This domain for sale: BrandNewInformation.com

I'm kind of bummed. The Genographic Project failed to find my haplogroup. It's gonna take a couple more weeks. Your sample has completed the DNA analysis phase of testing. However, during quality control your initial results failed to clearly indicate your haplogroup. We must perform additional testing to accurately determine your deep ancestral lineage. This is not uncommon, but will delay the posting of your results by two to three weeks. We appreciate your patience. Please also note that this delay is a sign of the Project's success in increasing the diversity of samples in our database. If we find that there is a problem at any point during the processing of your sample, you will receive an updated message when you log in to check your status.

My DNA has been isolated. In a few weeks I will know the route my ancestors took in their migration out of Africa. I signed up for the Genographic Project. It's a great project run by National Geographic that is mapping the migration history of the human species by using the DNA of hundreds of thousands of people from around the world. A couple of weeks ago I swabbed the inside of my cheeks then put the swab in a solution and shipped it to NatGeo. They received it and started running their lab work. In their words: The cells are broken open by incubation with a protein-cutting enzyme overnight. Chemicals and the samples are transferred into deep well blocks for robotic DNA isolation. The blocks of chemicals and samples are placed on the extraction robot. The robotic DNA isolation uses silica-coated iron beads. In the presence of the appropriate chemicals DNA will bind to silica. The robot then uses magnetic probes to collect the beads (and DNA) and transfer them through several

This thing is addicting. Send your own ElfYourself eCards

Send your own ElfYourself eCards

I love this site. According to the 'About' Page it's a "showcase for people around the world to document their lives and cultures. Anyone can submit one large, captioned image to each of Pictory’s editorial themes." I just submitted this picture in the "My Most Meaningful Image" catagory. It pales compared to the other submissions but it means something to me and that's all that's required. Here's the blurb I wrote for it: I was somewhere in Nevada and two weeks into the journey that I'd wanted to do since I was a kid. I started out in Washington DC and turned around in Seattle. The Bonneville Salt Flats were not too far up ahead with the Rockies further on. It was a hot day, 105.8F, with a slight breeze. After hours of riding with the muffled drone of my bike's boxer engine I pulled over to the side of a desert highway to enjoy the silence. I got off my bike, grabbed my camera, and stood in the middle of the road. I knew as soon a

I dropped my energy use by an average of $8/month from 2008 to 2009. Nice! Sometime soon I will calculate how much trees, carbon emissions, etc that saves.

One of the longest Lefts in the world.

Might have to check these wetsuits out and see if the market speak is true. One review I read says they stay pretty dry and warm but they stink up faster than a normal wetsuit.

DigiBook (1998) Originally uploaded by michaelb1 Cleaning out my desk I came across my idea from an ebook reader circa 1998. It was all CD based. My idea was that magazine subscribers would receive a CD in the mail from Time, Rolling Stone et al., and put the CD in the reader. My design was bifold to replicate the aesthetics of a real book as much as possible. E-Ink was just starting to get some exposure at the time. There had to be many people with this idea. It's a wonder it took to long to come to market.

7 2 1 4 : T o t a l M i l e s 16: Number of days on the road 450.8: average miles per day. 101: Max. speed in mph 15: average speed in mph 52: Moving Avg speed (mph) 0: Speeding tickets 44: average miles per gallon 19: states travelled through 5: National parks visited 2: Number of tires purchased 100: pounds of gear and equipment carried 749: Pictures taken (keepers) 1 : Number of times rained on. 3: duration of rainfall in minutes 12073: Highest elevation in feet 4: Number of nights in a Motel 9 : Number of nights tent camping 14: Number of 32oz gatorades consumed 96: inches of Subway sandwiches consumed 105.8: degrees highest temperature measured on the road, Green River, UT 4:40pm July 23rd 59.3: degrees lowest temperature measured on the road, Glacier National Park, MT 9:00Am $369.75: amount of money spent on fuel 110: Number of Twitter/facebook status updates

After a 200 mile hot dash across the desert I made it to Arches National Park. My plan was to blow right past it in favor of Monument Valley 150 miles further down the road. However when the temp hits 106 degrees you tend to re-evaluate. The cost benefit equation becomes unbalanced. So I pulled into the Arches National Park visitor center and marveled at it's rock models, interactive displays, and air conditioning. The ranger told me the campsites were sold out so I thought I would just tour the park, take pictures, and camp outside the park on the Colorado river. I saw the sites and took tons of pictures of red rock formations. I even got lost briefly on a hike to an arch. Late that evening I came to the campground. They appeared to be full but the "reserved" area had some openings. Sure enough the nice park rangers let me camp for the night in the reserved area. I didn't have the $20 cash so I had to use an old check I keep in my wallet. I was pleasantly surprised w

I wish I had a better mount for the camera.

Who knew eastern Washington and Oregon get so damn hot? The picture shows me soaking my riding jacket in cold water. It was bone dry again after about 30 minutes on the road but it kept me cool. Being wet at 70 mph WILL keep you cool even in 100 degree heat. After a great weekend in Seattle I am heading SE to the Bonneville Salt Flats.

I made it all the way to Wyoming with some help from the gentleman in this picture. His name is Denny. He noticed I was having tire trouble and offered to lead to the bike shop. While my bike was being worked on he took me to his shed, about a block away, and showed me some of his projects. Some really beauties here. I think my favorite is the Olds 88. The detail work on the grill and in the steering wheel is amazing. That's real brass in the globe in the grill. After my bike was done Billy even led me to the freeway so I could be on my way. Great guy.

Camping at Badlands National Park was perfect. That wind out the north that forced to ride on a 20 degree tilt on I90 made for a very pleasant camping experience. I rode up to the automated camping teller at about 730pm. It allows you to pick your campsite by number but doesn't show you a corresponding map to match the number with a location. I picked 76. I set up camp, had a cup o noodles and jerky for dinner, and prepared to do some star gazing. There wasn't a single cloud from horizon to horizon. I wasn't dissapointed. I took some great photos with my best low light lens set to the slowest shutter speed. Some photos, which only capture a small portion if the sky, have hundreds of stars in them. I havn't seen that many stars since I was at sea 13 years ago. I have no idea where I am heading today other than west. I know I'm running out of time if I want to be in Seattle on Friday. Yellowstone and Glacier NP's are the only must see spots left on my

I woke up this morning and made a fresh cup of coffee. That's been the highlight of my day so far. Right when I got on the bike I noticed that it wasn't handling right. Even though I was only riding 5 mph through the park I could tell something was wrong. My rear tire only had 5psi in it. So I went to a car shop a mile away and filled her up. That got me to Sioux Falls. From there I searched 'motorcycle repair' on Google Maps and started calling places. Apparently NOBODY will patch a tire due to liability reasons. So here I am at a bike shop trading $500 for two new tires. I had planned to replace both in Seattle in 4 days but I had not planned on spending $500. :(

I came up with a new system to give me more room in the saddle. Basically I crammed mire stuff into the hard cases to make the duffel thinner. Last evening I was racing the sun and the campground was the finish line. The sun won. My concilation prize was a night at the motel 6 in Davenport IA. I hope to make Sioux Falls by night fall.

Mark ( that's his hand) strolled over to chat while I was packing up. We talked a lot of things including bikes( he rides a Harley ).  Mark is in town working on a 42" long distance gas line. He thinks it starts in Canada, runs through Wyoming, and ends up in Chicago. It's one of those things most people don't know exists but makes modern life possible. Mike Roe should do a Dirty Jobs episode with Mark. He helped me pack my gear and even gave me the best invention ever: a net made of bunjie cord. This thing will change my whole trip. You just stack things up and stretch the net over it. Poof! Done. Marc since I gave you web address hopefully you're reading this. Thanks again and be careful working those gas lines. Maybe we will meet again on the flip side of my trip. -mb MB

By all accounts it was a good first day. As I type this blog entry on my iPhone I am laying in a tent at a campground in Baltimore Ohio. So I made about 400 miles today. Not a bad start but I need to do better tomorrow. Today was intended to be a shakedown day when I could learn the easiest and most efficient way to do things to make the trip go much smoother. I learned that The Weather Channel app for the iPhone is a critical piece of software. I noticed some dark clouds on the horizon so I pulled over and checked out the forcast. The app is location aware so I didn't have to bother looking up the local zipcode. I could see on the radar that the rain band would not cross my path. I didn't have to worry about putting on rain gear. The phone was also very helpful in finding a campground. You simple click on google maps, current location, then search for 'campground'. Little puns drop on the map where the local campgrounds are. By the way, KOA wanted $40 f

I'm at the BMW store getting a once over on the bike prior to embarking on solomoto ( I'm just going to call it that. 'my solo cross county motorcycle road trip' takes too long). There are a lot of nice bikes here including a BMW HP2 with a $27k tag hanging on the handlebar.

Instamapper is an iPhone app that tracks your position and puts it on google maps so that you can share it with the world. I'll use this for my trip. Check out my embedded map at michaelb1.com . The good: it's free which is $100 cheaper than the Spot tracker. The bad: Like all iPhone apps it does not run in the background so you have to leave it on to allow it to log and upload your coordinates. I just tested it out today and it works well. Looking forward to using it on the solomoto trip.

From The New York Times: HANDLEBARS: BMW's Boxer: A Classic Design Is Updated and Refined By STUART F. BROWN The flat-twin engine has been a distinctive BMW attribute for decades, but a devoted following does not mean the company has lost interest in innovation.... http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/05/automobiles/05BOXER.html MB

Can't change it now. View Cross Country Via Motorcycle in a larger map I'll travel through 16 states, stopping at a bunch of parks. The highlights: Yellowstone NP, WY Grand Teton NP, WY Glacier NP, MT Monument Valley NP, UT Devils Tower, WY Badlands NP, SD Mount Rushmore NP Little Big Horn, MT Rocky Mountain NP Mt Ranier NP, WA Bonneville Salt Flats SP, UT

...of the mobile blogging system. I am typing this post on my iPhone. If all goes according to plan this email will end up on brandnewinformation.com. I'm attaching a picture to see how it handles that. MB

Yesterday I gathered up all my gear, packed it into my bikes luggage system and a giant duffel bag and loaded it onto the bike. My two objectives were to see if I could get everything onto the bike and to see if I could do it safely. All this stuff.... Packed into this: The side bags will hold 22lbs each. The top case holds 11lbs. I was able to put most the heavy stuff (read expensive) in the saddle bags. Best to keep the heavy stuff low. This includes the laptop, camera, etc. The giant duffel holds my tent pegs, chair, and some other knick knacks. The test ride was successful. You gotta treat bikes like a lady. In this case it means not laying her down, mindful of the extra 70+lbs of baggage she is carrying. 6 Days until I head west. ~MB

I just finished the site for my cross country motorcycle website, michaelb1.com . Since hopefully my Mom will be visiting the site to see what I'm up to let me take a minute to pretend that she cares how it works and explain it to her in laymans terms. Soooo...all the data I create on the road will be automagically uploaded to the big internet cloud in the sky via my iPhone and MacBook. What I cannot upload cellularly I will use the nation's libraries and McDonalds free wifi for. The cloud analogy is not mine but I'll stick to it for this post. So now all this data is swirling around in the cloud. That's where michaelb1.com comes in. If you don't mind we'll keep the cloud analogy going. This internet cloud is made up of everyone's data. Data = rain. Michaelb1.com is my rain collector. The cloud is actually a bunch of sites scattered across many servers all over the internet. Flickr.com host my pictures YouTube and Vimeo have my videos this site

I just set up an aggregator page for the RSS feeds I will be using on my trip. Michaelb1.com has a feed for my road trip flickr set, my Google Maps route, my "Tweets" from the road, as well as the blog posts on this site. There's even a flickr slide show to watch. I hope it passes the mom test. It has to be simple and informative. Anything less and she doesn't want to see it.

Last weekend I took my first real ride on my new bike. I took it though Maryland, West Virginia, and Virginia. The BMW R1200R handles much better than the Honda VTX. It should as it is designed to and the VTX is designed to just cruise. On the way home from Tom's Run Relay I cruised through gorgeous valleys and many small towns. As a side note I only say one rebel flag hanging in a yard. I've made a few adjustments to the bike since I got back from this road trip. I ditched the windshield because I like to feel the wind. I'll probably put it back on for my cross country trip. I also installed some handlebar risers. My riding position was just a little bit too forward leaning. The risers fixed that very effectively. I also intalled a GPS mount on the handlebar. I plan to purposely get lost on this trip but I want to be able to find where I'm going sometimes. Love the new bike!

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Today I got my dream bike, a BMW R 1200 R. My Honda VTX 1300 R is a great bike. In the year I owned it I got a sense of what I am looking for in a motorcycle. It's great for cruising and it looks really good plus it is solid as a rock as far as reliability goes. The BMW is sportier, safer, more efficient, lighter and it's just more suited to the kind of riding I do. I bought it off Craigslist from a lawyer in Maryland. He really took care of it and rigged it for touring even though he mainly used it as a commuter. He added a lot of aftermarket accessories to make his commute easier which will benefit me greatly on my cross country trip. The additions include. hard saddle bags (lockable) trunk bag big enough to hold my helmet. extra lighting up front and in the rear blinking brake lights red LED brake lights around the license plate highway bars which will be invaluable to me after many long miles on the road. heated grips onboard computer power plug for chargin

I'm thinking of upgrading my ride to a bike that is better suited for touring. This weekend I'm going to take a look at a BMW R 1200 R a guy is selling on Craigslist. The BMW has several advantages over my Honda many of which will be particulalry handy on a long trip. For one it has anti-lock brakes. Also the brakes are linked so when I slam on the front brakes it also engages the rear brakes. This keeps the bike from nose diving as much and reduces the risk of going over the bars. Another cool feature is the "Telelever" on the front fork. Basically this little piece of engineering de-couples steering and suspension. The forks of most bikes handle both of these tasks doing neither optimally. There's similar hardware in the rear called the "Paralever". It keeps the rear wheel where it should be at all times. The bike has a lot of creature comforts as well: heated grips, on board computer, tachometer, water proof hard cases. As a m

Luggage for the trip Originally uploaded by michaelb1 I just created a set on Flickr that is dedicated to pictures of my cross country motorcycle trip this summer. I really need to come up with a name for this trip so I don't have to type out " my cross country motorcycle trip this summer" everytime. Here's a link to the set.

On the advice of a friend I stopped by REI yesterday to get some gear for my cross country motorcycle trip this July. Motorcycle camping is a lot like back country camping; you need to pack light and small. REI has a heavily promoted annual sale. Don't expect to save a ton of money over online retailers but you will get the benefit of seeing, touching, feeling before dropping a C note on a sleeping bag. Case in point, I walked into REI with the goal of purchasing the cheapest best sleeping bag I could find that would allow me to sleep through the night in Glacier National Park in July. After consulting with the shaved headed goatee'd salesman I bought the North Face Cat's Meow sleeping bag for $121. That's a pretty decent price but not cheaper than you can find online. I'm not complaining though, the price was good and the sales guy helped me out a lot. As I will be camping most nights of my 3+ week journey I thought I'd go ahead and get ever

Here is my tentative itinerary for my big cross country ' chautauqua ' this summer. Of course I will be editing this list over the coming weeks as I figure out distances and such. I want to sleep in a National or State Park every night if possible. sioux falls Badlands NP Mt. Rushmore NP Yellowstone NP Glacier NP Mt Ranier NP Olympic NP < View Larger Map

I definitely have to travel through Badlands on my cross country motorcycle trip this summer. http://www.flickr.com/photos/livingwilderness/294680370/sizes/o/

Moment of Zen Originally uploaded by michaelb1 I took a few moments away from a picnic with the kids to grab this shot.

I've been advised by epiphysis on VTXcafe forums that AntiMonkeyButt is a good thing to have on long motorcycle trips. I'm sure I will be thanking him this summer.

Originally uploaded by chase20 This is what I'm going for on my trip this summer. I came across this photo by chase20 while browsing flickr for motorcycle pictures.

Snow Birds Eating from Michael Brashier on Vimeo . As it happened we got a beautiful snow storm the day after I got my new Nikon D90. Here's some video of the birds in my front yard that I shot using the D90's HD video feature. I love the video. My only complaint is that there is no auto focus in video mode so you're limited to filming things that don't move very much.

Henery's bike Originally uploaded by spiderkakes I've been looking around flickr for some ideas on how to outfit my bike for the big cross country loop this summer. Flickr user ' Spiderkakes ' posted this photo. I think I have my template. I already have the saddle bags but I need that big trunk bag to carry my tent and extras. Right below the trunk bag you can see a chrome rack on the rear fender. I really like that. It'll serve to hold the trunk but it also looks really good without the trunk in a retro kind of way. It reminds me of the look of the bikes from the 40's and 50's.

I just had to post this picture by flickr user tx_corey.

View Larger Map This summer I’m going on a solo motorcycle road trip from one side of America to the other and back again. I’m starting in our nation's capitol and heading due west to San Francisco. From there I turn right to Seattle then hang another right bound for DC. My guidelines are: sleep under the stars as much as possible. stay off the major interstates as much as possible. take the picture whenever it presents itself. capture and post as much of this adventure as possible via pictures, twitter, gps position. Take it all in. I want to make the most of this trip. For the 4th bullet I’m going to build a website where I can post pictures and video from the road so everyone can see what I see. I’ll also post my geo-position in real-time or near real time as well as my twitter updates. Should I get an iPhone and use Google Latitudes for the positioning? Do I need to schlub a laptop with me? What’s the best one-man tent for this? For the last guideline bullet, what are the m