Geoff Berner at Pub 340

I have literally just gotten back from a Geoff Berner show at the Pub 340; I’ve been a fan of Geoff for a while, but never managed to see him.

Who says cell phone cameras aren’t useful?

If you haven’t seen Geoff you should; if you haven’t bought his album yet, what the hell are you thinking? Who knew the accordion could be cool. Light Enough to Travel and Iron Grey are his biggest hits so far, but for my money his best tune is Prairie Wind which may be the best song about Saskatchewan ever.

The Scream

One word for Howard Dean:

Ouch.

Ghost Ships in the Burrard Inlet

At about midnight, I looked out of the upstairs window of this house at the view of Vancouver - fog was rolling in from the east, and the city was becoming enshrouded in mist.

A quick walk down to the waterfront for one of the clear benefits of living in North Vancouver (the view of the city) had me taking a bunch of timed exposures of the ghost ships in the Burrard Inlet and the city itself.
Exposures, all at f8

Ship: 90 seconds, Sigma 90mm

Ship: 180 seconds, Sigma 90mm

City with ships moving: 120 seconds, 50mm Macro

City: 90 seconds, 50mm Macro

In Hollywood, the Mac is King

Having killed my cable, I’ve had little interaction with video of extended length; because it was in the library, I rented Woody Allen’s Hollywood Ending

My favourite line, uttered by George Hamilton:

Gun Control: A Modest Proposal

Warren Kinsella had this to say a couple of days ago:

According to the Globe, the gun control system is now being “targeted” - tell that to the 14 families who recall what happened at l’Éole Polytechnique in Montreal on December 6, 1989. Tell the families of these women that Canada’s system of gun control is not, quote unquote, “a meaningful law.”

He followed this by printing the names of the women who were killed that day; this, of course, is very much a sensationalist way of getting a point across and doesn’t focus on the real issue: the list of people killed in automobilie accidents would be longer, but is unlikely to create the same sense of outrage among readers.

Two basic points to be made here: first, gun control is absolutely necessary - absolutely; second, the current system has spiraled out of control and is not a realistic way of implementing a system when it’s already too late.

Continue reading "Gun Control: A Modest Proposal"

Blogging in the U.S. Presidential Campaign

Catching up on U.S. election news, the good folks at Campaigns Online provided a link to an interesting piece on NPR about the use of Blogs in the 2004 presidential campaign.

This - as often happens - sent my mind spinning in a number of directions, some relevant and others note. Here we go:

• What I find fascinating about the blog debate is that it’s revised the old debate about push vs. pull media, often defined as email vs. web. A simple google search brought up 85,000 pages - this isn’t going to be solved anytime soon.
• I think it’s endlessly amusing that presidential blogs are a good thing and Paul Martin’s blog is treated as a bit of a joke by our media; biggest difference - Martin’s blog doesn’t allow for input from site visitors.
• By far the thing that makes blogs cool is the fact that the underlying technology is ridiculously simple; despite this, the spark caught.
• Why is the NPR site so much better than the CBC site? CBC has very little in the way of archived content and does a miserable job of supporting different audio formats, especially the now very popular streaming MP3 format.

Is This A Trend?

While perusing my daily news, I came across this headline on CBS Marketwatch; I’ve yet to see a better example of the inanity of financial journalism:

Yes, that’s right folks: the first three hours of 2004 are a bull market! If you were lucky enough to get in at the bottom (i.e. this morning) you’re looking pretty good right now.

Tragic, isn’t it? (The journalism, I mean.)

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