the pod bay door

¦¦ The Edmonton Journal published a feature on blogging in the Friday 14 March 2003 edition. Written by Mairi MacLean, the two pieces feature comments from a number of locals, including Geoff, Robert (in Lethbridge), Jen, myself, and a mention of Kelly‘s site as well. Given the small amount of coverage available in a newspaper, I thought Mairi did a good job introducing blogging to the EJ readers. My only quibble: the URLs for the websites mentioned were not included in the print or online(!) versions of the articles.

¦¦ In the world of You-Gotta-Be-Sh*tting-Me, a woman in Germany began emerging from a 6-year coma when her parents took her Regensburg to listen to a Bryan Adams concert. My favorite take on the story left me in tears from laughing. Previously Bryan Adams was known only for Waking Up The Neighbours, not comatose fans. Meanwhile, in Kenya, sadly, three people died trying to retrieve a mobile phone that fell into an open-pit latrine.

¦¦ It’s unfortunate that you need to subscribe to read stories from the NYTimes Magazine online. The March 9 issue features three fascinating articles on: face transplant surgery, “smart-mobbing” the antiwar movement, and a disturbing piece on Mel Gibson and his father, orthodox Catholic theologian Hutton Gibson. Discussed is The Passion, Mel Gibson’s upcoming movie on the last 12 hours of the life of Christ, with the actors speaking in Latin and Aramic only. There will be no subtitles. “Gibson has has said that he hopes to depict Christ’s ordeal using ‘filmic storytelling techniques’ that will make the understanding of the dialogue uncessary.” (NYTimes, 9 March 02, p53) The publication of the article has infuriated the younger Gibson. What is disturbing about the article in the NYTimes Magazine are some of Hutton Gibson’s beliefs such as: the Sept 11 jets were not flown by Al-Qaeda operatives but were remote-controlled, and that the Holocaust never happened.

¦¦ Why are there not enough hours in the day to do what you want to do?

¦¦ Forthcoming project: to record in a notepad every song that appears in my head in one day from wakeup in the morning to going to sleep at night the same day.

¦¦ With all due respect to my many dear American friends, occasionally you shake your head in disbelief at what some of them do to get attention, especially in the name of so-called patriotism. Will the “average” American ever learn that there is sentient life outside the 48 contiguous, and, gosh darn it, that it matters too?

¦¦ Another pronouncement from the established media that blogging is now mainstream.

¦¦ Late night musical discovery: Secondsight, from North Carolina.

¦¦ It makes good sense that my friend and colleague Stephen Abram is a member of the Internet Librarian Hall of Fame. My question is: how does one qualify, and who makes decision to induct?

¦¦ It was great to see SNL pay tribute last Saturday to Fred Rogers. Horatio Sanz sat on stage near the end and sang a song in his honour. In the past, SNL skewered him mercilessly, the high water mark being the early 1980’s with Eddie Murphy, when he did Mr Robinson’s Neighborhood. National Lampoon was in on it as well, satirizing him on one of their first albums. Read a most heartfelt tribute to Rogers from PopMatters.

¦¦ Make your own online kaleidoscope! The Internet justs gets better every day.

¦¦ Indeed it is. The highlight today was a haircut at 10:00 am. But I digress. Ten years ago, when AAA radio began to take off in North America, I lamented in a letter to the Edmonton Journal that no such station was to be found in these here parts. Around that time, Calgary and Vancouver had AAA stations (Mix 1060, Coast 1040), but both were relegated to the AM band, rather than FM, and they could not build an audience big enough or sell enough advertising to stay solvent. Mix 1060’s playlist was so diverse and interesting that one time on a trip from Edmonton to Calgary, I listed every song they played in three hours to get a sense of the range of music, and I was impressed. My letter drew a response from the then-pop music writer, Helen Metella, who agreed. However, she interviewed local rock FM music directors, who insisted such a format would never work in Edmonton.

It’s ten years later, and Edmonton still features five faceless, interchangable pop-rock FM stations, populated by idiot djs, with playlists as bland as you can imagine. K-97 likes to play a lot of Supertramp, and 100.3 enjoys hitting us with Zeppelin. Hey, I like LZ, but time and a place, guys, ok?

Well, I should maybe make that 4.5 stations. A few days ago, Mix 96 because 96X, The Hit Music Alternative. I’ve listened to it for four days, while driving, and can report that the playlist is, well, diverse and interesting. There are problems, of course: the djs still talk to us like we’re 10-year olds, and often they will not tell you the name and/or song title of the tune(s) just played. This infuriates me – the Calgary and Vancouver stations always listed the song info after a set of tunes. Regardless, I hope they survive, and do well, if only because they’ve already been dissed by the sockheads at 100.3 – the radio station that growls at you 300x a day.

¦¦ While searching for info on AAA stations, I came across a web site called EdmontonStories.com. It is set in MT, and is a site to which readers can contribute Edmonton stories. It looks new, and I don’t think anyone other than designer has posted yet. Among the links there is one to another Edmonton blog, from Ray vanderWoning, rightfully titled Caustic Sense. This is why. So I look at the bottom page, and read “This work is licensed under a Creative Commons License.” I am further intrigued to read about what they are:

“Creative Commons has developed a Web application that helps people dedicate their creative works to the public domain — or retain their copyright while licensing them as free for certain uses, on certain conditions. Unlike the GNU GPL, Creative Commons licenses are not be designed for software, but rather for other kinds of creative works: websites, scholarship, music, film, photography, literature, courseware, etc. We hope to build upon and complement the work of others who have created public licenses for a variety of creative works.”

Watch an animated short about their mission (complete with cheesy roller-rink organ). Creative Commons wants to help us “skip the intermediary”, i.e., copyright. CC wants to help you let others make “some use” of your creativity on the internet, without having to jump through legal hoops. If copyright is a red light saying “stop”, CC is the green light, saying “c’mon in.” Their licences are explained here. CC has its own blog as well.

I think this is a great idea, long overdue. Copyright is important and necessary, but can be stifling and suffocating. CC is an US-based initiative, and I am not sure if it can applies outside that jurisidiction, but their licences are being used by non-Americans.

I also note that the Creative Commons movement is old news, from 2002, and I wasn’t surprised to learn that it is chaired by Lawrence Lessig. To those of you already familiar with CC, thanks for your patience.

¦¦ Look carefully before you decide to close this window after it opens. Thanks, Sharon.

¦¦ I am friggin’ tired tonight.

¦¦ I didn’t know that “yo la tengo” means “I have it” in Spanish. I did know that “husker du” means “do you remember” in Norwegian and/or Danish.

¦¦ Blogging is moving into the mainstream very quickly. Now, Harvard has hired Dave Winer to head up its new Weblogs at Harvard Initiative. So the question is begged: if blogging has made it to Harvard, have blogs moved into the mainstream? If so, I’m wondering what comes next, in whatever embryonic stage it might be at this time. Will blogs become passé? I don’t think so, at least not for a while. I think blogs will continue to evolve and mutate and morph into other formats. Time will tell.

¦¦ Norah Jones and Christopher Cross? Will she suffer his fate? I doubt it.

¦¦ Napster, seemingly forgotten these days, is set to return later this year.

OK, this is a blatant plug for the new album, ever-so-slightly rearranged, by my wonderful friend and brilliant musician, Jessica Owen (formerly Schoenberg – love you lots, girl!). After some delay, the record is now available for purchase from CD Baby.

This is Jessica’s fifth album. I was fortunate and priviliged to have played on and arranged most of her first offering, Sounds Like A Plan, recorded and released in cassette in April 1994. Since then, her talent has blossomed considerably, her songwriting and playing improved geometrically, and her incredible, powerful voice continues to amaze and demand your attention.

If you have hi-fi broadband access and Windows Media Player, listen to 2 mins each of four of her new songs. Low-fi dialup access is here.

Trust me, this is worth the effort. Yes, I am totally biased in her favour, but I can also tell quality music and effort when I hear it. Please consider buying a great product in support of a musician whom I respect enormously and love unconditionally, but more importantly, buy it because you’ll enjoy it for a long time to come.

My brother Chris sent this interesting story on the emergence of CD burning clubs. Group members chose a variety of songs, burn CDs, and send one back to every member. Downloading copyrighted material continues to be a hot topic. I agree with Dave Marsh’s comments in this article, and I’ve said this before: I’ve discovered more interesting music and been exposed to more interesting artists as a result of downloading and listening to new music from wherever. Copyright is the sacred cow in my profession. What I don’t like is the wholesale burning of an entire CD for someone else’s use, or downloading of anything for burning and resale. And so on goes the downloading wars.

It’s bloody freezing here in Edmonton today.

Am I the only person around who is not surprised of the lack of interest or outrage by Americans regarding the bankruptcy scandals involving corporate executives at Enron, Worldcom, Adelphia, etc? We’ve become numb to such events, I believe. There is so much crap happening in the world, that when we hear about senior Enron execs defrauding investors, we shrug our shoulders and check out the next news story.