Arcade Fire – Biting Their Thumbs at Convention

Posted on October 13th, 2009 in Music, creativity | 1 Comment »

Arcade Fire continue to look for interesting ways of engaging with their audeince.  This video shows 2 such attempts, and I’m sure the second was simply a thrill for concernt goers that night.

Blog Posts Should Now Be Automatically Dented

Posted on October 4th, 2009 in Site related | No Comments »

A new plugin should now post dents when I post a blog entry.  I wonder how it handles long posts….

Update: Doh – doesn’t seem to be working.

Hold Off On the Seasonal Flu Vaccine A Moment

Posted on October 4th, 2009 in Health and Fitness, Worth a Quick Look | No Comments »

There’s some evidence that suggests there may be reduced  immunity to H1N1 if you’ve received seasonal vaccines in the last couple of years.  Suddenly those innocuous little needle pricks don’t seem so purely helpful!  Note that everything is still unclear as the findings are only seen in Canada and the paper is not yet even peer-reviewed and published.  So just hold off until things get a little more clear.

Jets Overhead – They Get It

Posted on October 1st, 2009 in Copyrights, Music | No Comments »

I recently heard a song I like on the radio and ended up buying the album it was so good.

Wait, what year is it?  I heard it on the radio and bought it?  Yikes!  I haven’t done that in decades!  But it is true, and I wanted to sahre with you how cool this band is – they get the digital world (or at elast someone in their management team gets it).

Band is out of Victoria BC and is called Jets Overhead.  Their website allows you to download for free their first release from some years ago.  Easy way to battle piracy, right?  They have also released their latest single off their new album “No Nations “under a Creative Commons license.

I wanted to buy their album after listening to it in it entirety on their website (see, free preview – very smart).  Sure I was able to copy the MP3 sings from their website and get the album for free.  But I wanted to support this band.  Problem – they only seemed to offer digital download via iTunes which I won’t support.  I could have bought their CD from MapleMusic for $15 or so, but then have paid $5 shipping to get in in 2 weeks.  That’s broken right there.  I could have paid more to get it sooner, but then I’m paying more for shipping than for the CD.  That’s really broken.

Look, I just want to support this band.

So I decided to contact their management and suggest they get a digital version on Zunior as I wanted a lossless version.  Future Shop and Best Buy don’t carry their album, so I felt really stuck.  Once I explained my situation and desires to the fellow who responded via email, he got it.  Then he directed me to their BandCamp page.  I wasn’t aware of BandCamp prior to this, but man – they understand the digital age too.  So I purchased a lossless version of the album for less than $10 and was able to immediately download it, transcode to ogg, and listen.

Great album – seriously great.  Great band – supporting Creative Commons and all that.  Great management.  Great website too (BandCamp).

Support this band if you like their music – you can listen to it for free on their website or on their BandCamp page.

If they ever come to Vancouver/Surrey I’d like to know so I can buy a ticket.

Creepy Windows 7 Advertisement

Posted on September 30th, 2009 in Geek, I Think ... | No Comments »

I know what a Launch Party is.  This video advertisement for Windows 7 makes it all sound so creepy though.  And who are the writers of this stuff?  And the poor actors – they’re so rife with stereotypes that are trying not to be stereotypes that I can’t imagine how many takes it took to get some of those lines out.

The whole thing feels so terribly manufactured – could anyone possibly think it is a good ad?  Which makes me wonder who they’re targetting for this.  Which then makes me wonder if this is simply a viral marketing effort, a more sureptitious means of getting the word out than a simple ad.

Whatever the case, I won’t be holding or attending a Windows 7 Release Party.  Sorry.

Why Email At Work Can Be Bad

Posted on September 18th, 2009 in I Think ... | No Comments »

The Hacker gets a $33,000.00 fine and the employee who opened an attachment from a yahoo account on her perdiatric cardiac surgery department’s computer gets what?  And seriously, pesonal medical data is worth what nowadays?

Pretty much every detail of this story shocks me.

Cascades of Updates

Posted on September 14th, 2009 in Site related | No Comments »

This plugin now lets me update my blog, which updates identi.ca, which updates twitter!

Bah, failure abounds.  Deactivated for now.

And I Was Considering Buying One

Posted on September 14th, 2009 in Teh Funnay | 1 Comment »

Until he mentioned “Creepy Dad” …. yeah – he does look kind of creepy.