free mini course at http://www.wimhofmethod.com/video-miniclass/   I’m practicing by going for long walks without a coat and bare-legged and taking deep breaths when I get cold.     If I find some discipline I’ll sign up for the course and develop my “super powers”.   There is plenty of snow to roll around in and I guess that could be my cold shower and I know someone with a printer……

Here is a link to a documentary about him http://www.icemanwimhof.com/vice-documentary#vice-video

If you are looking for something great to watch on Netflix, may I suggest, “Small Town Security”.     Without a doubt the greatest reality show ever made.  If Errol Morris made reality TV,  I think  it would look something like Small Town Security.   There are 3 seasons.   Start at the beginning.

Checking out library books while you are on the trail.

I discovered this cool app, Overdrive, for my smart phone this year.   You enter your library card and then where ever you are, when ever you have wi-fi you can download audio books and e-books for free from your library to any of your devices.

If you are a collector of different library cards you can enter all of them and then get a bigger selection.

Great book: Born to Run

I just finished a book you’d love. It’s called “Born to Run: A Hidden Tribe, Superathletes, and the Greatest Race the World Has Never Seen” It’s by Christopher McDougall.

A good story and useful information—what more you could ask for. I couldn’t put it down.

My days of shelling out 700 dollars a hike for footwear are over.

These guys do 100 mile runs wearing homemade sandals. Their energy drink is chia seeds dissolved in water with lime and sugar added. And their energy food is pinole(roasted corn flour with sugar added, I believe). I think pinole is going to be the next corn pasta on the PCT.

Good documentary: Deep Water

I saw a good documentary called, “Deep Water.”

There is this sailboat race around the world to see who would be the first person to sail around the world unsupported.

This guy decides  it’s just the thing he wants to do but he doesn’t have a boat.   So he designs one and gets financial backing to build it.

Only catch is, if he quits he has to pay for the boat.   He puts up his house, which is housing his wife and 4 children, as collateral.    On the day before the deadline to sail,  he sits trembling saying “The boats not ready.”   But people tell him that he must go.  deep water

So he goes…..

Oh one more thing, he is not a real sailor, just a weekend sailor.

Because ideas and information should be free

booksYou probably know about Google Books;  you can type in any word or phrase and they will show you a bunch of books with that word or phrase and then you can preview the books.

It’s supposed to be like browsing at a book store but there are also books and magazines in their entirety for download.

Here is something Laen turned me on to.  It’s called Google Book Downloader ; it finds all the pages it can of a book and downloads them.  Then you can save it as a pdf and read it.

It’s a program you have to download.   Once you download it you need to read the instructions because it’s not that intuitive.

Then you put in the link for the book from Google Books or the ISBN and it starts finding your book, one page at a time.

On a dial up it is pretty slow, but eventually,  I end up with almost the entire book.

Humanure handbook– now free and downloadable!

toilet.jpg

Think you need a 3000 dollar system to compost your poo? No. All you need is bucket with a toilet seat lid, and this free downloadable book.

A link to the site: http://www.jenkinspublishing.com/humanure.html

And here is a link directly to the PDF.

Thanks to Richard for finding the links.

Related Post: Simple composting toilet

My favorite documentaries.

For people who love documentaries and all those movies that you could only see if you lived in a big city with an art house, Netflix has been a boon. They have everything. I live out in the middle of nowhere and my movies have a one day turn around. Netflix lets you rent, watch and return DVDs from home – Try free for 2 weeks Here is a list of my favorite documentaries:

  • American Movie (1999) About a guy with no talent or skill but a passion for making movies and a contempt for those who don’t.
  • Aileen Wuornos: Selling of a Serial Killer (1992) She worked as a prostitute and killed the men that raped her. Her advisers are a barefooted, singing lawyer and a religious woman that adopts her. Both of them sell her out and she ends up on death row.
  • Aileen: Life and Death of a Serial Killer (2003) The story continues.
  • Born Into Brothels (2004) Film maker teaches the children that live in a red light district of India how to photograph.
  • Capturing the Friedmans (2003)
  • Country Boys (2-Disc Series) (2002) Follows the lives of 2 Appalachian teens that go to a special school.
  • The Cruise (1998)
  • Crumb (1994)
  • Daughter from Danang: American Experience (2002) Woman who was born to a Vietnamese woman and an American solider leaves Vietnam and is adopted by a Texan when she is eight. She is completely americanized including a Texas accent when she returns to visit her family in Vietnam.
  • The Devil and Daniel Johnston (2005)
  • Devil’s Playground (2002) When Amish kids turn 16 they drink, have sex, and shoot drugs until they decide to become Amish or not.
  • The Eyes of Tammy Faye (2000)
  • First Person: The Complete Series (3-Disc Series) (2000) EarlMorris films people, interrogation style, with his special built camera.
  • Grey Gardens (1975) Two eccentric former socialites, who are related to Jackie O, live in their decaying mansion full of cats and raccoons.
  • Hands on a Hard Body (1998) Documentary about a contest in the south where people stand around with their hand on a Nissan pickup for days until the last one drops.
  • Hell House (2001) Christians set up a “house of horrors” about what will happen to you if you have sex.
  • Jesus Camp (2006) Training children to roll around on the floor, talk in tongues, be annoying to non-christians, and praise Bush.
  • Jupiter’s Wife (1995) Homeless woman that lives in Central Park.
  • Marjoe (1972) Rolling on floor, talking in tongues, child preacher grows up and doesn’t believe anymore yet keeps preaching for the cash.
  • My Flesh and Blood (2003) Single woman adopts all these sweet kids with disabilities and one little hellion that makes everyone miserable.
  • Sister Helen (2002) Loud, alcoholic nun runs a halfway house for drug addicts and alcoholics.
  • Sound and Fury (2000) Deaf parents are given the choice to let their deaf children hear via the cochlear implant but they want their children to remain deaf.
  • Spellbound (2002) Spelling bee and the kids that compete in them. Suspenseful.
  • Stevie (2003) Filmmaker goes back to visit the boy that he was a “big brother” to many years before. Finds a man that is more troubled then the boy he once tried to help.
  • Vernon, Florida (1981) Small town Floridians are interviewed. Ha!
  • When We Were Kings (1996) I don’t like boxing but this story of the Zaire match between Muhammad Ali and George Foreman is so well told it’s like you are hearing a folk tale.
  • Word Wars (2004) The rough world of the professional scrabble player.
  • Wordplay (2006) The not so rough world of the crossword puzzle addict.

netflick1.jpg

 

The best thing I have watched, ever.

first-person.jpg

Errol Morris’ First Person: the complete series. He uses this thing called an “Interrotron” – an innovative camera device Morris invented to maintain merciless eye contact with his subjects”. All they see is him on a little screen– no camera person apparently . It’s just the subject and the camera staring them in the eyes and they tell their stories. Haunting and disturbing stories like a woman who fell in love with a serial murderer.

Online documentary

Most of my Netfix selections have been documentarys. One I found particularly good was called “Country Boys”. It follows the lives of two Appalachian teens from the age of 15. After watching it, I went to the PBS/Frontline website for it and found the entire, 6+ hour, documentary available online for free. http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/countryboys/

Peace Pilgrim

peace-pilgrim.jpgThe Peace Pilgrim walked away. She left all off her stuff and walked. For thirty years she walked, walking until offered shelter; fasting until offered food. She never asked for anything. She only brought the clothes she was wearing, a comb, and her message: “This is the way of peace: Overcome evil with good, and falsehood with truth, and hatred with love.”

Her friends put together a website and a book: Peace Pilgrim: Her Life and Work in Her Own Words. At the website you can read most of the book online or ask that a hard copy be sent to you. There is an hour long documentary to download, interviews and a 2006 calendar to download.

The peace pilgrim pamphlet called the “The steps to inner peace� can be read at and is offered in 8 different languages on the web site, as well. You can also request a hard copy be sent to you.