Thursday, September 26, 2013

The Lively Music App

I have a wicked collection of bootlegs for having the unfortunate timing of my birth being later than allowed me to collect them live.
I also have grown up in the digital age, and as is more aptly named, the digitized age.
I love live music and have spent many hours with my tape recorder/digital voice recorder/cell phone in the air trying to capture a few minutes of a great show as a keepsake for later. The result is never as magic as I hoped for and the recreation of the experience falls flat.

I just found a solution. It's called Lively and is available on Windows phones, iphones and android phones. It looks like they are working on other devices too but for now seems to be limited to mobile.

Lively has set up a system where they use (legal) high quality video and sound equipment to capture entire concerts and you can download the whole thing for the price of the album. Since you can share video from your phone it makes it easy to recreate the concert in your living room (or your buddy's living room) - and you don't get a charlie horse in your arm - and you don't have to worry about security confiscating your camera.

Their commercial is not the best, but it does a good job explaining it:

I already downloaded The Lonely Forest concert and am beyond impressed with the results.  I am hoping that they hit the folk festivals. There are a lot of shows I would like to go to but between my last year of school and how much a lot of these shows are it would be a decent substitute to get the concert this way!




Thursday, September 19, 2013

Michael Asimos : Fishing on the Road

I saw this really nice fly reel this morning: at Abel's Reels and it got me thinking about how much I love fishing when I'm on my adventure.

Sometimes I like to rough it in a different sense and not bring any main food prep items. I will, of course, pack emergency food like high protein bars, but I like to try my hand at fishing when location and temperature make getting lucky probable.

Along with checking the fishing reports for the immediate areas I'm gonna be in, I try to camp along the river or lake so that I don't have to travel far to get started. Plus I really like the sound of rushing water, crickets, frogs and birds.

I always have the emergency line and hook in with my kit, but I have never used it. I've used something similar to the Ronco Pocket Fisherman (see right) with a little success. It's fairly lightweight and so small that it fits inside of my pack easily. I have a small bait kit that I put together after I read the fishing report and figure out what all I need to bring.
The Pocket Fisherman isn't the most comfortable to hold all day though, so if you're wanting something that is lightweight and won't wear out your hands, I recommend the Ultralight Fishing Rod and Reel Combo at 4.55 oz. I've had it handle some hefty bass and trout with no problem at all.


Do you have a favorite rod and reel combo for backpacking?