Matt Sandy's Blog

Bike Ride Photos

admin — Sun, 29 Jan 2012 20:22:04 +0000

Here are a couple of the photos I took while biking up South Mountain Yesterday. I did get a little lost and went up the wrong way to a hiking trail the first time. Granted, a pedestrian only trail would have been safer. There were so many cars, many of which I only were were approaching through auditory indicators, since the road wrapped around the mountain so tightly at many points.

Awesome Road Ahead

Phoenix from a Distance

South Mountain Updates

admin — Sun, 29 Jan 2012 19:53:39 +0000

This is a long overdue post. I am visiting Phoenix, and have been for a while now. I spent Christmas, New Years, and today down here. This was the first Christmas without Grandma, and it was the white elephant in the room for quite a while. Not going into sad things here, because why leave something sad to look back on later?

New Year’s Eve was fun. Ash invited me to something in Tempe at a place called The Compound. It felt like a more organized house show, without completely wasted people included. I saw one guy repeatedly falling over, but there was good music, including a band called North Dakota. Two people kissed me on the cheek, one person I knew and one stranger and then I went to sleep at Ash’s to avoid navigating the drunk drivers who would certainly be flooding the streets. I am glad I finished up the Battlestar Galactica finale before New Year’s Eve… I don’t think I would have wanted to stay inside.

The Trunkspace has had a couple fun shows since I have been down here, including a Kepi show that I brought my little brother to. Speaking of him, I picked up a new cartridge/holder for my old turntable I left down here and got that all fixed up for him. I also picked up a few records I will be leaving down here for him. One is the red Beatles compilation album which was a pretty good find, and one is Roar’s 7″. Once I leave I am sure he will enjoy them more, as the setup is in the room I am staying in at my mom’s.

There definitely has been a lot I should have been updating with, but I think having to update from my netbook makes me less inclined, as the screen is so small and the processor is pretty slow. I think I should be upgrading my laptop. I have some money saved up, but I don’t know if I want to spend the money on a laptop considering I wouldn’t be using it nearly as much once I get back to my desktop in Minneapolis, unless of course I start developing iPhone apps… which could be fun. Something I should think about.

I also rode up most of South Mountain yesterday. That was fun, but soooo many cars and so many bends around the mountain that could hide my position on the road. I was hoping today was Silent Sunday for South Mountain, where only non-motorists are allowed. Turns out that was last Sunday, and it won’t be again until February 26th, and I don’t know if I will even still be here, haha. I did grab some photos I am really happy with though. I will be posting them in my next entry.

First Snow of 2011

admin — Wed, 30 Nov 2011 01:23:35 +0000

This post is a bit delayed, but Minneapolis received its first snow of the season on the 19th. I walked to downtown and headed to my usual perch. Turns out elevators are disabled to those without keys during the weekend. I ended up climbing the stairs to the 25th floor, and ran into security on the 18th. I gave a smile and a polite “how are you?” that seemed to make it look like I belonged. Here is the view from the 25th floor.

From my Perch

…after climbing down the 25 flights I headed toward Nicollet and took this photo.

First Snow

Better late than never for the update, right? Well, that is it for now.

Old Seattle Photos

admin — Sun, 27 Nov 2011 19:43:22 +0000

I was going through my old photos and stumbled across the ones I took while in Seattle. I decided to try my hand at editing them again, as it has been around 4 years and my post-processing skills have hopefully gotten a little better. The first one is a heavy crop from a 6mp camera (inside a car). It isn’t the best shot I have taken, but it goes with the set.

Pike's Market (Public Market before Place and the clock were added)

I absolutely love this one of Mckenzie from the Dandilion Junk Queens. I saw her the first day but didn’t have time to snap a photo. The next day I went back to Pike’s Market and saw her getting coffee. I asked about her playing later and she gave me a time and place as well as the okay to take photos. I later found out who she was through Sean and Ben from Andrew Jackson Jihad.

Mckenzie from Dandelion Junk Queens

This last one I absolutely love as well. I didn’t catch his name, but I caught a lot of shots from different angles. This is one of the better I think.

Man with Guitar

Going through my old photos makes me really want to start just taking photos every day. I have taken a few recently that I will probably upload later this week… once I make sure this piece of software I have been writing is fully functional.

Return a Date Range Array in PHP

admin — Wed, 16 Nov 2011 15:41:43 +0000

I think this code might come in handy for me as well as other programmers. It lets you pass two dates and returns an array containing the range of dates between them. I had found code previously, but there was a glitch and so I decided to just write my own. Copy and paste version here.

function createDateRangeArray($startDate,$endDate)
{
$range[0] = $startDate;
$startDateInt = preg_replace(‘/[^0-9]/’, ”, $strDateFrom);
$endDateInt = preg_replace(‘/[^0-9]/’, ”, $strDateTo);
if($endDateInt>$startDateInt)
{
while($range[count($range)-1]!=$endDate)
{
list($year,$month,$day) = explode("-",$range[count($range)-1]);
$range[count($range)] = date("Y-m-d", mktime(0, 0, 0, $month, $day+1, $year));
}
}
return $range;
}

Music Filled Weekend

admin — Tue, 15 Nov 2011 19:09:12 +0000

Friday, Saturday, and Monday had music filled nights.

Friday Norman and I headed out to the Shonen Knife at 7th St. Entry. It turns out the opening bands were way better than I had hoped. Blind Shake was the opener, followed by Heavy Cream which was good enough for me to decide I needed their LP, and signatures. They reminded me of Those Darlins which is another great band from Nashville, and they actually turned out to be friends. I picked up the Shonen Knife LP as well just because they are not from this country, and definitely worth listening to.

Saturday Norman, Libby, John Volpe (he rides a Volpe), and I saw tUnE-yArDs who put on a great show. Very very dancy. The show actually sold out the main room and was so packed it was impossible to move. We ended up getting pretty good views though, mostly because Norman made a friend pretty quick who was farther up than we were. I think I am going to have to listen to more tUne-yArDs (funky capitalization).

Monday was Noah and the Whale Noah & The Whale which was a lot more low key. They were very British and put on a good show… the singer reminded me of The Doctor. The opening artist, Nikki Lane, reminded me of a southern Zooey Deschanel. She mentioned thrifting before the show… I couldn’t tell if that was to win indie points. Some nights I definitely prefer the 1st Ave. shows that don’t sell out… more room, and more intimate feeling. I definitely felt a bit old though when I saw the crowd that showed up for the show. *shrug*

Riding Weather

admin — Fri, 04 Nov 2011 17:44:48 +0000

I love the fall for the colors of the leaves, the brisk air, and the overall beautiful riding weather.

Fall Colors

The Wayzata ride I normally do was absolutely gorgeous. I have missed out the couple Saturdays before last weekend, but I think this Saturday I am going to try and make it out there again. I am not sure how much longer my rides will be feasible with winter approaching so I really should be getting out as much as possible. I wish I had the money to invest in a really nicer 29er for this winter, but considering the time I spend in Arizona I just couldn’t justify the purchase. Next winter

Show at The Triple Rock

admin — Mon, 24 Oct 2011 19:06:02 +0000

Andrew Jackson Jihad and Evan from ‘Into It. Over It.’ opened for Frank Turner last night at The Triple Rock. After a text from Ben saying he got into the states at 3:30am, Norman and I headed over to Hard Times with Ben while Sean slept. Afterward Norman and I headed to Jamba Juice so he could return a wallet someone lost. After the ride yesterday I figured I should get some protein and had one of the most delicious peanut butter smoothies ever. I think the weekend was just incredible overall. We headed back to the apartment to wrap up some things, before grabbing some real food at The Triple Rock.

Once we got to the Triple rock we all sat down for some AMAZING food. I suck at names, but Justin from Off with their Heads and his girlfriend (wife?) joined us as well which was fun. Minneapolis has such a wonderful music scene. I was a little unenthusiastic about seeing the opening band after listening to a couple tracks from ‘Into It. Over it.’, but Evan is really great live and I ended up picking up an LP from him. The holy hitch seemed to be my camera flash batteries dying during AJJ’s set. If just listening and singing along instead of taking photos was the worst thing to happen in a day, that is a pretty awesome day. I am excited to see some other people’s photos from the show, as I was pretty out of practice (months) and want to just see some great photos from the night. Here are some of the photos from the night.

Evan from Into It. Over It.

Norman with a new friend

Ben and Sean from Andrew Jackson Jihad

Ben and Sean with TONS OF FANS

Long exposure of Ben

Ben at the merch table

Sean in the back of The Triple Rock

Crowd surfer during Frank Turner's set

SO MANY PEOPLE

Frank Turner

2007 Revisited

admin — Sat, 22 Oct 2011 19:00:00 +0000

I used to drive kinda fast

I can't even remember where this was, but it was somewhere in California

Found this in a park in LA

The Unurban Cafe in Santa Monica

The drive back from a California trip

The first Willow House in Phoenix (coffee house)

My dog in Arizona

Now Entering Hudson

admin — Sun, 02 Oct 2011 03:23:52 +0000

I have been missing out on quite a few rides in order to finish up a couple projects with work that had missed their deadline due to feature creep. Today though… today I did over 60 miles which was nice. Unfortunately I am pretty out of shape , especially while using a fixed gear in Wisconsin. I was thinking of trying to make it up to Duluth before it gets cold, but I think I would miss having gears too much for that, and my touring bike still has a broken fork. If I can get some more riding in during the week, maybe I can get to where I would feel comfortable doing over 100 miles a day once again.

The Leaves are Changing

Fuzzy Caterpillar

Now Entering Wisconsin

Fun Shadows

The Route

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