mblog

A Camp (Nina Persson solo - Cardigans)
Alf
Marit Bergman
DJ Coolof
Broder Daniel
David and the Citizens
Nicolai Dunger
Firefox AK
Johnossi
Jenny Wilson
The Knife
Laasko
Stina Nordenstam
Peter Bjorn and John - young folks
Timo Räisänen
Sibiria
Elin Ruth Sigvardssons
Tiger Lou
Vapnet - Prästgatan

Rabid RecordsThe Motorhomes
Sophie Zelmani
Lasse Lindh
Anna Ternheim
Kent

On October 10th, Ontario residents will have the option to change the way they vote. There is an important ‘referendum’ choice that will appear on the ballot for this year’s provincial elections, and not knowing what it is might sink us back in the Jurassic period of voting for years to come.

The acronym to remember is MMP, Mixed Member Proportional. And it works like this. Say you really like Green Party, but you think that the member in your riding is a schmuck, or simply like the exuberance or the NDP leader in your riding. You want to vote Green for the province, but would rather have your MPP be the ultra-savvy NDP cyclist with a garden in their front yard. Currently, you’d have to make a choice, for the good of the party, or the good of your neighbourhood. This system is called First Pass The Post (FPTP). By voting yes to Mixed Member Proportional (MMP), you will have a say in both your riding, AND your province. Vote the way you want to, and make Canada a REAL democracy.

http://cnews.canoe.ca/CNEWS/Canada/OntarioVotes2007/News/2007/09/14/4496444-sun.html

So, I’m climbing the tower, and i need some sponsorship. It’s a mere 125$ and i figured, if i know 125 people, which i do, and they could spare 1 buck, which they can… then i should be golden.

It’s for the April 26th WWF End Global Warming CN Tower Climb.
Agreeably, this won’t end the issue, but! WWF is awesome.

Their CEO spoke for one of my company’s events yesterday, and he was so wicked.
I guess he used to be the CEO of petro-canada so, he’s got a good idea of things that need changed in the industry.

So, yes, sponsor me! just a buck or two!?
http://wwfcentral.ca/NetCommunity/Page.aspx?&pid=385&srcid=386&frsid=7313

With the recent elimination of Pluto as a planet, it’s about time we find a new 9th planet in the solar system. This particular day has yielded a high percentage of planetary discovery. Today might be the perfect day for any fledgling astronomers to make their mark by discovering the next MegRon 5.
Today in History:

Uranus: 7th planet from the Sun was discovered by William Herschel (1781)
Clyde W. Tombaugh: announced the discovery of Pluto (1930)

If anyone else was gluttonously feasting on the free content buffet, offered by Peekvid, you knew that this was some gross oversight on the internet, and that it would be short lived. No rules, no payment, no data collection… no monetary value at all, aside from the skanky low value banner ads offering Paris Hilton screen savers. Within 2 weeks of my post, the site was shut down into ‘Beta’. YouTube is waging heady battles with it’s content, recently removing 100,000 user uploaded videos. What’s a freeloader to do? Take up torrents? My internet comes from an unsecured connection and for that I am throttled to the point of dial-up, and the web pirates don’t let me play for it.

Viacom (owner of American tripe like MTV, BET, Comedy Central) responded to their battles with YouTube by giving a bid at free copyrighted content from it’s network a new TV content provider, Joost. It is still in testing mode, and doesn’t have nearly the content of Peekvid, but Joost has teamed up with Skype to strengthen it’s position on the web. As our attention span is becoming shorter with different disputes and marketing cycles continually shifting, only a brief time period with will determine if their content is addictive and vast enough to hold us for longer than a month, or if it will be a new step in the momentum to monetize the internet. I am still waiting for my BETA membership to pass, I can’t wait to see the angle.

Abu Dhabi, a pearl in the mouth of a very unstable oyster, wants to be the cultural center of the planet as well. The tourist metropolis is on the tip of a peninsula on the South of the Persian Gulf, and has been a booming business center and resort-like tourist destination since a chic sheik saw the potential to combine oil money, education and culture in the late 60’s. The city’s skyline is already an impressive array of modern architecture and planning, but the Cultural Foundation it setting the foundation to truly set their city apart from its Arab counterparts.

Progress has already begun on an international cultural center, with a Frank Gehry designed Guggenheim Museum, a desert Louvre (that will be more a cluster-like collection of differently sized building types directly by the sea), museums for classical art and performing arts centers among other state-of-the-art cultural facilities. Two 10-lane highways will connect Saadayat Island to the city and the airport, 29 proposed hotels, a marina for cruise ships and moneyed yacht-owners, all is planned for completion by 2018.

You have to wonder how can such a stable city, full of fashion, design, big business and resorts, exist in such a precarious location? Higher education, a lot of money, and friends in high places may afford you protection, but can it save you from atrocious architecture and inevitable resource devastation? In the struggle to mark as an influential nation of many values, you still have to be prepared to glitz it up and shake it like a show girl. If this is high culture, leave me at St. Sophia’s Cathedral choking on the dust of centuries.

Styrofoam has been banned in 24 US cities already, including Portland, San Fran, and Oakland. Why? Because it’s toxic, containing Benzene, and Styrene, which have been linked to various forms of Cancer, and nervous system damage. Plus it’s not recyclable in any measurable way, and never biodegrades. It poisons the air, water, soil, and the people using it. We now have natural and biodegradable containers, made of corn, sugarcane and potato that should be replacing the Styrofoam, plastic and paper take-out containers we’re using today.

Help us make Toronto the first in Canada to stop using Styrofoam, and urge our leaders to support biodegradable packaging!!! Sign the petition online at…
http://naturopack.org/petition.html

Show City Hall you care about this, and with your help we can make this happen.

When ACTRA went on strike, I thought that it was pre-mature for actors to cry foul play while getting paid for their work and getting added promotion as an artist through on-line mediums. I see now that it has been a pre-emptive measure to account for the likelihood of streaming TV and Video becoming standard. Websites like YouTube are skipping along graciously in this time of video compression, loose laws on distribution of copywritten content on the web, and broadband internet.

Peekvid.com is no slouch in violating copyright with it’s massive directory of movies, tv shows, cartoons, asian drama and anime, which they offer free to users. I recommend getting all your bootleg viewing in now before someone in law-land get wind of this operation and shut it down… and probably sue them big time. See shows you haven’t since a kid, and movies that are still in theaters. Peekvid.com

Edit: Since I initially posted this, it has been taken in ‘beta’ version, and offers only an e-mail capture. I wonder what the angle is?

I’m not much of an Apple user, but I have to applaud them for getting closer to the dream device that can do it all. I am a little weary of a touch screen, seems like I would either crack it, or that it will be way too sensitive for my clumsy fingers. But, Skype is in it. I can call on Skype!

There is a 600$ 2 year contract for 8 gig, and well, the iPod had caused so many people trouble that it’s hard to trust that refinancing for this puppy will be worth the pay off, but for sleek factor alone, this is probably closer to the device style that will start appearing on the market… multi-use dispay, multi-function device with large, bright display and tonnes of features and software.

Engaget.com Article

In the past 100 years, we have learned more than has ever been learned in the past. In the next 50 years, we are expected to double our knowledge. Already this information is cumbersome. Google has done a good job of indexing it, and you can certainly look up anything that you want. But with all this knowledge and information available to us, there must be more to been known than what one can think up to search, let alone the deluge created by all this content.

We need tools to help our premature brains sort, search, and be fed the countless possibilities of information available to us. As individuals we all have our own paths to follow and our own habits and tendencies that need to be recognized. We need technologies that know who we are better than our Moms do. If we hope to maintain any sort of cognoscente thought, these tools must know what we like, what we’ve done and what we want to know, even if we don’t.

The internet is still a wild beast, and she needs to be tamed. LivePlasma is helping tame her. The primary use of the software is to cluster similar movies, artists, directors and other media in a visual web using Flash. One take on the application is Musicovery.com, a program that allows you to navigate a similar music web, but this actually plays the songs. Another is C|Net News’ ‘The Big Picture’, which takes news stories and displays paths to related articles. Imagine these routes when applied to science, health, environment, or even government! These implementations are rudimentary and barely intelligent, but give hope that our information is becoming navigable in a not-so-linear fashion.

For other neat visual exploration, see: http://www.visualcomplexity.com/vc/