As the title says… I built a home rock climbing wall!

Actually, I can’t even pretend that I did this on my own. A lot of people heavily contributed to this bad boy as it evolved over the past few years.

Our rock climbing wall was born in January of 2010 in a “man cave” in Hawthorne, CA. Dan Pacifico and I wanted to be able to build our climbing strength, and we had a ton of room in the garage to work with. We decided we’d just put climbing holds all over the place.

This was the first set of climbing holds that I purchased from REI. We have a lot more now.

We soon realized that this would turn our walls into swiss cheese, so we decided to attach some plywood to the wall, and fill that with holes (for “t-nuts“). And thus was born…

v1: The Original Wall-Mounted Rock Climbing Wall

First, we built a frame, the outer dimensions measuring 8′x8′.

And attached two 4′x8′ pieces of sheet plywood to the frame. We then attached this 8′x8′ wooden climbing square “wall” to the actual wall using some fancy brackets.

And it was good.

Rock climbing holds are attached to the wall via bolts. The bolt goes through the climbing hold, then through the wood, and finally into the barrel of the t-nut.

We didn’t waste any time getting holds up on the wall.

This was the first time that either of us had ever set routes. We figured it out as we went, and had a lot of fun in the process.

The top of the climbing wall was about 9 feet off the floor, so we didn’t have a whole lot of vertical room to work with. This forced us to get creative with our routes.

We were stoked to have a home bouldering wall, but Miki pointed out to us that we now had a gigantic canvas hanging in our garage. So she made it look cooler.

The rock climbing wall got a lot of use in that garage, as evidenced by the black climbing shoe scuff marks all over the bottom.

I loved opening up the garage doors on a nice day and letting the cool breeze blow in… And loud death metal flow out into the neighborhood.

When it was time for us to move out, I couldn’t bare to leave it behind…

So Andy and Paul packed the climbing wall, along with everything else in the house, into the U-Haul (while I partied scott-free at Coachella!) and the wall followed us to our new home in Marina del Rey.

Unfortunately we didn’t have room for it in the garage at the new place, so… We decided to build a frame for the wall so that it could stand on its own.

v2: Free-Standing Wall with External Frame

We didn’t have a concrete plan right off the bat, so we put our thinking caps on… And took our shirts off.

We drilled some holes (for bolts) into the side of the wall. This particular step doesn’t really require a visual, but I kinda dig the photo.

We then propped the wall up with some 4x4s.

These 4x4s were vital in supporting the wall and allowing it to stand on it’s own, so they were connected to the wall with some big ol’ bolts.

We cut two right triangles and attached them between the new supporting 4x4s and the wall itself to provide additional support and stabilization.

This new, freestanding rock climbing wall ended up being even more awesome than it’s garage-dwelling predecessor.

Stepping onto my back patio and climbing in the warm California sun, and occasionally catching a cool ocean breeze (we’re less than a mile from the beach) is pretty much the greatest thing ever.

At this point, we’ve gotten much better at coming up with routes. We even brought in an intern route setter.

The majority of the holds that I have at this point came from Element Climbing, who make awesome climbing products.

Our lease is up this month, and the home climbing wall may not be coming with me to my next home. As it turns out, yards are hard to come by in Southern California! Then again, the climbing wall may just end up bolted to the wall in my living room… Only time will tell.

If you’re interested in building a rock climbing wall for yourself, just make it happen! We talked about it for a while and then one night we decided to just get in the car and head to Home Depot and figure it out. Once we took that step, everything else fell into place very quickly.

If you’d prefer to take a more structured approach towards building a climbing wall, there are a lot of guides out there, but I think it’s also dependent upon what you have room for. I’d like to think that at some point in my life I’ll have a lot more space (and disposable income) to work with, and I’ll build a much higher wall, as well as a nice big wooden training board.

For now though, I’m happy with what I have, and my local climbing gym (in Santa Monica) isn’t too shabby either.

The post I Built A Home Rock Climbing Wall! appeared first on JohnVantine.com.

My buddy Ryan over at Wpromote put together this awesome infographic, “15 Years With The Big Lebowski“. I’ve never reposted an infographic on here before, but I’m a big fan of this one.

The post 15 Years With The Big Lebowski (Infographic) appeared first on JohnVantine.com.

Soon after, it dawned on me that I was gonna need some sort of record organizer/record bin to store them in. I CAN’T STOP BUYING RECORDS.

While perusing /r/vinyl, I came across these plans to build a wooden record bin from a single sheet of 4×8 plywood.

Please note that these plans originated from this thread on Audiokarma.

Projects are fun, and building stuff is pretty manly, right? …Guys?

To clarify, I’m not looking for validation here, but there’s something about buying lumber and using tools that just seems “right”. It’s a lost art in this day and age!

So my friend Nick and I took an early morning trip to Home Depot and picked up some lumber. Two sheets of 4×8 plywood, as we were both planning on building record storage shelf holder bin thingers. Here’s a very exciting shot of said plywood, taken just MOMENTS before we paid for it. Make sure you’re sitting down for this one.

We actually had a friendly Home Depot employee help us out with some of the bigger cuts, so that we could fit the wood into my car, and to save us some work later on, as we only had access to a handsaw.

Blessed with a beautiful day and ice cold Yuengling Lager (brought all the way to Los Angeles from Pennsylvania), we got started right away.

Some of the cuts done by Home Depot were pretty rough, and the wood had splintered a good bit, so we spent awhile sanding it down.

Once we smoothed everything out, we started to put the first wooden record organizer together, and I realized how awesome this was going to be.

Once we inserted the dividers, we dusted these bad boys off…

And put them inside the house next to one another – to marvel at the beauty of our creations. The dividers look crooked, but it’s just the angle at which the photo was taken.

I then sanded the shelf quite a bit more to prepare it for the application of a polyurethane finish.

Lauren helped out too.

We then painted on the polyurethane finish… We actually did two layers, as the first layer didn’t look as dark as I had hoped.

We waited a few days for the stain completely dry, then brought it inside and moved some records into it!

While the quality of the photo above (shot in low light) leaves a bit to be desired, I’m very happy with the results. Apparently this record storage bin can accommodate from 5-600 records, assuming the record sleeves are 1/8″ thick. I probably have around 200 records now – the above photo was taken several months ago, and I’ve gone on several buying binges since then.

Edit: Here are some more shots of the finished vinyl record shelf.

If you’re interested in building one of these awesome shelves for yourself, be sure to check out this AudioKarma thread, as it contains several sets of plans (for variations on the shelf) as well as more detailed instructions.

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I took a bunch of pictures while I was there. As I’ve been growing increasingly frustrated with Facebook and its accompanying swarm of advertisements, I figured I’d just post some of my photos here instead. A good deal of these shots were taken with an iPhone 4, and therefore are not of the highest quality, but they’ll suffice.

There were quite a few of us visiting on this trip – myself, my girlfriend and her daughter Makena, as well as Lauren’s sister Ashley, her two sons and boyfriend.

Due to the number of us visiting and not enough rooms in the house , Lauren and I got to stay on a boat that is docked behind the house. Lauren’s stepfather Chris has sailed most of his life, and they had recently bought the land on the marina and built their house so that they could be close to the boat. Chris had just purchased this boat (a Bavaria sailboat, I think) in Sydney and sailed it down the coast. He arrived with the boat  the day after our flight got in.

Where we stayed while in Victoria, Australia

Since the boat was literally in the backyard, it served as an extension of the house for us, and it was actually pretty awesome.

We didn’t keep the boat docked the whole time we were there though. We took an overnight sailing trip to Queenscliff, which was one of the highlights of the trip for me.

It took us about 3 hours to get to Queenscliff, and it was a pretty tranquil and relaxing ride. We spent the day checking out cool little shops in the area, spent some time on Queenscliff Beach, etc.

As I said, the ride to Queenscliff was very relaxing. The ride back to Mount Martha the following day was a different story. We headed into some gale force winds, and before we knew it, the boat was getting rocked all over the place.

Chris (Lauren’s stepfather) knew that things were gonna get rocky, so he had us put everything that wasn’t attached to the boat below deck. Sure enough, things got pretty intense for an hour or so as we headed into the winds which were over 30 knots.

We had to send the kids below deck to the cabins so that they didn’t fall overboard. Chris has been sailing since he was a kid, so he knew how to respond and keep the boat under control, but I’ve never been in a situation like that before, and at the time it seemed very likely that the boat was going to capsize – it was pretty much sideways, and the mast seemed like it was going in the water at times.

While he was steering the boat, he needed help with certain things, like pulling/releasing the rigging ropes (to change the direction of the sails). In a chaotic situation where a boat is violently rocking back and forth and someone is quickly asking you to do things you’ve never done before, it can get pretty crazy. The kids were below deck crying, Lauren’s step-sister Deborah was getting sick off the back of the boat, items were flying off of shelves in the galley… It was very intense for a good hour.

Anyway, we obviously made it out in one piece, but it was one of the wilder situations I’ve been in for quite some time. In retrospect it was an awesome experience, but I’d be lying if I said it wasn’t a little scary. I don’t have any pictures of the chaos because I was holding on to the boat for dear life!

In addition to sailing, we also got some kayaking in. The Marina that Lauren’s parents live on lets out to the Melbourne Bay and from their house, it was about a 10 minute kayak ride to the ocean/beach, which was really cool.

We also got to do some paddleboarding, which was a lot of fun. Unfortunately, it was super windy on the day that I tried this, so I spent about 75% of my time in the water.

Chris paddleboarding in Mount Martha

We took a trip up to Melbourne the day before New Years, and it quickly earned it’s spot as one of my favorite cities. The architecture was awesome, the streets seemed very clean, and the street performers blew away the ones we have here in Venice, CA.

Bourke Street in Melbourne

As you can see, we did get to travel around a bit, but we spent most of our visit in Mount Martha. A lot of the surrounding area in the Mornington Peninsula (Arthur’s Seat, Red Hill) is vast and undeveloped. We went to a national park (Mornington Peninsula National Park) at sunset to check out some kangaroos.

It didn’t take too long for me to realize that you can get pretty close to these kangaroos before they start to move away. In true ignorant tourist fashion, I was trying to get up really close to a group (or “court”) of these unfamiliar creatures so that I could get a good photo. All of a sudden, a huge one stood up, puffed his chest out, and started hopping towards me. He made his message pretty clear, so I backed off – I’m pretty sure I’m no match for a 150 lb kangaroo.

As for the Mornington region as a whole, it is a peninsula that spans about 100 miles below MElbourne, and obviously there’s no shortage of beautiful coastline with clear blue water.

The peninsula itself is farm areas, orchards, and wine country. There are many beautiful winding back roads through rolling green hills, connecting the numerous wineries and art galleries tucked away all over the place.

Tree-lined Mornington Peninsula roads

We spent an afternoon visiting a few of these wineries. Chardonnays are big in the region, and while I’m not big on white wine, exploring some of the vineyards and doing wine tastings was pretty fun.

The vineyard behind Foxey’s Hangout

Montalto Vineyard

While on the subject of alcohol… Everything seemed to cost an arm and a leg in Victoria, booze included. I was so blown away by the price of a 6 pack that I felt the need to provide photographic evidence.

That’s a $25 six pack in the corner! A case of beer (or a “slab”, as they call it) wasn’t any cheaper. $42 for a case!? Crazy. And the alcohol is traditionally a lower proof.  If I lived in Australia, my weekends would certainly involve less drinking… Or I’d brew my own, I suppose.

I got a kick out of some of the slang used on billboards and in ads there. Unfortunately, I wasn’t on top of my game in regards to taking pictures of this stuff, but here’s one that struck me as pretty nonsensical.

The Christmas Hamper? Pressie pots? WHAT!?

I’m running out of photos here, but I can’t overlook one of my favorite parts of Australia…

Potato wedges! They’re served with sour cream and sweet chilli sauce, and most restaurants/bars seem to have them. It seems to be one of the go-to bar foods there, but I don’t think I’ve ever seen this in the US. The combination is amazing.

Anyway, the trip was a lot of fun, and was pretty relaxing (for the most part). There were 12 of us staying under one roof – well, under one roof and one mast. And I’m not quite used to traveling with kids (3 young, rambunctious and noisy ones at that). Needless to say  it can be a bit hectic at times, but it also made the trip a lot more fun in different ways.

While we were there, Lauren’s mom told me about RV relocation programs, where you pick up an RV in the off season and return it to it’s original rental destination. And as long as you get it to the drop location by a certain date, it’s super cheap, as you’re essentially doing the company a favor. I’d love to go back to Australia and explore this option, as it’d be an awesome way to see the country.

So that’s my Australia trip in a nutshell. Thanks for reading!

The post Two Weeks In Australia appeared first on JohnVantine.com.

Seeing a full-grown Mario playing Metallica (and playing it quite well, for that matter) was quite a sight. I came across him a bit later and heard him playing Pink Floyd’s “Run Like Hell”. You can see/hear clips of both in the video below.

The video also contains some footage of other street musicians in Melbourne. I was really impressed with the street performers there – every single one that I saw was super talented and had something unique to offer.

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Raven obviously didn’t make a major decision like this out of the blue. Search ranking data is dependent upon services that scrape Google’s index, and this is against Google’s Terms Of Service. Raven decided to remove this functionality per Google’s request, as they were threatened with having their access to the Google AdWords API revoked. If they’re no longer able to query the AdWords API, they’ll lose access to accurate traffic and CPC data. Beyond that, Raven obviously wants to maintain a positive relationship with Google moving forward, as the success of their company depends on it – they don’t want to “bite the hand that feeds”.

Raven’s decision had a lot of people in the industry talking… And then ahrefs.com made a similar announcement. In order to maintain their access to the Google AdWords API, they were forced to remove their keyword analysis tool, which was also dependent upon scraped data. In my opinion, the keyword analysis tool was not ahrefs.com’s biggest strength. I use them for their backlink data, however, that doesn’t change the fact that this is a disturbing trend.

And It doesn’t stop there. SEOMoz, who provide what is arguably the most popular/recognizable set of SEO tools available, have had their access to the AdWords API revoked as well. Because of this, AdWords data (search volume) is no longer available in their Keyword Difficulty Tool, which I use quite frequently. SEOMoz did not elaborate on why Google revoked access, but they do have their own rank tracking software, so it’s easy to speculate what Google’s issue might be.

Google has strong-armed SEOMoz in the past – they made them remove Google PageRank reporting from the MozBar (as detailed here). However, SEOMoz might be taking a stand this time. They’ve stated that they don’t plan on changing the data provided by their tools (here). They’ve also said (in the comments here) that they are currently looking for other providers of keyword search volume.

A War Against SEOs?

Some will say that Google is declaring war against SEOs. It wasn’t that long ago that Google began encrypting search queries from logged in users, taking a big chunk (roughly 40%!) out of the referral keywords that we saw in our analytics (the “not provided” debacle) in the process. They told us that this would only affect “a minority of [our] traffic”, but that didn’t end up being the case at all.

Selective Enforcement

So the question remains: What is Google’s motivation here? As far as I know, scraping the index has always been a violation of their TOS, so this just seems like a classic case of selective enforcement. They have not consistently pursued violators of this rule, so when they fire off a warning shot like this (crippling the functionality of some of the most popular SEO tools out there) people take notice. Are they trying to make a statement?

I would speculate that Google wants SEOs to stop focusing on things like rankings and focus on creating an overall better experience for users. While they have denied any sort of crackdown, something tells me that this most recent strike won’t be the last. Who is next? SEMRush?

Google’s Failure To Provide Access To Data

I think that this quote from Brian LaFrance (Authority Labs) says it best: “Google’s position to block access to their API for those who use scraped data isn’t unreasonable. What is unreasonable is that they know full well how important SERP monitoring is for users but still fail to offer any kind of accurate API for that. They have no problem leeching off of the content of others but do have a problem with others using their content.”

SEO In 2013

At the end of the day, traffic is (arguably) the biggest metric of success in an SEO campaign. As we see more personalization/localization in the search results, rankings are beginning to lose their significance as an indicator of success. But as any SEO will tell you, clients still want to see rankings, and they’re still an important signal.

In this post, the CEO of Raven Tools goes more in-depth on his decision to stop using scraped data, and speculates on what’s in store for SEO software companies in 2013.

Raven will continue to offer their rank tracker functionality until Jan 2nd, and ahrefs.com has made their keyword research tool free until January 11th, when they’ll be closing it down. If you use either of these tools regularly, hopefully you’ve already started looking for a replacement.

It may be worth noting that Raven was using a third party for their rankings data – Authority Labs, who still offer this data directly, and are working on a solution for importing historical Raven tracking data. I have no firsthand experience with Authority Labs, though I’ve always been happy with the ranking data provided by Raven in the past.

Looking For A Replacement?

If you’re looking for a new rank tracking solution, I’d recommend AWR (Advanced Web Ranking). I have used both Raven Tools and AWR extensively, and I prefer AWR. It’s not a web-based app; you install it locally and run the reports when you choose to. You can do a lot more with the data from the get-go, and it’s traditionally more customizable than Raven Tools. If you’re not looking for a local solution, I’ve also heard of people having success with Microsite Masters as well.

A number of other rank checking and competitive research tools are offering discounts/free trials – you can read up on them here.

Regardless of the message that Google is trying to send with these actions, as long as there’s a demand for rankings data, people will come up with ways of reporting that data. Scrapers will prevail. It will be interesting to see what happens over the next few months. I know I’ll be keeping an eye on Google and the major SEO tools.

The post Is Google Strong-Arming Major SEO Tools? appeared first on JohnVantine.com.

The seemingly endless grassland plains of the Sespe Creek Trail in Ojai, CA

Our original plan was to do a car drop and then backpack from Gene Marshall to Piedra Blanca, but an inclement weather forecast (including temperatures in the 30s, rain and snow) had us exploring other options. We decided to do Sespe Creek instead – the lower elevation seemed like a better bet, since none of us really have the gear for camping in the freezing cold.

Scattered leaves along the Sespe Creek Trail

We ended up driving north of Ojai to the Sespe Wilderness. We started at the Piedra Blanca Trailhead and went east (on the Sespe Creek Trail), making our way through seemingly endless grassland plains.

Initially I was a little concerned that it’d be super dry out there, and that there wouldn’t be much in the way of colors. This turned out not to be the case at all – lots of beautiful greens and yellows to be seen along the way.

Paul & Andy looking into one of the many valleys of the Sespe Wilderness

Much of the river bed had dried up, which made it difficult to stay on the trail at times. We found a few spots where there was running water, and we were able to filter some drinking water near our campsite.

We snagged a pretty awesome campsite right next to the Sespe creek bed.

We came across some awesome boulder fields along the way. Some of them were in areas where the river had dried up, which made for some fun rock scrambling.

Hanging out on some boulders along the dried up Sespe Creek.

The wilderness campsite that we found was awesome. It was right along the creek bed, with plenty of space for tents, and a sitting area with a primitive fireplace. It was too dry for campfires, but we were happy to just lay around and stare at the stars, which were extremely visible. There were a crazy amount of shooting stars as well, it seemed like one of us would spot one every 2-3 minutes.

It was a pretty short trip, but very cool nonetheless – not overly difficult, and lots of beautiful scenery along the way. I plan on going back when there’s more water and doing some swimming along the way. I definitely recommend that you check it out, but if you plan on swimming (or checking out the hot springs) you may want to call the Ojai ranger station first (805-646-4348) to find out about the water levels.

Here are a few more photos for your enjoyment:

A view of Paul through a writhing blackened branch

Looking down on Paul and Andy from the top of a large boulder.

These “witch pods” were all over the place along the trail. Kinda creepy looking.

I’m not sure what kind of plant this is, but it’s pretty cool looking.

The post Backpacking The Sespe Creek Trail in Ojai, CA appeared first on JohnVantine.com.

Here are the Prop 37 voting results as of 9:44pm last night (November 6th):

Rather than refreshing the page, I opened a new tab about 20 minutes later to see if the numbers had changed. Here’s what I saw at 10:05pm:

That’s an additional 92,233 votes for yes, and 100,674 more votes for no.

I checked again this morning (at 7:19am) and was surprised to see that the yes votes had more than doubled!

That’s another 2,569,609 votes for yes, and another 2,532,763 votes for no. This was a nice surprise, as I didn’t know they were still counting votes. Yes on 37 is gaining ground! The positive momentum is very encouraging to see.

According to the CA Secretary of State FAQ page:

“…election results will change throughout the canvass period as vote-by-mail ballots, provisional ballots and other ballots are tallied. Depending on the volume of these types of ballots, it takes up to 28 days for county elections officials to verify voter records and determine if ballots have been cast by eligible voters. How often these results are updated will vary based on the size of each county and the process each local elections office uses to tally and report votes.
County elections officials must report their final results to the Secretary of State by December 7. The Secretary of State then will certify the results of the election by December 14.”

It sounds like a lot of California voters cast their votes by mail… So there’s still a chance for Prop 37 to pass. I’ll be keeping a close eye on this today. Fingers crossed!

The post Prop 37: It’s Not Over Yet (GMO Food Labeling) appeared first on JohnVantine.com.

Anyway, I’m not creating this blog post to be preachy or anything. I wanted to share a handy little chart/graphic (mini infographic?) thing that I made for the Wpromote office. In environmentally conscious fashion, I printed a bunch of these out and hung them above all of the trash/recycling bin areas in the office. It’s a quick and easy reference, so when someone isn’t sure if they can toss that stack of junk mail into the recycling bin, they can easily check.

I actually learned a few things about recycling while putting this together. I didn’t realize that if a recyclable item has food on it, it’s not recyclable. Food is one of the worst contaminants in the recycling process, and some estimates put the costs of irresponsible contamination in the neighborhood of $700 million per year industry-wide. So that pizza box that’s covered in grease? You can’t recycle it.

Anyway, I’ll step off my soapbox now. Feel free to print this thing out and spread it around!

Please note that my research was done for recycling in the greater Los Angeles area. The things you can recycle in your area may be slightly different.

The post What Can & Can’t Be Recycled appeared first on JohnVantine.com.

So when I heard that they were doing an Axe the Cables set at a Winery in Saratoga, it was a no brainer for me – I bought tickets as soon as they went on sale.

On Friday afternoon, we drove up to Sunset State Beach (in Watsonville) and camped on the dunes. Beautiful camping just a few minutes from the beach.

We woke up on Saturday and drove to Big Basin Redwoods State Park. We were a little pressed for time, but we were able to hike to Berry Creek Falls before the show – from the trailhead to the falls it was about 4.5 miles.

After the hike, we raced over to Mountain Winery in Saratoga for the STS9 show. We got there about an hour before sunset. Fantastic venue, beautiful in both scenery and architecture.

Sound Tribe took the stage right at 7:30, which was a bit unexpected, but it was cool to watch them play as the sun set. We heard them playing from the parking lot and rushed into the venue just in time to hear them play “Circus”, which is probably my favorite song of theirs.

We ran into some friends at the show and they convinced us that we should stay at their place in Aptos rather than staying a second night at the campsite. An outdoor bunkbed on the side of a mountain sounded too good to pass up… And it was pretty awesome.

While it’s a much longer drive, we decided to take the scenic route (down the Pacific Coastal Highway) back to Los Angeles on Sunday. I’ve done this drive a few times now, but I’ll never get tired of all of the breathtaking views along the coast.

Oh yeah, I took several videos during the show. Pretty decent sound quality on these.

Here’s STS9 doing “ROYGBIV”>”Dance”:

Here’s an STS9 cover of The Rolling Stones “Sympathy for the Devil” (first time played):

And here’s STSS9 doing “Moonsocket”:

This was one of the better Tribe shows I’ve seen. While it wasn’t truly “acoustic”, their style of playing was perfect for this setting. It really was a perfect musical experience, and ranks up their as one of the best shows I’ve seen this year.

Setlist:

STS9 – 8/25/2012 – Axe the Cables- Saratoga, CA
Set I:
Kamuy
Circus
South of Here
From Now On
ROYGBIV-
Dance
…And Some Are Angels
Beyond Right Now
Sympathy For The Devil

Set II:
Equinox
Lo Swaga
Squares and Cubes
Untitled 2
Wika Chikana
Grow
Moonsocket
Rent

Encore:
Frequencies 2 – 3
Breathe In

You can see some more (awesome) photos from the Mountain Winery STS9 show here.

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