Introducing the New ActiveSteve.com

Huzzah, I’m finally at the early build stages! As you can see by the picture to the right, the top and bottom frames of the bar have been put together and mounted on the front panels (in this picture, the bar is laying on its eventual front). Does it look like a bar yet? Not likely. I have a few concerns at this stage already. On the left, you see the wide bottom frame. A piece of 1/4 oak plywood goes on top of that frame to form the base of the liquor cabinet portion. I’m worried that the weight of bottles will be too much for the 1/4 wood. I think I’ll upgrade the base with an extra 2×4 stud piece that I’ve got left over. I should have attached it before the frame was attached, but such is life. My second concern is the side frame. There are no 2×4’s for support on the frame. Instead, the bar will rely on the 3/4″ oak plywood sides (not seen here yet) to bear the weight. I would have thought that building a full 2×4 frame would be more solid. I’m not going to bother changing anything on that though, since I’m sure the designer has had plenty of successful builds to his credit.

Wow, things really get different in the off season for me! This past weekend was a complete departure from the disciplined Steve that I’ve been of late. Instead of denying myself all of my vices in order to train hard, I decided to just ‘let my hair down’ and party hard. Luckily, the doctor had just what I ordered. Friday night was set to be the Dr. Teeth year end party, to celebrate the close of yet another year of playing Ultimate Frisbee. A nice laid back (and by laid back I mean really intense) evening at Dave’s crib with the team-mates. Then, instead of recovering and taking it easy on Saturday, it turned out that it was our good friend Andy’s Birthday! Huzzah. Hmmm, now, how to celebrate that occasion? Why, Lucky Ron of course, with its associated delicious quarts of beer, followed by a nice pub meal at Patty Bolands, along with more beer, then off to some place called ‘Collection’ for a crazy round of Martinis (thanks I-A!). Now, normally, this would conclude my broadcasting night, but instead, we had to head to yet another party at McLarens on Elgin, to help Ian and Esther celbrate their upcoming wedding in New Brunswick. Yikes, turned into another crazy evening again! What follows isn’t for the faint of heart 😉

Hello out there. as many of you know, I’m curretnly trying to save all my pennies for an extended trip to New Zealand for a biking / racing adventure. As such, I’ve had to seriously curtail my extravagant ways. That’s hard for me to do, since I’m a serious gadget guy. Well, for some unknown reason, this morning I got to thinking about a little gadget of Kev’s, the Squeezebox. Mind you, he does have a slightly older model (not nearly as cool looking ;-), but still equally as cool a little device. Kev got his a while ago, and blogged about it in the past. He even mentioned me, but I never took the bait on it. Basically, this thing can allow me to hook up to my music library on my PC, and play it back through my stereo. That’s where things get a little trickier for me. You see, I’ve already got a whole-house sound system, integrated with my computer. I can currently play music on iTunes, and have it routed to the computer room, the rec room, the living room, the kitchen, and even the outdoor speakers all at once (can you tell I dig music?). This has been great for parties. But my big beef about that is that I have no ability to control the music unless I’m at the computer in the basement, which isn’t fun when you’re entertaining. So essentially, I’m thinking of getting this thing simply as a moveable head-end for the PC-based music. Basically, I could move the unit wherever I wanted (provided there’s a plug), and then use the supplied remote to change music on a whim. The key to making this work is that I’d use a wireless router (dirt cheap at about $70), which can talk to the head end, and then use a 3rd party application known as SoftSqueeze, which allows synchronizing the PC playback to the Squeezebox playback (not to mention the ability to stream my library over the web and such if I’m at a party elsewhere and wanted to call up a tune I own!)