itunes bonanza

Was downloading a few new podcasts and thought I’d share some of my favorites. I do a lot of windshield time and I don’t know how I got by without an ipod. I have satellite radio too, but find that I listen to it less and less. I like being in control of what I’m listening to.

Here is a list of Podcasts that I download or have downloaded. Some more than others.

• Adobe Photoshop Quicktips
• Amateur Movie Making
• Anaphylactic Allergy Podcast
• Creative Photoshop
• The Dave Ramsey Show (I subscribe to this one and listen to it daily)
• Digital Photography Tips from the Top Floor (the host is a goober, but some good stuff)
• Film School Online
• Fly Fishing Media (extemely ghey, but beggars can’t be choosers)
• Hike it All
• Inside Yellowstone
• The Itinerant Angler Podcast (highly recommended)
• Lightsource Studio Photography Podcast
• The Moth Podcast (some cool stories)
• National Geographic’s Atmosphere
• NickJr Diego (for my son)
• Photoshop Killer Tips
• PRI Living On Earth
• PRI Sound of Young America
• Science Talk
• Shralp! Snowboarding
• Southeastern Backpackers
• Start Cooking Videoblog
• This Week in Photography
• West Virginia Podcasts
• Wild Chronicles
• The Wildebeat
• 2 Minute Photoshop Tricks

There are a few that I’ve decimated them from my pc that I can’t recall. Some really awful ones. If you scan that list and say to yourself “geez, Phil is missing out. He should listen to…” then by all means leave a comment.

 

Good Ol’ Cobbler

The year of WV’s inception into the Back The Brookie program we were invited to the Trout Unlimited Southeast Rally in Abingdon, Virginia. We took the full slate of BTB Chairs sans the Education Chair including Jeff Nelsen, Dave Fulton, Lee Orr and myself. The Magical Mystery Tour of WV comrades found a well organized rally full of helpful seminars on conservation and leadership as well as a healthy trout stream by the name of Whitetop Laurel. Lee and I also did some bushwhacking for native brookies, but came back with gooseggs on that one.

On the last evening we had live entertainment from an upstart bluegrass band named “High Windy”. I’ve been to a handful of local bluegrass bills before and was expecting more of the same…some mediocre picking and some off key singing. But these guys were legit and put on a great show. Even Lee was impressed. After their second encore most of the crowd of about 100 folks left for bed or elsewhere. The band mingled around a bit and then jumped back on stage and did another dozen songs for the dozen or so people remaining. Then about 6 or 7 of that audience fell to sleepy attrition and the band gathered in the back of the building around the fire and commenced to playing another dozen or more songs. It was awesome.

When we thought the evening was done the band and the 3 or 5 of us remaining retired to the kitchen where we discovered that there was entire rack full of peach cobbler in the industrial strength fridge. Keep in mind that by this time most in attendance were fully inebriated. But that descriptor doesn’t begin to cover the guitar player. A better ‘adjective’ would be “barely standing”. But geez that dude was funny. I think he got in everyone’s face that night at least a dozen times to bleed out his true love for peach cobbler. I don’t think I’ve laughed that hard ever.

So anyway, Kim Ryals – former TU National Brook Trout Coordinator, sent me a link today to High Windy’s website with reminiscence of that night. Those of you who enjoy bluegrass should click and click hard. These guys are good.

High Windy Band – Website

CastAway’s Musical UTuberations II

The Coconut Records and Weezer videos are not “official videos”. Just video that some folks put to the song to subvert the grand anti-embedding conspiracy. Just more of the same, stuff I listen to on my ipod while tooling up and down WV’s vast highway system.

Coconut Records – West Coast

Brand new stuff from the Presidents of the United States of America – Mixed Up S.O.B.

Brand new stuff from Weezer – Pork & Beans

Okkerville River – For Real

New Galleries

Some new galleries have been uploaded to my website.

The family farm in southern Roane County has been in my family through direct lineage since before the Civil War. Unfortunately, I’ll be the first generation to not live there and raise my kids there. I had wished to build a house out there by this time, but with gas prices I’m not so sure a 40 mile commute to Charleston is a good idea anymore. Kind of sucks…wish I could live there again.

Photo Gallery – Smith Farm

Just to show I can take pictures of anything for anyone, I took some dirt pictures. Actually, my brother recently took a job in Charlotte, NC for an Ohio excavating company and is drumming up business for them. I took these to be used in brochures and such for him and his business. These were taken near Wheeling.

Dirt Picture Gallery

I have a nice a little collection of old fishing lures and equipment. I’d like to build onto it, but I don’t have much space to store it all right now. Someday I want to build a rodshop and create some places to display all of it.

Old Fishing Lures Gallery

I have also added a 3rd gallery to the Troutbum trip. I took about 150 shots last weekend, but some aren’t worth posting. This is sort of what was left.

Troutbum 2008 Gallery - 3 (note: I have had some trouble opening this gallery on some computers. I’ll try to work on it and get it debugged soon)

 

 

brookie walkabout 2008

Hopefully next year’s trip will be filled with less churnage than this year’s first annual brookie walkabout. Evan had to bail due to adult responsibilities. My past week was filled with anxiety over a huge personal career decision that still bothered me all weekend. Chris facing similar decisions. Adulthood sucks sometimes. That’s why we need to escape to really great places filled with solitude and basketfulls of 7″ brook trout.

Friday morning Chris and I headed out of CRW at around 7:30 am. Trekked approximately 4 1/2 to 5 miles down off Kennison Mountian where we pitched camp and begun fishing. It has been years since I last fished Dogway and I have done very well on numbers in the past. Chris is not a numbers guy so he didn’t count, which is a good thing because I am and I’m also very competitive so I would likely have focused on beating him more than just enjoying the serenity. We fished for 6 hours that afternoon and made it only about a mile from camp. After retiring back to camp we had a killer meal and hit the hay early.

After a bit of a rough night morning coffee never tasted so good. With threats of thunderstorms I decided to leave behind the DSLR and only take a video camera. So we hiked about 2 miles downstream based on our calculations from the previous day and began fishing. Starting at about 10 am and fishing to about 7 pm we barely made it back to camp before collapsing. Another great meal. By numbers I caught a ton of fish on Saturday (60), but knowing what this stream is capable of I’d call it an average day.  

Sunday on the way home we stopped for pizza in Craigsville and made plans for next year’s brookie walkabout. Seneca Creek with no stress attached.

A sampling of the photos taken can be seen in these galleries:

http://www.vandaliarodworks.com/troutbum1/index.html

http://www.vandaliarodworks.com/troutbum2/index.html

I will probably post some more of the photos not in these galleries on this blog during dead times and when I get around to it.