Congaree and Lower Richland

Posted on By Tom No Comments on Congaree and Lower Richland
Geocaching and Maps, History and Genealogy, Local, Travel

Starting out on the Congaree Boardwalk

Normally on a second Saturday I’d be off with the guys from Lowcountry Unfiltered. They had a great trip planned for today, but due to various reasons I wasn’t going to be able to join them. Instead, I teamed up with Dwight, his wife Sue, and son Adam to explore Congaree National Park and a bit of Lower Richland County.

Lower Richland County is located in a wedge formed by the Congaree and Wateree Rivers up to their confluence, where they become the Santee River. The area is also known as the “Cowasee” Basin, a name created by combining names of those rivers. Congaree National Park makes up most of the Cowasee Basin, but there are also lots of historical locations, including one interesting ghost town.

I headed down to Congaree on this clear, cool Saturday morning. I arrived at the park early to find an already packed parking lot. There were groups of Boy Scouts, as well as other tour groups gathering. I have to admit – I tend to be selfish with my wilderness experiences. I don’t mind others around, but lots of loud people make it hard to see wildlife. I was a bit worried.

Congaree Crowds Gather

Dwight, Sue, and Adam arrived, and soon we were off, headed down the high boardwalk. The plan was fairly simple. We would stick to the trails and boardwalks for the most part, but we wanted to do a little bushwhacking. We also wanted to find at least one champion tree.

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Rolled Pita

Posted on By Tom No Comments on Rolled Pita
Restaurants

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UPDATE: This restaurant is now closed.

I love Eastern Mediterranean food. There’s nothing like pita and hummus for a snack, and kabobs, olives, rice, and falafel make a perfect meal, especially when rounded out with baklava. So, I was thrilled to see that a Lebanese restaurant had opened on Wade Hampton Boulevard in Greer, within striking distance for lunch.

The Rolled Pita is located in the corner of a small strip mall near the old Allen-Bennett Hospital. For a long time it went unnoticed, with only a small sign proclaiming “Lebanese Restaurant.” I didn’t even spot it until they renamed the place and put up a larger sign. That was last Friday, so Wednesday I decided to give it a try.

Atmosphere

If it were a Greek place, I probably would have described it as “spartan” just to be witty. This goes beyond spartan. There are just a few tables in a surprisingly large area. The restaurant actually takes up two spaces at the mall, with the second space serving as a fish market. Unfortunately, the place reeks of fish, and I almost turn around and walk out.

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iPad as Effects Processor

Posted on By Tom No Comments on iPad as Effects Processor
Gear, Music

Bell Sound Waves 1

So far we’ve looked at iOS devices as digital audio workstations, notation readers and scorers, and as musical synthesizers. This time we’re going to take a look at the devices as effects processors.

The phrase “effects processor” is a catch-all term that refers to just about any way that sound is manipulated before its amplified, recorded, etc.  This could be as basic as adding reverberation to make it sound like your in a large auditorium instead of a small recording studio, or as complex as auto-tuning, looping, or otherwise radically altering the sound.

Effects devices typically took two forms.  There were rack-mounted devices that controlled EQ, compression, reverb, delay, etc.  Then there were performance devices.  These were usually geared toward guitarists, and included the Fuzz, WahWah, Flanger, and distortion peddles.  Now a whole range of effects peddles can be found.  Rack-mounted effects are still important in studio work, but most of those effects can now be found on performance devices themselves, such as keyboards, etc.

Effects apps for iOS seem to look more like performance level devices, and this makes sense.  The portability of the device makes it a great alternative if you needs some quick effects and don’t want to lug all your gear with you.  If you’re doing a jam session or just practicing, these are great.  I’m not sure how it would work in a studio setting, though.

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In-App Agony

Posted on By Tom No Comments on In-App Agony
EdTech, Gear, Rants

Most apps for smart phones, whether iOS or Android, are relatively inexpensive.  They are certainly cheaper than the programs for PCs and Macs over the past decade or so.  As computing power increases and memory gets cheaper, software seems to pick up added bloatation, so it’s also nice to see powerful applications in a streamlined package.

Even though streamlined, powerful apps are fairly cost effective, there is on trend that bothers me – the “In-App Purchase.”  You purchase a cheap application, or perhaps find a free one, only to find that inside the app you have to purchase additional components to get it to do what you want.  I’ve found this to be the case with photography and music-related apps quite frequently.

For example, TC-Helicon’s VocalJam app is $6.99 in the app store.

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By itself it’s a pretty good program. However, if you try to click on the effects buttons on the left side, you get the following message:

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Winter Paddle on Lake Robinson

Posted on By Tom 3 Comments on Winter Paddle on Lake Robinson
Paddling

Paddling on Lake Robinson

For Christmas Laura had given me a nice paddling jacket and neoprene boots so I could do some cold-weather paddling. I had not had a chance to really try these out, but Sunday afternoon presented a nice opportunity. It was breezy and in the low 50’s (not really cold, but close enough.) Bob and Alan joined me for a semi-quick afternoon paddle out on Lake Robinson in Greer.

Bob and I arrived at the Verne Smith Park and unloaded the boats. We could already feel the breeze coming off of the lake, but the water didn’t look too choppy. Alan arrived shortly thereafter. Just before we got underway I realized I was traveling VERY light for me. I had forgotten my phone, and didn’t have any GPS gear with me.

Launching on Lake Robinson

While there weren’t any white caps, there was a definite bounce to the water. The new paddling jacket was quite welcome as it shed the spray splashing onto the boat. I was also glad I had brought along my spray skirt.

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Rugby Caching

Posted on By Tom No Comments on Rugby Caching
Entertainment, Geocaching and Maps

Paris Mountain Geocaching Workshop

Several months ago John Kaup asked if I would do a geocaching workshop for Paris Mountain State Park’s Fourth Saturday program.  The appointed Saturday came around, so I headed up to the park with all of my GPSs, laptops, etc, in tow for the workshop.

I planned to do a repeat of the workshop I’d done for the park back in 2009.  We had secured eight Garmin eTrex GPSs for the participants to use, and I had set up ten dummy geocaches within sight of the building where we were holding the workshop.  The plan was to go over the basics and show them the website, then send the participants out to find the dummy caches.  I had the coordinates for the caches in my netbook, and had several different types of cables for different models of GPSs, in case someone had brought their own and wanted to participate.

Last time I did this I only had two participants.  This time I did more advertising.  I posted on the Upstate Geocacher’s Facebook page, and I also got it added as an event cache on geocaching.com.  That way, anyone who attended to add the workshop itself as one of their finds.  Ranger Cathy Taylor also posted announcements in the Greenville News.

Paris Mountain Geocaching Workshop

It worked.  We had nearly 20 participants.  Also attending were experienced geocachers Patrick Peden and his wife, who have over 6000 finds (compared to my measly 135).  Patrick took the photos here, since for just about the first time ever I got so wrapped up in the program that I forgot to take ANY photographs. What I really like were that there were families with lots of kids there. It was almost like teaching fourth grade again.

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Blog Rebirth

Posted on By Tom 4 Comments on Blog Rebirth
Miscellaneous

The deed is done.  Not since I switched from a home-built ASP-coded blog to WordPress has RandomConnections undergone as many radical changes.  None-the-less, here you are…the New and Improved™ RandomConnections!

I finally got completely fed up with my old hosting company, AccuWeb Hosting.  The service was locked down so tight that I couldn’t use even common features on WordPress.  I had to do work-arounds to get things posted, and that was a pain.  Yet, even though they had everything locked down so tightly as to what and where you could post things, they somehow couldn’t keep viruses off of their servers.

I knew I was on an older version of WordPress that had some vulnerabilities and limitations.  However, when I asked my hosting company about migrating to a newer version of PHP so that I could upgrade, they told me I would have to change my service plan and would most likely lose most of my content.  I’ve got nearly 10 years of blogging here, and didn’t want to lose any of it, so that wasn’t an option.

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