On the dangers of not having a personal life

So, I've been blogging much more for Free Culture Carleton than I have here lately; somehow I feel that's indicative of my life. It occurs to me that I'm not doing enough to meet my personal needs. I fear sometimes like I'm just going to become a walking mouthpiece for a movement, and that people won't be able to relate to me as a human being anymore. I think people are intuitively drawn away from getting involved with activists that are self-sacrificing; I certainly have been. I'm going to be working on maintaining a balance between my personal needs, and my needs to be involved in social change.

Unclog your YouTube

Today I leart that the internet is a series of tubes.

To every disgruntled pedestrian telling me to get off the sidewalk : "Bike's don't kill, cars do"

Yesterday my room mate Gwen recieved a call that threw the day into a storm of anger and sorrow. One of our mutual friends Mitch (I was not as close to him as she was) got hit by a drunk driver on his bike. He had to get surgery in his neck, and his chances of ever walking again are 1%. What is even more upsetting is that this happened almost 2 weeks ago, and friends that we have encountered several times did not let us know of his condition.

I hate automobiles. They are weapons of mass destruction. Not only are they responsible for massive environmental degradation, they are a power that anyone, no matter how irresponsible, can take into their hands. Seeing my room mate in such pain was very difficult. I'm saying a prayer for the well-being of our dear friend.

On the reception and delivery of information

I'm pleased to be taking my COMP 3007 course with Tony White because it is his favourite undergraduate course to teach, and it shows. He makes a real effort to entertain the class as well as impart the knowledge, something I really appreciate. Professor White described our textbook, Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs as "THE best book on Computer Science I have ever read". The Forward of the book is a marvellous passage that I think any lay person should read if the want to understand the philosophy of computer programming. I have made note of some of my favourite quotes from the book so far, including:

The source of the exhilaration associated with computer programming is the continual unfolding within the mind and on the computer of mechanisms expressed as programs and the explosion of perception they generate. If art interprets our dreams, the computer executes them in the guise of programs!

Every reader should ask himself periodically ``Toward what end, toward what end?'' -- but do not ask it too often lest you pass up the fun of programming for the constipation of bittersweet philosophy.

Pascal is for building pyramids -- imposing, breathtaking, static structures built by armies pushing heavy blocks into place. Lisp is for building organisms -- imposing, breathtaking, dynamic structures built by squads fitting fluctuating myriads of simpler organisms into place.

Invent and fit; have fits and reinvent! We toast the Lisp programmer who pens his thoughts within nests of parentheses.

In effect, we conjure the spirits of the computer with our spells... A computational process is indeed much like a sorcerer's idea of a spirit. It cannot be seen or touched. It is not composed of matter at all. However, it is very real. ... The programs we use to conjure processes are like a sorcerer's spells. They are carefully composed from symbolic expressions in arcane and esoteric programming languages that prescribe the tasks we want our processes to perform.

It's a goal of mine to make my university experience fun this year. I already laughed heartily about 3 times in class today :) I think I should go visit my prof in his office hours and share my enthousiam for this book, and the course. I'm particularly motivated to do so after reading a chapter of Inge Bell's book This Book is not Required entitled "Support your local professor". I decided that if I want to become a teacher (I'm considering it), a good way to practice would be to present the information in this chapter to my professors. It's occured to me that a good way to learn how to give good massages would be to practice on a masseuse because they know how to give good feedback. Well, I bet it's similar with teaching. I haven't commited to doing this yet, but I wrote out some notes...

I'm considering dropping in on a Toastmasters meeting one of these days so I can get better at public presentations. For the first time ever, my room mate Mark Tovey interviewed me about Free Culture and how it relates to his most recent paper, and he gave me some nice comments on my delivery of answers, which I found to be rather encouraging. I know I've got it in me to be a good speaker, but I need some refinement. That being said, there's value in being silent in voice and mind, so on that note...

Well, right now I'm at Carleton doing Free Culture communications because I don't yet have an internet connection at home. I left off Thursday, just before attending my COMP 3007 course. I'm pleased to have Tony White as a professor for this course because it's one of his favorite undergraduate courses to teach. Often in the beginning of a semester I find myself thinking along the lines of "if I'm to maintain an interest in this course, I'll have to do some self-study/work on things that relate to this ciriculum, because on it's own, it's just so dry". Often I don't. But when I left the course in which we will be learning the Scheme programming language, I felt compeled to read Douglas Hoffstader's analysis of Lisp, the mother language of Scheme in his "Metamagical Thema". Another fun self-directed learning task would be to fool around with Nyquist, a "sound synthesis and composition language based on a Lisp syntax". I just wish I was working in an organization that fostered this type of exploration. It's very hard for me to keep on track with my self-directed learning without some kind of support.

Speaking of extraciricular learning, that same day I participated in the RadFrosh filmfest, and despite my ADD tendencies, managed to sit through two films, The Take, and Battle Ground: 21 Days on the Empire's Edge, both very compelling works.

Yesterday I mostly just tried to make my home more habitable. Later I went to the GOSLING meeting for the first time in ages (when I was working at The Wild Oat, I always would have to work Friday evenings) with my room mate Mark Tovey. I invited Mark so he could meet some people involved in Open Source activism in government because he is currently seeking interviews with people concerning the paper he recently co-wrote Given enough minds...bridging the ingenuity gap (which I blogged about on the Free Culture Carleton site). It was great to be back in the Free Culture-related discourse; recently, I haven't been very socially engaged in the conversation. I know that I haven't made use of the mailing lists, discussion groups, blogs, and other digital communications available to me as much as I could, but there's something about live dialog you just can't beat. That's why I'm hoping that people will come join the Free Culture Carleton meetings. It just occured to me that it would be nice for the weekly Free Culture Carleton meeting to have alternating weeks of organizing meetings and chat and drink meetings.

That brings me up to today. Like I say, I'm just trying to do as much Free Culture Carleton internet organizing that I can before I head off to a volunteer appreciation party hosted by OPIRG. I look forward to dancing with my fellow activists.

alterlabel sampler volume1 : Tasty beats

alterlabel - alterlabel sampler volume1 on Jamendo

This album is rather catchy. It reminds me of Ghislain Poirier and Sage Francis at times. I will always remember it as the album I listened to while applying for a CopyCamp (copycamp.ca) subsidy. I look forward to checking out the alterlabel. I hope you folk will consider releasing your tracks in ogg format as well as mp3 (better quality, open standard/format). A reminder: by putting a No Derivatives condition on your music, you prevent DJs and podcasters from mixing your songs under Creative Commons license (and they're the ones who will help you promote your label).

Currently reading ....

The book I am currently reading is called "Fighting For Hope: Organizing to Realize Our Dreams"(a review here). I am about half-way through it. The last book I was reading was "The Glass Bead Game" aka "Magister Ludi" by Herman Hesse, but I didn't finish it yet despite it being an intensely insightful book. Maybe now that I'm back in university I should read it to gear me up for the game, but one thing at a time. Just thought I'd let you know; I may have something more interesting to say about this when I finish this/these books.

I've been exposed !

Ahhhh ! I'm out there ! Creative Commons Canada has made my rinky-dinky poem about "Getting wikified" their feature content, and has linked to this poorly maintained blog. When I visited the site to fetch the web link to my Best of the CC-ca Web project (still in progress), I found this poem that I intended to make my footer. The fact that this poem became the featured content shows just how much Creative Commons Canada needs your contributions. When first noticed the homepage, I erupted in laughter. But then the harshness of exposure kicked in, and I realized "I gotta get my act together". So, here I am facing all you Commoners and sharing my life as of late.

Today is the first day of classes at Carleton University. Right now I am only taking 2 courses, COMP 3007, a course I dropped after failing the midterm, and COMP 4004 . To be honest, I have little interest in the game that is acedemics, but I'm determined to complete my degree anyway. I'm more interested in learning to organize that learning to absorb information that I will probably never use and doing work that has no practical use. That's why I'm staring up Free Culture Carleton.

The funy thing about this is that I am probably in the most unorganized state that I have ever been. I just moved to a new home (the details of which I'll get to shortly), and all of my belongings are still in boxes. You'd think a week would be enough time to get settled, but I decided (maybe unwisely) to become a mentor for RadFrosh, OPIRG-Carleton's alternative frosh. That ocupied a lot of my time in the last week. For a week I have had neither phone nor internet, which has made it difficult to co-ordinate. Also, just before moving I lost my PalmPilot with all of my todo, contact and scheduling info in it (luckily some of it was synched to my PC). Yet somehow things seem alright... one of the reasons being that I live in a good home.

The location of the home I live in is near Preston and Elm St. The neighbours in the area are quite friendly; it really feels like a neighbourhood. I quote one of my room mates "I've talked to more people in one week here than the whole year living in the Glebe [Holmwood & O'Connor]". The rent on the 4-bedroom unit we ocupy is very reasonable. The location is very close to the OTrain Bayview stop, which is very convienient for getting to school. But the best part is that I have great room mates. I don't have permission to blog them up yet, but I'm going to ask permission and hopefully I'll get to blogging them soon. It suffices to say that all 3 of my room mates are both interested in Free/Libre Open Source Software, and also interested in environmental sustainability and other issues affecting the public interest. Thus, we're considering calling the house "The Green Penguin house" (the penguin being the mascot for Linux), but we haven't reached a consensus on that yet. Oh, and that brings me to another wonderful thing about our house: we're organizing ! We will be having regular meetings with food, and agenda, a minutes-keeper, a facilitator, and consensus-based decision making. I am beginning to recognize the importance of social self-determinination. It all starts in the home, they say, so here's wishing "power-with" with every day.

Well, I hope that gives a broader window to my world. I imagine my life will be opening up more and more with every day. I'm getting heavy with creativity, so I hope to be sharing more in the Commons soon. I'll be sure to let the community know of any new displays.

Letting go

On Friday I endured a blow to my self-worth and self-sustenance: I lost my job at the Wild Oat. What it came down to was that I wasn't properly fulfilling the duties of my job, which involved stocking up the supplies for making sandwitches and crepes. Ever since I started there, I felt like I was holding onto that job by a very thin thread because I found it a challenge to remember to do everything and to do it quickly enough. This is the first time I have ever been let go from a job due to a failure to perform my job (I've gotten terminated due to overstaffing before). I was not disappointed, because -- as much as I like the product and the environment of the Wild Oat -- I wasn't really happy there. I appreciate that I got lots of delicious free food and drink and got to work with cool people, but there were some thing I found disagreeable

The pay was too low for the amount of work I had to do. I judge this from the other restaurants I have worked at. Once someone commented that everyone just accepts that they are making some sort of sacrifice to work at the Oat because they are driven by a higher purpose. That left a very bitter taste in my mouth. Working for a company that provides healthy and socially responsable (i.e. organic, fair trade) food/drink doesn't equate to creating positive change in the world. I was still working for the interests of profit, and for the comfort of those who hold economic priveledge. As much as providing healthy food made me feel a little better, that doesn't mean I shouldn't get a fair living wage.

Everyone pretends like it's "one big family" there, but the communication is pretty weak there. One day I showed up to work and Michal told me that I was being let go and that I should go home. I was totally shocked. As far as I knew, everything was going fine, and the little feedback I did get was good. But people were complaining about my performance for weeks, without so much as a word to me. I told him this, there was a phone call to the other co-owner, and then I was back on the job like this *finger snap*. Also, for the whole summer, there was not one meeting nor company get-together (aside from one organized completely by a co-worker). They pretend there like this is no authority, there is no boss, and that everyone just fills their role and things all work out. But there little democratic process to work out issues there so they just kind of lurk around in the collective concious there.

I've heard a lot of people complain about the management at the Wild Oat, particularly about Michal, and how's he's "crazy". Well, I didn't work with him much, but whenever I did, I felt appreciated by him. He's probably the reason why I didn't loose my job earlier. Ironically, a couple of days before I was let go, he said to me, "I'm so happy you're still working here !", and I smiled with hesitation, holding crossed fingers in the air.

It does hurt me to lose my job because it reinforces fears I have about supporting myself in this world, but really, I'm working to frame this situation in a positive light. Clearly this was not a job that maximized my strengths so now I have some motivation to find a better fit.

Well, that is in no way a complete account of my feelings about this situation, but it's a start. And speaking of start, I must start working now. I mean... I've got to pack up my stuff. I'm moving into a new home ! My new address is close to Preston @ Elm. Let me know if you're in the neighbourhood.

Balance :

Fading Ways - Balance on Jamendo

Creative Commons DJ

One of my goals in activism is to get more people exposed to Creative Commons media, particularly music. It seems pretty obvious that one good way to accomplish this is to become a DJ. Frankly, I'd much rather convince a DJ friend (I have several of them) to play Creative Commons music. However, I think it would be easier to learn how to DJ than to convince any of them to become a Creative Commons DJ. That's not to underestimate the skill involved in DJing; it's rather to exemplify my difficulties them on to it. First of all, the cause just doesn't hit home with them; because the illegality of downloading, mixing, and then re-releasing those mixes on the internet rarely affects a DJ's ability to do their work, they just don't care. Most of the DJs I know either use turntables or CD-Jay decks; records and CDs of Creative Commons music is much harder to find than the digital media. Hence, it's probably more fit for a Creative Commons DJ to be an "e-jay" or a laptop DJ. To be in solidarity with the Free Software movement a Creative Commons DJ should use Free Software like Mixx to mix tracks. That's a learning overhead that even the existing e-jays may be unwilling to invest in. So, by no means am I saying I'm going to become a DJ. But I'm considering it. It's a great reason to expand my awareness of Creative Commons music and actually write some reviews of albums from Jamendo.com that I have been listening to. More to come.

Mate my friend

I would like to take this opportunity to promote Yerba Mate as a stimulating alternative to coffee. Yerba Mate contains caffene like coffee, but it also contains a wealth of other vitamins, minerals, antioxidants, etc. that give it a completely different feeling. I like to describe the mate experience as "a hum rather than a buzz". Although too much mate does make my throat feel a bit sore and dry (as does coffee), I never get the stomach cramps that coffee gives me due to it's acidic composition. In Ottawa, Yerba Mate can be bought for $6 a kilo (dirt cheap !) at the Latin American Grocer on Sommerset @ Empress. You can also get a gourd (mate) and straw (bombillia) there, highly reccommended.

Die blog ? No, dying to get out blog !

I've had thoughts about killing my blog again... no, it's not that I'm unsatisfied with blogger. It's just that sometimes I wonder why I even have a blog. I'm pretty sure no one reads the funkin' thing (yeah, that's my new replacement for the bad ol' f-werd). You can tell by the lack of comments. Maybe that's untrue though; most people lurk and don't feed back on the web. Well, if you're reading, this, I funkin' dare you to comment (even if its just to say FUNK)! I shouldn't expect that people read this blog, because I don't really tell people about it. Maybe I'll put it in an e-mail headder.

Anyways, so I wonder: why did I just feel like killing my blog. And then I though, hey, that'd make revealing blog post, "why I wanted to kill my blog" . So here I go.

Lately I've been feeling pretty self-disapointed. I told myself at the end of spring "this is going to be a great summer", and when I look back, it hasn't really been. I didn't get the job with Google Summer of Code, and ended up in the food service business for another summer (albiet one with healthy food for once, The Wild Oat). Also, I haven't been putting consistent efforts on my graphics software project. Plans with friends to set up a stage/area at Evolve festival fell through. No romance for Justin this summer (although I'm nearly numb to these types of disappointments). Various non-coordinated volunteering relationships weakenened (particularly my blogging efforts on Free Culutre Carleton and Creative Commons Canada). Didn't keep up the G-Spot Slice, the radio segment I initiated. That's another story alltogether. Didn't make it out of Ottawa for anything (I was particularly intending to go to Montreal this summer). Even my staff spinning practice has declined over the last month; I was practicing at least a short while every day earlier in the summer. Sure I attended some cool things like the National Community Radio Conference and Om Reunion, but my memories of those exeperiences are tainted with guilt. I didn't do a very good job of following up all the contacts I made at the NCRC, and I went to Om less prepared than I was comfortable with. So, things just funkin' sucked in certain ways.

I guess this is related to me being out of touch. Communication is so difficult for me in ways. Right now I'm not in regular communication with many people. The people that live in the same house as me, certainly not. See, I'm in a rooming house (an "alcoholic with class" told me this morning it used to be a half-way house; I feel like it still is considering ALL of it residents). I don't really hang out with any of the roomers regularly, but I favor one of them and we speak occasionally. There's no common space in here except for the kitchen, which doesn't even have room for a table we can all sit at.

It's like, unless I live with them, the reason why I see a person regularly is mostly incidental on some sort of other activity, liking going to a school/academy or doing some sort of work, paid or volunteer. I've met lots of great people like this, but I find our relationships are always flavored by that activity, or even limited to it. There are some friends that I've met through going out dancing that live maybe a 10 minute walk from here that I've been visiting regularly, but frankly it's disappointing for me to recognize that there's a lot of wonderful people that I know and love, I know how to contact/visit them, and I don't.

Sometimes I feel like I'm just not cut out for the city. When I did some WWOOFing in Nova Scotia, I got to live with a bunch of other folk who all had some common interest and we were meeting our needs together. I got to see and talk with all of those people every day. We didn't ever e-mail each other. We didn't ever call each other. We were just there sharing our presences. Yet alas, I'll be in Ottawa till I finish my degree says me, so I best forget about living on a farm intentionally, though eventually...

That brings me to a bit more positive note: I can still live intentionally in the city, and I will. I'm moving out of this place in September with 3 other ... what I would call "socially conscious computer geeks". I'm really looking forward to this. But at the same time I'm a bit frightened. I mostly fear that either I will drive my room mates crazy or that they will drive me (more) crazy. But I feel living with them will be psychologically healing. I don't want to get my hopes up considering all of my disappointments. It would make a good subject of meditation to just to imagine how I would have a healthy home relationship with these people, to visualize my actions that would facilitate that instead of just being like "WEE, it's going to be so fun !".

Well, to come full circle, I would like for people to get to know me through my blog (as scary as that is sometimes...for us both ). I'm going to write a sketch of my new headder as an act of intention toward communication

---------------------------------------------------
GET WIKIFIED
by Justin Wikinator
touchmewithsynchronicpulses @ gmail.com
http://wikinator.blogspot.com

Wikify my life, add to it,
Edit the story that is it
Link to me, and link me to you
So we can get to know our paths through and ...
Through expressions in an open way,
We open up the ground for the word play
We can dialog,
Or you can check my blog
If I forget about you give my memory a jog
Welcome are you to send pulses synchronic
Of your presence they will be mnemonic
--------------------------------------------------

Well, I didn't mean for this to be such a whoping blog post (even that headder turned into a poem). I have difficulty opening up, but I find myself with a lot to say, so when I do open open up I tend to explode. BOOM !

Sustainable fire spinning

I found out from this wikipedia page on fire spinning that you can use biodiesel as a fuel. This has been my first incentive to want to learn how to make biodiesel, but when I looked at some instructions on how to make a small batch, it sounded really scary, so maybe I can buy some off of a local producer instead of buying kerosene, which smells soooo nasty; I'd rather smell french fries. I wonder if I can get it to burn without mixing it with white gas as suggested...

Fire staff tutorials

Recently I found this great resource on fire staff spinning and other manipulation, [ mcp - fire staff tutorials ] . I discovered this page when I watched one of this guy's videos on Google Video. Note that the files on the web page are in .wmv format, but you can get all the videos in .avi format on Google Video. These new tricks should keep me busy for a while.

Back to the blog-o-sphere

Well, my life has been pretty closed source lately. As much as I love being a socialite, I also love being to myself, it makes it easier for me to engage in certain things:

• phone calls and e-mails
• writing: songs, journal entries, diagrams, computer programs, show programs
• book reading and other independent study
• thinking, musing, pondering
• playing my baritone ukulele and bongos
  
• crafting that requries detail and precision (crafting in general can be quite fun in groups, I hope show up at Spins and Needles one of these months, I was too exhausted and I finished work pretty late last Wednesday)
• meditation and yoga

I'd like to do more things than involve more people, but I have a tendency to end up by myself when I am not living with or close to people I know and care about.

It would be false to assume I do all of those solitary activities regularly. I aim to maintain practice of these things in some sort of fashion, but I'm challenged in juggling all of the things

• personal journaling (in ink) and personal blogging
  
• Free Culture activism (updating carleton.freeculture.org and www.creativecommons.ca)
• Software development: right now I'm only working on one project for graphic design image plotting, it's one man show right now, but I hope to make it Free Software soon and integrate it with Inkscape
  
• Cooking: it occured to me that I should aim to cook 1 new recipe per week; usually my cooking is improvised, so I usually end up with something new every time, but I want to learn to expand my knowledge of flavour combinations using recipes as a guide. Maintaining my efforts in sustaining the G-Spot it closely connected with this interest
  
• Learning how food grows : I'm volunteering at the community garden across from my house and I work with is very enthousiasticly demonstrative man; maintaining this relationship is valuable
  
• Performance arts: staff spinning, juggling, clowning, and other fun acts (I practice staff manipulation almost once a day, it's a good break from sitting at a computer because it opens up all your arm, wrist, and shoulder muscles)
• Creative writing: this sure comes in fits and bursts. I never just sit down and say, "OK, I'm going to write", I just get inspired with ideas and then write them down. Often I don't end up with a well-contained work, part of the reason why I rarely perform or publish my creative writing. I have been compiling some songs I wrote for circus performance, and when I get around to creating my own wiki (how can I be a wikinator without a personal wiki **raising hands in the air**)
• pursuing a path to inner peace and empowerment: physical health through nutrition, and exercise as well as taming and exercising the mind in various ways

Right now I'm at a point in my life where I'm somewhat unattuned and misaligned with my goals. A message just keeps comming back to me that I need to seek some form(s) of mentorship or even council from those further in their life's path. Mentorship was recently described as "someone who offers advice where it is not specifically asked for". Good parents play the role of mentons as well as needs providers, but when an adolescent reaches a certain age, it seems like they learn all they can from their parents. Adolescence brings a need for self-realization and this often leads youth to push away from the advice of their parents. But after the youthful rebellion, many are faced with more responsabilities w. The path that the average middle-class North American youth take at a certain age usually leads them away from their home and not necessarily toward any mentors to help guide them on their path. Many go away to educational instituions like universities and colleges and spend most of their time around people who are roughly the same age as them. Some students may find mentors in instuctors/professors but the institutions don't often foster these relationships. I may just be projecting this onto university because this has been my experience, but I have a feeling it's more than just a delusion. Regardless, I will remain open to discovering relationships for mentorship and council.

Well, that was a pretty heavy note to start out on for such a long gap... an explaination ? I think I'm going to do some bloging time travel and fill in these gaps. Then you'll never know just how long it's been unless you monitor this regularly. But how likely is that :-P

Geeks + Activists + Beer

So, it's been a while since I put anything remotely political on this blog, so I traveled to rabble.ca to see what's in the news. I looked at the headlines on the homepage and said to myself "I feel so distant from all of these stories". But then I discovered a new podcast on the Rabble Podcasting Network: Social Tech Brewing Company Podcast so I thought I'd give it a feature. This reminds me of GOSLING and Copynight.

Seeking dough-nations in a celebration for a rich nation

I just returned from the market area of Ottawa where I was doing some busking for Canada Day. It was my first time busking in Ottawa. I was with a friend who often drums in the market. I was doing staff spinning and juggling while he laid beats. It was fun to busk with someone else but the combination was somewhat disharmonious. At about 3pm (we had been around since 11am) we decided it would be best if we parted ways. My friend left me the lucky pennies, but I put some back into his cup and as soon as I got up to take off, a bunch of people started putting money into my friends cup. After we parted ways, I did some staff spinning on the stairs that lead to Majors Hill Park. I encountered several people I hadn't seen for ages. Also managed to give a couple of lessons. After deciding to call it a day, I wandered around and caught some of the busking shows, you know, the ones where lots of people gather around in a circle around the performer. It was a good lift to my spirits, as I was feeling a bit drained (I missed lunch, was a bit dehydrated, and tired of soliciting donations). I feel like I have a lot to learn before I can hold people's attention like that, but I will eventually. Sometimes I felt like I shouldn't have been busking because I'm just an amateur, but I won't let those insecurities get the best of me. I know I have something valuable to share, and I'm going to continue busking and sharing the art. It's good practice. Practicing across the street at the techwall is one thing, but engaging people's attention and convincing them to share (in) the wealth, that's a whole-nother game. I justified my monetary solicitations by arguing (to myself and others) that I and friends needed to pay off some collective debt that was incured by what I would call a "natural disaster". You see, on our way back from the In:tent gathering I mentioned earlier, the Winebago we were in sprung a leak in the radiator. We tried to patch it up with gum, but that just made it smoke like crazy. Next we tried driving until the car overheated and then letting it cool down. When we were going up the hills we were egging the vehicle on by chanting "you can do it Bella" (the name of the Winebago) , but despite this, it just wasn't working, so we ended up calling a friend and asking them to rent a van to come pick us up, about an hour outside Ottawa. When the driver arrived to pick us up, we found out that while he was in the rental vehicle by himself, a bear basically ran into the vehicle. The driver swerved and fishtailed, and the bear ran away. Everything seemed OK until we found out that the bear had incured some minor damage that we hadn't noticed. Although it was minimal, it ended up costing us $500 because they had to replace the whole panel and of course there was an insurance deductable. So that's my story for the day. Now it's time to go party.

What's in the mix

This morning I was enthralled to find out about what looks to be really good cross-platform DJing software Mixxx , and what looks to be a really good FLStudios alternative for linux, LMMS. I'm surprised that I haven't come across these applications yet, as I've been doing research on Linux audio for a while now. On the this Free Culture Carleton blog post I expressed interest in learning more about sound production; I feel like I already have so many things on my plate already, but I'm a juggler. I will learn to mix activities ... like they were audio streams !

Today's album reccommendation

Today I'd like to feature a gem of an album under a Creative Commons license available on jamendo.com :

Revolution Void - Increase the Dosage

If you like breakbeats, loungyness, jazzy sax and organ interludes, dope-arsed scratching, and psychedelic synths, check it out. Arguably one of my favourite full length CC albums.