DarrenBarefoot.com

Hockey-Reference.com does what it says on the box. I don’t think I’d visited the site until James Mirtle wrote about it the other day (I usually go to The Internet Hockey Database if I need to look up a stat).

Hockey-Reference.com just launched this clever sponsorship model, apparently taking after Baseball-Reference.com. You pay a small amount of money to put a text ad on any player, team or coach page on the site. The price varies based on how much traffic the page gets, apparently based on roughly $2.50 for every 1000 page views. I checked out Trevor Linden and Mattias Ohlund–they were both going for $40 a year. Gordie Howe is worth a $100 a year.

I eventually settled on Bret Hedican (great wheels, no hands) for a mere $10 for the year. I chose him because I was going to link to Julie’s figure skating blog, and he’s married to Kristi Yamaguchi.

It’s a clever gimmick, and a great way to raise a little cash for the site publishers.

My friend Gwendolyn recently started a food blog entitled Patent and the Pantry. She’s combining recipes with great photos of her concoctions. She brought a bunch of rosemary cashews when she came to visit us, and they were very tasty:

Rosemary Cashews have rapidly become my go-to hostess gift since I began making them a few years ago. They have been to book club and video nights, served as work snacks and traveled all the way to Malta as a small, homemade gift for friends hosting me there. (They were such a hit, we made a bastardized version for Canadian Thanksgiving, in which my friends invited 10 for turkey dinner by the pool.)

I love the play of salty and sweet and the hit of heat, combined with the herby woodiness of the rosemary. Plus they’re ridiculously easy to make.

My only tip for Gwen is that she ought to host (and tag and add to groups) her photos on Flickr, and include links back to the appropriate blog posts in the description field. That will likely drive some traffic, given how attractive they are.

I really enjoyed “The Bourne Identity” when I first saw it in the theatre (here’s an early, rambling blog post on the film). I also really wanted Matt Damon’s sweater. He wears this kick-ass black, military-style sweater in the film. Of course, he looks way better than I would in it, but that’s also true of togas, house coats and djellabas.

At the time, I imagined a website which tracked what actors wore in movies, and sold real-world equivalents which you could buy. This was back in 2002, and I remember searching for a website that filled that role. I couldn’t find much. I did a few quick searches today, and still didn’t find anything super promising. SeenOn.com looks like the right fit, but it lists all of three movies thus far.

CoolSpotters has the potential to become such a resource, though it seems more targeted at off-screen It Girl bollocks. I read about it today on TechCrunch:

It’s an eye-candy celebrity-focused site that shows users the products celebrities are wearing in various photos. Users can then talk about and, of course, purchase those items.

Users can track celebrities, products, brands, shows (TV, Movies, etc.), places, events, and more. The idea is to show connections between people and stuff. These connections are called “spots” (as in, “I spotted that”), and show details on the item. If something is incorrect, users can change or remove it, and add new people and things.

They kind of combine the crowd-sourcing of Wikipedia and Facebook tags (or Flickr notes, if you like) with the smarmy photos of gossip blogs. It’s a smart approach.

I did a search for “The Bourne Identity”, but the only product identified is an ostentatious TAG Heuer Quartz Chronograph. Which Mr. Damon was apparently wearing on both wrists.

Presented here without comment (thanks to Marshall for the Twittage):

Mark Pilgrim has written a very cogent, readable essay on Microsoft’s consistently lame music offerings:

Microsoft named this developer platform “PlaysForSure”, and they (and their partners) ran many, many ads decrying the fact that music purchased from Apple’s iTunes Music Store would “only” play in iTunes and on iPods. This was, technically speaking, true — and indeed it is still true, and it is why I have cautioned Dora and you and anyone else who would listen that you should never “purchase” anything from the iTunes Music Store that you might want to “own” longer than Apple was willing to allow.

I can’t get very excited about digital rights these days, but this is a well-written explanation of why this stuff might matter to the average Normal Human.

Just a quick, boring-ass post to cover where I’m going to be in May. This post will come in handy when I’m wandering around Vancouver, tie over my shoulder, laptop in hand, trying to figure out where I’m supposed to be talking. All of these sessions are, blessedly, in Vancouver.

• DocTrain West - May 7 - 8
• BC AIM luncheon - May 8 - Thursday is going to be busy.
• HTCE - May 12 - Julie and I are talking about “The Seven Risks of Social Media Marketing”. I’m going to make her do four.
• Third Tuesday Vancouver - May 20
• Cossette Convergence - May 22 - I quite like the aesthetic of this site–it’s a nice departure from your typical dull conference site. This is a deal at $200, given the rest of the speakers.

Marshall Kirkpatrick is at JavaOne, and just covered an interesting announcement by Canadian folk-rock legend Neil Young:

For the first time, Young’s entire collection of published media will be available for purchase, beginning today with the first of five volumes.

Young’s collected works after more than 40 years of making music and film would be a massive enough project - but the most interesting part of the announcement is that the media will be delivered on Blu-ray Disks that will check for updates when new content is available and download it to your local device.

That’s an interesting content delivery model. It’s a little surprising to me that physical media–Blu-ray disks, in this case–are involved at all.

UPDATE: Here’s a more thorough report from CNet.

Today I listened to the always charming This American Life podcast (where-in I learned that host Ira Glass is allegedly straight–who knew?). The episode features bits from a series of live shows that TAL did around the country in support of their companion television show, which I have never seen.

They toured with this husband-and-wife duo of an indie band called Mates of State. I liked what I heard, so I figured I’d purchase some MP3s and give them a more extended audition in my music collection. But which songs to buy?

1. First stop: Wikipedia, which indicates that they have five albums, dating from 2000 to a May, 2008 release.
2. Next stop, eMusic, where I’m a subscriber. eMusic only offers their first three albums. eMusic says their most popular songs are, in order, “Ha Ha”, “The Kissaway” and “Fluke”.
3. To Amazon. Amazon claims to stock four albums, but one is, in fact, just an EP. Plus, they say that the 2004 album is Mates of State’s “latest release”. Clearly this is not the case. Top songs on Amazon: “Goods”, “Along for the Ride” and “Jellyman Kelly”.
4. Next, the iTunes store. I don’t usually buy from them, but I figured I’d have a look. iTunes lists six albums (including the EP). Confusingly, one album is listed twice. Assuming the 2008 album isn’t out yet (though why isn’t it available for pre-order?), iTunes has the most exhaustive catalog. Most popular songs: “Goods”, “Along for the Ride” and “Fluke”.
5. On YouTube, the top videos are for the songs “Fraud in the 80s”, “Get Better” and “Fluke”.
6. Finally, there’s Last.fm. The most popular songs there are “Ha Ha”, “Think Long” and “Like U Crazy”.

Finally, I visited the band’s website. Why did I go here last? Because band websites are often lousy, and rarely help me to answer the question “which songs should I buy?”. I see that their forthcoming album isn’t out to May 20th, 2008. Their first single is out, though, and the video features a scooter rider in rabbit mask:

There’s clearly little consensus out there on the best three Mates of States songs. Is there a market out there for a website that just answers that question? It could be FirstThreeSongs.com. It could grab data from the above (and other) sources, and produce a reasonably definitive three song starter list for every band on the planet.

Somebody go forth and make that, please.

I was recently thinking about some of my favourite songs. Or, more accurately, my favourite parts of songs. I’ve noticed a trend, in recent years. My favourite song parts often feature:

• The first occurrence of the female singer in a duet.
• The bridge or concluding chorus of a song which features a lyrical or vocal shift, as sung by a woman.

In short, I like it when the girl singer comes in.

To elucidate this phenomenon, I’ve created a little Muxtape, uh, mix. It begins with that classic Christmas tune, “Fairytale of New York”. I like how the song picks up and Kristy MacColl launches into the second verse with:

They’ve got cars big as bars
They’ve got rivers of gold
But the wind goes right through you
It’s no place for the old

Hurray for internal rhyme and alliteration.

Next up are two versions of “Sweet Jane”, as covered by the Cowboy Junkies. You probably haven’t heard either version. They both diverge from the original cover that has so captivated people over the years. In both cases, I love Margo Timmons’s vocal improvisation that follows the bridge. It raises the hairs on my neck every time I hear it.

After that, there’s Sarah Harmer’s moody “Lodestar”. At about the three minute mark, there’s a bit of a trumpet solo. Then the tempo increases, and the strings get serious. Ms. Harmer sings:

And wait for it, there are only two of us now
This great black night, scooped out, and this fireglow

Listen! The darkness rings
The darkness…
Listen! The darkness rings
Take off your things

Lyrics drawn from a D. H. Lawrence poem, incidentally.

The first time I heard The Stars, I was driving and listening to the CBC. “Your Ex-Lover is Dead” started, and I was drawn in by the lush opening and Torquil Campbell’s theatrical voice. Then there’s the second verse, and the unexpected wonder of Amy Millan–it’s a duet! She sings how “the scar is a fleck on my porcelain skin, tried to reach deep but you couldn’t get in”. Terrific.

Finally, there’s my newest favourite song part. “Adventures in Solitude” is a gorgeous, surreal ballad by The New Pornographers. The song creeps along at first, all piano and mandolin, with A.C. Newman on lead vocals. At about the halfway point, the pace picks up. And there’s the incomparable Neko Case, her voice sweet as Saturday morning sex. She sings poetry that seems both nonsensical and poignant:

I know you want to, work for, wait for, one more
And that is comin’ at a bad time

Some cold place
Countless ways
For all we know

Writing a post like this, it’s apparent how I desperately lack the language to describe the music the way I want.

Just listen to the songs, though, and you’ll get the idea.

Jules points to a handy, easy-to-implement list of simple things that you can do to help the planet. Here are a few favourites:

1. Hang dry. I also do this because I’m obsessed with my clothes not shrinking.
2. Go vegetarian once a week.
3. Telecommute.
4. Abandon your answering machine. Apparently if everybody switched to voice mail, “the annual energy savings would total nearly two billion kilowatt-hours”.
5. Pay bills online.

These changes aren’t going to save the planet from environmental Armageddon, but they’re a good start.