Hugo Chisholm

Tropical fruit smoothie

• One whole banana
• 1/4 mango (sliced)
• Blueberries
• Strawberries
• Pineapple
• 1/8 cup of vanilla flavoured protein powder
• A drop of vanilla extract
• Strawberry kiwi juice

 I tend to have this everyday in the summer on my drive to work. Isn’t too heavy, full of energy, and tastes amazing. It’s also better in the summer because of the access to fresher fruit (rather than frozen fruit in the winter time). 

Mixed together in a magic bullet and enjoyed for ten minutes. I recommend trying it. A much cheaper alternative to buying them at Jugo Juice, Booster Juice, etc…, and you get to try new ingredients depending on what you’re feeling like.

Try it!

The world wants that attention. Only you can decide where it goes.

And it does determine the shape of your life: what you pay attention to becomes your reality. If you watch and read the news all the time, you will become obsessed with the latest crises. If you watch and read about celebrities, your life will revolve around them. If you socialize on social networks all day long, this will become your world.

I found an interesting article today about fighting for you attention. I agree strongly with many of the things the author mentions in her list of reclaiming your attention:

1. Limit your friends. Not real-life friends, but social network and blogging and forum friends. Not that these can’t be good relationships, but having too many makes them meaningless. And each friend will take up a little bit of your attention — when you read their updates, click on their links, reply to their messages, look at their photos, and so on. The more you have, the more attention they’ll require. Limit them to just the essential.

…

4. Give up on news. It’s a never-ending cycle. And if you’ve paid attention to the news as long as I have (I’m a former journalist), you know it’s all the same, year after year. Unless your job depends on it, the news is usually a waste of your attention. Let go of the need to stay updated. Even if your job does depend on it, keep it limited.

5. Be brief. Write brief emails, tweets, updates, blog posts. With some exceptions, of course. But make brief your de facto.

6. Give your attention to the important. This is the crucial part: choose what you give your attention to, and do this choosing carefully. What is important to you? Writing? Photography? Design? Coding? Creating a new business that helps others? Your kids? Figure this out, and give this the majority of your attention.

On top of my issues with FB, there is the simple reason that I just can’t deal with a large group of friends on a quality level. The only people I really deal with are the people in my day to day life: classmates, bandmates and friends that live in this city. If it weren’t for having a band of 7 members I’d be able to count the people I interact with that I consider friends on my two hands. I just don’t want to deal with more people in my life. It’s not that I don’t care or love my other friends, but a digital-only existance/interaction gives me no emotional contact. The only thing that really makes twitter, for example, fun is that most of my interactions are with people I see daily already.

As for the news point, I couldn’t agree more. History repeats itself and news is sounding more and more familiar everyday. I’m not saying I cut it out of my life completely, but the news that I can catch up on during the time it takes me to make or eat dinner is probably enough to keep me from looking like a complete doofus. I’m not living in a shitty world. My government doesn’t treat me like crap. I don’t make so much money that I feel like the gov’t is robbing me. I’m no protesting hippy. The news tends to be so sad and depressing anyways…

Number 5 is really my favorite. I think Einstein said it best: “Everything should be made as simple as possible, but no simpler”. I hate feeling like I contribute to the noise of useless blabber that occurs in so many parts of the internet. Taking a quick look here, I’ve been on twitter for longer than most of my friends, and although I keep an active presence on the social network I have less than many of my “younger” friends. I’m still under 1000 tweets where a number of my friends are way above that. Some even try for a large number. I don’t see the point. Say what you need to say, but don’t add to the noise in the world. ‘nuff said

The last one is probably the most import in the list. Spend time in your life doing what you love, what you find important, because in the end that is what will shape you. Without sounding punny, the only thing you can count on at the end of the day is that there are only 24h in a day. Only 365 days in a year. And only a slowly shrinking number of years left in your life. At the end of the day, your memories of what you’ve spent your time doing over the last 5, 10 or 50 years is what will make you who you are on that day. Why not be proud to have been in control of most of it instead of being a slave to someone or something else’s bidding?  Not to say that you can’t love your job or anything, just make sure you’re doing what you love somewhere in your life!

Ah hell, what do I know? I’m only 23; so young I don’t even know it.

I wear sandals. I like feeling air on my feet. They don’t get too cold. I was born in a cold place; I know what I’m doing.

Here’s your chance to make fun of me as the first person to be wearing sandals regularly this year. Make fun of me now before everyone else starts wearing them. Make fun of me now but I will dare you to try out this most liberating footwear now.

Dare to wear sandals.

Since my house has gone into vinyl mode over the past few months, I thought it might be interesting to share some images I found of what the grooves look like close up.

Chris Supranowitz is a researcher at The Insitute of Optics at the University of Rochester. Along with a number of other spectacular studies (such as quantum optics, trapping of atoms, dark states and entanglement), Chris has decided to look at the relatively boring grooves of a vinyl record using the institute’s electron microscope. Well, not boring for me.

I found it to be pretty neat, but that may be because I am kind of an audio nut. To contrast the magnified analog audio, the research team at The Insitute of Optics also checked out the pits of a CD.

You can check out the entire article here.

Well it’s 9th and Hennepin 
And all the donuts have 
Names that sound like prostitutes 
And the moon’s teeth marks are 
On the sky like a tarp thrown over all this 
And the broken umbrellas like 
Dead birds and the steam 
Comes out of the grill like 
The whole goddamned town is ready to blow. 
And the bricks are all scarred with jailhouse tattoos 
And everyone is behaving like dogs. 
And the horses are coming down Violin Road 
And Dutch is dead on his feet 
And the rooms all smell like diesel 
And you take on the 
Dreams of the ones who have slept here. 
And I’m lost in the window 
I hide on the stairway 
I hang in the curtain 
I sleep in your hat 
And no one brings anything 
Small into a bar around here. 
They all started out with bad directions 
And the girls behind the counter has a tattooed tear, 
One for every year he’s away she said, such 
A crumbling beauty, but there’s 
Nothing wrong with her that 
$100 won’t fix, she has that razor sadness 
That only gets worse 
With the clang and the thunder of the 
Southern Pacific going by 
As the clock ticks out like a dripping faucet 
Till you’re full of rag water and bitters and blue ruin 
And you spill out 
Over the side to anyone who’ll listen 
And I’ve seen it 
All through the yellow windows 
Of the evening train.

Trying to finish this “demo” or whatever it should be considered. This recording project is taking its toll on me. It’s been a work in progress for too long now and we still have nothing to show for it.

Raph and I went in this morning to work on tracks and we still aren’t complete. I’m thinking it would have helped if I had touched a guitar since the last time we did any recording.

I’ll be sure to post any songs we produce here for anyone to listen to.

P.S. We’re looking for a new name for the band, and ideas?

Google has finally pushed an update to their Wave product that allows users to be notified via email for updates to waves that they follow. This was previously only possible with a separate extension which had certain reliability issues.

Looks like Wave isn’t a lost cause after all!

I was in to see my dentist today to get a filling done. My first real filling ever. My first time being “frozen in the mouth”. For the record, it wasn’t really my fault that a cavity formed, it was due to my rear molars being misaligned after my braces were removed a million years ago.

My mouth is still numb on my left side as I write this. I’m almost tempted to bite my tongue just because I can!

The actual amazing part of my day was that I had the most attractive dental hygienist or dental assistant or whatever her title was ever! Better than any nurse I’ve ever seen, better than any lifeguard. I felt like I was in a movie!

Once she put my crazy rubber mask thing in my mouth she asked me a question:

“This might make it tough to swallow so just let me know if you need any sex.”

What?

Then it dawns on me that she said “…if you need any suction.”  Haha.

Highlight of my day at 9am. Might as well just go to bed until tomorrow now.

I’ve updated my tumblr with a new theme and added the new Reply feature to my posts and the Ask and Submit features to my sidebar.

So please, ask and submit away!

A quick trip through downtown Vancouver during the Olympic games this year. It was quite a trek indeed and my sister came to visit at the end!

You can comment on them on my flickr page.

(Turn up your speakers or plug in some headphones; this band/video is best head loud!)

Closure in Moscow First Temple

There are some band’s whose sound or style is hard to reproduce or imitate in an original way. Some that come to mind are The Mars Volta or The Fall of Troy. This Australian band takes both mentioned bands’ sounds and create something awesome! The lead vocals even remind me of Copeland, although I don’t know what put them in my head while listening to CIM.

The guitarists are solid, the drummer throws in some neat tricks, and the whole group ends up sounding nicely balanced. Impressive to hear in a new upcoming young band. They have some potential.

Here’s their album if you want to try it out, which i strongly suggest!

Enjoy

Original Post

This is an interesting little article I found that has more weight with the recent introduction of the iPad. Not so much for what the iPad is, but for what it was expected to be, and what I hope can or will come of it in the future.

This is my new screensaver. It’s also a unique way to view twitter based on these the six words love, hate, think, believe, feel and wish. It’s entertaining if not really useful.

One nice thing is that it doesn’t eat up system resources to run it as a screensaver. I’ve tried some Twitter feed ‘savers that really put my computer into overdrive while it’s relaxing.

Give the original website a shot first to see what this is all about, then grab the screensaver once you’re done.

P.S. this is a Mac thing :)

We were in the studio last friday to continue recording some music, and this time I brought my video camera to capture some moments. I’m on bass and Raph is on guitar.

This is one of our newer songs and of course there are vocals and horns on this song, but I had just written a new bassline and wanted to show Raph what I’d come up with.

Enjoy and stay tuned for more!

Look, I’m not saying it’s because the frigtards who run Twitter probably won’t be able to handle the load tomorrow and the whole system is going to crash. But let’s just say I wouldn’t bet against that scenario, either. I mean look at these guys. Birdman and Baldy, we call them. As Larry says, these guys couldn’t find their own assholes using two hands and a flashlight. You really want to rely on them for something important? I wouldn’t rely on them to wash my car.

-Fake Steve Jobs on his live blogging of Apple’s impending tablet release.

Google is finally sick of bending over to China’s demands to censor the Internet and search results. In this bold announcement on their blog today, Google announced that they will be ceasing their much-beloved censorship program at Google.cn.

We launched Google.cn in January 2006 in the belief that the benefits of increased access to information for people in China and a more open Internet outweighed our discomfort in agreeing to censor some results.

…

These attacks and the surveillance they have uncovered—combined with the attempts over the past year to further limit free speech on the web—have led us to conclude that we should review the feasibility of our business operations in China. We have decided we are no longer willing to continue censoring our results on Google.cn, and so over the next few weeks we will be discussing with the Chinese government the basis on which we could operate an unfiltered search engine within the law, if at all. We recognize that this may well mean having to shut down Google.cn, and potentially our offices in China.

— David Drummond, SVP, Corporate Development and Chief Legal Officer at Google.

This is great to hear (although not the part about the attacks on the human rights activists). Please read the above post and, if you believe this is a good move on Google’s part, support them in their move to help free China’s people from their “great wall of censorship”.

Lists are lists, and everyone loves reading or making or agreeing and disagreeing on lists. Especially big and all encompassing lists like the Rolling Stone 50 Best Albums of the Decade. That’s a big title!

Everyone is going to have their opinion on who should be included or cut from this list, but that’s not the point of this post. I just wanted to see which from this list did I get to listen to, to experience, to live with during the ’00s.

The following list bolds those albums that I do NOT have or ever had, and will subsequently get as they’re probably worth at least a try. Enjoy.

1. Radiohead - Kid A - ‘00
2. The Strokes - Is This It - ‘01
3. Wilco - Yankee Hotel - ‘01
4. Jay-Z - The Blueprint - ‘01
5. The White Stripes - Elephant - ‘03
6. Arcade Fire - Funeral - ‘04
7. Eminem - The Marshall Mathers LP - ‘00
8. Bob Dylan - Modern Times - ‘06
9. M.I.A. - Kala - ‘07
10. Kanye West - The College Dropout - ‘04
11. Bob Dylan - Love and Theft - ‘01
12. LCD Soundsystem - Sound of Silver - ‘07
13. U2 - All That You Can’t Leave Behind - ‘00
14. Jay-Z - The Black Album - ‘03
15. Bruce Springsteen - The Rising - ‘02
16. OutKast - Stankonia - ‘00
17. Beck - Sea Change - ‘02
18. MGMT - Oracular Spectacular - ‘08
19. The White Stripes - White Blood Cells - ‘01
20. Amy Winehouse - Back to Black - ‘07
21. Coldplay - A Rush of Blood to the Head - ‘02
22. Green Day - American Idiot - ‘04
23. D’Angelo - Voodoo - ‘00
24. Bruce Springsteen - Magic - ‘07
25. Radiohead - Amnesiac - ‘01
26. Cat Power - The Greatest - ‘06
27. The Flaming Lips - Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots - ‘02
28. Yeah Yeah Yeahs - Fever to Tell - ‘03
29. Sigur Rós - Ágætis Byrjun - ‘00
30. Radiohead - In Rainbows - ‘07
31. My Morning Jacket - Z - ‘05
32. Lil Wayne - Tha Carter III - ‘08
33. Daft Punk - Discovery - ‘01
34. OutKast - Speakerboxxx/The Love Below - ‘03
35. PJ Harvey - Stories From the City, Stories - ‘00
36. U2 - No Line on the Horizon - ‘09
37. 50 Cent - Get Rich or Die Tryin’ - ‘03
38. Ryan Adams - Bloodshot - ‘00
39. Kings of Leon - Aha Shake Heartbreak - ‘05
40. Kanye West - Late Registration - ‘05
41. Arctic Monkeys - Whatever People Say I Am, That’s What I’m Not - ‘06
42. Elliott Smith - Figure 8 - ‘00
43. The Killers - Hot Fuss - ‘04
44. System of a Down - Toxicity - ‘01
45. Kanye West - Graduation - ‘07
46. Justin Timberlake - FutureSex/LoveSounds - ‘06
47. Fleet Foxes - Fleet Foxes - ‘08
48. TV on the Radio - Dear Science - ‘08
49. Fiona Apple - Extraordinary Machine - ‘05
50. Bright Eyes - I’m Wide Awake, It’s Morning - ‘05

34/50 isn’t bad! I feel like I got a pretty good taste of what will be remembered about this past decade. It’ll be that music that gets played when my kids grow up and I’ll have to tell them “I know that band/song.  I grew up with that stuff!!”.  I hope it won’t turn out to be as embarrassing as the ‘80…

Happy new year!

linking my most significant web presences in a beautifully useful layout.

McDonald’s almost hired me one time, and I only applied for the job to meet younger girls. Black girls, Hispanic, white, and Chinese girls, it says right on the job application how McDonald’s hires different races and ethnic backgrounds. It’s girls, girls, girls, buffet-style. Also on the application McDonald’s says if you have any of the following diseases:

Hepatitis A
Salmonella
Shigella
Staphylococcus
Giardia
or Campylobacter, then you may not work there. This is more of a guarantee than you get meeting girls on the street. You can’t be too careful. At least at McDonald’s she’s gone on the record saying she’s clean. Plus, there’s a very good chance she’s going to be young. Pimple young. Giggling young. Silly young and as stupid as me.

Eighteen-, nineteen-, twenty-year-old girls, I only want to talk to them. Community college girls. High school seniors. Emancipated minors.

-From Survivor - Chuck Palahniuk.

My new novel for the holidays.

Chuck Palahniuck - Rant

I read Survivor earlier this year and was well impressed by how it hooked me, so I’ve no doubt this one will do the same. I’m actually excited for something other than studying for finals in 9 courses fighting for all my attention.

On top of just getting the book, I ended up surprisingly getting a signed copy (photo above). So yay me! :D

I’ll be sure to let you know if I like the book when I’m done.

My favourite protest signs from BuzzFeed

Today marks the release of vibealicious’ new Notify app 2.0. I used it in its 1.0 day and really liked it.

Basically it’s an email app. In the old days, it simply dialed into your gmail account at poped up every time you’d get a new email. In it’s UI it would give you the sender and subject. Upon clicking on the message it would open your browser to your message in Gmail. It kept things simple and worked flawlessly

Welcome version 2.0. Big thing for me was opening up to other types of email addresses. It can now also natively fetch MobileMe, Rackspace and any plain vanilla IMAP email. It applies the Safari/Chrome style tabs on the top of the app for the separate accounts.

The other big ner feature is being able to Quickview your emails without the browser: just select the email and click on the “eye” button (alternatively for keyboard users, the up/down keys work along with the global Quickview shortcut space bar).

New to this release is the added ability to respond and compose to emails directly in Notify. This is great for those quick-off responses.

Being a notifycation app, this is it’s strongest feature. Being used to the push style of my iPhone, I’ve always wanted a similar style push in OS X that doesn’t require the use of a full-blown app like mail.app. This app answers my call: Growl support, audio notifications, highlight of the app icon in the menubar along with unread count…  I can’t think of another way to notify you of a new email.

If you use email more than once a day, you owe it to yourself to give this app a shot. It stays out of your way and keeps an eye on your email so that you don’t have to. It’s free to try, and $10 to buy (although it will still function unregistered).

Vibalicious - Notify 2.0

Look at his CUTE FEET!

I just discovered this cute and useful free app in the iTunes App store today (link). It’s called “My Account” and it does exactly what it sounds like it does: gives you info about your Rogers (and for you Fido users, get the Fido version).

What I was surprised to find, and still am, is how nicely laid out the app is. It looks and acts like a native Apple app. I mean, in all honesty, this kinda of functionality should be included with the iPhone when you buy it (or somehow included in the quasi-useful “Usage” tab in the “Settings” app).

This app tells you how much of each part of your plan you’ve used up: Daytime minutes, Evening/weekend minutes, etc. It even tells you how many SMS/MMS you’ve sent and received, what percentage that accounts for of your total as well as similar Data usage. Everything you need to know about you’re account including your current balance, last month’s bill and the option to pay them off!

On top of it all, they’re set it up to not even require your username/password; it just knows! A really nice touch Rogers.

As an additional note, they’ve also added all of this fancy superfluous graphics to their newly designed web interface.

All in all, I give two thumbs way up to Rogers for all of this at no extra charge. I’ve been hating on their website access for years now and this really redeems them. Take a minute to try these out. :)

This is how I cram for a battery of finals all week: just put your nose to the grind stone until it makes no more sense.

Then, get a coffee and eat food.

Then got back to studying until it makes sense OR fall asleep and it invades your dreams. Then you’re ready.

Woot!  My tumblarity went from 0 to 9 in a day or two (didn’t see it yesterday)!

I don’t really know if this thing is even real, but it’s too good not to share with everyone!

juliaroy:

I am strangely really into this thing…

giannii:

I can use this right now. I’d wear socks though.

thedailywhat:

What hath Snuggie wrought?

[via.]

In the past little while I’ve been seeing an increasing number of people with iPhones (here in Canada). I’ve only just realises that it is probably due to the end of Rogers’ exclusivity of carrige. I though it was just one of those strange things I’ve been noticing more than usual but now it makes sense and I’m not going crazy.

It finally dawned on me this weekend when in my inner friend circle the number oh iPhone have doubled from 3 to 6 in the past month. I think it’s great that they waited for the phone to come to their carrier instead of switching; if it ain’t broke don’t fix it. If you’re happy with you carrier (as in they treat you like loyal paying customers) it’s probably not worth the effort of switching just to get a certain phone.

Mostly I’m just happy to happy to have more people to play ‘Words with Friends’ with!

Happy iPhoning everyone!

It’s no surprise to me that Trent creates the best remixes of his stuff. He already does it all himself anyway. This version is cool too because I think he even changed up the lyrics. I am just loving the song as a whole!

And as with most song I love (anything for that matter), I want to share it. So here it is in all it’s glory.

Nine Inch Nails - Right Where it Belongs (Trent Reznor web remix)

See the animal in his cage that you built
Are you sure what side you’re on?
Better not look him too closely in the eye
Are you sure what side of the glass you are on?

See the safety of the life you have built
Everything where it belongs
Feel the hollowness inside of your heart
And it’s all right where it belongs

What if everything around you
Isn’t quite as it seems
What if all the world you think you know
Is an elaborate dream?

And if you look at your reflection
Is that all you want it to be?
What if you could look right through the cracks
Would you find yourself, find yourself afraid to see?

What if all the world’s inside of your head
Just creations of your own?
Your devils and your gods all the living and the dead
And you’re really all alone?

You can live in this illusion
You can choose to believe
You keep looking but you can’t find the woods
While you’re hiding in the trees

What if everything around you
Isn’t quite as it seems
What if all the world you used to know
Is an elaborate dream?

And if you look at your reflection
Is that all you want to be?
What if you could look right through the cracks
Would you find yourself, find yourself afraid to see?

I’ve forgotten how nice this simple burning app is. Pop a CD/DVD into your drive and copy or create an image with one click. It keeps a history of all your previous activity. Can append data to already burned CDs.  It’s great!

And there’s the neat feature of having the app “smoke” when you burn a disk.

Try it out.

groho from Google Wave Communities:

The second thing Google did right is build on top of the XMPP protocol. (The protocol is an XMPP extension, look it up. It runs on an XMPP server, look it up. Enough said.) This is important because in order to participate in a conversation with someone or something you need to be able to talk to it. Right now, we are in a world of walled gardens:-

Facebook 

Myspace 

LinkedIn 

Enterprise applications 

Home applications 

These are very proprietary systems and you certainly cannot talk between them without something translating in the middle. If you wanted to write an application that worked across Facebook and Linkedin, for example, you’d have to write it twice, and translate in the middle. And then there is still no standardized way to talk with OTHER applications. But once you can talk directly with someone or something, bypassing the proprietary gatekeepers, the value of the entire network grows exponentially with each new connection.

I strongly agree with him on these points. I am a firm believer in supporting (well thought-out) standards on the internet. It’s why I don’t support Facebook.

Standards are created to help ease the communication boundaries between competing protocols/coding languages/etc. Open source projects are there to help make the internet (and software projects) stronger and better by letting everyone contribute to the solution. Email would not be so widespread if it were not an agreed upon standard, and I believe that until we all agree on some new communication standard, we are going to face a repeating history of new social networks that grow huge and when they die, take everything created on them with them.

From his new album “Battle Studies” slated for release on the 17th comes this Robert Johnson cover played á la Cream. This is without question a classic blues song done countless times and Mayer gives us his simple rendition of it.

Mayer’s virtuosity on guitar is often absent from his mainstream releases for, I guess, the obvious fact that it’s got to stay mainstream and likeable by everyone. So far this newest album stays true to this and is full of soft-rock classics that will certainly fill the airwaves for many a forgettable moment.

I guess I’m kind of indifferent to this new record where I wish I could be excited. I’ll just have to wait until he comes around so I can see him in his element. Until then, here’s Crossroads:

“I went down to the crossroads, fell down on my knee.
I went down to the crossroads, fell down on my knee.
Asked the Lord above for mercy, “Help me if you please.”

I went down to the crossroads, tried to flag a ride.
I went down to the crossroads, tried to flag a ride.
Nobody seemed to know me, everybody passed by.

You can run, you can run, tell my friend Willie Brown.
You can run, you can run, tell my friend Willie Brown.
And I’m standing at the crossroads, believe I’m sinking down.”

-Robert Johnson

I decided to actually take photos at a practice since we have none. This are some of what I got.

BTW, for those who don’t know, we’re called the Adherents and we play ska-like music. a 7-piece consisting of Guitar/vocals (Raph), Drums (Nic L), Bass (myself), Trumpet (Saya), Trombone (Nic D.), Tenor sax (Nic G.) and Baritone sax (Olivier). We play out of the Vancouver/Surrey area in western Canada.

I would like to quickly bring to your attention a beautifully simple app (both aesthetically and practically). Simplenote is an app for iPhone/iPod Touch with a very simple purpose: to take and take care of your notes. It is also more than just a native app; it features a web app for use on desktop web browsers so that you’re never far away from your notes.

Both the web app end, and the native app end are as simple as they need to be. You use your email address and a password for online sync, and you’re given a basically limitless number of note pages to create. These are synced live and seamlessly with an option to email notes as well. That’s all there is to it.

On top of this, the developer has begun a beta api for Simplenote. This api allows for other apps to call the server for your synced notes. There are currently a few “plug-ins” for Yojimbo and National Velocity. The one I want to mention here is JustNotes.

JustNotes is a small app that that sits in your menubar that allows you to log into your Simplenote account. This app also keeps true to its name by giving you only an option to switch fonts (Helvetica, Monaco, Lucida Grande and Marker Felt). Other than that, it is set up to float above all other apps while it is visible.

There are currently no keyboard shortcuts included, but I’m sure (and hope) that it’s that next feature to come considering it’s still in beta.

Also, for those who use or prefer a SSB (Site Specific Browser - like Fluid), there a few users who’ve created style sheets to customize the interface of Simplenote (Simplenote restyled, Simplnote menubar). They aren’t hard to implement and can really spruce up the UI.

If you find yourself ever taking notes on your device, you really owe it to yourself to give this app a shot. At $2 it’s a steal! And with all the attention it’s getting online, I’m sure the Cloud Factory will keep in touch with users and keep this app feeling fresh with regular updates (note sharing with other Simplenote users perhaps?).

There is something to be said for apps that do one thing and do it right. This is the “Notes” app that should have been included with the iPhone/Touch in the first place.

I’m sitting here on a city bus in a city I don’t even live in, yet I recognize this guy. Is it just a familiar face? Is he someone I’ve forgotten over time? Why do I think I know him?

…

I do know him; I’ve figured it out. I know him from my days working in a kitchen. I only worked there for 4-6 months but I clearly remember him now. He was one of those young guys with aspiration to be in charge. He had insecurity issues, a dirty mouth and wanted people to have to pay attention to him so why wouldn’t he want to have some authority in a kitchen.

(he keeps looking around and seeing me but had no idea I’m writing about him.)

His story isn’t what interests me. Neither is the weird coincidence that I’m on a bus with him 5 years from when I last remember seeing him. I accept that seemingly improbable things happen more often then I think. What does interest me is how many times do these occurences happen when I’m not paying attention? How many people I haven’t seen in years have I unknowingly crossed paths with?

Maybe if I knew I wouldn’t consider them such improbable occurences.

I almost lost when I found this!  Helvetica and Molskine are almost two of my favourite things in the design world, and to see them combined makes me greedy for a few of these notebooks. Too bad they’re so expensive…

You can find the original post at i love typography

The Half Shell Heroes - Building a Memory (Live @ Lantzville)

A few weeks ago some friends of mine played a show for our friends’ wedding. It was both a great show, and a great wedding (I’m still looking for photos). I did sound tech stuff for them, and tried my best to get a live recording of them to boot.

It didn’t work out as well as I had hoped in that I wanted to get a live feed from the audience and a live feed from the sound board, but with all the crowd being as rowdy as a wedding crowd is, I was only able to get a board feed.

All that technicality to explain that you don’t get to hear much of the drums (I only mic’d the kick. Conner is a loud enough drummer), and in a few cases not much bass guitar either.

Of all that you can hear, it sounds quite wonderful. I’m quite impressed at how nicely everything sounds. It really doesn’t sound too “live”, but this is a straight raw feed.

The song also is an original by the Half Shells. I’d say “if you like this, go support them,” but they don’t have a site or anything yet. So if you like them, I have more recordings from this wedding, and a few other sessions I’ve done with them that I can/will put on request!

Enjoy!

Song: Burning Bridges

Artist: K-Os

Album: Yes!

This is currently my album of the week. It’s always playing. There are a number of good tracks on it, so give it a listen (last.fm, iTunes) and leave your comments!

This past weekend was a big scavenger hunt for my school’s residence. We had to go around Vancouver taking photos of certain things defined by a list riddles. We also had many questions that forced us to go to certain locations to find the answers. We then had 3 “check point” locations that had to be visited before 2:30pm.

This video I put together shows quickly what we had to do. Oh, BTW we decided on a “cross dressing” theme for our team, so please don’t judge me on my dress.

Enjoy!

P.S.  There is a link to part 2 at the end because the video was too long to post as 1 part.

Thrice - The Weight

There’s many who’ll tell you they’ll give you their love,
But when they say “give” they mean “take.”
They’ll hang ‘round just like vultures till push comes to shove.
They’ll take flight when the earth starts to shake.

Someone may say that they’ll always be true,
Then slip out the door ‘fore the dawn.
But I won’t leave you hanging on.
Another may stay till they find someone new,
Then before you know they’ll be gone.
But I won’t leave you hanging on;
No, I won’t be that someone.

And come what may, I won’t abandon you or leave you behind
Because love is a loyalty sworn, not a burning for a moment.
And come what may, I will be standing right here by your side;
I won’t run away, though the storm’s getting worse and there’s no end in sight.

Some talk of destiny, others of fate,
But soon they’ll be saying goodbye.
But I won’t leave you high and dry.
Because a ring don’t mean nothing
If you can’t haul the weight,
And some of them won’t even try,
But I won’t leave you high and dry;
I won’t leave you wondering why. 

And storms will surely come,
But true love is a choice you must make
And you’re the one that I have set my heart to choose.
As long as I live, I swear I’ll see this through.

Here’s the new Linkin Park song from the new Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen.  I’m not convinced it awesome yet.  Try it out!