Ultimate Frisbee Tournament

Is anyone else surprised that I own cleats? I am so you should be. They're footwear for games of ultimate frisbee (check out this link for the basics of the game). Thanks to BUDA my summer Mondays were filled with league games of ultimate and the league tournament was today. I left my apartment at 8am and came home at 5pm muddy, half-limping, sunburned, sore and exhausted.

My team, the Merlot Riders, were assigned the color purple. No problem, I'm a huge fan of Prince and Purple Rain. The experience was great, I learned to play ultimate, met some new people and we had a great tournament. It turns out we went 3-1, which got us to the final game in the loser's bracket (we won that one too).

The games were played to 13 points and halftime happens when one team makes it to 7 point. During our 4th game, we were losing 7-0 at the half. We came back to win 13-12! Holy shit, it was incredible. The Merlot Riders played 80% of the tournament savage (no subs), meaning I played most of 5 hours worth of ultimate games. The last time I exerted myself like that was doing speed workouts for track in college.

It's a coin flip as to whether I'll sign up for a fall league but getting my exercise in a new way (not just running), has been sweet.

Harmonix interviews + beatmatching!!!

I spent this past weekend at Cape Cod with a bunch of hashers beaching it, drinking, ruling the table at beer pong last night and generally having a crazy summer weekend. This is relevant because my brain is addled from a lack of sleep and general dizziness from a whirlwind weekend of fun. Most of the pics are drinking game related (no beach photos because the sand and sea don't play nice with my little camera), perhaps a few of them will surface later. In the meantime, here's some news about Harmonix (HMX for short).

The Onion A.V. Club is a regular source of media reviews and interesting articles for me. Recently, they ran a series of interviews with HMX employees, which is exciting for two reason. First, a few of the interviewees are people I interface with regularly. Second, HMX comes off well in the article and some of the finer points behind the design of Rock Band are revealed. Check out the article here.

One particular quote by Matt Boch (a hardware designer) stuck out to me, making me realize what makes our game technically great...

"There are a lot of people who turn on a song, and it's a song. And they couldn't tell you what the bass player's playing, versus what the guitar player's playing, versus the synthesizer in the background, or any of those elements. They just hear a song"

Matt goes on to describe how Rock Band teaches people, in a pleasurable way, how to distinguish between different parts of a song. Let's say your playing a drum part in the game. Whenever you miss a note on the screen, the drum part will stop playing until you hit another note. This is the process of playing/learning that teaches your brain how to hear all the individual parts of the whole.

After working at HMX for 10 months and testing the game daily, I've seen my own understanding of songs grow. Musical muscles in my brain are being flexed as a result of my job, which is very, very cool. So where does this skill come in handy? Well, for one, when I'm DJing.


This is a picture of my setup at home. There are 2 Technics 1210 turntables (aka 'decks') and a gold mixer in between them. There's a red vinyl record on the left deck. The reason for having 2 decks is to create seamless transitions from song to song, the party and flow never stops. Now, Each deck has a pitch adjustment to speed up or slow down the record. A really good DJ will use the pitch adjust to 'beatmatch', meaning the tempo of the song that's ending matches that of the song coming in. The effect is the desired seamless transitions.

The real trick to beatmatching is being able to listen to one song through the speakers (the record being played, let's call it song #1) and the song you're cuing up (the record to be played, song #2) in a set of headphones. With vinyl, a DJ can start song #2 in time with song #1 and then listen to both tracks to hear which is faster. Then, he'll use the pitch adjust to change the speed of song #2 as necessary. Here's the thing, picking out the drum part (the beat) of both songs is critical. It's the foundation of beatmatching. Rock Band is helping me train my brain to pick out the drums (and only the drums) when I'm spinning at River Gods by the method explained above. Cool, right?

Blah, that's plenty about HMX and DJ skills, now I'll be sending you off with a picture of me in a suit (from my sister's AMAZING wedding a few weeks ago). Dashing.

Back from London (a belated post)

Clearly, I'm back from London. The 2 audio producers and I were successful with our business dealings and even had about half a day to poke around London. One thing I noticed was that you can't throw an old LP in certain neighborhoods of London without hitting a record store. My newly acquired vinyl (3 albums and a single) were nestled tightly in my airplane seat pocket on the way back because baggage handlers aren't to be trusted with breakable wax. Here are some pics from the journey with minimal explanations...

At the Paddington tube station, posing with a statue of Paddington Bear!

Heather and Julie, my co-travelers, taking in the flowers at the Queen's garden.

The decor at our hotel was arty, interesting, and sometimes a little ridiculous. Hence, the lip couch.

This is a nice shot of the hotel bar where our drinks cost 12 GBP each (I had a dark & stormy).

The trip was a two day whirlwind but was a great opportunity to do some travel for work I really enjoy doing. It's a switch from my days traveling with GE, definitely for the better.

Off to London!

Work at HMX (shorthand for Harmonix) has been very busy lately and I've been working plenty of overtime for the past week. However, things are going to be even more interesting this week. I'm one of 3 people headed to London, England for a business trip. Two of the audio producers are going and I was tapped as the QA (Quality Assurance) specialist to go along with them due to my position as QA Lead of the DLC testing team.

So, off to London on Tuesday and back to Boston late on Thursday. Expect a few pictures upon my return. I honestly didn't expect to be traveling again for work this soon, but I'm excited for it this go round. That's probably because I'm not going to be driven directly from the airport to a power plant, as I was with GE. Woo! Let's hear it for non-industrial business travel!

Rock Climbing in NH

In summers past, I've managed t0 miss opportunities to play outside and enjoy the sun. New England gets all 4 seasons definitively, meaning that our brief time in the warm sun should be seized. This year, it's been my goal to do lots of seizing (slathered in SPF 45, of course).

A recent addition to my list of activities is outdoor rock climbing, which a fellow hasher dragged me into. And by dragged, I mean she casually mentioned it and told me about some awesome climbing in Rumney, NH. Anyway, imagine being hooked into a harness, hanging from a rope, 50 feet off the ground trying to figure out how to scale a rock face. It's challenging both physically and mentally, rewarding and offers up plenty of camaraderie. Also, the view at the top ain't bad.

The drive up to Rumney, NH is about 2 hours and I did it all on my lonesome to meet up with the hasher, Deeley and her friend, Shelby. Deeley is crazy experienced and climbed all the routes initially to get the rope up to the top of the rock, which is how we were belayed. She's also enthusiastically helpful, whether you want it or not. Shelby was no slouch on the rocks either. The trip was worth it for the climbing, the weather, the view, the conversation and the pictures.

Here's Shelby about to be belayed by Deeley on a 5.2 climb.

On my way up the rocks of Rumney, this was my hardest climb of the day.

Coming down is the easy part.

Here's Deeley in action, leading a route for the rest of us to climb.

I've caught the climbing bug and hope to do a lot of it as the summer goes on. If only this damn rain would stop...

Check out the B-52s!!!!!!!!

Who's heard of DJ Matt Ransom? That's my alter ego on the wheels of steel and he's a huge fun of post-punk and new wave music, just like me! I'll often discuss some of my favorite bands like the Cure, Depeche Mode and the Faint with my other music oriented friends. Brian L., my DJ partner, and I have a real tendency to geek out over bands and new vinyl we've recently purchased. But when I mention the B-52's, my fellow music geeks tend to leave me hanging. I don't know why. Their sound is an incredible UFO dance party steeped in kitsch and nostalgia. No band has ever sounded quite like the B-52's and I love them for it.

So, using my old connections at the Paradise Rock Club, I got myself in to see their show at a 600 capacity club. It was me and a bunch of people past their concert-going prime. The audience may not have been too fresh but the sound and dance party vibe of their music certainly was. Check out this video and tell me what's not to love...

So, dance rock music has kind of jumped the shark lately, but I'd like to start a dance rock band. There's nothing quite like nervous guitar and a disco beat to make you jump around the room. There are plenty of musicians at Harmonix, where I work and I've picked up my guitar again lately. Maybe there's some room on a stage in Boston for me and my band. Anyone have a name for us?

Yo yo yo! The Boston Marathon Hash Weekend!

Matt Ransom is back on the interwebs with Stick or Automatic. It's been a while and A LOT has happened since I gave you the Muppets performing 'Never Gonna Give You Up'. In particular, I'm a single man and have been for about 6 weeks. More details on that to come. Also, there are plenty of pictures to come from my new digital camera. In fact, let's check out my first weekend with the new camera...the Boston Hash Marathon Weekend!

Hashing is an activity that's changed my life and allowed me to do some running, drinking, socializing and gives me an outlet for some ridiculous behavior. Each year, in the city of Boston, a tiny marathon happens on Patriot's Day. To celebrate, the Boston hash puts on an entire hash weekend with a pub crawl, a hash, a hangover hash and a beer stop at mile 21 of the marathon for the real runners.

On Friday, we pre-gamed for the pub crawl at a friend's apartment (hash name Wang Chunks) by playing Rock Band and drinking plenty of beer. Actually, it turned into the entire Friday event for most of us. I'm wearing the pink shirt with homemade graffiti.

The main event was a typical hash with 100 people. Oh, and the theme was 'Ladies' Night' meaning that all the girls and guys, wore dresses. I decided to dress up like Avril Lavigne with my awesome rock star tie. The D cups are courtesy of another hasher and 2 t-shirts.

Avril's on the left.

If I ran through the streets of Boston in that getup (and a skirt) alone, I'd probably get stared at, yelled at and harassed. However, when a crowd of 99 others join me, and about half are dudes, it's an amazing spectacle. The trail ended at a VFW in Southie and everyone there had a good chuckle at our ragtag crew.

The hangover hash on Sunday ended on the roof deck of another hasher (Beat by a Girl). There was plenty of pancakes, orange juice, beer and flip cup for the rest of the afternoon. Oh, and the roof deck overlooked the Boston Common and state capitol. Check out the view and the beer pong regulation cup.

The whole weekend was pulled off in spectacular fashion. The only snag was that Jess and I spent a lot of time in the same places only a few weeks after breaking up. Still, it made me realize that I needed some space. Anyway, more on that later. Yup, you heard me, more blogging later. Stay tuned!

Right now, I'm sitting on the couch recovering from a 13 mile bike ride and thinking about showering. My roommate, Rob is graduating from BU business school this afternoon and I'm gonna watch him walk down the aisle, maybe heckle him a bit.