crows to burnaby

Aaaand the award for Best Year of 2006 is: 2006!

It was a good one. It was full of new experiences, something I'm a big fan of. It had highs, it had lows, and it had a happy ending but with enough of a cliffhanger to make me want to tune tomorrow and see what happens next.

Have fun tonight, people, and let's all keep our fingers crossed that the sequel is even better than the original.

Having had a lovely Christmas day, we were faced with the prospect of what to do on the 26th. (The U.S., shockingly enough, does not have Boxing Day.)

Our original thought was that we'd go in to Philadelphia proper, check out our old haunts and favorite places, and wander around for a while and see what's changed. However, we managed to soak in the luxury of sleep for so long that had we gone in to the city, we'd hardly have had enough time to do much of anything. Plus, the hassle of traffic threatened to take the fun out of the few hours we would have to spend there before coming back for dinner.

So we ended up at the King of Prussia Mall, which is less satisfying but much closer. The town of King of Prussia contains one of the largest malls in the United States, a sort of consumerist Mecca for the region. It represents much of what we despise, and yet curiousity (and a wish for new Playstation 2 games) sometimes draws us there when we visit.

Parking was sheer madness, but all things considered, there was less stress and havoc than a typical Canadian Boxing Day sale day - the prices aren't discounted that much (I guess "Black Friday", the day after Thanksgiving, is the U.S. equivalent for megasales).

Things we learned:

• We know this, we lived this, but we have to be reminded every time we come here: East Coast drivers are far more aggressive than West Coast. It's not a myth.
• 2,856,132 square feet of people ignoring each other is kind of creepy.
• You can have a fruit smoothie in your hand or a cell phone; it's your choice. But you'll need the other hand free to carry your coat and/or bags.
• People will walk around the mall for hours and hours, but drive around a parking lot for the same amount of time to avoid walking too far from their car to the mall.
• It may be fun to take your yellow Lambourghini to the mall, but remember, it doesn't have as much trunk space as your Hummer.
• Fashion tip for Vancouver: fun printed pajama bottoms are now acceptable outerwear.

We escaped with only a few minor purchases. I can even claim I sort of needed some of them. I think a spiritual purging may be necessary, though; I'll be spending some quality time in the forest after we get back to BC...

Yesterday, here near Philadelphia, it was beautiful and sunny and warm. The sun was so bright and blazing that it made me realize just how small and puny our winter sun is north of the border, even as far south as we are in Vancouver. The difference in intensity was obvious. We walked around outside for a bit, just because I hoped that soaking up a little extra light would help me through the next few months of grey.

Today it is steadily pouring a solid rain and the weather looks exactly like what we left behind in Vancouver.

I thought half the point of travel was to get somewhere that feels different for a little while...?

Ah well - all the more reason to stay in, get a fire going in the woodstove, and eat delicious turkey 'til we burst.

Alright. Today's flight hasn't been cancelled yet (I'm still mentally prepared for anything, including being rerouted to Oklahoma somehow), the dog & apartment have a sitter here to look after them, we're packed and ready to go.

So posting might be a little light for a few days, or if I've got a lot of spare time, who knows, I might post a lot.

For now, I leave you with a example of the quality meal we can expect on the airplane:

and some party tips for your holiday celebrations.

Have a good 'un.

So the plan was that this Friday morning, Greg and I were going to fly out to Philadelphia to visit his parents for Xmas.

So far so good?

Wednesday evening, we got home from work and checked our messages. There was an anxious message from Greg's mom letting us know that the Denver airport was closed due to a snowstorm, and since we change planes in Denver, we'd better check on our flights.

I thought, that's nice of her.

I checked the itinerary on Expedia. It said the flight was Thursday.

I checked the tickets I had printed out the day before. THEY ALSO SAID THURSDAY.

And then I vaguely remembered that yes, we HAD booked the flights for Thursday. I had a moment of real panic, realizing that I had misremembered our departure date and that our flight was actually leaving in just over twelve hours rather than a day and a half. You understand, I never, ever, ever do things like this. I am meticulous about travel plans, I like to get to the airport well in advance, I tend to anticipate every potential problem and figure out what has to be done to avoid it. The idea of me missing a flight because I got the day wrong is sheer horror.

But I took a deep breath and called up Expedia to see what was happening with the flights.

Sure enough, they were cancelled. No other flights on Thursday or Friday, and there was ONE flight available on Saturday. We took it.

So it all worked out okay. But I'm still freaked out about the idea that if there hadn't just happened to have been a snowstorm in Colorado, we would be obliviously missing a flight right now. It'd be near-impossible to get another flight, and the stress would be unreal.

Sometimes the universe helps you out a little bit. Thanks, universe.

I'm not a fan of Rocky, or Rambo, or Judge Dredd, or, well, any of Sylvester Stallone's movies. I know little about him besides that he does thug-like action movies that tend not to interest me, and that there's an amusing and obscene anecdote about him circulating on Vancouver sets which may or may not be true. So it's been a bit of an eye-opener to learn that Stallone is actually a well-spoken, thoughtful kind of guy. He's been answering questions from fans over on Ain't It Cool News. And not just a few questions, but everything that gets thrown at him. He's up to 180 questions as of this post - ten questions per page, 18 pages. This is not typical celebrity movie-star behaviour.

On page 18, a fan asked him, "Why did you go through all this for us?"

I’m glad you asked that question. I was trying to surmise our relationship, because on the surface we seem to be at opposite ends of the spectrum. The truth is, we are not that dissimilar. I relish the relationship we’ve developed and truly take to heart the insights provided by the talk-backs/comments… because you open up a window to the world that is closed to most celebrities because of arrogance on their behalf. But the time comes when professional gravity sets in and you, my friends, are the keepers of the flame, the bearers of the truth, and quite often the truth comes wrapped in barbed wire. More than being physical, I consider myself cerebral and a person who lives his life alone. I came up that way. I feel the way many of you feel, there’s a kinship there, and that’s why I’ve savored this experience and will miss it when it rides off into the sunset. But, I will return with RAMBO IV and welcome your insights into that character and life in general. I may be a freak on the exterior, but I’m a geek at heart.

He talks a little about his familiar voice:

I’ve always sounded like a family of swallows decided to build a home in my mouth shortly after birth. It’s not easy sounding intelligent when you’re being muffled by a bird’s nest in your throat, but I’m an animal lover and chose not to remove it. Truthfully, I mumble, I wish I didn’t. It’s mainly because of an accident at birth (not going for the sympathy vote here), which makes it very hard to articulate with any sense of clarity.

Reading his answers, you get the impression of a man who's enjoying being able to represent himself online in his own way, and a real sense of gratitude towards his fans for all their interest and kindness.

I still may not like his movies, but at least now I have some respect for him - certainly more than Schwarzenegger, anyway...

Besides not contributing to sweatshops and pollution from transport, clothing made here is less likely to attack you.

You know, it's really not all that difficult to cook a turkey. It does take a while, and if you were also cooking ten other side dishes for a table of twenty I suppose it would become pretty stressful in a hurry.

But when you're just having a few couples over and they're bringing the side dishes and desserts, it can be quite a joy.

The turkey could've been slightly less done, slightly moister - but we cooked it for the minimum amount of time suggested to me by the guy at Windsor Meats, so what more do you want? Anyway, it was good, and the stuffing was fantastic.

We've never really hosted a holiday party, or for that matter a dinner party; most of our parties are the usual "drop in for a while and bring some food/alcohol if you like" where our little condo gets filled to capacity. Sit-down dinners are trickier; with a little maneuvering and the help of some patio furniture we were able to get eight people snuggled in. It was a really good time and it was nice to see it all happen. Now I kind of get why people "entertain"...

And as a bonus, we should have enough leftovers to tide us over for the week. We have turkey, cranberry sauce, green beans, a chocolate pudding cake, pumpkin pie, stollen, peppercorn bread, and salad greens. Plus there's broth from the turkey, and leftover pad thai from the night before the party. (Sadly departed are the stuffing and the yam poutine.)

Of course, that's a lot of rich food already, and it's not even actually Christmas yet. Roll me to the gym...

At lunchtime I lost a game of dice to Santa, in the middle of a monkey's wedding.

Santa was offering free drinks at a local non-Starbucks coffee location to anyone who could best him with a single die. I took him up on it. He rolled a six right off the bat, but gave me another chance; he rolled a three and I rolled a one.

Not my lucky day, I guess.

In the meantime, the monkeys were happily exchanging vows.

I've been getting a lot of these lately - pump 'n' dump stock spams with the spam part in a graphic and the rest filled with supposedly non-spam-like text. They're pretty easy to recognize from the header (hmmm, a letter from Elvin Overton titled "Good Morning Elvin") but I clicked on this one anyway and was greatly amused by the text that's supposed to trick the spam filter into thinking it's not spam:

Sometimes a green submarine hides, but a girl scout always sanitizes the paper napkin! Indeed, another fried judge figures out an avocado pit defined by a short order cook. A pig pen starts reminiscing about lost glory, and an obsequious crane takes a coffee break; however, the chestnut living with the tomato makes love to an ostensibly stoic customer.
Sometimes the minivan of a class action suit self-flagellates, but a financial cowboy always graduates from a fruit cake of a ball bearing!
Sometimes the minivan of a class action suit self-flagellates, but a financial cowboy always graduates from a fruit cake of a ball bearing! When a tabloid ruminates, a minivan about the chess board sweeps the floor.
Sometimes the minivan of a class action suit self-flagellates, but a financial cowboy always graduates from a fruit cake of a ball bearing! When a tabloid ruminates, a minivan about the chess board sweeps the floor.
Sometimes the minivan of a class action suit self-flagellates, but a financial cowboy always graduates from a fruit cake of a ball bearing!
When a tabloid ruminates, a minivan about the chess board sweeps the floor.

If spam was always this tasty, I might even read it more often.

You'd think I'd make a post like this once in a while, but I haven't really, have I?

Most of the new music I get into is by recommendation from friends - I use last.fm or Pandora sporadically but they rarely give me something that really moves me. It's like I need someone to TELL me to listen to something before I'll take it seriously, invest emotionally in it.

• I know I'm just a BIT behind the curve on this one, but this year Jen and Marcus finally got me listening to Nine Inch Nails. I always thought it'd be too shouty/aggro for me - I hate screamy voices - but Reznor has more of an anguished gritty tone that still can carry a melody. And it's more electronic than I thought, like if Depeche Mode just got really pissed off. And, hey, sometimes you just want to feel like a tortured soul. So I'm making up for lost time and listening to lots of NIN these days.
• I'm also quite enjoying a few tracks by Tweaker, the solo project of ex-NIN drummer Chris Vrenna, courtesy of our actor friend Craig. More electronica/downtempo, not as harsh and angsty, very listenable. Check out "Worse than Yesterday".
• Marcus pointed me to one song by Meletus is a Liar and I bought some tracks. I like the lonely, pensive sound to it; it's not something that I listen to every day but it mixes well with my other music.
• It goes without saying that I love Thom Yorke's solo album, The Eraser. Okay, it did take a few listens for me to love it, but I do now.
• I've gotten into Regina Spektor lately, via a recommendation from my friend Jon (who was the one who got me to listen to Radiohead, so I will forever respect his musical taste). Regina is in the sort of eclectic singer/pianist genre, like Tori Amos or Fiona Apple. Oddly enough, Darren also posted a rave about her the day I bought the CD.
• When ARCTIC played out east, we played a show in London, ON with Portia and I greatly enjoyed their set. Their Myspace tracks are live off the floor and give you a good idea of what they sound like - very Bjork/Massive Attack-ish sound. It pleases me when their tracks appear in shuffle mode on my iPod.
• I'm also really enjoying listening to the partially-finished ARCTIC track currently in progress. That's a good sign - if I got sick of them after a few listens, there'd be something wrong...

I have been craving new music, so if you have any suggestions, bring 'em on. In general I'm into anything that combines the acoustic with the electronic - Radiohead, Massive Attack, Beck - and very textured things, like Boards of Canada. I haven't found myself getting too excited about much new stuff lately - everything seems so "post"-everything and lo-fi and sparse, and sometimes that's nice but I'm finding a lot of the new indie bands to be derivative of each other. But I'm all ears if you've got ideas.

I seem to be in a Blogging Lull at the moment. I'm sure it'll pass. In the meantime, here's a list of sustainable holiday tips from Stop Global Warming:

• Choose energy-efficient LED holiday lights, which use 80% less energy.
• Select alternatives to wasteful paper gift wrapping -- scarves, newspaper, reusable boxes, tins and jars. If you buy paper, always choose recycled and save wrapping for re-use.
• Give the gift of an experience, rather than material goods, and save resources. Ideas include: theatre and concert tickets; museum memberships; and season tickets to sporting events.
• Shop early and avoid overnight shipping. Ground shipping saves more fuel than air shipping.
• Buy cards made from post-consumer recycled paper, or send holiday email greetings.
• Buy a living tree and plant it after the holidays.

I'll add one: if you buy things locally rather than ordering them (to avoid shipping, which uses fuel), I recommend you don't drive if you can help it, because you'll end up driving around in circles looking for parking as it is currently madness on the streets already.

Greg and I going out east for a few days over the holidays. But we stalled on booking our flights until early November, and then it suddenly dawned on us that we hadn't booked a place for our delightful dog to stay.

By that time, all the kennels we contacted were completely booked for the holidays, from Gibsons to Surrey to Aldergrove - one of them said they'd been overbooked since mid-August. We got put on multiple lengthy waitlists. All the dogsitters were booked. Our vet, who boards a few animals, was full up. Bringing him on a cross-country flight is not a fair or reasonable option. We thought we'd ask our usual dog-sitting friends to share looking after him while we're away, but they'll will mostly be out of town themselves. It was getting a little panicky, but as it turns out one good friend of ours will dogsit and water the plants and so on, and we'll have a dogwalker coming in on a few of the days.

It got us thinking, though. Vancouver's a big city, with a lot of dogs in it, and apparently not nearly enough boarding for everybody, at least at one time of the year. What if someone with even less notice than us has to make a trip in a hurry, a few days before Xmas? They wouldn't have a hope in hell.

Of course, dog kennels can't really exist in the urban environment - the noise would get them shut down in an instant. And dogsitting is not a lucrative business. There's a practical limit on how many dogs a single person can look after responsibly.

If you could come up with a service that would find dogsitters just over the peak period, you'd do alright. It's a tricky one, though. I thought about some kind of online dogshare matchup where people would offer to take in dogs, but on a trust level it'd never work. Proper dogsitters are insured and bonded, because no one wants to let random strangers into their homes, or take a chance on them stealing or losing their dog. You wouldn't hand your kid over to a strange sitter you found on the net - most people are like that about their dog, too.

Still, if you're the entrepreneurial type, think about it and maybe you'll see the angle I'm missing, and come up with something.

And then book us in for next year, would you?

It's been ages since I've written anything about recording ARCTIC. This is mostly because it's been very stop-and-go for the past several months - between NXNE, Marcus's solo tour, and a few live shows and rehearsals, and myriad other timing & scheduling issues, it's been hard to get into a recording routine. When you start and stop over a period of weeks, you forget where you were and what needed to be done, and all the gear gets moved around and has to be rewired, and it takes so much time just to get back to where you left off. Now that the band won't be playing out for a few months, the focus has switched back entirely to recording, and there's been some good things happening.

We spent some time rewiring things, adding a new ribbon mic and an incredibly helpful and amusingly named studio control center, shuffling bits of the studio around, and creating something more like a proper sound booth between dividers. That and some creative buffering helped to cut down on some of the ambient sound in the studio. It wasn't that bad before, but it's better now. We're also having a smoother time of switching between mics and speakers as well as dodging latency.

And of course, it's not as if nothing was tracked that whole time - there are a good solid number of songs in various states of doneness. There's also very different multiple variations of a few of the songs. One song was originally in 4/4 but it looks like the version that was spontaneously recorded in 3/4 is going to win out. Another started off slow, then was rerecorded at about 1.5 times the speed, but I think we'll be going back to the slow version.

Everything is far enough along now that I can listen to all the tracks and get a sense for how cohesive the album could be. It's not defined enough to be able to come up with a track order or anything, and there's still a handful of songs that aren't anywhere near done. But it's enough to get a rough feel for how it might flow, and I think we've done the most complex parts already. It's less nebulous, and that's nice.

Things that are good about the current weather situation

• Snow on branches looks beautiful
• Snow on mountains looks amazing
• The way the snow softly dampens all sound and makes people walk thoughtfully
• Watching the dog bound joyfully through snowdrifts like a rabbit
• The amusement value of hearing Vancouverites respond to snow with confusion and disgust: "This isn't Vancouver - this is Whitehorse!"

Things that aren't

• Yeah, the snowplows are out, but too late to prevent the three solid inches of ice coating the street
• Rediscovering that your winter boots leak, something you noticed towards the end of last season when it was too late to care, and then forgot about
• Having to stand in the cold while the dog searches in vain for a patch of grass
• Mind-boggling bus lineups, to which the only alternative is driving, which would be worse (do they even sell snow-tires here?!)
• The horror of hat hair
• Having the same conversation with every other East Coast import about how this is nothing compared to what we grew up with
• No longer having bragging rights about how mild the winters are here

I woke up abruptly at about 4:15 AM from a dream in which I was getting ready for bed on Monday night, but had a horrible sinking realization that I hadn't done any of my UBC work for the day, not even turned on my laptop or checked my email so I frantically started trying to get some work done.

Then I woke up enough to figure out it was still Sunday night/Monday morning and today hadn't happened yet.

But then I couldn't get back to sleep, which happens to me often when I wake up between 4 and 6. Usually if it happens it takes about an hour, but I gave up at 6 and got up and read for a while. I curled up on the couch eventually and got back to sleep sometime around 7:15-7:30.

At 8:15, I half-heard Greg getting ready for work in the background, and my dreams shifted into me waking up and talking to him and sitting on the floor patting the dog. Then I moved a foot in real life and realized I was still asleep on the couch. Then suddenly in real life the dog started barking like an idiot, because he does that when the phone rings, and it shook me very harshly into an ugly, noisy, sleepy, groggy reality.

It turned out to be someone from Greg's department, calling to tell him the power is out all over campus and all classes are cancelled and any non-essential services are suspended. So he gets to stay home today.

Now, me... I was going to be working from home today anyway. I have power.

Do I work because I can? Or take a snow day because everyone else is?

I was still too sleep-deprived to decide, so I went back to bed for a while and now I feel better.

I think I'll do some work. Partly because I can and might as well, but also because if I don't, I'm going to go to bed tonight, Monday night, and realize that I haven't done any of my UBC work for the day, not even turned on my laptop or checked my email...........

It's a snowstorm!! Everybody stay indoors! Keep off the roads! Stock up on candles and batteries!! Close your curtains and blinds! Don't talk to strangers!!

UP TO FIVE TO TEN CENTIMETRES ARE EXPECTED! *shrieks of horror*

(Yes, Craig, you may now laugh until you cry.)

I know people who are calling in sick tomorrow.

Me, it's my work-at-home day... I don't have to worry about it. *yawn*

Take a slice of really good bread (Terra Breads makes an amazing rosemary olive oil loaf that should suit. In fact, if you don't live in Vancouver, have some rosemary on hand).

Toast it.

Put some honey on it.

Sprinkle curry powder over top. If lacking the appropriate aforementioned bread, sprinkle some rosemary as well.

Slice up an avocado and spread it onto the bread.

Eat.

You can wait until you're done eating to thank me - don't talk with your mouth full.

Man, I just love that big glowy thing at the Backstage Lounge. It's practically a reason to play there, just 'cause the pictures look so great.

It was a good show. We were on second, which is perfect... the crowd is at its peak when you finish. The place was pretty full, and we had lots of people up front, some sitting watching up close, others bopping around a little further back. (Vancouver is one of those cities where it's very difficult to get people to dance, so I take any dance-like motion as a compliment.)

Au4 closed the night; it's the fourth time I've seen them now, and I still enjoy it, much like I couldn't stop listening to the CD when I got it. They're also super nice and professional and easy to work with. You learn very quickly to appreciate and respect the other people who are serious about what they do. It makes things go so much smoother and that, in turn, makes it all much more fun.

The ARCTIC crew all stayed out ridiculously late after the show. I can't believe how functional I am today after only five hours or so of sleep. But I'm starting to run down now; this rock star needs an afternoon nap...

UPDATE: Want to know what you missed? Here are some live videos from the show.

I try to be reasonably conscientious about wearing earplugs at shows, both as an audience member and as a musician. On stage I'm pretty close to a drumset and even though it's not like we're a heavy band, that kit can sure make a racket. And attending shows, you never quite know what you're going to get - some venues and sound guys appreciate that excessive volume can make people miserable, and others like to crank 'er up until your teeth hurt. I remember seeing a show, I think at the Railway, where I found my eyes forced to blink in reflex every time the drummer hit the kick drum.

Plus, I've got a bit of tinnitus already, which happened at some point during a loud summer spent in Philadelphia - I suspect the July 4th fireworks display, which I remember finding painfully loud. It's not all that bad - I only notice it in a really quiet room, and it isn't distracting at any other time.

But a few months ago my left ear, over the course of a few hours, suddenly felt clogged and uncomfortable and my tinnitus in that ear became very loud. I had it checked out immediately, and was told it was probably a viral ear infection that would have to go away on its own. It improved dramatically over the next few days, but there's still a residual hissing/ringing in my left ear that wasn't there before that day. I'm told it may get better in time - but that can take quite a while.

The upshot of all of this is that I'd been tossing around the idea of getting custom earplugs for quite a while, but that experience with my left ear gave me a scare. Having had a taste of how much worse my tinnitus COULD be, through factors out of my control, I decided I needed to make the changes that ARE in my control.

As I've said, I've worn store-bought earplugs faithfully, but they are very unsatisfying - they strip off so much of the high-end that you lose all the subtleties of the sound. Sometimes I found myself putting them in loosely, or leaving out the plug that isn't facing the drumkit, which defeats the purpose but was often the only way I could get enough clarity to perform well. I've tried a number of different types, but nothing was optimal. Custom-made earplugs are expensive - but tinnitus and deafness are forever.

So Marcus and I both made appointments at the Western Institute for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing to get fitted for custom musicians' earplugs. They cost $140, which is cheaper because WIDHH is a non-profit - other places charge about $160-170. They're available with 15db or 25db filters; some places offer a 9db version. We decided 15db would be about right. You can also buy additional filters if you want to swap them out in different circumstances; they're an extra $80 or so.

Now the freaky part. They have to make a mold of your ears and send them out to the lab. So the first thing is to stick a little piece of foam, attached to a string, as deep into your ear as it can safely go. The fellow who did our ears poked the foam so far in that your brain is sending you alarm signals - your body KNOWS you're not supposed to have something that far down your ear canal, and it's a bit disturbing and not very comfortable, either. I had to have one of mine adjusted because it was starting to ache, and Marcus had to start over as the first piece of foam was too big a fit.

Then the fun part. The guy mixes up a sort of epoxy-like goop, some pink and white substances, that end up looking like bubble gum. This goes into something that looks like a icing tube. This then goes into your ear. And that's why it's a good thing you've got a piece of foam buried deep in your ear canal, because who knows how far the goop would go without it?

Having pink goop squirted into your ear makes a disturbing squelching FHHHSSHHPPPSHHPPP sound... and then nothing. Once both your ears have been filled, you can't reasonably hear much of anything. Conversations are difficult and you quickly switch to gestures. It's quite still and strangely peaceful - when you know it's going to end in ten minutes. I wouldn't want to make it a habit.

Then the molds get worked awkwardly out of your ear and you feel like your brain's going to get pulled out as well, and then you get to see what the insides of your ears are shaped like. They're much more crooked and bendy than you'd think. Everything sounds so much clearer after you've been deaf for ten minutes.

It took exactly two weeks for the plugs to arrive, so last night's show was the first opportunity I had to use them.

I should've done it years ago.

It really is just like having the volume turned down. It's an even attentuation. Foam plugs cut out more of the high-frequency sounds (which are more harmful, so that's usually a good thing) but that's what makes the sound so muffled. I could still hear things quite clearly with the earplugs in, and I had no trouble distinguishing anything - it just took the edge off. They're fantastic. Singing with them was a little strange, not because I couldn't hear myself as I feared, but because I could hear myself so clearly that I wondered if I was too loud.

So if you have a need for good earplugs and you've been waffling about whether or not it's worth the money, I say do it. These really are a cut above standard earplugs - and $140 won't buy your hearing back if it starts to go.

I'm always highly amused by "musician wanted" ads that specify "no flakes".

If you're a flake, do you really think you're a flake?

Sure, many people will admit they're flaky in one way or another. But the type of "flakes" referred to here are usually the type who blow off rehearsals, don't learn the material, don't have their gear ready, and are in general unreliable. There's a lot of these people out there, but the problem is they don't realize it's a problem.

No one is going to look at an ad and say "No flakes... oh... uh... guess I'm out."

"No druggies" also shows up in ads, but that should be pretty clear. Either you're a druggie, or you're not. There are druggies who haven't admitted it to themselves and might answer the ad anyway, but they're likely to be in the minority.

But I doubt "no flakes" works as an effective filter.

I'd suggest making the ad itself a deterrent to flakes - ie., "We work really hard and expect you the same from you". Of course, everyone's definition of "work really hard" is going to vary as well...

A few days later, and the accuracy of this software has gotten better. But I still don't think I can realistically use of for transcription - as you see. There are just enough mistakes that going back in correcting them will take as much time as taking it in the first place (and that should be "typing"). And most of the mistakes are insidious - minor grammatical things that are hard to pick up skimming.

Buying and string a fast type this

I am extremely fast typist, so unless I am actively trying not to use my hands, this software is not a huge benefit for me.

The other strange thing is that it is hard for me pose my fonts strictly in my hand

The other strange thing is that it is hard for me to compose my thoughts strictly in my head. I am very much of visual writer - I need to see the words in front of me. I like to rearrange my sentences after they have already been written. I guess I could get used to this, but I find myself staring blankly at the screen, uncertain what to say next. And by the time I am done making corrections, I have lost my train of thought.

It's back to the keyboard for me.

We're planning to use voice recognition software at work to transcribe video. Alas, since industry leader Dragon Naturally Speaking isn't available for Mac, I'm using iListen by MacSpeech, and I'm in the process of training the software to recognize my voice. So far I've read about twenty minutes or more of text into it. The results have often been less than stellar, but I do understand it takes a while to fine-tune things.

Everything you see from this point on will have been dictated using iListen, without any editing:

Unfortunately I haven't yet learned all commands to back tracking and make corrections using iListen. It's a bit strange same words come out that aren't exactly when I would have sent, but it's still not that. Bad. I meant to save bad. Know that should say say for knots say if. I think it's starting to panic. It seems to do better if I speak smoothly. I guess that makes sense since I've been trained at to listen to Maine while I talk they headed. Who were the hell dividend main from?

This is not going well.

There something like three pages worth of instructions and demands, and really I should be training at with corrections while I'm talking. But I just want to dive then and use the software. Maybe that is in the best approach for this.

I said it isn't.

Here's something I've been meaning to do for a while. Meg Fowler does this often and well and it's lots of fun - questions for you, o precious visitors. Some of you I know well and some of you I don't even know exist. Now is your time to shine, your moment in the sun (if there was actually any sun today or likely to be any for the next week, that is).

So move your hands from mouse to keyboard and let's see what you have to say for yourself. Yes, YOU.

1) Hi! How are you today?
2) Do you have a calendar nearby? What's the theme?
3) Do you prefer sweet or savory?
4) What would you do for a living if you could do ANYTHING - time, training, physical strength and talent are not barriers?
5) Have you ever played lasertag?
6) What's your favourite article of clothing you have?
7) Do you have a superpower? What is it?
8) What song would you sing at karaoke? (You have to pick something, you can't just squirm and say oh I can't sing.)

That ought to get you started. C'mon, this'll give you a way to put off doing that unpleasant task you're avoiding at work for at LEAST ninety seconds.

Boy, it's really one of those just-when-you-think-it-can't-rain-any-harder- it-suddenly-does kind of nights, isn't it? For that matter, most of the weekend was like this, except for occasional bursts of actual, real SUNLIGHT.

I like this kind of rain, though. It's kind of warmish out, and the intensity of the rain gives you something to react to. I can't stop peeking out the window to see what it's doing. Vancouver's typical grey drizzle is so unexpressive, but a good downpour like this catches your attention. I used to love New York thunderstorms in the summertime for that reason - that's still one of the few things I occasionally miss about Long Island.

I even walked home in it tonight. I'd been at the studio all afternoon, and headed for the bus stop - then just kept walking. After several hours spent sitting in a chair, it felt good to move around, and the rain just added atmosphere. Took me about an hour to get home, and the umbrella couldn't stop me getting soaked below the knees, but I enjoyed it. I got one good splash from a car at a point near the end of my walk where it really didn't make any difference - just made me laugh.

If it's got to rain, it might as well do it with style.

Greg keeps me up to date on the latest & greatest movie news, and so when he spotted an article about the upcoming film production of Stephen Sondheim's "Sweeney Todd", he knew I'd be all over that.

See, here's the thing. When most of the other teenagers were listening to, oh, Rick Astley or Bon Jovi or something, I was the freak interested in Stephen Sondheim musicals.

Even anyone else my age who would've said they liked musicals would probably have been talking about Cats or Les Miserables. But my favourite musical of all time is Sweeney Todd, the story of a murderous revenge-seeking barber who kills his clients and lets his landlady, Mrs. Lovett, cook them up into meat pies. We had the George Hearn and Angela Lansbury version on VHS, and I watched it so many times I've pretty much got it permanently burned into my brain. I used to love showing it to friends just to get their reactions. (Most of the time, they were still my friends afterwards, too.)

There's this great moment, for me the real turning point of the entire show, where Mrs. Lovett gets the idea of what to do with Todd's victims. She presents the idea to him, a bit shyly, hesitant, wringing her hands on her apron:

Seems a downright shame....
Seems an awful waste...
Such a nice plump frame woss-'is-name has - had - has...
Nor it can't be traced.

In the video, you can hear audience members groan and gasp as they realize what she's implying. They're disgusted, but they're riveted. Mrs. Lovett is bumbly and harmless and seems to see Todd's bloodthirsty revenge quest as an endearing personality quirk, which she doesn't fully understand but is happy to assist him with, especially if it'll help out her pie shop a little.

Business needs a lift -
Debt to be erased.
Think of it as thrift, as a gift, if you get my.... drift?
[pause]
No?
[sigh]
Seems an awful waste.

Todd hasn't caught on yet. But by now the audience has got it. They're still shocked. But she seems so innocent and reasonable that by the time the next song, "A Little Priest", finishes the first act, we all think the whole thing is a quite practical and decent venture and we wish them all the best in their new business partnership.

The movie version will be directed by Tim Burton and star Johnny Depp and Helena Bonham Carter. This sounds like a deadly good combination, and I have high hopes. I am slightly concerned that Burton might make it too "cute", and that the stars will be too young 'n' pretty to be believable as aging, weathered working-class Londoners. And it may be that nothing can ever live up to the high standards set by the version I've got memorized already. But I can't wait to see how it comes out, regardless.

Looks like I spoke too soon about last week's show being our last of the year - we're playing another one after all, because we were offered the show and it's just too much fun not to. It'll be on November 17 at the Backstage Lounge, and we'll be with the ever-impressive AU4 again, as well as Bradley.

This Sunday was the first time I can ever remember that I didn't know about the time change beforehand. Usually I look these things up in advance, or I see it on a calendar, or notice something somewhere that says "Don't forget to set your clocks back!" This year, I was oblivious.

And it was great! Because I hadn't been able to fall asleep for an extra hour Saturday night, and so I needed to sleep more and decided I wouldn't have time to stop by the Vancouver Guitar Show before meeting up with my parents. And when I awoke, and learned that I was the lucky winner of an extra hour in my day, I was so damn happy.

How often do you wake up and discover that you have an extra hour that you weren't expecting? Not often.

So I went to the guitar show after all. It's a good thing I don't actually play guitar or it'd be like walking into a candy shop and wanting everything. I gawked at some very cool and very old and very custom and very interesting guitars and a few nice basses. Didn't see anything I couldn't live without, though there were some pedals that were seriously tempting, and some incredibly small yet powerful bass amps that would make carting my gear around almost pleasant. I picked up a little Yamaha sampler for $10 from a dealer who just wanted rid of it - it'll give me a new toy to play with, and something new to learn, and if I don't like it I expect I can sell it for $20.

The next plan for the day was to meet up with my parents at IKEA, since we both wanted to get something there (including meatballs w/lingonberry sauce) and figured it'd be a convenient meeting spot. Surprisingly, the power was out for a small chunk of Coquitlam, and IKEA's restaurant was down. What are the odds? We got sushi in PoCo instead and went for a walk in a park somewhere in between the two places.

Next item on the agenda: the second annual Halloween Haunted Studio Tour. Once again, Greg was a tour guide at this event, in which Bridge Studios sets up an elaborate haunted house on their sets. Makeup artists, special effects, actors and stuntpeople volunteer their time to entertain tour groups for the weekend. This year was far bigger than last year, with longer tours, more people, and more parts of the studio included. It sold out weeks in advance - I was going to post something about it but there almost didn't seem to be a point. You get a good look at major Stargate sets (including the Stargate - now I wish I had actually watched the show before so that I'd recognize the sets and get excited about it - ah well ;).

I wasn't particularily scared but I was certainly entertained, and Greg was a terrific host despite trying to feed me to a witch at one point. But he'd been fending off zombies, vampires, and a giant mutant spider-beetle for days, so who can blame him?

After this, Jen and I went out for Ethiopian food at Addis Cafe on Commercial. I've been saying "oh, we should try that" for years and never done it, so it was pretty exciting. I'm a definite fan of eating with fingers. Ethiopian food is eaten by scooping up the food with a type of bread called injera, which has a pleasant spongy texture. The flavours were fantastic, seriously. Very very tasty (and not too spicy, if you're worried) and fun to eat.

All in all, it was a pretty rich weekend. Well, Saturday wasn't as eventful, but it still had its perks. Not every single day can be filled with interest and novelty (though I'm not sure why not).

On Friday I spent most of the day in delightfully music-oriented meetings. Friday evening I went out with some friends first to see Paula Toledo at Cafe Montmartre. She played a lovely solo set at the semi-Parisian cafe on Main Street, where crepes, wine, and flickering candles set the atmosphere. Her last album was recorded in France, so I think the setting is quite appropriate and suits her songs well.

From there we caught Mongoose, a "Rock Punk n Roll quartet", at the Lamplighter. I'd heard plenty about Mongoose before - they're known for not only being a wildly energetic heavy & loud band, but doing it with great technical proficiency. Shockk, the guitarist, also does an ambient guitar project called Interior Design - he played in between sets at our last show at the Lamplighter. And Johnny Wildkat, the bassist, has done sound at our last two shows. They're all an extremely talented bunch, and so while Mongoose is a definite departure from the sort of thing I would usually listen to, I had a great time and got right into it.

Paula and Mongoose have very, very different styles, and would be unlikely to ever be on a bill together. But when you've got a city's worth of music to choose from, setting up your own dramatic contrast can be good fun once in a while.

Somebody seems to be compiling a list of female Vancouver bloggers (and a few male - hey Darren, that's you) to approach for... some commercial venture...?

Psst! ....WE CAN TELL IF YOU LINK TO US.

Lucky for me, my blog wasn't the one described as "Another girls [sic] who yammers on about this and that, and not much substance. Perfect." That might have been more criticism than I could take in a week.

UPDATE:

I've removed the links as the page in question is now gone. The author of the page wrote me a lengthy embarrassed apology. He was helping his girlfriend organize a wedding fair, and hoping to get some bloggers on board to talk about the event - but accidentally put it on his public server rather than a private LAN server. Links were clicked, and hijinks ensued. But like a good sitcom, everything and everyone is back to normal now, and there's a good ol' moral to the story that we can all learn from. Whee!

Got to play the Railway Club last night, which was lovely. I've always liked it there - it's got a good vibe, the sound is usually excellent, and it's cozy.

The event was CiTR's Shindig, which is a sort of elimination-round battle of bands thing, but much friendlier and less aggressive than the rest. We signed up not really with any delusions of grandeur or real expectations of winning (we didn't even realize it WAS a competition at first!) but because we like CiTR and we like the Railway Club. People know about Shindig and it's nice to be a part of it.

All three bands played well; I was quite happy with our set. I could tell pretty quickly that Better Friends Than Lovers would be picked as winners; they had a good crowd and a nice energy on stage, and a sort of Pink Mountaintops vibe which is big right now - big group of people on stage, organic sound, very melodic and upbeat. Kudos to 'em; I wasn't surprised they won. It was a good call.

I don't think I'd want to play a competition again, though. I didn't expect to win, but I would've rather just played a normal gig with no strings attached. It's like going to an event where you find out there's a raffle. You've got your raffle ticket, and for a moment you think "Oh, wouldn't it be great if I won the iPod?" and when they call the numbers you have this flash of hope, but then they don't call your number, and you're more disappointed than you would have been if there'd never been a raffle at all.

The bands were also all a little standoffish to each other, too. That doesn't happen as much with normal gigs. No one was rude or anything, just... distant. I smiled and said hi, but there's something about knowing that you'll be ranked against each other that makes it harder to be chummy.

The other trippy thing about it is reading the judges' comments. I'm one of those people who is prone to taking bad things personally and discounting the praise. There were some lovely glowing comments in there, about the band in general and about me as a player. Which were very nice to read. But I feel that if I'm going to take that seriously, then I should also take the less positive stuff seriously, or the suggestions that are meant to be helpful. And then you get into a slippery slope of letting other people - anonymous strangers! - shape the course of your music. Even if the comments are good, it makes you think "Oh, well, we'd better keep doing it this way then because it's successful".

There were some very interesting and useful observations, and I do like to know what sort of impression we make on people. There were also one or two comments that I would have actively taken issue with if I'd been talking to the writer directly - things to which I would have had to respond, "Well, if we did it like THAT, it wouldn't be the same band!" In those instances the judge clearly preferred a different style of music and their suggestions pushed us more towards that style. And, well, that might be what they like, but we're not setting out to make music for that one person.

Marcus has a totally different approach to reviews - he doesn't read them at all, whether they're good or bad. And that's probably a smart move, because it can really mess with your head - I'm not even the songwriter in this case and it messes with mine. I think when you get to a certain level you stop reading all media and reviews entirely; I'm still at the point of "oh boy what did somebody say about us???" where I can't resist it.

In Radiohead's tour documentary Meeting People is Easy, an exhausted Thom Yorke tries incoherently to discuss with the band how being so hyped changes them and changes what they do, and finally bursts out, "It's just a headfuck, it's a complete headfuck! ...Isn't it?" I don't expect to ever get 1/10000th of their popularity - but I see what he means.

In some ways I've got a real thirst for validation, but I have to be careful about where I look for it. When I play and I know we sound good and we're really on, that's the reason that I'm doing what I'm doing. And then there's nothing better than to have someone I've never met before come up after the show and tell me they really enjoyed it too. Which happened as well after the show last night. The point is those real, spontaneous connections - not seeking high praise from critics or judges. That's what I have to focus on.

Despite the wild success of wikis and blogs, I still think the forum can be the best format for many things (depending on how it is structured). But they've gotten a bad name, largely because of Field of Dreams syndrome - webmasters believing "if we build it, they will come", and then being surprised when the forum still looks like a ghost town a year later.

A List Apart just posted a very good article on cultivating a great forum community. It's worth a read.

So says the spam that I've been getting to my projectarctic.com email for the past week or two. So far I've received the following important missives and more:

• Serious message. You require to read.
• Essential message. You should to read.
• Significant note. You need to read.
• Grand note. You should to read.
• Weighty note. You need to read.
• Weighty letter. You have to read.

I assumed it has to do with vast quantities of money available to me in Nigeria or someplace along those lines, but I just clicked through one and it's actually about a stock that I should be considering investing in. "The great predictions are drawn up."

In other news, I just got roped into sitting on our building's strata council for next year. I guess it had to happen sooner or later. Hopefully the extreme management issues of previous years are behind us now...

I got my hair cut on Saturday... pretty much the same length, just thinned it out a lot (my hair gets very thick and poofy when left untended). For the fun of it I let her straighten it with one of those iron-like thingies. I like it, though I keep doing double-takes every time I pass a mirror (and Greg keeps being startled as well). There are definitely some things that are easier about straight hair, and it's hella fun to have a new look for a bit, but I'm glad my hair will change back to curly next time I wash it.

People with curly hair always want straight hair and people with straight hair always want curly hair. It's not so much the other type of hair we want - it's only the ability to change it easily.

Here's a picture. My hair's also still pretty red from a few weeks ago, and it looks so much lighter without the shadows from my usual curls.

Now, the quandary: do I leave it like this for Tuesday night's show, or wash it back to default curliness? I'm leaning towards washing it. You are welcome to offer an opinion, but it'll only be truly taken seriously if you plan to attend.

Okay, people. I hope this is coherent, because it's 2:00 am and I'm feeling a bit fuzzy.

I set myself a challenge this weekend. I have a bad habit of starting songs or experiments in Pro Tools, hitting a point where I don't know where to go with it, abandoning the song and leaving it alone forever. I had a few hours in the studio tonight and I decided I would start something from scratch and just post whatever I came up with at the end of it all. That'd force me to turn it into something I was willing to share. Good exercise.

It's nothing earth-shattering, but here you go:

The Untouchables (6.1 megs)

Now I must hit SAVE on this post before I change my mind. Then I must go home and go to sleep.

UPDATE 11/1: Haha, I see I'm getting hits for people searching on "The Untouchables". I forgot there was a movie with that title. This song has NOTHING whatsoever to do with it.

ARCTIC's next show is this coming Tuesday, October 24th at the Railway Club (579 Dunsmuir @ Seymour). Yeah, I know it's a Tuesday night, and that sucks for most people. Even me, since I have to do a little rescheduling to accommodate it. But it'll be fun, and it's part of Shindig 2006, aka "CiTR's annual music deathmatch". For those unfamiliar, it's sort of a weekly elimination thing.

This will be a full band show, with me on bass, and our guest Max (of Kooper Kain) on drums. It'll probably also be the last ARCTIC full band show of the year (unless we win, I guess), as Marcus has been making some headway on writing and recording lately and would like to keep that momentum going. We've learned it's a bit of a see-saw; if ARCTIC is rehearsing & playing, then recording & writing stalls. Either activity requires a lot of focus, so it's best to put all efforts into one at a time. And between a solo tour and three band shows this fall, all the focus has been on playing out.

I've been wanting to play at the Railway for ages - it's a neat place. We're on at 10:30; Belcon Migs is on before us at 9:30 and Better Friends Than Lovers follows us at 11:30. Come by and say hi after our set!

Many people who know me are familiar with my routine bitching about the car. Our '96 Ford Probe GT was wavering at that awkward point of "is it worth putting any money into it" for the past year or so. It was mostly doing a good job of getting us from point A to point B, but it was doing it more and more grudgingly. There were so many little things that needed to be done (punched-out lock - thanks, Vancouver! - a trunk that you had to prop open when loading gear into it - a "Check Engine" light that wouldn't go away) which we stalled on for quite some time.

But we've finally made the leap, and traded in the Probe, and taken out a two-year lease on a brand-new 2007 Mazda3.

This is momentous for a few reasons:

• We've never leased before. I'd always read it wasn't as good a deal, because you don't own the car, etc etc - but given the sudden random maintenance that had to be done on the Probe with little or no warning, long-term car ownership has lost its appeal at the moment. Plus, this gives us the opportunity to get a newer, more fuel-efficient car - and maybe in a few years the prices of hybrids might come down a little bit to the point where we could consider one of those.
• Neither of us has ever had a truly new car before - we've always bought something used. I think I've only even sat in maybe one new car in the past several years. So it was a heady experience to drive a car with genuine New Car™ smell and only two digits on the odometer.

It's only been a day, but I'm pretty happy. It's so quiet! It's so smooth! Also, the Probe was manual, which I'd gotten used to but never liked; traffic jams were especially annoying, and I didn't have a lot of confidence in my ability to shift quickly in a tight spot. Now I'm back to automatic again so I can cruise along happily. And having a newer car means that there's features that seem futuristic enough to make me giggle: rain-sensing wipers! Dark-sensing headlights! An engine that doesn't completely intimidate me when I look under the hood! It's like magic.

So, a fond goodbye to the ol' red car; it was sporty, but not the best choice for city dwellers. And welcome to the new Mazda (which, like any 2007 car, IS the car of the future since it's still 2006).

First of all, why did it have to be spinach? I really like spinach, and it's one of the only veggies that Greg and I willingly seek out and eat. It's easy to prepare, goes with anything, and tastes pretty good. If it were cauliflower - I really wouldn't have cared. I like cauliflower, but I don't have it very often. But spinach! That's just tragic. I'd actually just bought a bag of Earthbound the very day the news came out, and was eating a sandwich with it when I read the news. I survived, but felt obligated to throw the bag out.

Secondly, I have to point something out. I'm neither vegetarian nor die-hard carnivore, and I do think there's some things seriously wrong with the way our meats are raised and consumed. But every time something bad happens in the meat market - say, mad cow disease, or avian flu - all the vegetarians and vegans get very, very smug and start saying things about how it was all just a matter of time, and it's a sign of the instability of a meat-based diet, and carnivores had it coming, and so on. Well, what do you have to say for yourselves now? Now that our spinach salads have been terrorized and our healthy carrot smoothies ravaged? Eh?

I'm just going to go back to overdosing on sushi. I already KNOW that's got high levels of mercury in it. No news there.

After several years of living in the States, and the fact that the Thanksgiving weekend is longer and more of a big deal there, Canada's October thanksgiving still takes me a bit by surprise. It doesn't feel quite like time for turkey yet. Still, I would never let that hold me back from a really excellent turkey dinner, and having a partially American family gives us an excuse to do it all over again in a month if we feel like it (only without the statutory holiday).

It was a good weekend - attendance at ARCTIC's show on Friday was quite respectable despite the long weekend, we played well, and it was a fun night. Today Greg and I spent our day off doing some much-needed cleaning and making an impromptu trip to IKEA. Now the bedroom looks terrific for the first time since we moved in, but the rest of the place looks like something exploded. I guess it's necessary to keep a consistent percentage of messiness throughout our home, or life would be out of balance...

...because picking on Telus is as easy as shooting fish in a barrel.

My built-in ringtones are pretty crappy, my phone doesn't have the ability to make new ones, and so Telus is the sole source of new ringtones for me. I've bought two or three from them over the past two years that I find tolerable. I was thinking about picking up another one recently, and then it occurred to me: what happens if I replace my phone, in a year or two? The ringtones should be associated with my Telus account - so could I download them again, or would they say it's only associated with the phone?

I sent them a note. They informed me:

Downloaded items (ringtones, truetones, images, videos, games) cannot be transferred from one handset to another. Downloading that item allows you the license to use that property on that one specific TELUS wireless handset. You are expressly prohibited from transmitting, distributing, reproducing and modifying any ringtone, image, or game downloaded from mytelusmobility.com to your handset.

Here's my response:

This is unfortunately what I expected. I understand that a download is a license for a single handset - and so I'll never buy a ringtone or game from you again. Let me explain:

If I buy a song from Apple's iTunes online, it would cost me 99 cents and I would receive a digital download of a song, perhaps 5-6 minutes long. It would be fairly high quality. I could authorize multiple computers to play the file, I could burn a CD that I could listen to on my home stereo, and I could listen to it on my iPod, all perfectly legally. This is a good deal.

If I buy a ringtone from Telus, it would cost me as much as $2 or $3 for an extremely short sound file - maybe a sound effect, 4 seconds long, or a beepy polyphonic version of a song. I can only ever play it on this phone, which'll be outdated in a year or so. If I buy a new phone FROM TELUS, replacing the old one - and maybe renewing my contract in the process - you would still expect me to pay ANOTHER $2 or $3 for the privilege of downloading and reinstalling the same ringtone I ALREADY PAID FOR?

This is not a good deal.

I won't be suckered into it again.

I doubt a single pissy email is going to topple their overpriced DRM scheme overnight, but I thought I'd post this for anyone else with a Telus plan who hadn't really thought about this before either.

A note to my parents:

You'll probably not really going to like my hair colour (think "shiny new penny") when I come out for Thanksgiving this weekend. It's okay not to like it, and don't worry, it's only temporary.

A note to everyone else:

If you want to see what I'm on about, come see me at ARCTIC's next show at the Lamplighter (210 Abbott St, in Gastown) this Friday, Oct 6. Doors open at 8pm, cover is $10.

Late Thursday night, I found myself the lucky recipient of two tickets to see Land of Talk, Shout Out Out Out Out, and Holy Fuck at Richard's on Richard's, about an hour before the show started. I've heard about all these bands to varying degrees, and how often do I get free tickets to things? So off I went.

Richard's on Richards makes me happy and sad at the same time. Happy, because they're putting slightly less emphasis on the dance club thing and bringing in some damn good bands now - it's a great-looking venue, the sound has been good whenever I've been there, and the balcony gives you a great look behind the stage so you can properly geek out at the bands' gear. Sad, because it has been sold to a developer who is going to knock it down and turn it into condos at the end of the year, and so each show I enjoy there is a little bittersweet.

We got there partway through Land of Talk's set. A female-fronted three-piece from Montreal, they were extremely listenable indie rock, and the crowd was into them. As part of a three-piece, it warms my heart to see others with a big rich sound. The lead plays a guitar that she appears to have gutted (note the holes where knobs should be) - I'd be curious to know what the story is there.

The crowd was at its peak for Shout Out Out Out Out (that's four outs, people - this is obviously not baseball). They're a sort of dance/electronica juggernaut - six members, including two drummers and four guys on assortments of keyboards, vocals and basses. We spotted four basses on stage, and each of the four guys played at some point; I think the most in action at any one time was three. Of course, I highly approved.

They came out and explained that essentially what they do is play dance music, run around a lot, say bad words through vocoders and then usually what happens is that the audience will also move around a lot and jump up and down. And that's essentially what happened (although I couldn't ever understand what was said through the vocoders). The amount of energy on the stage was unreal, and one of the guys kept doing these high kicks that I know just has to occasionally take out one of the other guys or some of the gear. And it was good, solid, dance music. Nothing that's going to change the world - just damn fine stuff to shake around to.

They reluctantly surrendered the stage and we watched with wonder as Holy Fuck's equipment began to emerge onto stage. Which gave us reason enough to utter their name - it's a fascinating pile of little cheap-o keyboards and an army of pedals and effects to run them through. There's two sets of little keyboards and effects, each resting in a case on top of a keyboard stand, and then a bassist and a drummer. There's also an old moviola with a tape head mic'd that, when moved, sounds almost but not quite like someone scratching on a turntable. There's two different types of Whammy pedals, one red and one black (which my friend rightly pointed out was a "double whammy"). One of the cases was so heavily laden that its stand seemed to wobble unsteadily when touched - I got distracted at one point waiting for all the gear to come crashing down, which never happened.

Holy Fuck also plays danceable electronica, though it was a little more introspective than Shout Out Out Out Out's full-on energy - Holy Fuck's players have to keep their heads down to see what they're doing, and the energy is more of a grooving build than a frenetic flailing. It's better for serious head-nodding than for jumping up and down. But that's more my style anyway - I ended up buying the tracks on iTunes the next day, because I enjoyed them but didn't have enough cash on me for the CD.

What fascinated me, though, was the difference in the sounds of the last two bands, given their equipment. Shout Out Out Out Out has some beautiful synths, Korgs and so forth, various high-end technology, and all their songs an 80s-dance tone to it - very digital, very "bleepy". Holy Fuck, on the other hand, has a smorgasboard of goodies that look like they were pieced together from pawn shops and yard sales and then wired up in different configurations through trial and error. But their sound was more nuanced and had a far wider range - they had more control over the subtleties and so there was more to listen for.

So it was a great evening, overall. Also lucked into some free food and a high-quality free t-shirt on which I can probably cover up the Fido logo. I couldn't stick around for all of Holy Fuck's set, unfortunately, but I would keep my eye out for them to swing by again someday.

1. Learning about a quirk in Pro Tools that mean I will have to re-export and re-upload all my mixes that I just announced to the frigging world this week because they probably don't sound the way I meant them to;
2. Getting to the bus and discovering that the electrical lines for the trolley buses are all dead, so the teeming hordes that already pile on the B-Line are even more teeming than usual, making me half an hour late for work;
3. Being on a bus packed with sheep who stare blankly into space when the driver asks them to move back more so people can get on the bus, even though he won't move the bus until they do;
4. Not being able to listen to my iPod to calm my frustration because I'm still recovering from some viral inner ear congestion thing that makes every loud or sharp sound buzz irritatingly in my left ear. Which is also probably related to why I didn't notice that the mixes in item 1) didn't sound the way I meant them to.

I don't ordinarily blog from work, but I know I won't get anything done until I've had a good rant. I'm done now. Plus I discovered I still have a little bit of marzipan left here, which doesn't really fix anything, but at least it's something positive. You have to cling to the positive. (At least until it melts in a chocolatey mess.)

(or, "Okay, you can listen now.")

I finally have enough songs done that I think are listenable enough to release out into the general realm. They've been a sort of learning experiment to see what I can do on my own, and to figure out what I sound like. They're all written, produced and recorded by me, with the exception of "Here First" - Marcus Martin did some of the production early on and basically enabled me to get started on all of this.

There's still more ways I could improve everything; it's sort of a perpetual process and at some point you have to say "stop". I'm considering The Pace Changes to be a sort of demo-in-progress, where I refine & replace songs as I learn more and improve my playing and writing. Music online is a lot more malleable - you have the option to change releases in a way that you didn't when everything was CD-only. So occasionally I might replace a mix, change the track order, or add another song. Or it might just stay like it is forever; we'll see!

I'm still working out a glitch in "Shiny New Toys" where the bassline develops a bit of a buzz when it's played in any of the Flash players. The mp3 sounds fine, so if you want to hear the version the way I want it to sound, download the mp3 directly from Project Opus.

You can hear the songs in two places:

• Project Opus (preferred). Five songs are here.
• Myspace (obligatory). Only lets you upload four songs.

Hope you like 'em.

A few weeks ago, I was idly browsing through Long & McQuade when I spotted a most beautiful bass. Now, this sort of thing happens now and then - I've often seen basses that made me drool visibly, and I've played a few that I had to surrender most reluctantly. But this one pulled at me. I played it for a little while in the store, and I think I actually felt a little woozy afterwards.

I told myself it was out of the question, and promptly went home and obsessed over it for two solid days.

I decided that renting it would be the deciding factor - if I took it home and tried it for a while, I'd either get over it and be willing to hand it back, or I'd be comfortable enough with it that buying it wouldn't feel like such a risk. It took a few days for me to get a real feel for it - it's a 5-string, and the spacing between the strings is narrower - but before long I was just as comfy with it as I am with my Fender. And the tone is so, so warm and rich, and I can do so many things with the tone - with three EQ knobs, piezo pickups, and a lever to switch the regular humbucker pickups from series to parallel, I can make it sound like several different basses easily.

So the deed was done. I bought the Ernie Ball Music Man Stingray 5 (in Pacific Blue Burst with abalone pickguard) on a three-month installment plan. I am very happy about this.

But it couldn't be done without sacrifice. I've sold the old Kawai keyboard I used in a few shows - it was a neat machine, but not really the sound we were looking for. I'm going to sell several of the Breyer model horses I've had for a decade or more (remind me to post about THAT sometime).

And I'm going to have to sell my Fender.

It took me a while to come to terms with this. I've had it for three years this fall. It's my first bass ever. It's treated me well; I've had nothing but good times with it. It took me to NXNE this year.

But if I harshly shove the sentimental value aside, it is simply a typical 2003 Fender Precision Bass, made in Mexico. It is a great standard bass, reliable and solid, but it isn't a collector's item (yet!). And once I start playing the Stingray more, I'm unlikely to switch back to the Fender - I can make the Stingray SOUND a lot like the Fender if I want to.

So I'm offering it for sale, but before I go to craigslist or anything like that with it, I want to offer it to people at a more individual level first. Hence this post. See, I've come to terms with parting with it, but I want the person who buys it to treat it well, because it's a damn good bass. I don't want it to end up in someone's basement, rusty strings out of tune, where the new owner only picks it up once a year to halfheartedly thunk out some 80s hair-band basslines. It deserves better than that. It needs to get out of the house, go to a gig, go to a lesson. That's all I ask. (Well, that and $500 CDN.)

Down to the details. It's wine coloured with a white pickguard. Original pickups and hardware. It was set up last December by the respected Paul Iverson; he did a beautiful job, as you'd expect, and I've never had to tweak anything about it since. It plays wonderfully. It's well cared for, in great shape. It currently has SIT stainless "Power Wound" light strings on it, and it'll come with another fresh set. (They do stay in tune, it's true!) It also comes with a very comfy padded strap.

In short, I'm only selling it because I can't have my cake and eat it too (what does that expression really mean, anyway?). And I'd much rather sell it to YOU, someone who's reading my blog, than ebay it into the ether. So you get dibs on it!

If you're interested, or know someone who might be, please contact me at kirsten [at] crowstoburnaby.com, or post your info here if you prefer.

My husband Greg is a major movie fan. It's how we met, actually - talking about movies online. He loves reading about what movies are coming out; he knows lots about what movies are in production, and he can play those "six degrees of Kevin Bacon" type games like nobody's business.

He also usually has the summers off when classes aren't in session. Vancouver is a pretty heavy-duty movie and television town, with a wide variety of things filming every day, and there's always a need for extras (aka "background"). In the past, Greg's taught during the summer and managed to squeeze in a bit of extra work here and there. This summer, he decided to pursue his passion further, and went into acting and background work full-time.

He got his headshots taken - which look damn good - and began to get frequent calls for extra work, plus a few auditions here and there. He's an easy guy to cast - he can play a very wide age range, and he's handsome but with a friendly "everyman" look. So by the end of the summer he was working pretty much every day.

Extra work can be both easy and difficult at the same time. At its easiest, you're paid to hang out, eat amazing food, and play poker with your friends for hours, occasionally being called to set to walk from left to right. At its hardest, you're standing for what seems like forever at the top of a muddy hillside in Mission at three in the morning, halfway through a fourteen-hour day, wearing heavy fake armour while cold water pours over you from rain towers, waiting to charge downhill in slippery boots not really meant for charging... before trudging back uphill to do it all over again. And the next night. And the next night.

There's a lot of waiting - hours and hours - but a lot of fun too. There's a real camaraderie between many of the extras; when you spend ten to fourteen hours a day with the same people, you get to know them pretty well, and Greg made some good friends this year. And it's exciting to finally see some of his appearances on television. Once we saw him on two different shows within fifteen minutes - as hotel staff on "Whistler" and as a photographer in "Saving Millie". Tonight "Men in Trees", a new series with Anne Heche, plays on ABC - Greg isn't in the pilot, but will most likely appear in episode 1, and is certain to be highly visible in episodes 2 or 3. And that's just the tip of what he's worked on (you can check out some of his photos here):

• A demon doctor, with all-black contacts, on "Supernatural"
• The date of a guest star in a high-school reunion episode of "Stargate SG-1"
• Walking through a small town on "Blade" the TV series
• Sending fiery sparks into the air as a grinder on the SciFi series "Eureka"
• Stylishly dressed in 1940s fashion on "Marriage" with Pierce Brosnan
• A witness to the destruction of killer I-Pods in "Scary Movie 4"
• A SWAT agent busting a meth lab in "Family in Hiding"
• A Secret Service Agent protecting the president in "Shooter"

Greg will be everywhere. I think I'll enjoy that.

On Friday, Marcus Martin is heading out across southern BC to Calgary and back for an ARCTIC Solo Expedition. Some of the bills at the moment are just him, and it'd be nice to have someone else there to open the show and share the bill. So we're asking if anyone knows of any performers in the area (living nearby, willing to drive there or already touring) who might be interested. It'd be about a 40-60 minute set. It'd probably be a good fit for a solo singer/songwriter or duo, but we're open to other ideas.

The shows in question are:

Enderby, BC - September 17 - Lorenzo's Cafe
Calgary, AB - September 18 - Karma
Fernie, BC - September 20 - The Brickhouse
Kaslo, BC - September 21 - The Crooked Cafe

You can listen to a bunch of tracks at http://www.projectarctic.com/listen.php and see what you think.

Contact me (through the email address in the upper left) or Marcus if you're interested or know someone who might be.

Here's my September 11 story.

In 2001, I was living on Long Island, NY, and working in Syosset, about thirty miles from New York City. On September 10 I had had a disagreement with my boss that I needed to talk to her about the next day. (I felt that having had insomnia so bad I didn't dare drive should count as a sick day; she thought it should be considered a vacation day.) She'd said we'd talk about it on Tuesday. I had about a twenty minute drive to work, and I got there a bit before nine, a bit anxious and ready for a tense conversation.

When I came in, the office manager asked if I'd heard about the plane hitting the World Trade Center, and since I hadn't listened to the radio on the way, I hadn't. We thought, or hoped, that it was some little private plane that had somehow strayed off course. She was nervous because her son was a courier who worked in that area. I wanted it to be some minor fluke, but had a sinking feeling it wasn't. I tried to get more information from CNN.com... or NBC.com... or ... well, anywhere. The net was choked. We ended up getting our updates from Ananova, in the UK. It was pretty obviously something bigger than we had hoped.

We read that the second plane hit.

My boss and I agreed to put off our discussion until later. It didn't seem to be worth getting into right then.

Our building had a conference theatre with a big screen and a projector, so somebody put up CNN and gradually the room filled with everyone from all the different offices. There we watched events unfold with the rest of the country.

Phone lines were completely clogged, but most of us with friends in the city (or with worried friends outside the area) were able to get in touch through IM.

I remember wondering how they were going to put the fire out, in a building up that high.

I went back to the theatre and the screen was a mass of smoke and dust. I didn't realize the first tower had fallen. When the second one collapsed, I started sobbing. It hadn't occurred to me that that could even happen. Someone asked me if I'd lost someone in the tower. I said no, it was just the idea of it. I guess I'd just assumed most people would get out, up until then.

We waited around, stunned. We heard about the other planes.

Eventually my boss called everyone into the office, around 11:15.

He said he understood that we were all in shock.

He said he was going to give us the rest of the day off, but we would have to pull ourselves together and carry on with our work, because otherwise if everyone just stopped, it would affect the economy and the terrorists would have won.

He said a lot of things. I don't remember them all, but I remember some of us were angry afterwards - not at the attacks, but at him. Our office manager still hadn't heard from her son. One of our coworkers would later find out he'd lost a friend. At that time, we still thought the death toll from those towers, thirty miles away, could be upwards of ten thousand. But we were being given a pep talk on how we were needed to do our good work for this company.

Oddly enough, work didn't seem like the most important thing at the time.

I went home and Greg and I watched the news together, expecting more attacks, not sure what to expect. There was a scare that night involving the Empire State Building, and I remember saying no no, not that too, please no.

It's not fear, specifically, that I remember. I remember us both feeling completely and totally numb for days; there seemed to be no point in doing anything at all, because nothing we could do could possibly be as important as what had just happened. It was all about the uncertainty, the horrible sinking realization that everything was going to change, that everything had already changed.

The next day, we could smell the smoke. In the weeks that came, we saw the smoke pouring from the rubble; we saw the desperate "Missing" signs posted all over the city; we drove through a military checkpoint at Houston Street and saw soldiers with assault rifles patrolling Penn Station.

I remember saying that if one good thing comes out of this, maybe the United States will finally wake up and realize that there is more to the world than just the USA, that they need to consider how they interact with their neighbours. Maybe America will learn some humility, take a kinder approach in dealing with other nations, and learn how to get along with everyone.

That didn't happen.

It's not like you didn't notice that there was a line of at least twenty people waiting for the bus.

Maybe you don't know that it's like that every day, that because Translink hasn't got enough B-Lines we all have to wait until three or four double-length buses, already full, pass us by. Only a few of us can get on at a time. The rest of us wait - ten, twenty minutes sometimes. First come, first served. It's pretty simple.

You definitely saw us waiting there. There's no missing that line.

I saw you hovering nearby when I was about two or three people away from the front of the line. I knew what you were up to, and I wasn't about to let you in. When it came time to get on the bus, I stepped right by you and gave you no room to sidle in front of me. If you'd tried it anyway, I'd have had a few words for you. I was still feeling a little sick and very, very tired, and wouldn't have been on the bus if I didn't have to be, and I would have been pretty snarky.

But you somehow made it on to the bus anyway, ahead of the lady two people behind me, ahead of about another ten people who'd been waiting there longer than you.

Do you really think you deserve to be on the bus more than the rest of us? Are you that much more important? Were you late for work, so that made it okay?

And you, the lady she cut in front of - what the hell were you thinking? You earned your spot, and you nearly didn't make it on to the bus because of the jumper. Why'd you LET her slip in front of you? Why didn't you say anything? Now she's going to keep doing it because people like you let her walk all over you. Thanks a lot.

But the joke's on you, line-jumper. You got crammed onto the bus somehow facing me. And I made sure I breathed some of my germs in your direction. My little contribution to karma.

If this was you, and you're sneezing today, maybe you should think about why.

I seem to be sick, in about the worst week I could've picked to get sick. ARCTIC has a show on Friday. Greg and I have a house guest. It's the first week of classes plus we've got a deadline at work, so things there are going to be a bit hectic for the next few days. And I'm a big puddle of wooziness.

It's weird being sick in the summertime. I associate colds with chilly dampness, but here it is roasting in the apartment and I'm even more roasting than usual. But I don't want to go outside where it might be cooler and more pleasant; I just want to curl up into a ball and fade away for a while.

We had a rehearsal today, and I managed to make it through sitting down the whole time. Hopefully by Friday I'll be more functional. And hopefully the guys don't get hit with the virus, or at least not so bad. I knew sooner or later I'd have to do a show when sick - it's pretty much inevitable - so I'm not getting too worked up about it. But I do prefer to be at my best on stage. Who wouldn't?

I don't know whether it's better to stay warm or try to keep cool. Anyone got any useful advice on summer colds?

I've had a Yahoo Mail account since around the time they started the service. And it's great. I even pay for the Yahoo Mail Plus subscription, so I can access other accounts, and it's a terrific service. I'd recommend it to anyone.

....As long as you don't have any problems.

It's been a bit of an ongoing fascination for me to see just how astonishingly bad Yahoo Mail's customer service is. I honestly am never sure whether I'm dealing with a real human or a computer that simply scans my email for keywords and then sends back the FAQ that appears to be the closest result. It doesn't appear that they ever actually read my email, because invariably the first response I get completely ignores whatever it was I sent.

Here's an example. They had an option to create an alias (aka "extra email address") to my Yahoo address. I thought that'd be nice, but it wouldn't work for me. I wrote to them:

When I try to set up my extra email address, Yahoo tells me:

"It looks like you already have an extra email address. You can only have one extra address at a time. If you really want to create a new email address, you'll have to remove [address] from your Mail account first."

I tell Yahoo to remove & confirm [address], and it tells me "[address] has been successfully removed from your Yahoo! Mail account."... but then when I click "Choose a new one", it goes back to the message about "you already have an extra email address".

How do I get rid of [address] and choose a new address?

They wrote me back:

It is not possible to remove your Yahoo! Mail account without removing your entire Yahoo! account.

and also gave me instructions on how to add a vacation response message, as well as how to remove my entire Yahoo account if I felt so inclined.

Yes, the words "remove" and "account" appeared in the same sentence of my message. But I think you'll find that under modest examination, my message does NOT say anything about actually wanting to remove my account.

It took about another five messages for them to comprehend that I was actually encountering a bug. Eventually, it just worked one day when I tried it. Quite a while later, they sent me some oh-so-helpful instructions on emptying my cache.

It's almost a running joke. Every time I write them it's the same thing: inane autoresponse from them, bitingly precise clarification from me, radio silence for a while, confused suggestion from them.

This time, I emailed them with a feature request. I had liked how in the old Yahoo Mail, there was an option for an advanced search; in the new Yahoo Mail Beta, there's only one simple search and you can't filter it down at all.

I didn't expect a reply - it's a feature request, after all - but oddly enough I got one after a few days. It says:

Hello,

Thank you for writing to Yahoo! Mail.

Yahoo! Customer Care is committed to answering your questions as quickly and as accurately as possible. We apologize for the delay in responding to this message.

Before proceeding, we'd like to verify your account information so we can confirm your account ownership. We take this precaution to ensure the security of your account.

Please provide all of the following information:

1. Your Yahoo! ID

2. Your zip or postal code AND the verified alternate email address you specified when registering your Yahoo! ID

3. Either the secret question and answer or date of birth you entered when registering your Yahoo! ID

We'll be happy to assist you after matching this info with our records.

Again, we sincerely apologize for any inconvenience this delay may have caused you, and we thank you for your patience. Your satisfaction is always our goal.

Thank you again for contacting Yahoo! Customer Care.

I wrote back saying "Why on EARTH do I have to verify my personal information to make a feature request?"

I didn't hear back, of course.

Today I received an email that says:

Dear Valued Yahoo! Customer,

At Yahoo!, your satisfaction matters more than anything else. In order to meet your needs and preferences, we invite you to share your thoughts with us about your recent experience with Yahoo! Customer Care in a brief online survey.

Great! thought I. A chance to vent!

I clicked on it and it told me "This survey has expired."

I clicked on it again and it told me "You have already completed this survey. Thank you for your participation."

At least they've finally clued in to one thing: it doesn't make them look good when I fill out their customer satisfaction surveys.

Man, I have just not been in a blogging space lately. It was a fairly busy week, so hopefully that explains it.

Every day this week at work we gave a series of online workshops on web accessibility, which went quite well. From the signup list, I had anticipated maybe 5-8 people in each workshop - as it turned out, we had over 20 people every day but one, which was great. Got good feedback, useful suggestions, and it was all quite enjoyable.

Other than that, I've been pondering how to use Reason in a live environment without actually having a laptop to use it on. It's a bit of a quandary. We've got an old G3 iMac that can be used, but the audio output is vile; it won't use my Digi Mbox2, so we'd have to buy an audio interface. A used G4 laptop would be perfect, but at cheapest they run $800+, which is a bit much to spend on something that might turn out to be purely experimental. I'm used to being able to rent instruments from places like Long & McQuade, but renting laptops seems to be a rarer and probably more expensive undertaking. I'll probably look into the rental possibility tomorrow, but I'm trying not to get my hopes up...

At long last we have a blender again, and I'm furiously making smoothies to catch up with summer. I just made one from peanut butter, cocoa, banana, and date.

I've been greatly inspired by "East is East", a Vancouver restaurant with locations on Broadway & Blenheim, and Main somewhere around 29th. They've got some insanely good smoothies incorporating things like rosewater and cardamom and cinnamon.

And then of course one also has to make the best of fruit season before it stops - there have been lots of blueberries involved as well.

Anyone have any particularily good concoctions they'd like to share?

• This week a homeless guy in a nearby park told me that the logs in the park are magical, because he sometimes sees animals in the white stuff at the ends of the logs; a mountain lion, a dog. He seemed quite surprised by the whole thing.
• Today I called up Greg and asked him, "Should I buy you an open flesh wound?" (I did).
• I also asked a friend if I could borrow their spacesuit, in case I go to the robot party tonight. (I can.)

In the house on San Juan Island, someone found a 1000-piece jigsaw puzzle and started working on it. I hadn't done a jigsaw puzzle in years, but figured I'd help out and do a chunk or two. Instead, I got completely fixated on the puzzle and ended up doing just about all of it myself, everything except the sky. I didn't have time to finish the sky, and since every piece was the same shade of blue it was so frustrating that I could only do little bits at a time before having to back off and give my brain a rest.

Less than a week after I got home, I actually found myself craving a jigsaw. This surprised me. Fortunately, if I'm addicted, it's an cheap addiction; you can get puzzles that aren't too gawdy for a mere $2.99, which I can make last a long time if I don't get too obsessive-compulsive about finishing it. I picked up three puzzles, finished one (Havasu Falls seen from above) and I'm on the second one (horses, duh).

There's something satisfying about jigsaw puzzles, and yet innately frustrating at the same time. It's like not being able to stop eating a bag of chips. Every piece you lay into place is like a little miniature goal-fulfillment - the pleasing YES when you know it's in the right place - and yet there's always more, you'd feel better if you could just find that one bit that goes next to that blue thing with the twigs sticking out..... It's about the process more than the completion, but the process keeps tugging at your sleeve and telling you to keep going.

It's funny how what looks like a big pile of identical blobs gradually becomes easier and easier to distinguish the more you look at it. Your brain changes its search pattern - "find all of the blue pieces that have that slightly greyish texture to them" - "now find all of the blue pieces that are kind of mottled" - until you can easily sort the pieces into little piles for future reference. Perhaps this will be good for my attention to detail.

It's so tactile, too. I could do puzzles online, but it just wouldn't be the same. It'd disappear as soon as I closed the window, and feel like I did nothing at all. Even taking a puzzle apart after you've finished it has a certain ceremony to it.

This may be a phase, which I will outgrow after the third puzzle, but let's just enjoy it while it lasts.

This weekend's zombie walk doesn't appeal to you? Too messy, too gory, too mindless, too much of an uncomfortable reminder of death? Well, there's a little something for you too this Friday night. Newmindspace is hosting a robot-themed transit party on the SkyTrain on Friday, August 18 at 9:09 PM, starting at the VCC/Clark station.

Clean, durable, intelligent, and shiny, robots are everything that zombies are not. I personally am trying to figure out how I can save myself the trouble of making two costumes, and just make one that I can wear to both events. But the ideas aren't coming yet.

My blogging's been all over the map lately, hasn't it? Whales and zombies and logos, oh my. I just want to bring you up to date on what's happening musically these days.

• The next ARCTIC band show in Vancouver will be September 8, at the Lamplighter, with The Feminists, Parlour Steps, and Orchards & Vines. Doors at 8pm, cover is $10.
• Much of my attention has been turned towards booking an ARCTIC solo tour in southern BC. (If you're just joining this blog now, ARCTIC is Marcus Martin, sometimes with a band and sometimes not.) Not being a professional booking agent, it's a daunting process, since I'm basically cold-calling venues asking for a show. I've never been fond of the phone - I like to deal with things over email when I can, but not everyone is as web-centric as I am. Still, the pieces are falling into place, and there are shows confirmed for Langley, Kelowna and Calgary with others yet to be finalized.
• I'm also still writing, and when I can get time in the studio, mixing a few of my songs that'll eventually go online. The catch is, I find that the more I write new songs I like, the less I like some of my old songs..... So I have a growing folder of songs but the number of ones I consider "candidates" stays more or less constant. Hm.
• Just for the hell of it, I auditioned for a student film that needed a female bassist. I had a fun time at the audition, actually; since I had nothing riding on it I wasn't particularily stressed. As it turned out, I got high praise on my bass skills but they decided to go with someone with real acting experience. Which was fine with me - I never claimed to be an actor but I do claim to be a bassist, so really that's what matters.
• I hit the occasional open mic. See pic.

Greg and I just had a pleasant stay on San Juan Island, off the coast of Washington State, a few hours' drive from Vancouver. From where we stayed, we could watch orcas pass by, headed north or south up the Strait, looking for fish. We weren't far from Lime Kiln Park, which is well known as a great spot for whale-watching (yes, I know, orcas aren't whales, they're dolphins). There are three resident pods - known as J, K, and L - that travel the area, and at Lime Kiln lighthouse the passage of each pod is faithfully tracked and reported to park visitors hoping for a glimpse of the orcas.

I love watching the orcas pass, especially up close, when you can hear them exhale and you're so aware of their presence. I always wish I could see underwater and see what's going on in between their brief appearances at the surface.

The past few times we've seen them, something has nagged at me: the way that they're constantly followed by so many whale-watching boats. We went on a whalewatching boat once a few years ago, and our captain was very responsible and respectful of the whales and other wildlife. The boats often report to each other if they spot the whales, try to position themselves so that the whales pass them, and turn off the engine; you wait and watch and hope and then they emerge from the water and they're beautiful. (The photo at right comes from that trip, in 2004.)

But watching from shore, looking at them from a distance, you see all the other boats, too, and you realize how busy it is out there. The boats follow the orcas at a distance, scattered across the strait, like paparazzi trying to anticipate where the celebrity's car will turn. Guidelines govern the behaviour of the boats both in the US and Canada, and there is a small crew that attempts to monitor them. But there have been plenty of violations reported, and undoubtedly many more that slip by.

Now, I'm anthropomorphizing here. But since humans don't like to have paparazzi following them around, I can't help but wonder how much trouble the whale-watching boats make for orcas. Even if every boat follows the guidelines - and that's a big if - how does it affect an orca to have a constant humming in the background? Does it interfere with their communications? Does it stress them out at all? We can't strap devices on them and measure their heart rate; we can only extrapolate by behaviour changes. And that only tells us so much.

(Interestingly, when I asked the volunteers at the lighthouse about this, one mentioned that kayaks can actually be just as problematic for the orcas as motorboats, because they approach so silently that they can be startling.)

Of course, you can always bring up the educational angle. Many people have fallen in love with orcas and wish to protect them, precisely because they've had the opportunity to see them up close on whale-watching boats. Getting to see an animal in its natural environment creates a feeling that can't be duplicated in an aquarium or a zoo. The public is obviously keen to get out there and see orcas - is that better than ignoring them, the way they do most other species? Is it worth hassling the orcas if it makes people more willing to support them? Or do most of the tourists just buy a few fridge magnets and forget about the trip when they get home?

Perhaps it's like having flies around you at a picnic. They aren't actually going to sting you or bite you, or even take away much of your food, but it's just a distraction that you can't ever completely ignore.

I wouldn't go on another whale-watching boat again, personally. I know they're not all bad, but I'll choose not to be a part of that buzzing swarm.

Just FYI, there will be little or no posting here for about the next week... I've barely been around, and when I have it seems that every minute is already pretty much accounted for. All should return to normal (whatever that is exactly) soon.

I know I'm far, far behind the curve on this one. And that I have a history of resentment towards rebrandings.

But it's taken me this long to realize that I am actually a bit annoyed by my alma mater's decision to completely redesign themselves. Memorial University of Newfoundland will be doing the following:

1. Renaming themselves to Memorial University
2. Replacing the crest logo with the amorphous blob at right
3. Changing the slogan to "Become."

(Oddly enough, I can't even find the new chunky logo on the site that officially announces the rebranding - I had to get it from Wikipedia. What, is MUN embarrassed by it?)

Now, since the province of Newfoundland has been renamed to Newfoundland and Labrador, I can grasp that MUN wants to change the name to accommodate this. "MUNL" just doesn't have the same ring to it. And everybody rebrands once in a while. I went through the same thing at SUNY Stony Brook - whoops, I'm sorry, "Stony Brook University" - when they replaced a tasteful Tree of Knowledge logo with a brightly coloured theme park sign. (There was an even older logo, fondly known as the "Bacon & Eggs" logo, that still lingered on a few buildings.)

So I can handle the fact that they want to change things up a little, but it's the triple-whammy of name, logo and slogan that gets to me. Why so bland and generic? What IS that chunky thing? "Become" what exactly? When you put the three elements together, you get a "brand" template that could fit ANY university. Could be in Newfoundland. Could be in Iowa. Could be a fictional campus made up for TV - it just doesn't seem to represent anything in particular.

I feel no connection, no pride. The new brand is too vague to be meaningful. I suspect it's another design-by-committee where all the compromises average out to produce a mediocre result that doesn't actually offend anyone - but doesn't please them, either.

For those who enjoyed last year's Zombie Walk or were sorry to have missed it, you'll be pleased to learn that Vancouver will indeed have another zombie walk this year, on Saturday, August 19.

From various places on the internet:

Zombiewalk 2006: Zombie Beach Party from Hell!
will happen on Saturday, August 19, 2006 . . . still lots of time left to decompose properly.

Starting at 3pm at the Vancouver Art Gallery (Howe and Robson).

To combat zombie exhaustion the route will be shorter!
To combat zombie boredom the route will be different!

more info later..

You've been warned. Stock up on red food colouring and corn syrup. Or, if you're not a joiner, learn how to protect yourself from the zombie hordes.

As most kids do, I passed through several phases on what I wanted to be when I grew up. There was the obligatory "doctor", which eventually mutated into "veterinarian" but fizzled out of existence when I discovered computers in my teens. I was all into "astronomer" for a year of high school, but after a few too many deathly boring physics classes at university, I abandoned that idea. I think I had a brief "opera singer" phase when I was five (perhaps a little parental influence there?) which ironically seems to be slightly closer to what I want to be now.

But I love the fact that I never, ever could have predicted "web designer". It just didn't exist. I think the closest I could have gotten was "graphic designer" (towards which I never had any inclination) combined with "computer programmer" (which I did become, only to realize I preferred playing with the toys to building them).

It makes me wonder what careers the next generation is headed for that we haven't even considered now. Some unexpected variation on biotech? A weather engineer to reverse global warming? Endangered animal replicator? Telephone sanitizer?

Can you believe that after living here for four years, I'd never been on the Seabus? But really I never had much call to go to North Van before, and it's only now that I take bass lessons over there that I need to go at all.

It's a far longer trip than driving, but the views make it worthwhile:

In New York it was pretty much taken for granted that you must have air conditioning at home. I have one friend there who doesn't, and when people learn of this their jaws drop in amazement: how does he survive?

In Vancouver it's not usually necessary except for maybe a week of the year. This, however, is that week. Our place is south-facing and therefore roasting. We keep trying to figure out the most strategic methods of fan placement: blow the outside air in, or the inside air out? What angle will capture most of the room?

Here's some useful tips on how to cool yourself without air conditioning, and here's more on how to sleep comfortably on a hot night. Hope it helps.

I know we're all saying that the United States needs to be more sensitive to other nations, but this is ridiculous:

http://www.taylormarsh.com/archives_view.php?id=24262

It's hardly an assault, but it is staggeringly disrespectful. Being the leader of the world's most powerful nation doesn't give you a free license to maul the other leaders. Yes, Bush, EVEN if they're female.

I've talked about different ways to make a living as a working musician, but lately I've been giving thought to different ways of simply being a working musician. Back before I started getting serious about music, I hadn't really noticed how many different approaches there are. I wouldn't say any given way is wrong or right except for the individual.

Among the session players, there's technical musicians, who hone their skills and focus on technique. I think for them, music is less of a creative expression and more of a challenge or puzzle, or for some, a simple job. It took me a while to get my head around this, until I compared it to writing: at one end of the spectrum there's creative writers who feel compelled to write expressively, who "can't not write"; at the other there's technical/communicative writers who pride themselves on accuracy and clarity, but don't have any urge to write fiction.

Then there's musicians who join or start multiple ongoing projects, dividing their time between different bands, balancing tours and rehearsals. It gives them exposure to different styles and tons of experience, and it's a way of putting your eggs in more than one basket. It's practical, though it looks like it can be overwhelming, particularily if you've also got a day job to balance as well. Kudos to you if you can make it work, but for me and for many I suspect it'd become a matter of dimishing returns, juggling three or four bands.

My own philosophy is probably the result of my impressions of the bands that influenced me early on - I noticed each band as a whole, and not so much the individual players who were playing. I listened to Sting and Peter Gabriel, but didn't learn about many of the incredibly talented musicians who backed them (though I know who they are now). I listened to REM and The Cure, but never learned the names of every band member: they appeared to be a complete unit, with a voice. Once in a while I'd hear about somebody's guest spot or side project, but they still usually kept the focus on just their one main band.

So I've always been more interested in being part of a cohesive unit, building something ongoing. Of course, then you're risking more, because all your efforts are invested in one place. More importantly, it's incredibly rare to find that dynamic, where everyone has the same vision and same goal. That's why so many bands disintegrate so quickly, or lose members, or learn to despise each other (as The Police were famous for). It's a difficult balance to maintain, and so sometimes if you're particularily driven to get something done, you might be better off just finding session players who can at least interpret and perform your vision, whether or not they subscribe to it wholeheartedly.

But whatever the balance is, whether it's an "all-for-one-one-for-all" band or a group of hired guns or a mix - once you find it, I think that's when some really good music gets made.

I love this city, especially in the summertime, but I'd like to file three minor complaints:

• Every single road in Vancouver seems to be under construction at the moment. Broadway, Cambie, Main, 12th, 16th, Granville, Kingsway, Pacific - they're all ripped to shreds and filled with orange cones. I guess most of it is for the new RAV - excuse me, Canada Line, some of it is replacing old water and/or sewer lines, and some of it is basic road maintenance... but because it's happening all at once, it's a bit difficult to navigate the city at the moment. I'm trying to bike more than drive these days, which helps in getting around, but still.
• Is anyone else sick of the whole "let's take statues of a large charismatic mammal, paint them funky colours and put them on every street corner" thing? It's been done to death in every major metropolis. Some of the orcas were okay, but the bears are hideous - many of them are simply sponsored by some store and then painted to remind you about their sponsor, rather than having any intrinsic aesthetic value.

  (While searching for the link to the bears' site, I discovered I'm not the only one who finds them a bit tacky. Some are more worried about it than others, though.)

• I'd really like to go to the Vancouver Folk Festival this weekend. I'd like to see Jane Siberry, and I wouldn't mind seeing Feist, and most of all I'd like to see Sisters Euclid again, who are just great to watch. But I just can't really do the $125 thing, you know? Even $60 for a day pass is a bit staggering. I understand the Folk Fest doesn't get big corporate sponsors, and that's refreshing, but it's still out of my comfort range. (And stop telling me to go listen over the fence; I'm not going to.) I'll have to enter a few contests and keep my fingers crossed, I guess.

UPDATE: I am now offering electric bass lessons myself, and you can learn more at http://www.vancouverbasslessons.com. For now, I am only teaching beginners; if you're already comfortable on the bass guitar and looking to improve and extend your skills, I would definitely go to Glenn. But if you're starting from scratch and would like to learn the basics, please drop me a line at kirsten (at) vancouverbasslessons (dot) com.

----

I wrote a while ago about the bass lessons I've been taking from Glenn Riley, and the theory I've been learning. I've been getting a lot out of these lessons, so I thought I'd pass the info along in case someone happens to be googling (now a legitimate verb, BTW) for a bass teacher in Vancouver.

Glenn's primarily a jazz bassist, with 30 years of experience including studies at Berklee. I don't play jazz, but there's ideas in it that can be applied anywhere. The lessons are a blend of theory and technique so you don't find yourself doing the same thing every week, or even for the hour. I also like that Glenn doesn't let me get lazy, but pushes me to incorporate what I've learned, or to play something I wouldn't ordinarily play. It's easy for a teacher to let you sit in a "safe zone" where you just get a little better at what you can already do - but you don't learn as quickly, and you don't really process what you have learned. I can hear where what I've learned is reflected in some of my newer songs already.

He has a page where you can read a bit about his lessons, and you can listen to some of his music here at Project Opus (which is a worthy site in and of itself, but for another post).

This was posted on Overheard in New York over a year ago:

Dumb teen: Hey, look at this! It says "Train for jobs in biotch."
Smarter teen: Fool! That word is biotech. Why you gotta be ignorant all your life?

--1 train

And since then, "biotech" has become possibly our favourite curse word. "Why, you little son of a biotech!" "Quit being such a biotech." It's also great for muttering under your breath, because even if someone overhears it, it's not a clear and recognizable insult... but you know it is.

Anyway, just had to share.

One of the highlights of this past weekend was the annual Bike Month variation of Critical Mass. Critical Mass is a giant bike ride held on the last Friday of every month. Greg and I used to be occasional participants a few years ago, and gradually got distracted and stopped going as often. However, we still try to get to the June ride if we can, because it is truly a massive mass. Last year they topped 1200 riders, and this year early estimates expected 1500-1700 or so. There is nothing like being part of a flowing river of over a thousand bicycles, surrounded by happily binging bells and cheering and crazy mobile art displays. You see every type of person and every age, from the kids being towed in the cart behind their parents, through to the twentysomething activists with the crazy hair, through to the thirtysomething executives just kicking back for the evening, up to the old guy wearing nothing but a Speedo and sneakers. Ahead of you or behind you, there's bikes as far as the eye can see. The mass stretches for blocks in either direction; you can't find the beginning or the end.

Critical Mass has no leaders (though there are a few informal organizers) and there is no set route through the city. It moves as a flock of birds does, directed by the whim and agreement of whoever happens to be at the front of the ride at the time. In traffic, it behaves as a bus would: when the light changes to red, the riders in the middle and back of the ride continue on so that the mass isn't fragmented - as any self-respecting gazelle knows, there's safety in numbers. At intersections, individual riders "cork" the road to prevent cars from trying to force their way out into the street (which can and does happen, and can be very dangerous).

The riders are urged to be polite, respectful and cheerful to drivers at all times; we are aware that we're delaying them, and we don't want to rub it in their faces. Most drivers deal with it well - many cheer and wave and beep and grin at the hundreds of happy cyclists ringing their bells. Others just stare at us, jaws dropped, and others grimly glare at their steering wheels. Then there's always a few aggros who let road rage take over. Usually it's just verbal venting (a mother and her kids got out of their taxi to walk when they were stopped, calling us "fucking idiots" as she passed - good example to set there, Mom). But I've seen people get out of their cars and start physical fights with the corkers, or actually push their cars recklessly INTO the bicycles. What usually happens at this point is that this roar emerges from the ride, and a swarm of the tougher cyclists stop at the scene like blood cells rushing to clot a wound, making sure it doesn't get out of hand. The rest of the ride continues, ignoring the conflict, which usually dissipates as the driver grasps that it's him against hundreds, or once he's done screaming his frustration at them. (I do understand why people get frustrated by the ride, but I have no sympathy for those that get violent. They're usually young men in expensive cars and clothes whose body language makes it clear they feel themselves far more important than anyone else enjoying the ride, kids and dogs included.)

There's always police at the outskirts of the ride somewhere. Sometimes they keep an eye on the end of the ride, or cork the roads for us at difficult intersections. Sometimes they just watch, or threaten those who seem to be stalling unnecessarily, making sure the ride moves along. Sometimes they videotape the riders. In Vancouver we generally don't have too much cause for complaint; in New York there's been known to be arrests at Critical Mass rides, where there's not as much tolerance for delays and large-scale activism.

It's tough to describe the sense of awe when you reach a slight hill and can see the next six blocks filled with cyclists, and you know you're only around the middle of the group. One of the high points of last Friday's ride for me was coming off the Granville Street bridge (usually un-bikeable) onto 4th Avenue, looking up towards the bridge and seeing that it was still filled with moving bikes. (I've yet to find a photo that conveys the scale of the event, but at least here's one that shows you what I'm talking about.) It was unreal, being part of something so - well, massive. For a few short hours, you are part of a floating mobile community, where everyone is approachable, everyone is friendly, and everyone has the same goal - just to ride their bike for a while around this beautiful city without having to dodge SUVs.

For every twenty persons in an organization, there will be one person for whom technology does not work. This person is the Touch of Death (TOD).

I have no absolute proof of the TOD Theory, but observations from the field seem to support the idea. Given a large enough group, there will always be one person whose computer has constant issues: crashing, lost data, bizarre error messages. Not only that, but the problems aren't always limited to one computer or one peripheral: fix the TOD's computer, and their printer will mysteriously die. Replace the printer, and then their network connection will go wonky. The equipment doesn't seem to matter - it's something about the person themselves.

Whaddya think? Is this sheer nonsense, or a realistic pattern? For those of you in larger workplaces, can you identify the TOD in your group?

(I suppose you could argue that given twenty COMPUTERS, one of them is bound to have problems. But that's not nearly as much fun.)

Greg and I joined five friends to go camping this weekend at Harrison Lake.

We love to get outside, but oddly enough haven't gone camping all that often. It seems that in the summertime, there's always one thing going on every weekend that is enough to keep us from going anywhere. And we'd either have to bring Dexter along and then watch him every minute, or get someone to dogsit him. BC parks also have a way of filling up fast on summer weekends. This was a fairly impromptu gathering and we were lucky to find a place to camp; most of the campgrounds close to Harrison Hot Springs were already full by the time our "scouting party" got out there.

But we found a beautiful spot, about twenty miles out on a dusty, bumpy dirt road, on a river leading to the lake. And we had a wonderful, relaxing two days. Even though I just came back from a big trip, it was a pretty intense and exhausting time. This was just what I needed - I felt I could finally still my mind for a little while.

Harrison Lake is COLD, but in that sort of "it's great once you're in" way - once you've been in for a few minutes and your skin's gone numb, swimming feels fantastic. There's nothing like floating in a quiet cold lake on a hot day, with mountains to watch and the occasional raven flying by.

As we were hanging out on the beach, stacking rocks and soaking up the sun, I saw two people I knew wandering down the beach: Karen Fowlie and her fiance Steve. I met Karen at an open mic last year, and was very impressed by her beautiful and memorable voice. I've since run into her at pretty much every MusicBC event I've attended, but I was surprised to spot her on an isolated beach over two hours from Vancouver! Random coincidences rock. (FYI, Karen's been recording at Greenhouse Studios this summer - looking forward to hearing the results later this year.)

Greg chopped firewood from dead logs around the area. Hot dogs were cooked, marshmellows were toasted (mostly by me, the sugar addict), and the guys cooked eggs, bacon, toast and tea for breakfast.

On Sunday morning, five of us climbed up to the waterfall that runs near the campsite, scrambling over rocks and logs. Once we got there, three of us decided to climb up the nearby slope to see what we could see at the top. It took a while, and was challenging, but I loved it; I'm not much of a physical person, but there's something very basic and fulfilling about climbing a hillside, grabbing on to branches and rocks along your way. It reminds me that we're primates, I think.

The top had a lovely view, but looked like prime bear territory, so we headed back to camp. We didn't see any bears, nor did we see a Sasquatch even though everything around Harrison seems to be named after it.

Here's a Flickr photoset to look at. It was hard to decide which photos to post, but I didn't think you wanted to see all 200+.

I'm not a picky eater. I'll try just about anything, and friends tend to eye my food combinations suspiciously, because I'll try just about anything with anything else. When we go to Casa Gelato (an ice cream parlour with over 200 flavours), I'm the one who'll try the lavender flavour, or pear-and-blue-cheese, or the chocolate jalapeno. (I tell you, the balsamic vinegar gelato is surprisingly good.)

There have been a few foods that took a while to grow on me. Beer was one of them - I hadn't met a beer I liked until I'd been already been of legal drinking age for several years. I've made peace with most vegetables, including brussel sprouts and turnips - if they're fresh and they're cooked thoughtfully, they can be quite lovely. Tofu isn't my favourite food, but in the right context, I like it just fine.

But olives - I've hated olives forever.

As a kid I'd stick olives on my fingertips, rendering them inedible to adults, but otherwise had no use for them. I'd tolerate olives on pizza, or chopped up and cooked in things, but eating them as snacks? Out of jars? Never. Bitter, salty, nasty little things.

I like to be open-minded about food, so about every year or so I'd try an olive or two, say at a party or something, just to make sure I still didn't like them. And every year, same results.

Late last summer, I did my annual olive test, and didn't entirely hate it; I was just sort of creeped out by the taste. And several times since then, I've tried an olive and been mildly intrigued. In the fall, I had a sandwich that came with two olives - and not only did I eat my olives and enjoy them, but I took Greg's too. (He hates them.) I've been eyeing the olive bins in the grocery store for the past few months, wondering if they're any good.

Today was the final test, though. I was at Granville Market, and I bought olives. Just a little bag - just 100g - just enough to prove it to myself.

And I like them. I get it now. Why, though? Did something in my body chemistry change over the past year to make olives more palatable to me? Was I just trying cheap, low-quality olives all this time?

I don't understand it, but there it is. And it signifies the last food that I won't eat. (Based on flavour, at least - there's things I won't eat for moral reasons, like, say, horse.)

Actually, come to think of it, I still hate kohlrabi. But as always, if someone can offer a good recipe, I'm open to change.

Toronto to Vancouver in four days: TO to Thunder Bay, Ontario; Thunder Bay to Brandon, Manitoba; Brandon to Golden, BC; Golden to home. (Note that Brandon to Golden involves FOUR provinces.) I'm a bit zombified. I had a great time but it's lovely to be home in familiar surroundings with adequate sleep.

I've put up about 50 of my bazillion photos into a photoset on Flickr if you'd like to take a peek.

Don't know if you've been following the tour blog, but that's where I've been posting everything related to NXNE and ARCTIC for the past few days. We're just leaving Toronto for good now, and I'm prewriting blog posts in the car. We've got a day in St. Catharine's and then we start heading west on Thursday morning.

I'm surprised by how much I liked Toronto. I'd been here a few times, but only at the tourist level really - it makes such a difference to stay with locals and learn about the town from more of a ground view. We were staying in the Queen Street West area, which is filled with funky independent shops of all sorts and an incredible number of restaurants. In the evening it's easy to just walk up and down the street and wander into a place with amazing local musicians and good food and drink. It's slightly more effort in Vancouver; it always seems like you need to have more of a plan ahead of time.

So one upshot of the trip was that now I'm not dreading Vancouver's impending growth spurt quite so much. Some of this growth isn't going to be managed all that well, which is what has always worried me. But there's a lot of people keeping an eye on it, and if it means that all the good things get condensed more thickly in the right parts of town, then that'll be a benefit, at least. Maybe it won't be so bad to get big.

Speaking of things I wasn't sure how much I'd like, I'm really enjoying touring, too. I wish we had more shows - it's been nice to have a few days off and catch up on sleep, but if there was more I'd be ready for it. I'm looking forward to someday planning more of a full tour where we have more advance notice and can set more dates, maybe with a day between them when possible. This is fun.

I wouldn't have thought I'd enjoy the smaller towns as much - the wannabe rock star in me likes playing bigger venues - but after Saturday's show in Cambridge I'll play anywhere that we can get a good crowd like that. Smaller towns don't get as many bands coming through, so they're more appreciative.

There's something missing, though, and that's my husband. Greg, you want to roadie the next trip???

On Sunday night, Marcus and I stopped in at a bar where a local Toronto musician was playing. Marcus said he'd seen this guy nearly every week while he lived in Toronto, stopping by after work to watch him and his band play.

We stepped inside, and I was absolutely transfixed - the bar is exceptionally cool, with huge long curtains and painted ceilings and thoughtfully decorated walls, and the man's voice is simply beautiful. A bit like the softer side of Tom Waits, but so smooth. There was no question we were staying to watch; I sat on a couch near the end of the bar and we watched for a few songs.

The scene was so lovely that I had to capture it; I took out my camera, turned off the flash, and took a few pictures and about thirty seconds of video, just to have something to look back at later.

Then, about five minutes after I'd already put my camera away, a very smartly dressed, smug man came up to me, tapped me on the shoulder, and with tight lips said "[Artist's name] would prefer that you not take pictures or video during the performance. [Artist's name] would also request that you expunge the pictures from your camera." And in a scolding tone, he added, "And you should always get an artist's permission before taking pictures."

Now, I suppose you can argue that cameras are distracting during performances (I repeat, I did not use a flash). But apparently this artist used to encourage photography at his shows, years ago. And I didn't just walk in and start clicking - we were paying customers of the bar. I don't know whether the person who talked to me was with the venue or was the singer's manager, but it doesn't make a difference - it completely ruined the moment, and we left about two minutes later, feeling defensive and indignant.

You know what - I was planning to post this artist's name and the venue and tell you how amazing he was. I'd have bought a CD if we'd stuck around. But apparently the people associated with said artist do not want him to get free publicity from enthusiastic potential fans. I'm sorry.

Man, I just don't know what to do with myself today.

I'm about as ready for the trip as I'm going to be. Thought about sending some last-minute notes to various industry people about our NXNE showcase - but really, at this point, one email from yet another band isn't going to talk them into coming to a show they don't already know something about. Really, it's more important to be focusing on building our audience. So... we've set the machine in motion, and done the best we can with the resources we've got, and hopefully there's enough word-of-mouth as well to draw a decent crowd.

I'll just practice for a while tonight. That's something useful.

It's a little odd travelling to the epicentre of the terrorism investigation, too. I don't know whether it's more disturbing to think of the potential damage that could have been done, or the potential repercussions either by anti-Muslim racists or by other extremist groups. So I'll choose not to think about it all that much, and live life as normal.

Not much else I can really do about it.

At the day job this week I've been mostly concentrating on making sure there's nothing else that has to be done before I go, that everybody has the files they need, etc. And even that's pretty much done, as far as I can tell. Last week I just finished piecing together the first draft of our process manual on accessibility; the week before that we had our big session at CADE in Montreal. This week, there's no deadline for anything, no sense of urgency.

I should really try to enjoy it.

I guess I'm not all that good with downtime. I know it won't last long, though, and after this trip I'll probably look forward to a nice slow patch....

For the next two weeks I'll also be guest blogging over on ARCTIC's site, at http://www.projectarctic.com/expeditions. Marcus and Max are starting their drive to Toronto tomorrow; I'll be flying out on Wednesday and joining them for the shows and the return drive. We'll be posting photos and stories from our travels to NXNE and back again.

I'll probably still post a few non-ARCTIC related things over here during that time, but if you want the full adventure experience, check in over there from now through June 18.

The comment spam has been so bad lately that I finally installed the captcha plugin for b2evolution. However, in the process I discovered that my server doesn't have the Freetype library it needs to generate an image. So I've just hacked it so that you have to enter a word to leave a comment; you'll see it when you try it. It's actually probably a better solution, because it's more accessible and it isn't from a prepackaged script that spammers are prepared for. So it'll sit there until I eventually upgrade.

If you try to leave a comment and it doesn't work for whatever reason, please let me know by email (kirsten at crows to burnaby dot com). Unless, of course, you're spamming me.

This Friday, June 2, we'll be playing our NXNE kick-off show at Azure (770 Pacific Blvd, right across from the Plaza of Nations). This is an all-ages show from 5pm-10pm. It'll be my first all-ages, so I'm sure it'll be a different experience, different kind of crowd. It's a double CD release party for Waiting For Roger & Sonic City, with guests Shiny Diamonds and, well, ARCTIC of course. We're on at 6:00.

Advance tickets are $10 and include a free copy of the new Waiting For Roger CD and a chance to win a free guitar from Tom Lee Music. You don't get this if you buy at the door, but you do if you buy from us, plus we get a modest commission which could be helpful for gas money on the upcoming cross-country trip.

Drop me a line if you'd like a ticket - kirsten (at) crows to burnaby (dot) com - or just post here.

pizza

Wednesday was a free day for me, as I'm only registered at the conference on Thursday and Friday. So I started walking, which is what I tend to do when I'm in a new city: I walk and walk and walk until I run out of time, energy, or places to walk.

I walked up Rue St. Catherine towards Rue St. Denis. Several blocks into my trip, two smiling girls in uniforms were handing out free single-serving frozen microwaveable pizzas. They gave me two packages. "Great," thought I, "that's lunch taken care of."

But it was only 10:00 in the morning, and I wasn't ready for lunch. I didn't have a bag in which to carry the pizzas, and I didn't really want to hold them all day. After a few more blocks it dawned on me that while I did have access to a microwave, it was back at the hotel and I had no intention of going back there until the evening. If I carried the pizzas around all day, they'd be a soggy, inedible mess. I supposed I could just throw them out, but I couldn't bring myself to do it - such a waste of food and packaging. My free lunch suddenly seemed like a burden.

I decided I could eat an early lunch. There's a mall across the street from Place des Arts, so I went in there and went down to the food court. But I was too embarrassed, both by my French and by the idea, to go up to any of the vendors and ask them to microwave my pizza at their restaurant.

So I wandered around like an idiot for ten minutes, holding two frozen pizza packages, until I finally went back out to the street and returned to a spot where I'd noticed a sleeping bag tucked away in an alcove. There were two homeless kids in two sleeping bags resting there. I gave them the pizzas, and one of them thanked me.

Of course, now they have to figure out how they're going to heat those pizzas up.

doors

I walked over to Vieux Montreal, which is filled with beautiful historic stone buildings that are in turn filled with identical souvenir shops. It's a beautiful area to walk. I'd like to eat at every restaurant there - and there are a lot of them.

On the way back, I walked along a side street, admiring the ivy growing up the buildings, and I started taking pictures of doors that interested me. There was one with a detailed sculpture and an Asian look to it, and another very classic black, and another so spartan and modern and glassy that it looked like it belonged to a different city.

As I walked along, a woman came out of a door I'd just photographed and asked me "Qu'est-ce que vous faites?" somewhat sharply. "In English if you like." I told her I'd just been taking pictures of doors I liked in the neighbourhood, and showed her the photos on my camera. She explained that her door was that of a woman's shelter, and so she was wondering - I apologized profusely, and deleted the photo from my camera. There was no way I could have known, of course, and she was very nice about it once she realized I wasn't up to something.

I am usually pretty self-conscious about taking photos of people in public without their permission, because I don't want to upset anybody. But I've never really worried so much about taking pictures of things and places. I've read a few stories of people being asked to stop taking pictures of facilities for "security" or "copyright" reasons, usually by guards, but this was different; it was for privacy, for the possible safety of who knows who, that I couldn't take a picture of an object.

I'm writing on the airplane to Montreal, just for something to do. It's a bit odd to have a computer on but no internet access. Every so often I think of something I want to look up, and almost load a browser. I really do take it for granted now - it's so rare to be offline but still at a keyboard. And it's not even just being offline, but being out of communication range. I can't use my cell phone here, can't even wing someone a quick text message if I feel like it. I could, if I really needed to, call someone using the phone in the back of the seat. But no one can reach me.

I'll have to get used to this feeling on the return trip from NXNE. I still haven't fully processed the distances and the amount of driving that's going to happen. Greg and I drove across the States in 2002 when we moved out to Vancouver, but we took two weeks; we stayed for a few days each in a few cities to visit friends, and we took an extra day if we really liked it somewhere. ARCTIC will be making the trip from Toronto to Vancouver in about five days.

When driving across the States, you really feel like you're getting somewhere, because every so often you cross a state line and you're somewhere "new", even if the landscape hasn't changed.

When ARCTIC heads for home, we'll drive for twenty hours and still be in Ontario.

And the driving will be more or less constant, with the occasional stop for food and sleep. No real sightseeing to speak of. When the other two become as email-deprived as I do, maybe we'll get to stop at an internet cafe, but there'll be none of the everpresent awareness that I'm used to, no instant notification of new mail.

I'll miss it, but I'll probably be too tired for it to really bother me...

On the way to the airport, there's a furniture store called "Once a Tree Furniture". This name bothers me somewhat. Sure, I like real wood furniture as much as the next person, but I like living trees better. The idea of buying furniture from "Once a Tree" depresses me a little.

See, humans don't like to be reminded of things they've killed. "Once A Piglet Bacon" probably wouldn't go over too well in market tests...

I'm actually going to be in Montreal for the next few days, for a distance education conference. We're giving a presentation on web accessibility, in the last possible session on Friday afternoon, from which I will leave directly for the airport.

I'm slightly bemused by the whole thing, since I'm not a frequent conference-goer and my focus isn't so much on education theory but on the implementation side of things. But a few days in Montreal in May will be lovely, I'm sure. It's just kind of funny that I may be back there for a show a mere two weeks later...

ARCTIC has been accepted at the North by Northeast music festival in Toronto. If you're not familiar with NXNE, it's one of the biggest festivals in Canada, so this is very, very exciting. Marcus played solo there last year, and as it's a bit unusual to be accepted two years in a row, we hadn't counted on it this year. But we're in, and he's decided it'll be a full band show this time. So off we go!

The show is on June 8, 10:00 pm at Clinton's Tavern. I don't know who else is on the bill yet.

We're also planning to put together some shows in the Southern Ontario area from around June 9-12. We can't play in Toronto proper during that time, as part of the NXNE agreement, but can play pretty much anywhere outside of there - Hamilton, London, Guelph, Kitchener/Waterloo, etc. and we'd consider going up to Montreal or Ottawa if the timing is right. We'd also like to do a few stops on the way back, like Calgary or Edmonton, and get back into Vancouver by the 18th. So it's not a heavy-duty tour, just a week & a half - but it'll be a good taste of the road.

I don't know how many of you live in these areas, but if you know of a band that could use an opening act, or you know someone who could help us get on a bill, we'd truly appreciate all the help we can get. Any & all leads are welcome. It can be a full band show, or a solo show, whatever's more appropriate for the venue & the event. And if you've got friends in Ontario - and who doesn't? - tell them to come check us out, and say hi to the bassist.

I was so hyper about all this the other day that I actually started cleaning, just because I had all this extra energy to expend and couldn't bring myself to sit in one place or concentrate on anything. (I rarely, rarely experience fits of cleaning. This is highly unnatural.) It's exciting, and also a little daunting - I've never toured, I know I'm going to miss Greg, and I'm a little worried about the lack of sleep involved - but I'm up for it. It's the sort of experience you don't let pass you by.

Last week I launched a site for Katie Davis, a Seattle-based singer-songwriter. Pilar Alvarez designed the site and I did the development.

I've never actually met Katie, nor even spoken to her on the phone, but I greatly enjoyed working with her over email - the distance seemed pretty much negligible. I like what I've heard of her music thus far, and hopefully I'll get a chance to see her play in person someday!

Check out the site. There'll be more changes made to it over time, as well - we'll be adding a blog, and a street team page, and other goodies.

A vacant lot at Main & 23rd has apparently been converted to prime beachfront property:

Dive in, kids!

Perogies for All

Friday night, Greg and I and a few friends headed out for perogies at the Ukrainian Orthodox Church on 10th Ave. We've been vaguely aware for ages that they have a dinner on the first Friday of every month, but only recently when people actually recommended it to us did it occur to us to attend. It turns out it's quite the event, and the crowd is a surprising mix of hipsters, families, and old folks, all lined up for platefuls of perogies dripping butter and large quantities of smoked meat.

The food was very tasty (I preferred to mix all of it up together - well, except the cake). If you're counting calories, though, I wouldn't even look at it sideways.

Things I've Learned About Songwriting, part 3

Over the past few days, I poured some time (15 hours) into pushing some music along (2 songs. Well, 2 1/2.). I had gotten stuck at a point where I knew what the structure was, and knew sort of what I wanted to do with them, but couldn't really see how to do it. I finally pushed past that point, and just started recording and layering and adding and deleting to see what would happen. And they finally started to gel. I actually quite like listening to one of them. The other, I'm giving a few days to see if I still like it.

They still need some work, and then they'll need to be properly mixed. But they're coming along.

Recently I've been taking some bass lessons, partly to work on technique and the range of what I can do, and partly to learn more about music theory so I can better improvise and compose.

Now, I have a pretty decent music background, in that I took lessons on one type of instrument or another for many years from about ages 6-18. But at no point did I ever learn anything about chord theory and harmonies. It wasn't really needed for classical music - you'd just read what was written on the paper in front of you. Interpret the style, yes, consider phrasing and dynamics. But harmonies? That's already done for you.

So I'm slowly bending my mind around these new concepts, but it's a different type of understanding than I'm used to. For starters, there are essentially mathematical rules at play here: there's different circumstances under which you can play a third, a seventh, a dominant seventh, and you need to learn those circumstances.

Some of the rules seem arbitrary, but at the same time they're almost instinctive. This is what's messing with me. Let's take a simple example: major and minor chords. Most people are aware that a major chord sounds happy and a minor chord sounds sad. The question that keeps surfacing in my brain is why? As far as I know, science hasn't found a reason; it's just something about the way we process the sounds. (I did a little digging around, and just found more questions.)

When I learn that a dominant seventh has an unresolved sound, and "wants" to move to a sound with more closure, it makes sense to me to some degree. After all, I can hear it; yes, there's a sense of tension until the chord resolves. But why? What is it about the sound that makes us agree that it is unresolved? I keep looking for an answer in the math, but math is not necessarily the best way to explain emotional response.

It seems like there's as many exceptions as there are rules, as well, and of course any of the rules can be broken if you really want to, or are clever enough to play your way out of an uncomfortable chord. This is less like math and more like language, now: one chord can ask a question that another chord appears to answer, all the while defying mathematical rules you've already established.

These aren't new ideas, but they're on my mind at the moment. It feels like I'm very close to understanding it, if I could just come up with the right metaphor - but none of the metaphors of math, language, or emotions are quite right. Music includes some of these things, but is something else besides.

One thing I've been relatively quiet about on this blog is the fact that I'm a fairly rabid Radiohead fan. I've seen them eight times, usually as close to the stage as I can get. But now that they're announced their North American tour dates, it's time for me to come out of my little closet and mention that their shows are pretty much the closest thing I can comprehend to a religious experience. They have an incredible live presence, and their music has more than a little to do with my own drive to write and perform.

Unfortunately, they've somehow managed to bypass the entire Northwest region, and won't be any closer than Berkeley, CA.

This is terribly frustrating.

Greg and I are totally up for a road trip, but that's only half the problem; getting tickets is the other half. We couldn't get in on the fan ticket sale this week, which means trying to fight through the hordes at Ticketbastard's site. And though we really want to go to a show, we aren't willing to pay the $300+ per ticket that the scalpers command on eBay. We never have before and we're not about to start now.

So who knows what we'll end up doing. Even though I've seen them a few times, I'd hate to miss out on a new tour completely. Going to see your favourite band live again is not like seeing a movie again. It's a different experience every time. And they won't be touring forever.

Interestingly, Radiohead's tour is not in support of a new album, and though they've been in the studio there's no album expected this year. They will be playing new material at the shows, though.

If you want to geek out a bit, check out Graham Lee's blog on myspace. He's Radiohead's live sound engineer, and is posting as much as he's allowed to about rehearsals, gear, and tech specs. Their guitar tech, Plank, is also keeping a blog, though it's not as detailed. And of course, Radiohead themselves keep a blog - posting is a bit sporadic and unpredictable, but that's part of the charm.

Sunday night

Word went out on the NMW artists' list that Elixir, The Turn, Motion Soundtrack and Whitfield had been chosen as Best of the Fest and would be playing at Richards on Richards Sunday night. Greg and I decided to get some last use out of our wristbands and head on by. We skipped Elixir and The Turn (I'm sure they're very good but they're not so much in our genre range) and caught some of Motion Soundtrack and Whitfield.

I've mentioned Motion Soundtrack before; they're all incredibly talented and always put on an excellent live show. I was pleased to see them get the award for Most Likely To Succeed - I hope they do.

Whitfield I've also mentioned before. But maybe they read my comments back in 2004, because I can't say I'd say the same things about them now; they seem to have evolved into their own sound, and I'm not hearing the same Radiohead and Coldplay echoes that seemed so obvious before.

Unfortunately, the turnout for this show was as poor as Saturday's conference sessions. This isn't a huge surprise, given that it was a Sunday night concert, with the bands announced only that afternoon, but it was a bit sad.

This was the one biggest criticism that we heard, from several people, about this year's New Music West: not nearly enough publicity. If you're already in the Vancouver music scene, it's hard not to know about it, but most people aren't. There were a few little blurbs in the Straight and Westender and so on, a few "picks of the fest" (we got a nice mention in 24 Hours, actually!) but that seems to have been about it. It's still a young festival, and the current organizers have only taken it over fairly recently, but next year I'd like to see them get outright aggressive with the promotion: street teams up and down Granville, two-page schedules printed in the Straight, the artists announced at least a month in advance. It's hard to draw out a big crowd in Vancouver, it really is. But hopefully every year, they can build some more momentum. I think NMW is an important festival - it's really the only large festival that showcases bands from this part of Canada at all. There's some amazing talent out here, and it needs a spotlight once in a while.

Anyway, it's time to get back to real life for a little while. May is going to be a relatively quiet month for ARCTIC; it's time to organize the studio, get some recording in, take another look at merch, all the things that have been sitting by the wayside while we've been working towards these shows. But things won't be quiet for long, we're pretty sure of that.

Speakers Series

Saturday from 11-6 was the New Music West Speakers Series, which we figured would be a good opportunity to hear a bit about others' ideas on the industry, meet some people, and learn some things. It was held at the lovely Centre for Performing Arts across from the library.

Speakers included Daniel Cutler of Arts & Crafts Records (Feist, Broken Social Scene), psychotherapist Phil Towle, and Raine Maida of Our Lady Peace. There was also a SOCAN Songs & Stories showcase featuring Jeremy Fisher, Kinnie Starr and Leeroy Stagger, all of whom were excellent, but the first two especially moved me.

I can't say that I had any great "a-ha" moments with any of the speakers; I think I learned more from Lefsetz's letter than I did on Saturday. The message was the same message that we've been hearing for a while now: you don't need a major label, the internet is a great tool for independent bands, you've got to learn to do it all yourself, not just the music side...

Ironically, after a day spent bashing the majors, the final session of the day was an A&R panel session consisting of reps from the majors, talking about what they had to offer in today's modern music world. Perhaps NMW should have mixed the indies and the majors in the panel and gotten some real debate going. That might have also helped with the crowd, which was dismal; attendance for each session ranged from about 25-75 people, in a theatre with a capacity of 1800+.

Saturday night

Originally I had lined up about five bands I wanted to see Saturday night, and had my time planned out from 7:00-11:00. I didn't make the 7:00 because we all took our time having a nice dinner after the last session and dissecting the day's events.

I also missed most of the 8:00, only catching the last two songs from Edmonton's Storyboard at the Plaza, which I quite enjoyed. (BTW, they not only have a female bassist, but a female drummer, an even rarer sight.)

But I'd mostly been interested in seeing Au4, since Cindy at IMU mentioned them and I really liked what I heard online. Saturday at New Music West would be their debut show.

Well, they put on a hell of a first show. Smoke, synchronized lights and videos; damn good sound, and a really great set. Extremely tight, extremely together. Everything they did made it clear that they're ready to move up to a larger venue at a moment's notice. And most importantly, the music was wonderful. I bought the CD before their set was even done, and that is unusual for me - I'm slightly wary of buying CDs at shows, because so often it just doesn't match up to the live version. But I've been listening to it over and over, and I still think it's beautiful and can't seem to stop listening to it. (You can stream the entire album online on their website - click "listen".)

They're very obviously influenced by Nine Inch Nails (not the aggressive side, but the ambient keyboard side), and their myspace page also lists Air and Massive Attack as comparisons. You can hear all of this clearly, though not so clearly that you mind in any way.

Anyway, after that show, I felt pretty much done for the evening. It'd been a long week already, and the next two bands on my list (The Blue Alarm and Motion Soundtrack) were bands I'd already seen before. So I called it a night.

Friday night

I decided to check out the Boompa Records showcase at the Penthouse. Four bands were on the bill that night. The size of the crowd ranged from about a third of the venue to maybe half at peak.

• My Project: Blue, who got a little write-up in the Straight recently, opened the evening. I'd seen them play outside at UBC last year, and quite liked what I heard, but the sound wasn't too great that day; it was good to catch them in a better venue.
• Run Chico Run followed. I hate to do the "they sound like so-and-so meets wossisname" thing, but it's the best way of getting things across sometimes. So, I'd say they sound like Cake meets They Might Be Giants. I kept wondering why I heard three instruments when there were only two guys, and then I got in a little closer and saw one of them was playing drums with one hand and basslines on a little keyboard with the other. Every so often they'd get up, cross the stage (maybe with a high-five in the middle) and switch instruments. They looked like they were having fun.
• Catlow - Gritty, energetic female-fronted songs that make you tap your feet a lot. Catchy stuff.
• Everything I've read about The Salteens uses the word "sugary" in the description, and with good reason. It's happy, cheery, boppy major-key music; very dynamic and bouncy. They've got a horn section, even.

Next up: Saturday's conference sessions and a few more shows.

Coming out of my band-induced haze, here's my take on New Music West, which is just finishing up today.

ARCTIC showcase

Our show at the Marine Club went rather well. We'd heard that many venues were poorly attended on Wednesday night and that things were sparse during the early Thursday sets, so we were pleased to have a modest crowd there.

However, the first act, Julie Gribble, was AWOL. No one seemed to know where she was; she didn't appear for soundcheck and the NMW volunteers had no answers. (We later learned that she had had to cancel due to a family emergency a week earlier, but this information didn't make it to anyone at the Marine Club.)

We pondered starting earlier, but having listed our set time as 11:00, we didn't want to start too early and have our crowd miss us by showing up on time. So seizing the opportunity, a guy named Guy Wilkins borrowed a guitar and played for a few songs. He was solid: good songs, good performance.

Our set went well, I thought; the setlist was totally different, which felt odd but seemed to work alright. I played bass on the last song of the set, "No Trace", where I usually play keyboards. While I love the high, chilly keyboard sound in the song, I replaced it with a bassline that becomes the last thing to hold solid while everything else disintegrates around me; Marcus's guitar loops start to fade out, and Alex starts doing some crazy drum stuff. My job is to be the last one standing. It's fun, and a bit challenging, because instinct says to keep steady with what Alex is doing, but he's playing around the beat entirely. Crazy stuff.

I was really happy with the crowd. The crew from Project Opus, who've been helping us promote the show, was wonderfully enthusiastic, and we had people bopping around and gettin' into the tunes. I was startled when they cheered at the start of "Some One Turning", and realized that it was because they recognized the song, something large, well-established bands take for granted - but we don't. It was a good moment.

One thing that was a little unnerving was that Marcus was actually sick on Thursday. But he's a professional, and he pulled through; as soon as he got onto the stage he was "on". I doubt anyone could really tell. I could hear it a little in his voice, but probably only because I know it well enough to know the difference.

It reminds me of something I don't like to think about, though, which is that someday I'll have to play a show when I'm sick, or after a night of insomnia, or under great stress, or under some similar less-than-optimal conditions. I've been very careful to get good full nights of sleep on the days of our shows, because I have that luxury right now. If we do a tour sometime, I may not have the option, and the lack of sleep and travel stress will probably make me sick at some point. It's part of the job, but I have this thing about wanting to set conditions up to be just right, so being sick for a big show is one thing I'm not looking forward to facing.

David Blair followed us; he's a super-enthusiastic, super-nice guy who's been in music for a while but is just starting out with his own songs. He and his band played well and the crowd was into it, including a couple of covers at the end.

Next up: Friday and Saturday's shows & events.

I find I get very fidgety and distracted in the twenty-four hours before a show. It becomes hard to concentrate on anything unrelated; I just want to play now now now. I think this must be something like what racehorses go through when they can tell a race is coming up. It's not nervousness, but anticipation.

Maybe I need to come up with some kind of pre-show ritual. Like: twelve hours before, eat grapes. Six hours before, put on heavy winter clothing and sit in a very cold room. Three hours before, chant backwards while balancing on heels. Stuff that has nothing to do with performance, but when repeated often enough, gets you into a certain mindframe. (You think that's strange, check out the tech riders of the real-life stars and what they request in their dressing rooms...)

We're not using the keyboard in this show - it's a shorter set than usual, and the extra setup & takedown time doesn't justify its presence - but one of the songs I usually play keyboard on, I'll play bass instead. So we came up with a new bassline today and yesterday, and I'm just working on it and getting it down. We're closing the set with this song, and it'll be pretty interesting to see how it works there. It could get a little crazy...

One last plug for the show: ARCTIC at the Marine Club, 573 Homer Street (@ Dunsmuir), part of New Music West. Tix are $10 at the door or $20 for a wristband that gets you into all the NMW showcases. Julie Gribble starts the showcase at 10:15; we're on at 11; David Blair is up at 11:45. Come check us out.

I can tell it's spring - not because of the flowers in bloom, or the birds chirping, but by the frantic scrambling of paws on a kitchen floor, a frustrated bark, or the occasional WHUMPF of a small body flinging itself from couch to carpet to couch again. With the windows and doors wide open, the occasional housefly now finds its way inside, and quickly becomes something for Dexter to chase and hunt. It's a great way to keep a dog entertained - just wind him up and let him go.

The downside is that there is now some sort of wasp making its way from window to window. Looks like Dexter's encountered them before, because he's being unusually cautious about this one.

I officially declare it to be sandal season.

So NewMusicWest lets us have a little guestlist, which is nice.

We did some hemming and hawing over what to do with the list. We're probably supposed to use it to lure industry heavyweights to the show - but they're not really our target audience, they're probably swamped with invites, and they've all got VIP passes anyway. We'd rather have a nice big crowd of people who are there for the music.

We've given away some of the passes to fans in contests, but we have one or two spots left. We'd like to invite the blogosphere - after all, is there a better venue in existence for word-of-mouth than here?

So we'd like to put you on the guestlist. If you:

• keep a blog
• can make it to ARCTIC's show in Vancouver this Thursday, April 27 at 11 pm
• would be willing to post a write-up of our show (an honest one - this is not a bribe)

please drop me a line at kirsten at crowstoburnaby dot com (run it together into real address, of course) and I'll see what we can do.

If you want to know more about the band first, take a look around http://www.projectarctic.com.

After several years using an excellent Olympus C3000Z digital camera, I have at last acquired something a little more contemporary (as digital goes) and portable: a lovely Canon SD600 ultracompact. I've been mulling getting a new camera for probably about two years now, often wishing I had something I could just toss in my purse for those "wish I had a camera" moments without having to cart around the fairly hefty Olympus. And I didn't want to sacrifice too much image quality in the meantime.

I'm very pleased with it so far. Expect to see more photos decorating this blog.

Despite my best intentions, I haven't been blogging as much as usual lately - I keep starting posts, or thinking about things to post, and then getting caught up doing other stuff instead. So I'm going to do a capsule summary of what I've been doing, and then hopefully in the next while I'll get some time to write out some longer thoughts on things.

• Giving two presentations on web accessibility at the BCEd Online conference downtown. One was a more Powerpointy style talk, and the one later today will be a more freeform, conversational hands-on workshop where we step through some things you can do to make your site more accessible. The Powerpointy one went well - I keep surprising myself by finding I'm starting to enjoy presenting - this afternoon's will be interesting as it's not at all scripted, and that'll be more of a challenge for me.
• Preparing for the upcoming New Music West show. Involves a lot of printing and cutting of paper, and flurries of emails.
• Working on a song or two of my own. Yes, I'm still at it. Last week I wrote something I liked quite a lot, but the downside is now I'm eyeing some of my older songs a little more critically...
• Taking some bass lessons to develop my technique. You can never learn enough (of anything).
• Avoiding beef. Not because I'm afraid of catching mad cow (it's not really likely a risk), but because I'm objecting to the conditions that bring the disease around in the first place. Of course, by that logic I should also avoid, well, most meat altogether. But one step at a time.

More details as events warrant.

Project Opus, a new online music community, is holding a contest to give away two passes to our showcase at New Music West. You just have to answer a few easy trivia questions about ARCTIC, and you're in. The contest ends Friday, April 21 and the showcase is Thursday, April 27 at the Marine Club.

Take a look around Project Opus while you're at it... it's relatively new, but it has a good feel to it, and a growing community. It was also born and raised in Vancouver, which is nice. I like it considerably more than the other bazillion music sites we're signed up on, enough to hang out and actually talk to people once in a while.

I went to an open mic tonight, and liked it a lot. The last time I'd done an open mic, about a month ago, I never quite got into it, and felt self-consciously like yet another ho-hum wannabe with some unfinished songs. This time everything meshed nicely, the sound was better, I was in a good zone, and I just enjoyed the hell out of it.

I got to chatting with another bass player later in the evening, who asked me if I play in a band. I said, "Yes, I play with a band called Arctic." He blinked and said "I just heard you on the radio."

I did a double-take, and remembered that CiTR is helping us give away passes to our New Music West show. So tonight and next Thursday night, you can listen to Thunderbird Radio Hell and phone in to win.

Technically, then, I wasn't on the radio, because CiTR would probably have played Some One Turning, and I'm not in the recorded version.

But it was very cool to hear about it.

Vicky at Gone to the Dogs has an interesting tangent in a recent post about which part of Newfoundland she and her husband needed to live in:

The last reason may have some of you scratching your heads, but I've come to the conclusion that there are sunrise people and sunset people. We are of the sunrise variety (we like sunsets, but we're morning people at heart), so we need to be east. Sunset people are more westerly. Just a weird theory of mine.

This is a variation on an observation I've made often since moving to Vancouver: there are east-coast people, and there are west-coast people, and you won't be happy if you're on the wrong coast. I've seen it happen a few times now - someone moves to Vancouver, and even after they've settled in there's a restless, antsy quality about them. Something's not right, they're frustrated, and sure enough within a few years they're heading off to Toronto or further.

And then I've known others who moved west and didn't realize how out of place they were until they hit this coast. The west coast is like a release.

So maybe it is tied to sunrise and sunset. I'd say Greg and I are sunset people, because it's a rare, rare thing that we're up for sunrise, and if we are it's not something we're happy about. Maybe that explains the "early bird gets the worm" attitude of the easterners and the casual, twilight behaviour of the hippie west coast: which way do you want to be facing when the sun is by the horizon?

If any of you have any interest in making a band successful, you really need to read this New Act Primer letter by Bob Lefsetz. Pretty much every paragraph had me nodding my head and saying "this is absolutely dead on".

Post-show? Not post-game? Oh yeah, I guess there was a hockey game last night... can't say I follow it that closely, though I'll be pleased for the city if the Canucks win stuff. But I was only dimly aware of the game because we had to wait for it to end before we could start our set. *grin*

If it's possible, I think I had an even better time at this show than the last one. The last time was exciting since it was the first time, and there was a lot of anticipation and build-up and nervous energy, which was fun. But this show seemed more comfortable - I had a better sense of what to expect and could just relax and get into it, savour the moment rather than think through it.

Playing wasn't the only great part of the night - I thought the other two bands were both simply excellent. Windows '78 has a lovely warm, ambient, multidimensional sound, reminding me a bit of Mogwai and The Album Leaf. Their sound fills the room beautifully. You can read a nice summary of them here at Chartattack. (It also mentions their connection to Hinterland, another Vancouver band I've mentioned before; they seriously impressed me at last year's WCMAs.)

Following Windows '78's CD release party was The Hermit. While their latest CD features several different vocalists, Paula Toledo is their voice for their live show. I've mentioned Paula before as well, as ARCTIC played at her CD release party last month and I did the development work on her website; The Hermit's style is quite different from her solo work, and she does it just as well. The Hermit is driven by drummer Hamish Thomson, so the music is also beat-driven, beautifully layered loops of drums and keyboards and effects, building up with bass and guitar and vocals. It's a dreamy sound - and combined with the projected visuals, hypnotic.

It's funny... when Greg and I first got to Vancouver, we went to a few random clubs for live music here and there, and nothing ever really seemed to click. I wondered what I was missing in the live scene. Now I feel like I've finally stumbled into a treasure trove of genuinely great music. The other two bands were not only superb performers with creative, original sounds, but they're awfully nice people too.

I've been trying to figure out how to say this without sounding either a) fake or b) cliched, but I really did feel honoured to play on the same stage as everybody there last night. Kudos to Cindy at IMU Productions for putting the lineup together - she said this'd be a great match, and she was right.

Next chance to see ARCTIC is April 22, when Marcus will do a solo performance at the Media Club (lineup also includes Madison's Panic, Visions Of You, Perpetual Dream Theory, Benjamin Keith CD Release & Rebecca Ramone). Next time to see me play is at our New Music West festival showcase, on Thursday, April 27 at the Marine Club, 11:00 pm.

Recently I had the opportunity to record a small choir (about 15 people) during rehearsal. They'd been trying to record their practices with a basic hand-held tape recorder, which is okay for getting the gist of timing and pitch but not so good for quality or figuring out how well the voices blend (the basses tend to get a bit short-changed).

I sat at a small table in the room, with an Mbox, a laptop with Pro Tools, and a most lovely and warm-toned AT825 stereo microphone, rented for the occasion.

It was a great chance to experiment a little with mic placement and see what worked. The biggest problem I noticed was that I picked up all the foot shuffling and paper rustling noises. If it had been a performance or a serious recording session, they would have needed music stands. Pointing the mic further up reduced the problem, though it also reduced some of the detail.

Of course, it would've helped to be able to monitor from a separate room, as even with excellent headphones it can be hard to hear the mix clearly. There's a slight latency when recording digitally - if you're not familiar with latency, it's a brief delay in the sound while the computer processes the audio before outputting it. So when you're in the same room as a performer, you hear their performance live - while you hear it again, delayed very, very slightly, in your headphones. (This is very disorienting if you're the performer and have phones on - it'll throw your timing right off.) There are ways to reduce latency to some extent, or if all you need to hear is the incoming sound, you can listen to the signal in real-time before it reaches the computer.

There were no technical hiccups at all, no surprises, and I had a grand ol' time listening to songs like "It Had To Be You" and "Chattanooga Choo-Choo", sung by people who're doing it because they love singing. (One of them, randomly enough, is the guy who sang that United Furniture Warehouse jingle that you can't help but know if you've heard it more than once.)

Technically it was work, but it sure didn't feel like it.

I had a strange parallel reality moment last week.

While ego-googling my name, I've previously spotted another person named Kirsten Bole online. Since my name isn't all that much common, and with my maiden name I never encountered any duplicates, this is a little odd to me. I suppose all the John Smiths of the world are used to it, but I find it slightly disturbing: who is this alternate me? Will people confuse me with her? Are we at all alike?

The other Kirsten is an artist in Denver, and her name comes up in association with galleries and exhibits. On the spur of the moment I sent her a quick hello (if there's only one other person there with my name, we should at least know each other, right?). She wrote me back a quick hi a few days later, and it was odd to see my name in the "from" field, because it was all lowercase the way I've set mine, and I couldn't remember cc'ing myself on anything recently.

What made it all a bit surreal was that in the same afternoon, I also received a quick hello email from someone else with a Pembroke Welsh Corgi named Dexter. (Naturally this parallel-world Dexter is very cute as well.)

The coincidences are out there, if you're lookin' for 'em.

While I seem to have a handful of posts underway in some kind of note form, I haven't had the time this week to actually expound on any of them. I will do this sooner or later, but when, when?

Until things slow down enough for me to write something proper, I'll help you pass the time by sending you to watch a video about fainting goats. If you're anything like me, you'll watch this at least two or three times, and laugh and laugh and laugh.

I'd like to draw your attention to my dad's photography gallery, hosted on secondcello.com. He's got a few hundred of his photos there, including some wonderful shots of Newfoundland ranging from 1960 to 1995, and an assortment of stereo photographs (some you cross your eyes to see, some for parallel viewing - you can also use a viewer if your eyes get tired trying).

It's a wonderful collection, ranging from abstract close-ups to scenic views, and whether you're interested in Newfoundland's history or you appreciate composition in general, you'll find something in it. His interest in photography inspired my own - I got my first camera at age 7 and learned how to look at life through a viewfinder, and even if I don't always carry my camera I still like to imagine how I might frame and capture a moment.

Have a look.

I may have made it to the Zombie Walk last August, but somehow Vancouver's pillow fight completely passed me by. Looks like a great time, though with my tooth still a little tender it's probably just as well I wasn't there to be joyfully whomped upside the head.

I'll be playing in a couple of ARCTIC shows this April:

Saturday, April 8
The Media Club
Windows '78 CD release party with The Hermit and ARCTIC
Doors 9 pm, tickets $10

Thursday, April 27
The Marine Club
NewMusicWest Festival Showcase

• Julie Gribble at 10:15
• ARCTIC at 11:00
• David Blair at 11:45

Admission is a $20 wristband which gets you into all the NMW shows - about 200 bands over 5 nights!

There is also a solo ARCTIC show at the Media Club on Saturday, April 22; the songs are the same but the sound is very different. The lineup includes Madison's Panic, Perpetual Dream Theory, Visions Of You, Benjamin Keith CD Release & Rebecca Ramone. Doors are at 7pm, tickets $10.

It's only around 8:30 am, and already today I've learned that

a) I have to get a root canal next week, my second ever, and my first ever crown, and
b) there's 1100+ spam comments on this blog, most of which I have to delete by hand because they didn't include a URL that I could block.

Things had better improve today.

UPDATE: If you want to leave a comment now, it has to be at least 20 words long - this will at least stop the automated crap I've been getting. I've cleaned about half of it out but can't bear to look at it any more for now, so I'll finish it later. There, it's done, and it took me probably about a solid hour and a half over the course of the day. I feel like a storeowner who's just had to clean off a huge wall covered in graffiti. I'm not the fightin' kind, but I'd like to land one good solid punch in the spammer's face for making me clean up their mess for no good reason.

I love this photograph. It's my grandmother, around 1928, on the side of a mountain. It makes me admire her - not just because I myself probably couldn't make it up Grouse without a stretcher, but because hiking up mountains is just not something you associate with women in the 1920s.

When I knew her, she may not have been climbing mountains any more - still, she was up and about and active until the end. I wish I'd been old enough to get to know her as a person, but I was still a kid. I do know she was sassy and independent and sharp, and so proud of her family.

Having a mountain-climbing grandmother is perhaps as cool as having a friend who got hit by a shark at work last week. Yes, the fish kind of shark. None of us who sit at computers all day can possibly say anything that interesting about our jobs...

Looking at my comments sections, I really need to get this guy and this girl (scroll down) hooked up. I think they'd make a great couple.

Rumour has it that today is International Women's Day. I have slightly mixed feelings about this event. I'm looking at a little flyer from campus that lists off a bunch of things that are good to do or be ("I believe in the potential of every person... I create an environment where it is safe to question the status quo") and ends in "I am a feminist".

Perhaps it's only because I live in a society where women are doing pretty well already, but I can't get terribly worked up about this. I have a very simple "feminist" philosophy, which is that the only reason I can't do something a man can do should be because of physical differences, rather than societal pressure. (By "physical" I do include brain differences - I acknowledge there are some things that men are better wired for and some things that women are better wired for.) So I'm not strong enough to be a roadie, but the fact that there aren't many women in the music industry shouldn't dissuade me from being an engineer or a musician, and working alongside men.

Now, this is decidedly closer to equality than past generations - and certain contemporary nations - where a lone woman wouldn't be allowed in the presence of unrelated men without a chaperone. So do I celebrate the fact that I have the freedom to make these sorts of choices? Or do I take it for granted, because it shouldn't even be a question in the first place? I don't feel a need to treat women as something "special", just because most of civilized history ignores us. It smacks of affirmative action - a well-meaning attempt to overcompensate for past mistakes. Take us for what we are, try to understand the differences, and then let's all move on together. Wait, let me take it a step further first: I'd like to propose International Men's Day to raise awareness of the men who get this - for my husband who understands me as a person and not as a possession, for all the male colleagues I've had who've treated me as an equal. It's not just women that are changing, and not just women who should be celebrated for it.

I think the value in something like International Women's Day is to spread this notion to the places where women's rights are still weak. I think this day will be a success when it is finally completely irrelevant.

Little twists of fate have gently interrupted my plans over the past few days. Yesterday, a trolley bus de-wired at Granville and Broadway and managed to take down most of the other wires with it, so all traffic to this major intersection was rerouted. This includes the 99 B-Line, which runs an absolute and unwavering route straight down Broadway to UBC with only a slight twist at Alma to shift from Broadway to 10th. It was a bit alien to ride the B-Line down Hemlock to 4th and back up Burrard - several blocks out of the usual route - and as we passed under the Granville Bridge we saw probably around a dozen trolley buses backed up across the bridge. The roads were a mess, and even an hour or two later the buses were still running slow and very, very full.

Today I was working from home, when the power to the building suddenly died. Mildly annoyed, I waited a few minutes... and a few more... and finally wandered out to see if I could figure out what was going on. Lo and behold, but a power line had snapped down at Broadway, and the entire block from Cambie to Main was dead. Hours later, I still see no lights in the stores across the street; luckily, I can get some work done at a net cafe, but the laptop batteries will only last so long and etiquette will demand that I not abuse the free wireless too much longer.

I had quite a laundry list of things to do today - including laundry - that won't happen until the power comes back up. It is a little intimidating to realize how much we take these wires in the sky for granted, and how much of a disturbance we consider it to be when they go away. I almost don't know what to do with myself if I don't have a computer around, which is sad. Even my musical instrument is electric.

It did make people on the street talk to each other a little, though. That was nice.

While it may be easier these days for independent musicians to get their music heard and distributed, making a comfy living at it is still a challenge. The most obvious avenues for income are touring, CD and merchandise sales, and music placement/licensing. But there's a lot of flux in the industry, and the models are changing.

Recently I started musing about how past musicians supported their work, and I got to thinking about the patronage model from days of yore. A lucky composer could gain the support of royalty or the church; the musician could focus on their music and the patron would gain credit and respect for their contribution to the arts. This system has mostly died out, but there are a few modern variations on the theme:

• Commercial sponsorship: music licensed or commissioned by a corporation is the most obvious contemporary equivalent of patronage. This has a stigma attached it, in that you will be judged on your connection to the sponsor, and you run the risk of alienating your intended audience if your sponsors' ideals differ greatly from your own. Hummer, the gas-guzzling SUV manufacturer, can't even give money away - they've offered $50,000 and upwards to several bands and been turned down over and over again:
  

  "My standard line is you guys will play a hundred million gigs before you see this amount of money," Hysen said. "Usually they come back with, 'We'll do anything BUT Hummer.'"

• Private or government grants, such as the Canada Council for the Arts and FACTOR, play the role of state patronage. These are a welcome and appreciated form of income; of course, there is a lot of competition and never enough money to go around.
• Orchestras call for individual members of their audience to provide various levels of support and dub them "sponsors", "patrons" or "friends" accordingly.

  This is a time-tested and acceptable practice in the classical world, but implementing it with a rock band would require a lot of tact. It's much easier to see what the expenses are with an orchestra - there's dozens of players, and a huge hall to rent! Classical audiences also have different expectations attending a concert; they may know the music already and are appreciative that someone is there to perform it. If they don't like the music but do like the performance, they may still return on another night.

  Rock audiences are a harder sell. They might not know your band, and your immediate challenge is to win them over. If you then suggest that they pay something in addition to their ticket or CD price, you risk offending them - haven't they already shown their support?

  There are indie musicians trying this model in various ways, offering things in exchange for donations, such as printing fans' names in the CD liner or offering access to exclusive material. It'll be interesting to see what works, but it probably won't be a band's primary source of income any time soon.

How about some other ideas? There's the story of Marissa Marchant, a singer/songwriter who tried to charge $1,000 for her CD and was laughed off the internet:

People don't want musicians to think highly of themselves, but plumbers are allowed to get 500 dollars for changing a pipe for an hour.

Visual artists may also be able to set their prices, but they still have to be established in the marketplace before they can consider asking a cool grand for their artwork. And even so, music is so easily reproduced that it's more akin to selling a print than selling a painting.

How could she have handled this differently? Perhaps arranging for someone to sponsor her before she made the CD would have seemed more appropriate to the masses - which brings us back to the patronage idea.

Would most modern rock musicians even accept an individual's patronage? There's pride in that word, "independent". And there's also a tradeoff between being poor and being beholden to another. What if your "patron" wants to directly influence your music? Surely that's no worse than a label saying "we need a hit single" - uncomfortable, but something you have to deal with until you're successful enough to call the shots.

While tossing and turning sleeplessly recently, I thought back to the room and bed I had when I was younger. I had a waterbed from about age 11 to 18 or so, and it seemed like every other household had one as well. It was supposed to be good support, let your back rest in a natural position, blah blah blah.... but by the early-90's, it seemed that the whole notion of the waterbed simply evaporated. I hadn't even thought of them in years.

I remember I really liked my waterbed. It was fun; you could make the dog seasick by jumping around. I liked the soothing motion, and the constant warmth. The only significant disadvantage I remember was if the power went out - once that bed was cold, you could lie on it all night and it would never, ever warm to your body heat.

I doubt I'd consider owning one again - one more powered item in the house that has to be constantly heated, extra maintenance, special sheets, risk of damaging it. Sure, that's a practical viewpoint that I wouldn't have had as a kid. But obviously a large number of adults had to consider the practicalities, and the waterbeds still won for a while. Was it purely a fad, and people eventually ditched their beds because they weren't in fashion?

A quick google search shows over a million hits, and plenty of manufacturers. Somebody's still making them, which means somebody's still buying them. Who?

If I'm remembering waterbeds in the midst of 80's nostalgia, somebody else is too, and there'll probably be some radical waterbed renaissance within a decade. It'll just take the right changes and the right marketing, and then the next thing you know, everyone will be swimming with the fishes again.

Ah, I had a great time Saturday night.

We had a decent crowd to start with, and got a very positive response to the show. The Media Club is a nice place to play - a comfy size, a positive vibe, their super helpful in-house sound guy Shawn. Merch was sold, guestbooks were signed, and most importantly, a good time was had by all.

I wasn't nervous at all - alert, perhaps, playing more cautiously than I would in rehearsal, but not the least anxious. It was only when I stepped down from the stage at the very end that I noticed I seemed to be vibrating slightly. That energy helped keep me going until four in the morning, which is very, VERY rare for me. But it's hardly a surprise, when this is what I want to be doing.

Paula Toledo & co. put on a wonderful show, of course... her voice is just gorgeous and her music is dynamic live. She was followed by Jonathan Inc; most of us hadn't seen him before and all of us were highly impressed by him.

I'm slowly bouncing back from what I've dubbed "post-ecstatic stress disorder" - that purposeless feeling you get after a major event that you've been anticipating for quite some time, when you realize that life goes on and you don't quite know what to do with yourself now that every waking moment isn't spent thinking and planning something very exciting. (I gather theatre people get it as well... a "now what?" upon waking the day after the performance.) But there'll be more good things coming; this is just the start.

A little followup:

• Greg took some videos of the event, and a few songs have been posted up at YouTube along with the videos from A New Rock Reality.
• What's next? ARCTIC will be a mix of some solo shows and some band shows. Rest assured I'll keep you updated...

If getting around on the SkyTrain has gotten dull, grab yourself one or two anagram maps and enjoy the ride all the way from Sandwich Mutation to Ho Mold.

I'm playing in it.

Been keeping quiet about it while the logistics were worked out. Taking a solo project and adding more instruments & people to it is a bit of a gamble, and we wanted to be very sure that it was going to work. But it does work, quite well in fact. I provide bass, keyboards and backing vocals, and Alex McKechnie is on drums.

If you'd like a sneak preview from the rehearsal space, take a look at these clips from Novus Cable's "A New Rock Reality". They filmed us for two songs and did an interview with Marcus as well.

Again, the show's at the Media Club at 695 Cambie; doors open at 9, tickets are $10. We're the openers (at 9:30) for Paula Toledo's CD release party; Jonathan Inc plays as well. If you're free tonight, come out and join us - it's going to be quite a show.

I for one can hardly wait!

A most excellent show will be happening this Saturday at the Media Club. ARCTIC will be performing at Paula Toledo's CD release party. Tickets are $10 at the door - doors open at 9 and the show starts at 9:30.

ARCTIC will also be performing a solo performance on CITR 101.9 on Thursday, February 23 from 10-11 pm PST - you can listen online. And if you happen to have Novus Cable in Vancouver, you can see ARCTIC featured every few hours on channel 34's "A New Rock Reality".

Posts here have been a bit scattered lately, but they'll pick up again, probably in another week. Until then, why don't you see if you can trade up to a house before this guy?

Well, my afternoon note is really that I haven't got any. I wandered off at lunch, and just didn't feel like coming back right away. None of the first few afternoon sessions grabbed me, it was a nice day out, and I felt pensive.

Instead, I wandered over to Thurlow where I knew I could spot Greg as an extra in a commercial shoot, stylishly dressed in a suit. I couldn't talk to him, but it was fun to see him in action. Then I got some lunch, and actually shopped on Robson a little bit, something rather unusual for me since the mix of tourists and fashionistas tends to enervate me.

I'm in the lobby, where it's nice and peaceful, listening to the gentle murmur of the sessions in the rooms and wondering why I'm not excited to be here. Maybe it's just the passage of time. I've settled in, I enjoy blogging, but I'm not as caught up in the feeling of "wow, this is changing the world etc" as I was a year ago. The blog world has grown up, and fast. I look around and I see interesting people doing fascinating things online, but it's in a new stage now. It's levelled out, it's moving forward; it's lost its baby fat.

The last session I'll be attending will be called "Blogging, Passions and Personal Expression". I'm looking forward to that. I'm going to it for the same reasons I went to Nancy's talk: I'm interested in net life, about the way the net is integrated into our daily existence. These are the things that have been drawing my attention the most lately.

This is absolutely a good conference, well-run and chock full of ideas, but I'm realizing today that I didn't honestly know what I wanted to get out of it. And now I remember someone once saying how the idea of holding a conference about blogging will someday seem as quirky as a conference about talking on the telephone. Maybe we're getting there.

Update: Interesting - looks like it's not just me.

A few notes:

• As I type this note I'm watching Nancy White's presentation (she is always, always entertaining, and she brought CHOCOLATE for us too so she gets extra points). I'm also watching a slightly time-delayed video and sitting on a fairly quiet IRC chat, plus I received and answered an email from the person next to me. Who says computer geeks are isolated? The irony is, of course, that my awareness of the presentation is a little fragmented, and I'm missing some things.
• Last year I really liked that you could submit your RSS feed to the aggregator and also see what everybody else was writing about the conference. It was a very useful backchannel and a good means of introduction to the other participants. It doesn't seem to be there this year, alas; I mentioned it to some of the NV people and hopefully they'll keep it in mind for next time.
• Some ideas I've liked: from Nancy, that lurkers are a powerful force, reading and absorbing information. From Dave Sifry and Tim Bray, a thought on how advertising can be successful but not intrusive: look at catalogues, where you ask a company to send you an entire book of nothing but advertisements!
• Now I'm in Colin Brunelle's "Music 2.0" session, where about 29/57 people have laptops visible. Interesting history of recording technologies, with quotes about how destructive each new technology was perceived to be (Sousa was horrified by the creation of the phonograph; radio was perceived as a threat to sheet-music sales...) It's a well-delivered general overview of the state of net music, though so far there's nothing really new to me. I'm hoping there'll be some lively debate of some sort afterwards.
• There's a couple near me that have been talking to each other solidly for the past twenty minutes of the presentation, and it's completely distracting me. Are we so used to the idea of a backchannel conversation that we think that it's acceptable to do this in person?

I'm signing in a little late to Northern Voice... sleepy, sleepy. I won't be eventblogging the same way I was last year, writing detailed notes, but checking in occasionally, more like running a parallel mental track of some sort.

Looking forward to meeting some of you folk out there. I'll be the one wearing this shirt.

I'm very much looking forward to Northern Voice this weekend, the annual blogging conference (it says "Canada's" blogging conference, but I suspect it's more like Northwest). I could use a little social software shakeup, personally. I feel like I'm falling into a bit of a pattern, and I haven't been blogging as much as I'd like. Maybe it's all the grey skies this winter that make everything seem the same, but it seems to me like much of what I think about falls into one of two categories:

• Things that everybody else is already blogging to death and I have nothing new to add (the Canadian election... the US budget... cartoons of Mohammed... face transplants...)
• Things that I am doing that either wouldn't interest you, or that might interest you but that aren't ready to be talked about

I know there's more going on in my brain than that, and am looking forward to drawing it out with some new ideas and inspiration.

I also know the odds are good that I'll regret not signing up for Moose Camp on Friday, but I had a suspicion that I would need that Friday for something else and I was right. I'll have to cope with not being up on all the in-jokes on Saturday, as I'm sure I'll miss some memorable moments, but that's happened enough times in my life that I think I can handle it...

One thing I could still do last week while sick was brush up some of the promotion for Arctic. It was nearly time for the bimonthly newsletter to go out (newsletters are archived on the site a month after they're sent, so if you're not subscribed, you'll have to wait to read it). Before the mailout, we wanted to get a few things up on the site that had been in the works.

The biggest addition was the "share" page, which is essentially ideas for how you can help promote Arctic. Independent musicians rely on their fans, and the easier you can make it for fans to spread the word, the better. Whether that's just sending a link to someone who might like the music, or printing out fliers for a show, you're grateful to anyone who wants to get involved.

The other major change was the merchandise section, which was originally just a link to a Cafepress site. Now Arctic's "Music for Rain" EP is finally available on the site via Paypal. It's a two-song EP, and the songs are available on the site - but for those (like myself) who still like the physicality of a CD and its packaging, it's nice to have the option. The CD cases each have the title burned into them - I've never seen that before. They look cool.

While the Cafepress store is still there, their selection isn't nearly as impressive as Spreadshirt, which has a huge selection of shirt types and colours. Spreadshirt also lets you use digital transfers or vector-based flex/flock prints, so you have a much wider range of possibilities. I ordered one last week and am very curious to see how it looks in person.

Also in the Arctic store: guitar-string bracelets, labelled with when they were played. And at the show on February 25, there'll be some innovative handmade t-shirts...

Now is a good time for trying things out to see what works. That's something I'm enjoying a lot right now: brainstorming tactics, or taking some of Marcus's many ideas and putting them into action. There's no real right or wrong at this stage. It's all worth a try.

Today the weather remembered that it's not supposed to be spring yet.. A nasty sideways windy rain is ripping the crocuses up as I type. At least this way we'll probably reach that new January rainfall record before the end of the day. Joy!

I've been toying with some interesting online utilities lately that I thought you should know about.

Yahoo Mail Beta

I've used Yahoo Mail since it first appeared. I upgraded to Yahoo Mail Plus in order to have the ability to send & receive from multiple mail accounts, and it's been very, very useful to me. A month or two ago, Yahoo started offering Plus users the ability to test-drive Yahoo Mail Beta, and I jumped at the chance.

It's a really nice interface, much more like a standard email program, and you can drag & drop messages into folders (still no ability to create subfolders, though - um, Yahoo, hello, welcome to 2006?). There are handy shortcuts and it's all delightfully intuitive and well thought out.

The one big catch with it, though, is that it is SLOW. It is a beta, so I'm hoping they'll work this out, but sometimes when you go to load a folder or message, it just... doesn't. And it's not always clear whether it will load, but slowly, or if it's having a problem, or if it didn't register that you clicked.

On the web, one is generally used to things that sometimes load slowly, and willing to accommodate it here and there. The thing that may plague the new Yahoo Mail is that it looks so much like an application that people are more likely to get impatient - because if you had to wait that long for an offline mail application, you would stop using it. I have actually switched back to original Yahoo Mail for a little breather, and noticed that often the response time is just as long - but it feels longer when you think you're in an application, and when the browser itself isn't telling you something is loading.

I hope they can iron the kinks out, because other than the speed issue, it's quite nice.

Don't get me started about Yahoo Mail's so-called customer service, though - that'll be a topic for another post someday.

Zohowriter

One thing Yahoo does NOT do well is its notepad utility. Once it renamed each of my notes with the first 255 characters of ANOTHER notes. This was over a year ago, and despite my report to Yahoo's customer service, the problem was barely addressed and never solved.

I've got a barebones wiki set up, but for some reason I wanted something that I could format without fuss, so I went in search of a respectable online notepad and landed on Zohowriter. Also in beta (beta is the new black), I haven't seen it talked about much. Writely seems to be the online word processor of choice, but it seems to focus more on collaborative documents, which I wasn't looking for.

One of the things I like about Zohowriter is that you're instantly in the program when you login. No clicking through welcome screens and reviewing your files - you're right there, in a new document, and if you don't like that you can load one of your saved ones from the left.

You can import and export Word, PDF and Open Office. I haven't had a good reason to test this out yet and see how compatible it is, but I like the fact that it's there. You can post to certain blog software (not mine though), share documents or make them public, and create document templates. You can also use it as a bookmarking tool by creating a little bookmarklet for your taskbar. I've noticed a few of these features have been added since I joined, only a few weeks ago. It's always nice to see signs of development and progress on beta sites.

After a week spent inert and snivelling under the effects of a cold, it was a relief not only to feel a lot better today, but to see the sun shining gloriously just before lunchtime. I even sat on the balcony for a bit and took the dog for an extra walk, for which I was rewarded with the sight of crocuses which had apparently exploded into existence sometime in the past twenty-four hours. That's the thing about Vancouver rain - sure, you get used to it, but then the nice days are that much more dazzling.

I opened some windows to let the air in and literally brushed the cobwebs away; funny how you don't see them when the sky is grey too.

And just to get outside again, I popped out for some food this evening, and wandered over to Wink on 8th, a relatively new vegetarian restaurant. I'm not a vegetarian (although I often wonder why I'm not), but if I could have food every day like I've had at Vancouver's vegetarian restaurants, that'd probably tip the deal for me. (Cooking it is not a realistic option. I know my limitations by now.)

Wink not only has an absolutely delicious thai-lemongrass rice bowl, but wonderful decor. It looks busy but has a surprisingly calming effect as your eyes travel slowly around the room. As I waited for my food, too, a Sarah Slean cover of Radiohead's "Climbing Up The Walls" came on - an extra bonus. I liked it there.

I think the rain's supposed to start up again tomorrow, but it was nice to get a day pass. A sunny day and a good meal make a fine way to start a week.

Something I notice about writing emails is that given enough time and familiarity, I will write to a person in something similar to their own writing style. I'm not even sure how intentional it is, but I pick up on their format and incorporate it into my own. So when replying to my mom, I'll write with more ellipses... and i don't always bother with capitals. To my dad, short snappy phrases.

This seems odd, but when thinking about it a little more it's really not that much different from in-person communication. We adopt either formal or casual attitudes around others according to the situation, and we adjust our spoken language and body language to bridge the gap between us and them. Just think of how many catchphrases you've picked up from your friends over the years. We're very susceptible to memes; it's just part of how we get along.

The interesting thing about applying it to online communication is that if you're good at it, you can completely mask your own self, whereas in person it's a lot harder to hide. Which is why I can troll on a gamer msgboard about how psp is teh suck!! and no one would be the wiser. (I'm not sure why I would want to, but that's a different issue.)

I don't think that I've ever noticed anyone copying me back to myself. This leads me to believe that either a) I'm the only one doing this, b) I am oblivious to others, or c) my style is inimitable. What say you?

There is a most excellent article by Jeffrey Zeldman on A List Apart this week about the hype surrounding the "Web 2.0" chatter at the moment. He's saying a few things that need to be said: essentially, that there's a move on to build buzz around websites again and bring back the glorious dot-com bubble days of the late 90s, when "going public" was all the rage and the most used letters in the alphabet were I, P and O.

It's true, and it's something I was vaguely aware of, but hadn't seen it put quite so well. The advent of creative, usability-focused sites like Flickr and del.icio.us has made people look at the web in a new way. The notion of social software and open APIs has led to marvellous innovations. But it's also leading to a lot of bandwagon-jumping.

I remember way back when I had trouble deciding whether to use Furl or del.icio.us for bookmarking. In the past year, I've lost track of the number of social bookmarking tools. I can't possibly try them all out.

Part of the purpose of social software is to make use of the so-called "wisdom of crowds", letting the users be the ones to add value to the content. If the users are distributed across a dozen or more sites, the content and the value are diluted as well. It seems to me that the very nature of social websites implies that the most successful ones will be the early models, the first of their kind that gather up the most loyal users and hit their critical mass, not any of the copycat sites that emerge in response. Once you've invested a certain amount of time in putting all your bookmarks, photos, music or friends on one site, a new competing site has to work twice as hard to budge you.

So why do new companies think they can make a quick buck developing a clone of del.icio.us? Yahoo isn't going to buy them, too.

While it is nice to see a sort of renaissance in web development these days, I agree with Zeldman that there is a lot of hot air blowing around at the moment. A year ago I'd jump on every new social software idea I could find (except the networking tools, usually) but now I'm going to wait and see what sifts to the top of the pile. I spend enough time on the computer as it is.

For some reason, Greg's been having a terrible run of bad luck with electronic devices lately. This is bad enough, but the treatment he's been getting from the local companies he has to deal with has been even worse.

NCIX

Greg's six-year-old computer was having serious issues and we decided it was time for it to be replaced. After comparing several local companies, he decided to order a system from NCIX, on Broadway at Burrard. Greg ordered his computer online; he was told it'd be ready in 2-5 business days. He tried calling them after 5 days, and could never get through to a person; he sat on hold for twenty minutes. He sent them an email and never received a response. Eventually, he went to the store in person and was told it would be ready in another two days.

A week after he got the computer, it stopped booting. Greg tried bringing the computer in for repairs on December 26th (since no one would answer the phone) and they told him they weren't accepting returns and repairs that day. He brought it in on Tuesday, the 27th, and the guy said he could look at it "today or tomorrow". Thursday morning Greg was told it was ready: he picked up the computer, brought it home, and plugged it in. Still nothing. He had to make another trip back to get it fixed properly, and fortunately it was dealt with promptly this time; it turned out to be a faulty power supply.

When you've just purchased a major piece of technology, you want to know that a) it's going to work, and that b) if it doesn't work, you can have some confidence that you can get in touch with a person who will fix it AND do so when they say they're going to do it. This is where NCIX falls down. Answering your phone and email is the minimum amount of effort you should put into your business. Making your products work would be a good next step.

Visions

Greg got an LG535 cell phone last July from the Visions on Broadway near Cambie. The phone worked beautifully up until about six weeks ago, when the connector to the charger died. Unfortunately, a few months ago, that Visions store went under, so he had to take it all the way out to Marine Drive to get the phone fixed under the three-year warranty. Visions staff were not particularily knowledgeable or helpful.

When asked for a loaner phone, they grudgingly coughed up a fairly ancient device and demanded a deposit of $220 - more than the phone was actually worth, and a bit redundant when they're already holding his phone. I can barely talk to Greg when he's using that phone because my voice echoes back to me.

Five weeks later, they called to tell him the phone had come back from the repair shop (FutureTel in Richmond) and the repairs were done. Greg drove out to Marine Drive, picked up the phone, brought it home - and guess what? Same problem. He drove back out to the store again, and the disinterested staff (and the day manager) informed him that yes, it would be another four to six weeks; no, there's nothing he can do about it.

Greg then asked for his phone to be replaced rather than repaired - but Visions' policy is that there have to be three repair attempts before they will replace the phone. This means he would have to be without his phone for about four months before they'll replace it. And they still made him pay the outrageous deposit to get the old loaner phone back again.

Who knows where this is going. Greg may try bringing the phone directly to FutureTel on the off chance that it saves a few weeks' of effort. So now he has to go back and forth to Richmond instead of Marine Drive.

UPDATE: Greg called FutureTel and learned that they have not accepted drop-offs since 2004. The Visions manager gave Greg incorrect information.

NEXT UPDATE: After a little research, Greg realized that his phone has a second power connector that uses a different type of charger. Instead of letting Visions send in the phone again, he simply went to a different cell store and bought the other charger. If someone at Visions had known or noticed this, it would have saved Greg six weeks and several trips, plus he would have bought the charger from them. Instead, they get this blog post. Anyway, hopefully that's it for this little saga.

Products occasionally fail. This is life. But when an unhappy customer comes to your store with a problem, it's good policy to reach out and try to help. We're not looking for a grovelling apology, merely some attempt to make up for this repeated inconvenience. Visions has made it absolutely clear to us that thoughtful customer service is not their priority.

The upshot

• The experience with NCIX worked out alright eventually (at least, a few weeks later the computer is still okay - check back in a year) but we were soured on them and would not recommend them.
• Neither of us will ever consider buying from Visions again, and we'll be warning our friends about the sort of treatment you can expect.

Companies need to learn that when they provide poor customer service, the resulting word-of-mouth can cost them more than the effort it would've taken to do their job right in the first place. This is why I'm posting this. Neither of these companies have done anything illegal or unethical. They've just shown a complete lack of interest in customer satisfaction. That's their choice - but it's my choice to tell other people before they have to deal with the same problems.

So I gather there's an election coming soon. Joy. I'm not looking forward to this at all. I do think the Liberals need to be humbled and removed from power for a little while, but I strongly dislike the idea of the Conservatives getting in. I wouldn't mind taking the NDP out for a spin, but a) they can't really win and b) I'm not sure if I'm ready to let them loose on the whole country yet.

I see it as a sort of lose-lose-lose scenario, and want very little to do with it. My mom's got a great expression for elections: "The trough doesn't change - only the pigs rotate."

I haven't yet received any of the umpteen polling/questionnaire telemarketing calls that seemed to plague our house during the last provincial election. But this time, I'm prepared. I stumbled across the anti-telemarketing counterscript recently, which is a flowchart of suggested responses and questions to keep the caller on their toes. Also, Greg learned a while ago that when a telemarketer asks you "Is there a better time when we can reach you?" tell them after 10:00 pm. They're not actually allowed to call after 10, so you won't hear from them again.

Finally, if all else fails, you can play games: one friend of ours amuses herself by mumbling and groaning unintelligibly at telemarketers to see how long they'll keep talking. The downside is, a clever telemarketer will interpret the mumbling as consent, so who knows what she's signed herself up for...

Would I get lynched if I wore this shirt to Northern Voice?

I listen to a few internet radio stations on occasion, mostly to play in the background while I work on something that doesn't require serious use of the language module of my brain (something recently discussed on Penmachine). Sometimes I like Radio Paradise and Groove Salad. Sometimes I'll dig around through other users' playlists on the network with iTunes, and sometimes I'll punch something in to last.fm and see what it feeds me.

But I can be very particular about what I'm listening to; if Radio Paradise or last.fm feed me something I actively dislike, I have to make it go away. And Groove Salad can be zombifying after a while. Yesterday, I noticed the 1920's Radio Network in iTunes, and it turned out to be just what I needed: something that sounded different from everything else, yet mild enough to play in the background without becoming a nuisance. It plays ol'-timey and big band songs, happy things to dance to (not that I know any dances) and quaint love songs where the protagonist is all shy or simply pining away. (Here's a good one: "I found your lips tonight, but where do you keep your heart?") So much of the music that I listen to is typically about dealing with problems or thinking about yourself that it's pleasant to listen to something escapist once in a while, and it's refreshing to get outside my usual genres.

One of the best things about it: it streams at 48kbps, which is very low - but the quality doesn't really matter so much since it's not like the originals are particularily high-fidelity. So I've never had the station stall for buffering.

Right now there's some faux calypso song on about going to Trinidad, and I can hear a slight regular swoosh as if the record was on the record player. It's fun. My grandmother would like this station, if she had a computer and could use it. This'll probably be a brief listening phase and then I'll tire of it and go back to my regular programming after a few hours, but I thought I'd share it with you all in the meantime.

I use OS X almost everywhere, but some of the work I do on the accessibility project means I have to use a PC once in a while. I was a PC person many years ago but converted, and I've never looked back. I'd used Windows 98/2000 a lot; I only recently started using XP. I have found it to be exceptionally irritating for one reason only: it attempts to anticipate what it is I want to do, and it's usually wrong.

• For web design, one of the cardinal rules of usability is to keep the navigation more or less consistent, so the user always knows where they're likely to find a particular button. Yet in XP, the Windows Explorer navigation appears to change depending on the context. The list of "Other Places" seems to vary according to where I am on my drive; there is a link to the Desktop if I'm looking at "My Documents", but not if I'm looking at "My Computer". So I have to click around a few times to get the right link to show up.
• This is a Word thing rather than an XP thing, but they're all spawned by the same beast. Sometimes when I highlight and copy some text, a sidebar appears with a list of all the things I've copied lately. I don't want that there. I just want to copy and paste and go about my business uninterrupted. Instead, I have to click to make it go away (and there's no obvious "don't show again" button I could hit).
• Today when I booted up, a little balloon appeared that said "There are unused icons on your desktop" and offered to make them go away. Annoyed, I clicked the X, and the balloon went away... and then came BACK a few seconds later. Windows XP, did I ASK you to judge my desktop? Did I say I needed some help tidying my icons? No, I didn't, and I resent you interrupting me and making me click something extra for no reason. Twice.

I'm sure these things could be addressed by changing some settings somewhere... although the idea of trying to find that "somewhere" makes me weary. The fact is that by attempting to anticipate my workflow, Microsoft is actually getting in my way. I find these little interruptions and adaptations distracting; they actually slow me down and throw me off track. This isn't my first Microsoft rant, and it probably won't be my last - I find their products to be bloated and awkward in every context. At least that's one thing consistent about them.

I just launched a website this past weekend; it's the home of the lovely Paula Toledo, a Vancouver-based singer/songwriter who I have mentioned before. The launch coincidences with the upcoming release of her new album, Stay Awhile. The new site (and the CD insert) was designed by Pilar Alvarez; I did the XHTML/CSS/PHP/Flash coding.

Stay Awhile will be launched on February 17 and Paula's CD release party is February 25 at the Media Club. Paula'll be playing with a full band; I'm really looking forward to this! It'll also be your next opportunity to see Arctic. Paula's producer Jonathan of Jonathan Inc. will be performing as well. This is going to be a great show.

There are many things that one couldn't find in Newfoundland in my formative years, and those included fresh lychees, longans and rambutans. Tropical fruit does not do well near the North Atlantic, and if anyone ever imported them I hate to think how much they'd cost. I never noticed these fruit during my time on Long Island either (suburbia isn't interested, I guess) and it's probably only due to Vancouver's major Asian population that it's pretty easy to find longans and lychees in your average corner produce store.

Once you peel away the rinds, they all look an awful lot like eyeballs, and the texture only reinforces that impression. Don't let that gross you out, though. The fruits are delicious... of course, maybe eyeballs are too, for all I know. (Photo is by Stephanie on Flickr.)

• Lychees are tasty, mild, and easy to peel. Don't absentmindedly try to bring them across the US border without declaring them, though, or it'll cost you $50.
• Longans are smaller and slightly sweeter, and have a rind that is surprisingly similar to an eggshell: it cracks off in bits and pieces. It's easier to open them by taking a sharp knife and putting a little slice in the rind, then opening it into halves.
• I know I've had rambutans before, but the flavour wasn't all that memorable. What is memorable about them is that they're covered in a thick fuzz like a 70's shag carpet, and so they get points purely for entertainment value if nothing else. Check the link for some lovely rambutan photos.

I've got about six songs so far that I'm done working on until we start actual proper work on the demo this spring. Then there's another five songs that I'm not certain about yet, two or three that I've completely abandoned, and a folder of random little chunks and ideas jumbled together like a kid's arts & crafts box.

It's funny, the uncertainty factor. I've heard this from other musicians too: sometimes you have to let a song simmer for a while before you can decide if you like it. Don't listen to it for at least a week, don't think about it. Then come back to it, and either it'll make you cringe or you'll be pleasantly surprised. Sometimes you realize it was pretty good in the first place and you only needed to rearrange some parts.

I'm currently waiting to decide if one particular song I'm working on is any good. I decided to start it just with vocals, and see what happened, then fill in the bassline underneath it (the opposite of what I usually do). The bassline ended up sounded more supplementary than most of my other songs, and more of a typical rock/pop sound than I think I usually do. Actually, the whole song is kind of poppy, and that's what's really bothering me about it. I can hear how it might fill out to a really catchy tune, but then I also might hate its guts for that very reason. Maybe I shouldn't be afraid of something that sounds a bit more popular... or maybe that's how one-hit wonders get started....