My most recent pro-bono client is Empowerment International, a Colorado-based company that helps Nicaraguan children stay in school and out of places like Old Navy sweatshops. My good friends Kevin & Kelly worked with these kids in Nicaragua for the better part of a year, and I was lucky enough to get to visit them. Nicaragua is a beautiful country, but is also impoverished.

I wanted to help Empowerment International in the ways that I was best suited. I built the marketing materials for Empowerment International’s charitable fundraiser on October 8th (posters, postcards, and website). It’s called Mi Camera, Mi Mundo – it’s a photography show & auction. The 40 photos picked were all shot by Nicaraguan children who Empowerment International are working to educate.

Tickets are $35, and all proceeds from the event go directly to Empowerment International. I’d love it if you took a look at the site, and I’d love it even more if you bought a ticket to support a Colorado non-profit dedicated to helping the global community.

Just a quick update to let you know that I’m a contestant in the Ford F-150 EcoBoost Challenge. The Social Media team at Ford is hooking me up with a free F-150 to drive next week as part of the promotion.

The contest has 3 sections, and luckily for me one of them isn’t a swimsuit portion (and probably luckier for you). The payoff is that if you help me win, DENVER WINS FREE SHELL GAS ON SEPTEMBER 3, in a series of flashmob giveaways.

If you want to check out the website I built that’s devoted to this contest, head over to FreeF150.com to learn more. Here are the quick details and info on how to help Denver win.

• Part 1 of the EcoBoost Challenge: The 2011 F-150 with EcoBoost that Ford is giving me averages 22MPG on the highway. I’m competing against 7 other contestants in 7 other markets to average the highest MPG from Monday August 22 through Friday August 26th. I aim to do mostly highway driving.

• Part 2 of the EcoBoost Challenge: Ford is letting people vote once a day on Facebook for their favorite contestant in the contest. Obviously this is me. So head over to the EcoBoost Challenge Facebook Page and vote for me. EVERY SINGLE DAY.

• Part 3 of the EcoBoost Challenge: Planning and executing a successful social event that benefits a local charity. I’m planning a can drive on Saturday, August 27th outside the Rackhouse Pub in Denver, benefitting Denver’s Metro CareRing. Anyone who brings 5+ cans to donate will receive a voucher for a complimentary draft beverage of their choice at the Rackhouse. Ford is hooking me up with a $500 gift card which I’ll be using to purchase $500 in canned goods for Metro CareRing. Help me fill the bed of this F-150 with canned food for people less fortunate than us!

I’ll be posting more often on the FreeF150.com site, and promoting my efforts on Twitter. I would love to have you be a part of this awesome contest!

Ok, so Hwy 34 doesn’t have the same ring as the distinctly American Route 66, The Pacific Coast Highway (Highway 1), or Germany’s Autobahn (or Dylan’s Highway 66 Revisited, for that matter). But I contend that it’s as beautiful as any of those other roads.

I went to dinner in Grand Lake tonight with my folks, Aunt & Great Aunt (at the tasty Oa Bistro). I was on my way to try to fish before the sun went down. And while I was traveling back towards my home in Tabernash, the sun was setting. So I figured it was time to take photos instead. They turned out nicely, even though I was using my point and shoot (I so wish I had my fucking SLR with me). The image below this looks better blown up (click it to see a bigger version).

Incidentally, I just read that US Highway 34 starts in Granby, CO and goes all the way to Chicago, IL. I had no clue. It has to be better than driving fucking I-76 to I-80 from here to Chicago – although it is (surprisingly) beautiful through Iowa.

I was also basically on Hwy 34 when I shot those photos on Trail Ridge Road last week (see post below).

I spend a lot of time in the Colorado mountains. I should probably explore places I don’t often go more, and I definitely should take my camera more places. I bought a point and shoot for this reason, carrying my DSLR around all the time has proven to be tiresome. But something with a decent optical zoom and lens that fits in my pocket has been making me take more photos.

Last Friday I had to get from Winter Park, CO to Lyons, CO. The fastest way to go is also the most beautiful way: over Trail Ridge Road in Rocky Mountain National Park. I have to say it’s one of the most breathtaking drives in the state.

I won’t be at the UMS today because I’m going to see Bela Fleck & the Original Flecktones and Bruce Hornsby at Chatfield today. But if you’re going, the bands I recommend for Sunday at the UMS are Rob Drabkin, Vices I Admire, John Common, Overcasters, Coles Whalen, Dan Craig Band (super bummed to miss this guy’s set), Busman’s Holiday, Gregory Alan Isakov, Timber Timbre, and The Orbans.

Fox and the Bird, 5pm, Irish Rover

The Fox & The Bird ended up being at the Irish Rover at 5, although I thought it was supposed to be a different band. Sometimes you make mistakes, and those mistakes turn out to be beneficial. The band playing was the Fox & the Bird, a folk band from Dallas. It was no shock to me after hearing their music that Paper Bird were pals of theirs. String band music paired with horns (sometimes) is a nice way to explain their sound. The PA wasn’t exactly working so well, and it was cool that they walked into the crowd at the Rover to play in the middle of us. It was a unique treat at the UMS, I didn’t see anyone else do this at the UMS.

The Photo Atlas, 6pm, Hi-Dive

Another band I liked listening to on my Spotify playlist was The Photo Atlas. Their music in lots of ways reminds me of At The Drive-In. I saw ATDI in Toronto in 2000, and it was just before they broke up. It was a great experience, and good to know there are other bands playing similar music. My favorite banter from the show: “This song is called White Noise, clap along if you know it.”

Pink Hawks, 6:20 Indy Ink

In a few words, Pink Hawks can be explained: Afrobeat, face paint, percussion. They had a song with a chorus of “everyone’s addictied to pain”. I thought they were saying “everyone’s addicted to brains” and that this was a zombie funk band. My friend Rachel told me I was wrong. They were good, but it was SO hot in Indy Ink that I had to check out some other music. Before I left, I saw the hat of the festival: it had a horse throwing golden human shoes at a post in the ground.

Jay J Matott, 6:40 Illiterate Gallery

I wandered next door to the Illiterate Gallery to check out Jay J. Matott & the Arctic. They were on my list anyway, but they were giving out great “fliers” that were really just transparencies with black Buddy Holly glasses & a stylish mustache on them a little earlier. I had to go now. I saw my first cello at UMS. They were a solid 5-piece band.

Old Canes, 7pm, 3 Kings

Old Canes was a solid folk rock/Americana band. I liked the melodica + trumpet melodies a lot. I also “stole” some flash from other people taking photos at this show. It was actually kind of nice to borrow their light, by luckily snapping some photos while they were using a flash 10 feet away.

My Gold Mask, 7:20, Hi-Dive

My Gold Mask was one of the most unique bands I saw at the UMS. They had a drummer lead vocalist. A drummer lead vocalist who is a woman. A drummer lead vocalist who is a woman and also stands up while she drums. Different. Amazing. She has a pretty great voice, too (although there was some insane reverb on the vocals). I liked them a lot.

Patrick Dethlefs, 8pm, Michelangelo’s

Of all the UMS music I listened to on Spotify, I thought 21 year-old Patrick Dethlefs (det-lefs) was the most intriguing. He played a set in a full bar, full of attentive people. He’s got a wonderfully soft and warm voice. In many ways, the warmth of his voice makes his songwriting sound even more honest than it already is. He has a lot of the qualities that I like in Todd Snider’s music. There was a nice mix of originals and covers, the covers included “Dark Hollow” and a really nontraditional version of “Red Rocking Chair”. Patrick also played some nice simple riffs along with the rhythm, nothing too showy but he definitely can play guitar. Something I liked was the unique alternating bass notes on c-shaped barre chords. He told us that he recently released a Daytrotter session, released July 1st. Dethlefs is also playing August 6 at Larimer lounge with celloist Ben Sollee. Great line: “this goes out to all the pretty ladies in the audience. There’s more than one.” #BrowniePoints

If I wanted to start a band, Patrick Dethlefs is the kind of guy I would want to play with.

Snake Rattle Rattle Snake, 9pm Goodwill parking lot

Their music was just “eh”, but I got a nice photo of their set.

Abi Robins, 10pm, Michelangelo’s

Another Singer/Songwriter I enjoyed was Abi Robins. Abi recently relocated to Colorado from Saint Louis. She was a great guitar player who at times played pretty technical riffs and sang at the same time (classy). Her songs were honest and melodic.

Hellogoodbye, 6pm, Goodwill parking lot

Even though it was so hot, it was worth getting to the UMS early to see Hellogoodbye. This band had a ton of energy, with some great musicians. One guy played guitar, mandolin and a ukulele (which has a Descendents bumper sticker on it – hilarious). Happy sounding, lots of jumping around. Plus there were guys wearing shorts on stage (go shorts). There was also liberal use of a tambourine. The guys also had sweet hollow body electric guitars. Hellogoodbye had good crowd interaction, and I loved their short replay of some wasteoid dancing earlier in the day. This was a great way to start off Friday at the UMS.

I was looking forward to a few bands at 7pm, but they turned out to pretty much suck. Instead of writing about them, I’m just going to post this nice photo of the sunset from yesterday.

Gardens & Villa, 10pm, Hi-Dive

After plopping down at Barry’s on Broadway for 90 minutes to watch the Rockies, I mozied down to the Hi-Dive to see Gardens & Villa. It was maybe the first time I’ve seen a flute on stage at a rock show and actually enjoyed it. Some of their tunes were reminiscent of the Talking heads, with a solid, hard driving beat beat. Plus there was 40% mustache participation from band members.

A Great Big Pile of Leaves, 11pm, Skylark

After a mostly subpar evening of music, I was waiting outside the Irish Rover to see another band. But they were taking too long to set up, so I cruised down to the Skylark to see A Great Big Pile of Leaves. They were on my list of bands I’d heard on Spotify leading up to the UMS, and Hellogoodbye gave a glowing recommendation of them during their set earlier in the day.

And I am very happy that I made it to see them. AGBPOL were definitely the best musicians I’ve seen so far at the UMS. They played loudly and with a good amount of distortion, but were very melodic at the same time. These guys from Brooklyn definitely brought their A-Game. One of my favorite parts of their music was the unique strumming rhythms, not something you usually see in an indie band. They were super tight, and have definitely made it into my regular playlist. In listening to their albums on Spotify, though, their live show was better than their albums. Maybe I just need to listen to them a lot louder.

There’s more music happening tonight, excited to see it even if I’m tired. Definitely stoked to see bands including The Photo Atlas, Patrick Dethlefs, Snake Rattle Rattle Snake, Abi Robins, Bear Hands and the Black Heart Procession.

Dirty Mittens, 8pm, Skylark

Dirty Mittens this was not. It’s actually some guy playing electric guitar. He gets bonus points for playing in shorts. I liked his singer/songwriter stuff. Not bad, but most exceptional was his amazing beard. He announced who he was: Jacob Metcalf from Dallas Texas, which makes the beard that much more impressive. He said he hadn’t touched an electric guitar in 10 years. Still, not so bad. I got a tweet from @DirtyMittens telling me their bus broke down in Salt Lake City. Hopefully I’ll get to see them soon.

Pictures of Then, 9pm, Moe’s

I walked up to Moe’s, which is weirdly out of place considering the other venues are all within 3 blocks of each other. I’m happy I made the trip to see Pictures of Then. This was their first time playing Colorado. They had a million effect pedals in front of them. Hilariously, the TV was still on behind the band. The bar was relatively empty, maybe 20 people were there. At one point the bass player puts on sunglasses. Either he’s “that cool” or on acid, sometimes it’s hard to say. Both guitarists and bassist sang some songs together (classy). Both guitarists take leads (also classy). There was also a kid watching who looks like he’s straight out of Huck Finn. Suspenders, jeans rolled up, only thing missing is a piece of hey betwixt his teeth. The main vocalist guitar player’s voice is what would happen if Jim Morrison and the dude from Modest Mouse had a baby, and that baby started a band that played at The UMS. A dude volunteering for the UMS was dancing not unlike Andy Richter dancing as a harem girl in the film “Cabin Boy”. There’s also a woman drawing an ink sketch of the band which was cool to see.

Wire Faces, 10pm, Hi-Dive

Previously known as that band my local bartender plays in, Wire Faces put on a pretty great show. The drummer is often the main singer, and also gets to set up his kit in line with the guitar and bass, not unlike the band Telekinesis. The drummer has Chili Peppers-style vocals sometimes. Ian does sweet guitar tapping on a few songs. The drummer was rocking a Pittsburgh Pirates shirt. There were flashes of the “punk-era Police” crossed with the Clash. I also enjoyed the dude in a tie-dye in the front pretending he was a drummer. 2nd band in a row that has 3 people singing on songs. Impressed.

Oh No Oh My – 11pm, Irish Rover

Hailing from Austin, Oh No Oh My also used the first acoustic guitar I’ve seen so far at The UMS. They had some loud and good vocals. Reminded me at times of Doug Martsch from Built To Spill. Different band members played different instruments as the set progressed. “Summerdays” off their album “People Problems” was the best song of set. I really have enjoyed listening to these guys over the last week. Hope to see them again in Colorado soon.

El Ten Eleven, 12:30am, Hi-Dive

The band that caught my attention the most while listening to so many bands on Spotify was El Ten Eleven. It’s sort of this funkified instrumental dance fuzz music with just a guitar and bass player. There were no less than 5 guitars on stage – which turns out to be wrong. It was 3 double-necked guitar/bass electrics, and an electric bass. This was the first real multimedia show of The UMS. Great lights. Back screen projection. Multiple cameras broadcasting live to the screen behind the two guys. The multimedia show featured awesome old timey movies, including a medley of scenes from an old movie about gangs and beer pressure. Loop stations and bass harmonics were used liberally. And some cowbell! They also rocked a great version of the White Stripes’ Seven Nation Army. Often times with the double neck guitar, the left hand would play bass while the right hand would play guitar. He also bowed the bass at times, and this was no upright. Expert use of the Boss loop station, even the reverse button with some bass. This was definitely the highlight of my festival, and I still have 3 days to go.

So that was Thursday. Here’s the Spotify playlist I’m listening to for bands playing tonight at The UMS. Stay tuned for more tomorrow!

In this case it’s music. Passionate enough about it to waste 3 solid days listening to, categorizing, and planning an entire weekend of music. Passionate enough to write a blog entry about it (yes I know I still have to post photos from Prague and Barcelona from November – I’m working on that).

The Denver Post Underground Music Showcase (The UMS) is a music festival in Denver, starting Thursday and running through Sunday night. In fact, it’s so underground, that most of the people I’ve talked to about the UMS had no clue what it was. You’d think there would be a better social campaign for this cool music event. But that’s another blog entry for another time.

Look for blog entries today through Saturday telling you what I’m stoked about for the coming day, along with Spotify playlists of the bands I’m interested in going to see. Obviously I can’t see them all, but thought a good list of each band I liked would help me figure out where to go and where to go if a bar was crowded or if a band sucked.

HOW DID I COME UP WITH THIS LIST?

Spotify launched in the US last week, which coincided with my learing of this music festival a few miles from my house. So I decided to find as much music from the UMS as I could on Spotify, and listen to as much of it as I could to decide who to go see this weekend. Working from home is nice because I can listen to what I want, when I want it. So i listened to music. Lots of it. Basically all day, every day for the last few days. I’ve made a list, and nerdily color-coded it.

COLOR CODING SYSTEM

RED – can’t miss
GOLD – hope to see
GREEN – maybe want to see
BLUE – if I happen to be there, I’ll check it out

So here’s what I’m planning on seeing on Thursday. Stay tuned for what I’ll be checking out on Friday. If you’re a Spotify user, here’s a playlist of the bands I am going to try to see Thursday at the UMS.

THURSDAY

Dirty Mittens (indie pop) – 8:00 – Skylark
Pictures of Then (indie pop) – 9:00 – Moe’s
Gauntlet Hair (Britpop?) – 9:00 – Hi-Dive
Wirefaces (indie) – Thursday, 10:00 – Hi-Dive
Porlolo (lady singer indie rock/americana) – 10:00 – 3 Kings
OH NO OH MY (indie) – Thursday, 11:00 – Irish Rover
Royal Bangs (indie fuzz rock) – 11:00 – Hi-Dive
El Ten Eleven (indie/instrumental) – 11:55 – Hi-Dive
Minor Note Orchestra (big band) – 11:55 – Irish Rover

Stay tuned for more music tomorrow! I’m pretty excited to rekindle my addiction to music. It’s been a while, good to see you again.

Early in the ski season I was wondering if there were any apps out there that tracked your ski day using the GPS chip in an iPhone. All I had to do was look, and I instantly came across an app called Ski Tracks – which does everything I was hoping for, and even a little more. It’s super easy to use, you just fire it up and it starts tracking your day, including total vertical, max speed (which doesn’t really work right – there’s no way I went 70MPH yesterday), average slope steepness, total distance. You can also take photos in the app throughout your day, and it will create a great mashup of your day.

But the ultimate awesomeness is that the app exports a KMZ file and you can send it to yourself to view in Google Earth!

Here are some screenshots from my trip to Vail today.

The overview page (for some weird reason the date is incorrect, not sure if that was my fault or the app’s fault):

A GPS + Map mashup that shows exactly where you skied, and is broken up to lifts and runs automagically:

There are also awesomely nerdy graphs that show you your altitude and speed, which you can tap on each point to see what your exact altitude and (assumed) speed is:

It breaks down your day by the run and shows you vertical for each in an easy to read format:

Clicking on a run gives you a very detailed analysis of everything you did on that particular run. This happened to be Lodgepole

My only complaints are that it doesn’t seem to track everything perfectly, or at least the main overview page doesn’t reflect the data collected accurately. And it seems to really use up a lot of battery. But it’s still incredible. And only $0.99!