Author: Kirk

One Hour Without Lights – I Feel Like I Cheated

That one hour without lights was a fairly poorly-timed hour, smack dab in the middle of a night where I needed to get some renovation stuff done. So a few things went through my head … I could kick back for an hour and relax, listening to music, or I could read a book by candelight … Oh! I could chop some wood and relax with Alisa in front of a fire! Or, I could fire up my 120 grit sander and ground off the surface of oil paint so I could apply a coat of primer ….

125 MegaWatts were saved though – so that’s not so shabby. Now if we did this on a regular basis instead of once a year …

1 Hour Of Less Light

An international effort to reduce electricity usage is happening in a few hours (my local time).  I suppose it is already underway for many people already!

A small, simple gesture – but with what results?  It’s like voting, no complaining about it if you can’t do small simple things like, well, turning your lights out for an hour tonight.  Have fun in the dark!  I know I will (sleep …. sleeeeepppppp …….)

Nanaimo B.C. – Google Earth Capital Of The World?

Did anyone else know that Nanaimo, a small town on Vancouver Island here in BC, is leading the world in getting its city mapped?  Did you want to check out the downtown core in 3D, or see the exact lot size of a potential land purchase?  It’s all available in Google Earth.

Privacy issues cannot be ignored here, particularly when the residents don’t seem to be aware of these things.  But that’s the power of Google’s business approach.  Until recent years there has been a lot of information publicly available, but nobody knew about it.  Google lets its bots spider across all this data and mash it all into one place where suddenly people are sitting up and taking notice.  I can do research on cemetery headstones in Nanaimo today from my desk.  In the old days that would have been a trip to Nanaimo and some skulking about in the cemetery – all perfectly legal.  But now that people can do it anonymously … it seems to have changed people’s opinion of the entire thing.  Interesting.

Our First Contest – Still Here!

Worry not those of you who have entered into the Inaugural theBside contest … I have not forgotten you!  I’m just taking a lot longer to get my CDs cataloged, that’s all.  And since Dale was so easily foiled by Nath and Louis (ahem) last time, let’s do a little update here.

I’ve just started to catalogue the “P” artists, and my current count is 529 albums.  Note that a double disk album will count for two albums in most cases.

Updated rules: you cannot guess within 25 CDs of another person’s guess, so get your guesses in early for those obvious numbers!  I’m not going to bother trying to estimate when I’ll be done, as that didn’t work out so well last time.  I’m still hoping for “soon”.

Again, the winner will still get the album of their choice as a reward.

Canada’s Most Controversial Music Video – Thank You!

I’ve been a big fan of Hayden as a musician for many, many years now. I’ve never really thought his videos were much to speak of though, so I stopped watching for them. His latest album (which is excellent) includes the lead track “Where and When”, and CBC Radio 3’s R3TV showcased it last week. And rightfully so. Hayden introduces it and its premise, we get a glimpse of the Radio3 people’s reactions to it, and the video rolls.

Now, the video itself is actually a fabulously created and delivered observation on today’s video obsessed Internet culture. Through it I learned about another video that this one is riffing off of called “2 Girls 1 Cup“. After reading about the video I understand how it could become so notorious in Internet-land, and heartily recommend that you don’t even try to find a copy of it – it is disgusting and the epitome of all that is bad with Internet video. I stopped trying to find a copy once I read that Wikipedia description, as that was enough for me (and any sane, normal person).

So Hayden has caught part of this video’s momentum and created a video that looks back at those who are watching these kinds of things, at those who are surfing YouTube looking for a certain type of video. He reflects on the state of music on the Internet and in concert halls. He poses questions about who is the audience and who is the performer. Maybe I’m seeing more in this video than I should be, but damnit I really like it. Heck, I love. OK, fine, I think you should go watch it. Oh, and the tune is mighty fine so don’t think you’ll be losing time or anything.

Here’s a link, where you can also see all the previous episodes of R3TV – a podcast that I firmly believe deserves a lot more attention and love than it currently receives.

Accolades For A Brother Product

In our current efforts to reduce the amount of clutter and “stuff” we have in our house, we recently traded in our old laser printer and scanner for a Multi-Function Copier (MFC for short).  You know, one of those machines that does it all: copy, print, scan, fax, etc.

After some research and figuring out what I needed versus what I wanted, I found and bought the Brother MFC-7820N.  Not only did it have (almost) all the features I wanted, but it was completely functional in Linux – a do or die criteria.

I have to say, I am impressed.  I’m able to not only print to this network printer, but anyone on my network can use it to scan, copy, print, and fax.  That’s right, I said scan and fax.  I walk up to the unit, specify what computer I want to send the scanned document to, and scan away.  It shows up on the computer via the network.  How freaking cool is that for a consumer-grade machine?!

I’m downright delighted with this machine – and that’s not something easily done.  So bravo Brother!  And give that support center fellow in Japan that I’m emailing back and forth with a little something from this Canuck – he’s doing a bang-up job.

For my reference, here are some resources I found useful when setting up the fax:

  • Test your fax’s sending ability for free – this site allows anyone to fax them something, and it will appear on the main page within a few minutes.  So I could fax something to them and verify they received it.
  • Test your fax’s receiving ability for free – this site allows you to upload a document (up to 3 pages, twice a day) and they’ll fax it for you anywhere in the US and Canada.  The free service pops a cover page on the fax with advertising, but for personal use who cares?  And they offer a premium service that removes the ads.  Just a really neat service.  I used it to fax myself something, to make sure I could receive faxes on my new fax number.

This was prompted by the fact that I just finished tonight setting up the fax capability after activating a distinctive ring on our phone line.  We have a fax number if you ever want to borrow it to send out a fax or if you want to send us something.

The Canadian Museum for Human Rights – Public Consultation

I’ve been passed a link to a public consultation on how to define and manage a newly-approved museum in Canada:

The creation of a new national museum, the Canadian Museum for Human Rights, is an opportunity to tell the story of the evolution of human rights in Canada and elsewhere. This story is a complex story to tell because human rights resonate differently with individual Canadians. A web-based public consultation will provide the opportunity to receive the views of a large number of Canadians and advice on the possible content and programming of this new institution.

There is a link there to a brief survey wherein you can have your say as to what you think about this new museum, what it should focus on, and how it should measure its success. It’s worthwhile and only takes 5-10 minutes if you give the questions a little thought.

Highly recommended! I think the museum represents an interesting opportunity for discussion and reflection (though I didn’t put reflection as my top priority for a museum – take the survey and you’ll see what I mean).

Stanford, You Had Me At $60,000.00

What an uplifting announcement from Stanford University today regarding changes to their financial aid program:

Under the new program, parents with incomes of less than $100,000 will no longer pay tuition. Parents with incomes of less than $60,000 will not be expected to pay tuition or contribute to the costs of room, board and other expenses.

The program also eliminates the need for student loans

Now the American and Canadian education industries are fairly different. But my limited exposure leads me to believe that access to higher education in the States is severely impacted by one’s ability to either pay or borrow large amounts of money. This announcement can hopefully be parlayed into wide-spread changes across the States and Canada.

Education, no matter what level, should be available to everyone, not just those that can afford to pay tuition and room/board.