otrops: jeff van campen’s personal blog

1. 

   Fleet Foxes - Fleet Foxes

   One of those albums I kept hearing about before I listened to it. I thought it was overhyped, but I was wrong. Do I feel kind of lame for putting it at the top of my list when it’s on the top of everyone else’s list too? Yes, kind of lame, thanks for asking. I mean, no! Not lame at all. Listen to it. It’s amazing.

2. 

   School of Seven Bells - Alpinisms

   I was very tempted to put this at number one, but I felt I couldn’t because I discovered them so recently. Nevertheless, this has quickly become an album that I’m returning to again and again. I discover something new and exciting every time I listen to it.

3. 

   David Byrne & Brian Eno - Everything That Happens Will Happen Today

   Did I want another My Life in the Bush of Ghosts? Yes. Did I get it? No. Do I love it anyway? I do, but it took a while to grow on me. Once it did I realized that even if the album isn’t ground-breaking, it’s one that I’ll be listening to for a long time to come. This was also a perfect model for how to release an album. I had listened to the entire album several times before I bought it. When I bought it, I received the mp3s and flac files immediately. The CD was released and arrived in the post few months later. Not only did they make it easy for me to decide if I liked the album without having to buy it or break the law, they made it easy to get the digital files in the format I wanted. Maybe it was ground-breaking, after all.

4. 

   White Denim - Workout Holiday

   These guys were one of those record store discoveries. I was browsing in Resident in Brighton when this album came on. After three songs I was hooked. I immediately bought the CD and haven’t looked back since. Every song is energetic and fun, and they’re from Austin.

5. 

   African Scream Contest

   This is a compilation of psychedelic funk from Togo and Benin in the 70s. Every single track is amazing. Imagine James Brown on acid or Os Mutantes out of Africa. Aw, screw it, don’t imagine anything. Just listen to this.

6. 

   The Seedy Seeds - Count the Days

   I absolutely love this album. They remind me of some of the Elephant 6 bands, specifically Apples in Stereo and Dressy Bessy. Only with more Casio keyboards and a kind of bluegrass edge. I keep listening to them, usually when I just need something to make me smile.

7. 

   Flight of the Conchords - Flight of the Conchords

   Not only are they hilarious, but they are today’s preeminent musical chameleons. My personal favorite - Boom - makes me smile because it reminds me of Yellowman. Of course, their Bowie impersonations are fantastic, too.

8. 

   Death Cab for Cutie - Narrow Stairs

   This album didn’t make a huge impression on me. I thought it wasn’t nearly as strong as previous Death Cab albums (e.g. Plans and We Have the Facts and We’re Voting Yes). Then Joanne managed to get us tickets to see them live. Seeing them perform I Will Posses Your Heart changed all that. This album is more subtle than previous albums, but has now become one of my favorite Death Cab albums.

9. 

   Vampire Weekend - Vampire Weekend

   Another album that I almost didn’t put here because I got sick and tired of hearing about it, but I keep coming back to the album. It’s another one I love listening to, and it makes me smile. Especially when they’re doing their homage to Peter Gabriel. (It gets even better when Peter Gabiel covers Vampire Weekend.)

10. 

    Blitzen Trapper - Furr

    Another recent discovery. I considered putting it higher on the list. The whole album is pretty good, but the title track is probably my favorite track of the entire year. In fact, it is so perfect it’s fast becoming one of my favorite songs of all time.

As you’ll probably know from last post, I ran in the Baxter’s River Ness 10k over the weekend. I managed to finish it in just over an hour (01:00:10, to be exact).

Before I talk about the race, I’d like to go on about the Highlands for a bit. This was my first time there. On the way up and the way back, we were all amazed by the beauty of the place. Cairngorms National Park was especially stunning. I described it is as a combination of Rocky Mountain National Park in the States and Dartmoor National Park in England, but this really doesn’t do it justice, as it has its own unique beauty.

Rolling hills rusted over with heather give way to snow-capped peaks in the distance. The weekend was fairly wet, so the hills were threaded with hundreds of gossamer streams. The rivers were everything I love about mountain rivers — clear, quick and wide.

At some point, we’d really like to return and spend a week or two walking and exploring the Highlands. I we did, I’m sure we’d be able to fit in a whisky tour (or two).

The race went fairly well. As this was my first 10k, my goal was simply to finish it, running the whole way.

To my knowledge, I’ve only run 10k non-stop once before: about a week before the race on the treadmill. I really shouldn’t have been running that far just a week before the race, but I needed to know that I had it me. My time on the treadmill was 1:10:47. I really wanted to run the race in the time it took me to run 10k on the treadmill, but I wasn’t sure if I could do it.

Before the run started, I was really nervous. I was there around 45 minutes early. I think I warmed about three separate times because I couldn’t stand just standing around. The race was slow to start. My times indicate that it took me about two and a half minutes to get to the starting gate, but it felt more like five.

The first two kilometers went well. Sometime after the second kilometer, I had the beginnings of a side stitch. I focused on my breathing, and it was more or less gone by the time I hit kilometer three.

After five kilometers, I started to psych myself out a bit. I still felt pretty good, but I found myself wondering if I had another 5k in me. Fortunately, I soon saw Joanne, David and Lindsey cheering me on from the side of the road. It was exactly what I needed.

At 7k, just as the run met the River Ness (one of those lovely mountain rivers I was going on about), I started to feel like I was losing energy. Fortunately, David had given me one of those gel packets just before the race. It seemed to do the trick.

From that point, I knew the route. We’d walked most of it the day before to register for the race. In my mind it was pass a bridge, cross a bridge, pass the first bridge again, then finish.

The distance from the last bridge to the finish felt a bit longer than I’d anticipated, but I had enough energy left to pick up the pace a bit over the last kilometer. When I came to the finish line and saw 1 hour two minutes on the clock, I just smiled. I’d finished the race faster than I’d run 10k on the treadmill. Even better than I’d hoped for.

When we got back to David and Lindsey’s flat in Glasgow, I got the time from the chip: 01:00:10. Just over an hour. Needless to say, I’m pretty pleased with that.

Today, Joanne and I ran the Tree-Athlon, a 5k in Battersea Park.

My goal for the run was to run in in 30 minutes. I came in at 30:01, but giving all the faffing about at the starting line — it was at least 30 seconds before there was room enough to run — I’m going to consider that under 30 minutes.

The course made it easy to hit the 30 minute mark. They had every half kilometer marked, so I could check that each one was taking around 3 minutes. Podrunner helped as well. The 148 bmp Paradiddle turned out the be exactly the right rhythm.

Lately, I’ve been working on my breathing. Usually after 5 or 10 minutes, I can breath in four beats and breath out four beets (on my left foot) without having to think about it too much. That only really happened for two kilometers today. The rest of the time I had to really focus on it.

All in all, it wasn’t as easy as I would have liked, but it wasn’t terribly hard, either. However, at around 3.5 kilometers my calves were really burning, and I convinced myself that at around 4.5 kilometers they would seize up the way they used to back when I was a skater kid. I did my best to put the thought out of my mind.

I said that when I was finally able to run a 5k in under 30 minutes, I would shave off my beard. So guess what? No more beard. Just be prepared for that next time you see me. I look kinda weird without the beard. I’ve only had the full-on beard for about two years or so, but I’ve gotten used to it. It’s gone now.

So now it’s time to set another goal. At this point, that’s just going to be finishing the 10k I’m running in two weeks. Two of weeks of back pain and recovery have really messed up my training, so I’m not feeling entirely prepared for the 10k. So the goal is just to finish the thing, running the whole way. Even if that mean running really, really slooooow.

So. A while back I asked for your advice on what to do about this blog. Thanks to everyone who responded. I know what I’m going to do, but I’m not done yet. So you’ll have to suffer with the old school blog for a while, but look out for a new, improved otrops.com. Coming to a web browser near you.

One piece of the puzzle is in place, however. Without further ado, I give you otrops quotes. I’m forever jotting down quotes from books I’m reading. And I’m always wishing that I had a place to easily store quotes that I’ve read on-line. I’m using tumblr to share and keep track of these quotes. If you haven’t tried tumblr, I highly recommend it. It does much more than quotes: links, images, audio, video and even IM conversations. It just so happens that quotes is what I wanted to keep track of, and tumblr provided a quick and simple way of doing that.

For those of you who can’t get enough of me — Hello? Still with me? Ahem, good — I’m also introducing otrops elsewhere. This is effectively my lifestream. I don’t really like the term. Mostly because my on-line existence is only a portion of my life, even if it is at times a fairly large portion. In any case, otrops elsewhere allows you to keep track of what I’m doing across the Internet. I’ve played with a few lifestreaming applications, and I settled on Soup. As with tumblr, I’ve decided to use Soup because of the simplicity of its interface. The fact that both sites allow me to use a vanity domain didn’t hurt, though.

And that’s about all the otrops I can give you. At least until I pull my finger out and launch the new blog.

Joanne and I are going to be running again in the Trees for Cities Tree-Althlon.

You may remember that we did it last year and actually managed to finish, despite the fact that neither of us had ever run before.

We’re going to do it again. We’re going to run to raise money to support Trees for Cities efforts to plant trees around the UK and in Ethiopia, Kenya and Peru.

Last year we raised almost £200. This year we want to raise £360. We’re already 25% of the way there, thanks to some very generous people. Anything you can give to support our efforts will be greatly appreciated.

Donate here (thanks in advance for your support).