Super Ball IX

Posted on July 8, 2011 by Runaway Jim

So as I mentioned in my last post, I attended Super Ball IX last weekend. It was Phish’s ninth festival and held at Watkins Glen International, the famous auto race track in Watkins Glen, NY that last held a music festival in 1973. The most amusing part of the whole thing is that the people from the area seemed worried that this festival would end up like that one, which saw 600,000 people show up to see the Grateful Dead, The Band, and The Allman Brothers play for a single day. There are plenty of in depth reviews of the music. I’ll just write about my experiences and some brief thoughts about the three shows Phish played over the weekend. Continue reading →

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I’ve been a bad blogger…

Posted on June 27, 2011 by Runaway Jim

So I know I just posted my thoughts on Bethel. Most of it was already written, I just had to finish it up. Really, I should add some pics, but you can check my Flickr stream for the pics.

Anyway… next weekend, I’ll be headed to Watkins Glen, NY for Super Ball IX (that’s nine, not super ballix). It’s Phish’s 9th festival. I will definitely be reporting back from there… but probably not until after I return. And I hope (no promises here) that it won’t take me a month to post about it like it did my trip to Bethel.

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Journey to the Holy Land

Posted on June 26, 2011 by Runaway Jim

and by “Holy Land”, I mean Bethel, NY.

This past Memorial Day weekend, I traveled to Bethel, NY to see Phish play three nights at Bethel Woods Center for the Arts. Bethel Woods is located on the property that was once part of Max Yasgur’s farm, the piece of property where the Woodstock Music and Art Fair was held in 1969. Visiting Bethel was like a pilgrimage for me, having been quite interested in Woodstock and the 60′s hippie culture since I was about 10 or 11. This post is mainly about my visit to the area, along with some pictures, and what it was like being there, and my thoughts on the venue. I will cover the three Phish shows in another post that will follow. Continue reading →

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Woodstock 2011?

Posted on May 25, 2011 by Runaway Jim

OK, not really. But I am going to be spending this Memorial Day weekend at the site of the original 1969 Woodstock Music and Art Fair. Phish is playing 3 nights at the Bethel Woods Center for the Arts. It’s on the site of Woodstock. I, personally, am pretty pumped for it. I have been obsessed with Woodstock since I was a kid. I remember one of the first cassette tapes I bought was the Woodstock soundtrack. I think I was 10 or 11 at the time. I plan on visiting the museum there as well. Expect some reports of both the shows and the experience of visiting a place with such rich musical history.

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Sugar Shack Porter

Posted on May 15, 2011 by Runaway Jim

It’s been 2 weeks since I brewed my Sugar Shack Porter, my 8th batch of homebrew. It’s a maple porter, if you didn’t get the reference. I used a quart of Vermont Grade B syrup in the boil for this one. I just racked it to the secondary. After brewing, my original gravity came out 10 points high at 1.076. When I checked my gravity today, it was exactly what it was supposed to be at 1.019. Instead of being just over 6% ABV, it’s going to be about 7.5% ABV. I don’t have a problem with that. Continue reading →

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Waco or Wacko? You decide…

Posted on April 27, 2011 by Runaway Jim

Came across this article about Bill Nye (remember him? The Science Guy) giving a presentation in Waco, TX about… you guessed it… science. I’m gonna start off by saying that, while I am not religious in any way (I consider myself a bit atheist and a bit agnostic), I have absolutely no problem with people who practice religion and actually believe what they practice… so long as they have some common sense about it. Heck, even the Catholic Church admitted that the story of the world being created in seven days wasn’t completely accurate, that the story is just a story to make a point and to explain something that couldn’t previously be explained. Continue reading →

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Jazz Jam at Roots Cafe

Posted on April 26, 2011 by Runaway Jim

Last Thursday, I went to the Roots Cafe on Westminster Street in Providence to check out a free show that Scott Murawski announced on Twitter that day (though apparently, it was known before then). Roots Cafe has only been open for a month or two, so I got double the excitement in seeing a new bar/restaurant/venue in town and also checking out some live music. Continue reading →

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Tried Some New Beers

Posted on April 17, 2011 by Runaway Jim

I’ve had the opportunity to try some new (to me) beers lately. Here’s a quick rundown of what I tried (anyone who reads my twitter feed saw the long list of beers I had last night). Continue reading →

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Speed Up Your Internet Connection

Posted on April 6, 2011 by Runaway Jim

I came across this article on Lifehacker recently. It got me thinking. I had been using the OpenDNS servers and then Google’s Public DNS servers for a while now because they both advertised that it could speed up your internet experience. Now that there are so many location-based services and location-based load balancing, it seems that they may not necessarily be faster. So I tried the tool, Namebench, mentioned in that Lifehacker article. It turned out that if I switched back to Verizon’s (I’m a FiOS user) DNS servers, I could, in fact, speed up my internet. In fact, Namebench told me it would be about 500% faster by switching. So I switched my DNS servers in my router and will hope for the best. Keep in mind that you may not notice a huge difference, but when it comes to large downloads from services that use location-based mirrors determined by the DNS lookup, those might actually be noticeably faster.

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Brewery Growing Pains

Posted on April 6, 2011 by Runaway Jim

Recently, Rhode Island has seen a couple breweries pulling distribution out of the state. This happens somewhat regularly, but it’s interesting to look at the specific breweries that do it and their reasons for doing it. While my last post was about breweries being bought up by larger breweries/companies or merging with other small breweries, this one is going to take on those who remain independent, but are still growing in both popularity and brewing capacity. Continue reading →

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