November 3rd, 2008, 1 Comment »
I’ve seen a couple of these signs attached to telephone poles around my neighbourhood:
They are, it turns out, a band. Maybe I’m overly curious, but a simple sheet of 8 x 11″ paper with the band’s (admittedly peculiar) name printed on it was enough to get me to look further. Had it been your ordinary photocopied indie band poster, I probably would have ignored it.
October 20th, 2008, 13 Comments »
As you’re no doubt aware, hockey season has begun. In the furnished apartment, there’s only a crappy, old, 20″ CRT television. Broadcast television, of course, is getting more and more widescreen. Watching hockey broadcasts on a traditional TV, I have the sense that I’m missing a good 20% of the action beyond the edges of the square screen.
So, I want a 26″ widescreen LCD TV. We’re going to get a whole home theatre setup when we build our house, so ours is a temporary need. I hoped to lessen the impact of the purchase by buying used, and selling or giving away the TV in a year or two.
That’s proven surprisingly tricky. For three weeks, I’ve been keeping an eye on Craiglist and Used Victoria, and there are very few televisions that fit that description. I’ve also searched on eBay, where there are more options. However, the shipping charges generally make the TVs more expensive than going down to Future Shop and carrying it home.
Finally, I visited a pawn shop here in Victoria. They had exactly one TV–an old CRT among the dozens of speakers and stereos. I asked about this, and they explained that they’d just been through the ‘back to school rush’. Bloody university students, eh?
Here’s what I’m seeing: stores mark down new televisions so much that there’s little incentive to buy a used one of a similar calibre. Or maybe few people are done with their first LCD TV, and the used market will expand in a few years. What do you think?
UPDATE: Here’s another possibility. The prices of these TVs have dropped sharply in the past three years. When people are ready to upgrade, they’re bummed to find out that their three-year-old $1200 TV can be bought for $400 new. So they don’t bother selling it used.
October 6th, 2008, 6 Comments »
I was walking down to Cook Street Village the other day, and noticed a couple of pieces of paper folded up in the crook of a tree. Thinking of Found Magazine, I grabbed them and stuck them in my pocket.
When I got them home and unfolded them, it turns out they’re school work by a young man named Alan. There’s a one page essay on B. B. King, largely cribbed from Mr. King’s Wikipedia article. Alan scored 5/5 for that one:
He didn’t fair so well on an accompanying quiz (’Music Exploratory Quiz #1: The Blues’), in which he only scored 3/5:
One of the questions he got wrong was ‘what gives the blues its groove’? He incorrectly answered ‘the rhythm’. What does give the blues its groove? Whiskey? Getting dumped? I’ve got nothing.
October 4th, 2008, 8 Comments »
I voted today. Unfortunately, I’m going to be in the US on October 14. I voted for the Green Party, as I have done so in the last two (maybe three?) elections. For pretty much the same reasons. I have no expectation that my candidate will win, but I believe in supporting the party whose values most closely align with my own.
I’m not a big fan of strategic voting. Even if I was, I’m pretty sure that the Conservative candidate in Victoria has about as much chance as winning as, say, the Christian Heritage candidate. Er, that’s not technically accurate, but Victoria hasn’t elected a Tory since 1988. Besides, VoteForEnvironment suggests that I can take my pick.
When voting, how much consideration do you give to your local candidate and how much do you give to the national party? I’ve asked this question before, and some thoughtful discussion resulted. Four years later, I can’t think of a good reason not to ask it again.
As I indicated, my choice skews heavily toward the party. Why?
My perception of the party leader–of their competency and character–matters as well. Less than the party, but more than the local candidate.
How about you? Do you vote for the candidate or the party?
UPDATE: On a vaguely-related note, somebody sent me this video featuring local Vancouver candidates talking about their parties’ platforms on climate change.
UPDATE #2: Speaking of videos, I love the aesthetics of this one (thought its message could be clearer).
October 2nd, 2008, 1 Comment »
Former classmate, founder of Theatre Skam and occasional reader of this blog, Amiel Gladstone, has adapted and directed Chekov’s classic “Three Sisters” in a new production entitled “My Three Sisters”, running this week at the Metro Studio.
I saw the show last night and it had the pacey energy and unpredictability that I’ve come to associate with Skam productions. Ami has (mercifully) reduced the typical three-hour Chekov to a mere 85 or 90 minutes. In doing so, I think he’s shaved a lot of scenes down to their essence. The result is more energetic and dreamlike production than I’d usually associate with Chekov’s work. The play has always had an ephemeral quality for me, and Ami’s direction makes it all the more surreal. A cake (yep, it’s a lie) hangs suspended over the corner of the stage. One of the leads plays the ukelele. The three sisters-looking like lost brides–glide across the stage in blousey, satiny white dresses.
You can’t go wrong adding a few songs to a play, and Ami’s got the cast singing blue-grassy tunes by the likes of Neko Case and Veda Hille (who seems to be a fairly regular blogger). Combine this with the white dresses, surreal undertones and warm hues in the lighting and set, and the whole production reminded me a bit of Oh Brother, Where Are Thou?
The cast is terrific–they’re a wonderful, talented ensemble. But here’s the best part: the three sisters of the play’s title? They’re actually played by three sisters. The Stubel sisters are all performers (here’s a profile from the Georgia Straight on the youngest), and it’s a rare pleasure to watch their natural sisterly chemistry on-stage. One of the sisters, Camille, is actually eight months pregnant. So that adds an extra frisson of danger to the entire affair.
It’s rare that I’d recommend Chekov, but there’s too much to like about Skam’s production.
September 18th, 2008, 3 Comments »
As you’re probably aware, New York’s Metropolitan Opera has been showing live broadcasts of their performances in cinemas around the world. The newish GM of The Met, Peter Gelb, launched this audacious program in 2006, and it’s been wildly successful. According to Wikipedia, by the end of the 2007 season, nearly a million people attended the screenings, generating $13.3 million from North America and $5 million from overseas. Apparently they plan to expand by another 30% for the 2008-2009 season.
I’m not a fan of opera, but the screenings are reportedly a joy to watch. From Peter Conrad in The Observer:
I remained sceptical until I saw the relay of The Barber of Seville in March. Bartlett Sher’s production of Rossini’s opera is a whirligig of sliding walls and speeding carts; characters scramble up ladders or vault on to sofas, juggle oranges and sashay through impromptu flamenco routines.
Watching it in the cinema was like having not just the best seat at the Met but all the best seats simultaneously. Thirteen cameras alternated between the stage, the orchestra pit, the wings and even the fly tower, so my eyes felt as if they were attached to irrepressible pogo sticks.
A while back, I watched an interview with Gelb in which he discusses The Met’s declining audience, and the new life his idea has brought to the company (and, I suspect, the genre as a whole).
I was reminded of The Met’s innovation yesterday when we visited our local multiplex. We saw “Burn After Reading”, which is a good, not great, Coen brothers film (and it features one of Brad Pitt’s worst performances).
On the way in, I noticed this sign advertising The Met’s simulcast season. The season runs through next May, and all but two shows are sold out:
Ironically, one of the two shows that’s not sold out is the one I’d be likeliest to see: Dr. Atomic. I heard an interview with composer John Adams, and it sounded kind of fascinating.
In any case, The Met’s idea seems like a win for everybody: the opera company, the movie theatres (another medium in decline) and opera fans who can’t afford to go to New York.
September 17th, 2008, 7 Comments »
Victorians love their lawns and gardens. I mean, there’s even an annual flower count. Are all the local retirees so footloose and fancy-free that they’re resigned to counting the begonias in their front yard? I note that the count has come down in recent years, to a mere 2.4 billion.
As a result of this passion for all things flora, my neighbourhood seems overrun by landscapers. Not a day goes by that I pass at least one stenciled van or pickup truck (’Lawneratti’, ‘Aboreal Morals’…ah, I’m making those up) parked outside a house, with somebody wailing away with a weed whacker in the front yard.
In my youth, it seems to me that all gardeners, lawn mowers and landscapers were men. It was a common summer job among my male peers in high school and university. These days, however, it seems like at least half of these employees are women. That’s a significant shift. Has anybody else observed this trend?
On a vaguely related note, a friend and I were talking over the weekend about how much less dog poo one sees when out and about. Hearkening again back to my childhood, I remember how the boulevard in front of my friend’s house was off limits because it was notoriously rife with doggy landmines. I guess the social pressure on dog owners has increased over the past two decades?
August 26th, 2008, 4 Comments »
I happened to be using the old-school Victoria Yellow Pages to look something up today (house cleaners, if you’ve got a recommendation, email me). While browsing…er…paging to what I was seeking, I encountered page 222:
August 12th, 2008, 9 Comments »
When you spend as much time as I do exploring the shiny and the brand new in the technology world, it’s easy to forget that the middle of the bell curve is receding into the distance. I sometimes get frustrated when Normal Humans, who (quite legitimately) don’t know any better, make poor decisions about their web presence.
Take, for example, the Victoria Fringe’s website. It’s nicely-designed, and accommodates almost all of my Fringe-going needs. There’s one glaring exception: the online schedule. They appear to have just converted the offline, hard copy schedule into HTML and dumped it on the site.
As you can see, it’s sorted by venue. There’s one page for each location where shows are running. That’s possibly a reasonable option for the printed schedule. On the other hand, it may be evidence of a classic information design mistake, where the designer chooses a structure that fits their needs instead of their users’. After all, the Fringe sorts its volunteers, technicians and shows by venue. You’d expect Fringe organizers to think of the schedule in those terms, too.
However, users may want to browse or search the show listings in different ways:
Happily, this is a problem that the geeks have already solved. We can think of each show listing as ’structured data’–each listing (or database record, if you like) has an expected series of values–show title, performers’ names, venue, dates, times and so forth. It’s really easy to host this information in a database and display it so that it’s easy to browse, sort and search.
I’m not sure about front-ends for these, but free database services like Google Base or Dabble DB would be a natural place to start. Even if the user interface was a little clunky in the first year, or a little messy to look at, I’m betting it would be an improvement on the current approach.
The problem, of course, is that this looks like a hard problem for a Normal Human. We need more Common Crafts, who are expert explainers of the new.
August 12th, 2008, 2 Comments »
The one time I went into this Apple store on Yates Street, they gave me incorrect information about Bluetooth-enabling our old iMac. I was unimpressed, so I haven’t been back.
The clip art doesn’t even make any sense. The slogan says ‘Tune your Mac’ and they’re using an image of a (jauntily-leaning) doctor? Surely a mechanic (or, say, a piano tuner?) might have been a wiser option.