Caleb Hutchings » Culture

Living Free in 603

CalebHutchings — Fri, 26 Jul 2013 02:23:15 +0000

The month of July is a beautiful thing not to be wasted. Beyond sun and warm waters, there’s a fleeting island of opportunity that exists solely within the borders of 50 states. Some call it Fourth of July; I prefer to think of it as Manifest Destiny.

I wouldn’t dare say all states are created equal in this spirit. (Additionally, I’ll guarantee you’ll never find me repeating this holiday in Connecticut.) Yet, I come from a state with a bold slogan and habits to match. From this patriotism evolved the greatest friend weekend Arlington Pond has ever seen.

It all began with a deep seeded desire to introduce a few city friends to the rural pleasures of a persevering blue collar neighborhood. The plan was to invite a few friends up to my former home for a relaxing weekend. Then one thing single-handedly tipped the scales. Sparks Fly Fireworks released a Buy-4-Get-7-Free (no typo) sale on 500gram firework cakes (the biggest you can get). Naturally, I’m a rewards program member there, so I even walked away with an eighth.

Done. We merged a friend’s birthday, invited all the friends, and created the perfect concoction of ingredients for any New Hampshire party. What are they? A lake, fireworks, aquatic trampoline, musket, camping, a bonfire, good beer, better friends, and a cannon. Combine in no particular order.

This post contains the captured joy of these spoils. I recommend watching all of the firework videos:

Thank You’s:

A huge THANK YOU to the Co-Chair Timothy Roy. Without him we would have never been able to pick up the fireworks or complete the 2 months of cleanup it took to get the beach house up to par. Thank you to my brother Josh who painted and cleared leaves to the dump, and made a Rebel Alliance flag for the party. F-ing righteous. Thank you to JAMES who we met for the first time and cooked breakfast for EVERYONE. Thank you to Seth and Victoria for sewing up the trampoline and cooking burgers for everyone. Thank you to Dustin for deconstruction said Trampoline. Thanks to my father Bob for blowing it up and providing the beach house. Huge dangerous thanks to Ben for climbing the flag pole to put the Rebel Alliance flag up, and helping a drunken Caleb collect firewood. Thanks to Ashley for coming all the way from NY to party. Thanks to Joe Burleigh for providing a Jam Box and booze. Thanks to Bryan Christie for being born. Another huge thanks to Josh for providing, packing, and firing the cannon and musket. And now Tim deserves another thank you for being Captain. Thanks to Shay and Brennan for the extra tents and tubes. I’m sure I’m forgetting people, but as you can see, this was a huge team effort. Most importantly, thanks to everyone who came up! For those that missed it, get on our level next year! Another thank you to Seth For this Awesome video:

Opening Day at Fenway Park Viewed Via Boston Pedicab

CalebHutchings — Fri, 08 Mar 2013 16:27:49 +0000

As we prepare for Opening Day at Fenway Park, while simultaneously being blanketed in snow, fond memories of its sun soaked 100th anniversary carry promise of summer’s approach. Last year, I wanted to capture this anniversary and the activity it incited across the city. After considering how to accomplish this, I landed on the team that is in the heart of the spectacle, the Boston Pedicab. With the help of a close friend, we attached a GoPro to the handlebars of his pedicab. Taking pictures every few seconds, we captured over 3,500 images of the day.

Below is a short video from this collection along with the highlight images from this summer day.

We caught DJ Nite Train in the mix!

100th Aniversary of Opening Day at Fenway Park from Caleb Hutchings on Vimeo.

How to Rock a SCVNGR Trek for Your Business

CalebHutchings — Fri, 15 Feb 2013 21:22:30 +0000

In the summer of 2010, The Ad Club was anticipating their 10th Anniversary of the Hatch Awards, the largest creative awards celebration in New England. To promote the fall event and meet the renowned judges, we partnered with the SCVNGR team to create a trek leading to the “Meet the Judges” pre-event location. I was charged with designing the locations, clues, and general operation of the trek. Following these key guidelines, it was a huge success.

Pick Unique Locations:

This seems like a no-brainer, yet investing the extra time to incorporate interesting places into your trek makes a tremendous impression. For this trek, we were fortunate to have a combination of Beacon Hill, the Waterfront, and Faneuil Hall. This is an obvious playground of easily recognizable tourist locations, but the trick was to dig beyond the conspicuous monuments and find something new even to locals. I tend to walk everywhere in Boston, so I started with an upper hand. Further exploration resulted in clues/challenges placed on the Monopoly board in the giftshop of the Union Oyster house, a giant nautical compass at the end of a pier on the waterfront, and the entrance of a hidden, cozy bar frequented by most young statehouse employees.

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Create Fun Challenges

We’re getting the two most obvious details out of the way first, but there are some tips to be learned. First, use spaces creatively. Not all challenges have to solve a riddle. As a way to break participants out of their shell, we used the tall stairway in Government Center to imitate Rocky Balboa’s famous stair climb. Some challenges involved visiting the Aquarium for a clue, so not only did you win points but you saw seals and penguins! Finally, there were a few challenges that were multi-dimensional; you had to make it to a specific location, stand in a certain direction, and solve a riddle with clues in the city’s skyline in front of you. These activities not only brought you to some locations that locals don’t even frequent, but they revealed new facts to even the most seasoned Bostonian.

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Make Bright T-shirts:

You can complete a SCVNGR trek in any attire, but forcing everyone to look like you’re on a children’s field trip provides necessary advantages. The first is the energy it creates. Standing in Faneuil Hall, you could witness a sea of fluorescent t-shirts canvassing the area. This drove competition between teams, as they could witness other competitors completing challenges. Second, it demonstrates the scale of the event. All tourists were quite aware something was happening, because they could distinguish our attendees from the crowd. The excitement from our group was contagious to the rest of the public, and many stopped us to ask what the event was. Finally, the most obvious, it’s a great opportunity for sponsorship. The Creative Group came on board, and reaped a lot of visibility from this event while enabling all of the previous benefits of these shirts.

Get Pedicab Involved:

As you can see from the map in the first point, the locations of these clues do have some outliers. This incorporates some strategy into the mix, to determine what challenges are worth more, and which path is more advantageous. To add another variable to the equation, we brought Pedicab into the mix. This was a concept of mine, as many of the Pedicab cyclists were personal friends. They were thrilled to participate, and facilitated much of the enthusiasm with their personalities and prompt transport from clue to clue. To avoid people from abusing the privilege, we limited participants to a maximum of three clues/trips with the Pedicab.

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Make Interactive Props:

When you have familiar locations or traditions, they lend themselves as a great opportunity to incorporate something unique for your trek. The greatest example of this in our SCVNGR trek, was our use of Dick’s Last Resort. You can’t go to Faneuil Hall without seeing a mob of Freshman girls with ridiculous, tall paper hats on their head. Thus, we were going to suffer our participants with the same fate. I persuaded the manager to give me two paper hats, and keep them at the host’s stand. Before the event, I had two talented interns mark them up with relevant slander and logos of our sponsors (always wielding new ways of visibility for sponsors). The challenge was to go to Dick’s, ask for the hats, and take a picture in them. This proved to be a great way to incorporate a popular tourist activity, but make it unique for our group.

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Invite Relevant Media to Participate:

PR benefits all events (well, nearly). Since our event was to promote the Hatch Awards, we certainly wanted to scale that message as much as possible. BostInno registered and proved to be solid competitors throughout the entire trek. Their promotion afterwards not only highlighted the approaching award ceremony, but put the spotlight on the SCVNGR team!

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Thank Your Partners:

This is a common principle that should never be missed. We were quick to thank all of our corporate sponsors, but also wanted to do something unique for the Pedicab crew. These guys were a core addition to the event, and many guests forgot to tip their cyclists amidst all the excitement. Luckily I knew most of them personally, so I could attest to a common favorite of the team: Narragansett. I called in a favor with some friends connected to Gansett’s Boston account. Along with a gratuity, I dropped off 3 complimentary cases of the Rhode Island courage as a thank you. They had a fun night.

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Boston & Nemo – PHOTOS

CalebHutchings — Sat, 09 Feb 2013 03:02:22 +0000

As you are well aware, it’s snowing sideways with only more on its way. Plenty are adventuring outside in Allston to play in the snow, including some brave souls riding bikes. A few vans are also breaking the driving van to try to offer cab rides to walkers. Here are the photos my ventures produced:

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10 Free Productivity Tools to Hack Your Day

CalebHutchings — Fri, 08 Feb 2013 23:03:46 +0000

We could all use more time in our day. While we’re all limited to 24 hours, there are plenty of tools to squeeze the most out of our time. These 10 tools are some of my favorite for a variety of applications. Hopefully they can serve you just as well!

Evernote – The perfect browser application to capture all things digital and access them from any device. Official Description: From saving thoughts and ideas to preserving experiences to working efficiently with others, Evernote’s collection of apps make it easy to stay organized and productive.
Sparrow – Acquired by Google, this is a fantastic email application. Superior user experience sets this one apart from the rest.
RescueTime – Tracks all activity on your computer, and provides you reports on where your time is spent and what sites you frequent. OD:A personal-analytics service that shows you how you spend your time & provides tools to help you be more productive.
8tracks.com – 8tracks is the attractive sibling of Pandora. Users create mixes based on moods, genres, or specific artists. I’ve found way better music through 8tracks than ever through Pandora. Try it for yourself.
Awesome Screenshot – This Chrome extension is the greatest tool I’ve discovered to capture selections or entire screenshots of webpages.
Boomerang for Gmail – Boomerang is a great application to schedule emails, follow-up, and reminders.
Buffer – Another Chrome extension that enables you to socially share the webpage you’re reading. You’re able to schedule or post instantly.
Page Ruler – The third Chrome extension of the list, I use this one all the time. Page Ruler measures the dimensions of any spacing or images on a webpage. A fabulous tool for web development.
Tweetdeck – While Hootsuite is the quite popular alternative, I’m quite partial to Tweetdeck. The Twitter application updates in realtime, and enables users to search and schedule updates.
WiseStamp – Emails signatures aren’t necessary a thrilling thing, but clean design can make a great impression. WiseStamp offers a lot of creative freedom for customizing your signature.

Thanksgiving Redo: Tradition at its Finest

CalebHutchings — Wed, 12 Dec 2012 03:58:00 +0000

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Traditions make the most of the social fibers that string us all together. They connect friends, evoke culture, and normally share culinary delights with the power to forge bonds between even the biggest Debbie-downers. Hailing from a family that lacks our own, I’ve taken it upon myself to create a few original traditions to pioneer forward. May I introduce: The Thanksgiving Redo.

This tradition actually grew from tragedy. After a visit to a friends the night before Thanksgiving, I started cycling home. Only a block away from my apartment, I simultaneously turned to check a car behind me and hit a crater of a pothole. My feet were still on my petals after I flew over the handlebars and stopped rolling down the street, but my collarbone was in pieces. After immediately ensuring the three girls that witnessed the accident that I was perfectly fine, I went home and passed out.

The following day was spent in the ER, following a quick trip to Hubspot.tv for a quick beer and taping. Thus, my holiday was stolen, and I was ripe for revenge. I returned to Boston with one arm, and prepared an entire Thanksgiving dinner to feed friends. The Thanksgiving Redo was born.

The week following Thanksgiving provides the perfect storm of elements to create a holiday party. Friends return to their routine home, people normally need to recover from their relatives, and, most importantly, all Thanksgiving food goes on severe discount. A quick trip to Market Basket provides $10 turkeys, cheap herbs, potatoes galore, and discounted fresh cranberries.

Here are the secrets to preparation: Always get fresh cranberries, they go quickly. Three bags are ideal, two will suffice. Add some fresh orange juice and zest and you’re golden. Brine the turkeys. It makes the juiciest turkey you could imagine, brings out the flavor of the meat, and makes the cooking time only four hours. For our redo I cook two turkeys, brining them for 24 hours beforehand as they defrost. Follow the brining mix below, invite all your friends over, and prepare to hear all the stories of drunken relatives.

6 Quarts of Chicken (or vegetable) broth
Fresh Thyme
Fresh Sage
Fresh Rosemary
3/4 cups granulated sugar
Salt, Pepper, and Lemon Zest

Fourth of July.

CalebHutchings — Wed, 12 Dec 2012 02:59:10 +0000

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Counting the number of holidays on the calendar, it quite obvious one’s favorite comes down to personal preference. Depending on the ranking order of colored eggs, chocolate hearts, or Turduckens, your favorite time of year could fall on any season. However, for those from the “Live Free or Die” state, an assumption that the Fourth of July takes precedent over the rest, isn’t stretching the truth.

Growing up on Arlington Pond in North Salem, NH did provide its advantages. Primarily, it served as a front row seat for a rural interpretation of true independence. All the festivities start with a short road trip to Sparks Fly Fireworks in Concord. Not only supplying the most visually stimulating fireworks, Sparks Flys also sells everything at buy-one-get-one-free. Thus, you buy a 500 gram Openfire cake, you get a 500 gram Loud-n-Rowdy cake. Perfection. Next, you secure a lakeside, or better yet a boat, spot to watch as neighbors compete in a fireworks display and thousands of dollars explode overhead.

Feeling a bit more rowdy? Many individuals (including my younger brother) take it to the next level by shooting a charge out of a cannon. Yes, you read that correctly. You’ll know it happened when the foundation of your house shakes, and an applauding chorus resounds across the lake. Roman candle fights push the limits, as well as trucks riding by shooting fireworks out of their bed into the tree canopy above. When the last cake is fired and the bonfire dies, you’ve just experienced a true holiday celebration.

God bless America.

Pepe’s & Pancakes: A Trip to Peg’s

CalebHutchings — Wed, 05 Dec 2012 21:04:35 +0000

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Three hour, late night rides bundled in blankets. Brief naps and watching lights stream by would pass the time. Perhaps even a bulky portable TV would glow a Disney VHS. An arbitrary battle over the minivan’s wide back seat would normally commence the journey, yet every trip to Grandma’s house would end in the same warm welcome.

While the traditions and destinations differ, most trips to one’s Grandma’s house evoke the same warm connotations. Secret treats, funny tasting water, treasured ice cream shops, and vintage furniture make for plenty of delights to explore. Some of the Wolynec traditions involve flying paper airplanes from the top of the stairs into the living room, mandatory trips to Pepe’s Pizza, double-cones at Dip Top, sledding hills on the golf course, put-put golf on the driveway, and wiffle ball games.

Making the home further unique was my grandfather’s architectural design of the lofty living room, cubby entry mudroom, and my grandmother’s garden spanning the entire property. On my last visit to this home I captured the elements of this place that hold the greatest significance from years past.

Caleb Hutchings » Culture

Living Free in 603

Opening Day at Fenway Park Viewed Via Boston Pedicab

How to Rock a SCVNGR Trek for Your Business

Pick Unique Locations:

Create Fun Challenges

Make Bright T-shirts:

Get Pedicab Involved:

Make Interactive Props:

Invite Relevant Media to Participate:

Thank Your Partners:

Boston & Nemo – PHOTOS

10 Free Productivity Tools to Hack Your Day

Sparrow – Acquired by Google, this is a fantastic email application. Superior user experience sets this one apart from the rest.

RescueTime – Tracks all activity on your computer, and provides you reports on where your time is spent and what sites you frequent. OD:A personal-analytics service that shows you how you spend your time & provides tools to help you be more productive.

8tracks.com – 8tracks is the attractive sibling of Pandora. Users create mixes based on moods, genres, or specific artists. I’ve found way better music through 8tracks than ever through Pandora. Try it for yourself.

Awesome Screenshot – This Chrome extension is the greatest tool I’ve discovered to capture selections or entire screenshots of webpages.

Boomerang for Gmail – Boomerang is a great application to schedule emails, follow-up, and reminders.

Buffer – Another Chrome extension that enables you to socially share the webpage you’re reading. You’re able to schedule or post instantly.

Page Ruler – The third Chrome extension of the list, I use this one all the time. Page Ruler measures the dimensions of any spacing or images on a webpage. A fabulous tool for web development.

Tweetdeck – While Hootsuite is the quite popular alternative, I’m quite partial to Tweetdeck. The Twitter application updates in realtime, and enables users to search and schedule updates.

WiseStamp – Emails signatures aren’t necessary a thrilling thing, but clean design can make a great impression. WiseStamp offers a lot of creative freedom for customizing your signature.

Thanksgiving Redo: Tradition at its Finest

Fourth of July.

Pepe’s & Pancakes: A Trip to Peg’s