Yes, it’s true that I turned 30 almost a week ago now. Age is but a number, and I hardly feel old. Lord knows I hardly act my age, so it was actually pretty nice to get numerous gift cards to Futureshop.
Being that we have absolutely no idea what happened to the 2G iPod nano shortly after our trip to Kansas City, the timing is nice. I know it made it back to Vancouver, but there is a good chance that it was stolen. In it was not only the iPod nano, but so was the USB cable, ear buds, and the Belkin TuneTalk Stereo that was so vital to our mobile podcast recording adventures.
On our way home the other day, we stopped by Futureshop and cashed in on the following.
Not bad, and it’s nice to have an iPod again, not to mention some nice ear buds with really impressive quality. Still getting used to the UI of this generation of nano, but I’m really enjoying getting caught up on podcasts. All that remains is to replace that mobile recording element, and I’m banking that the built-in support for voice recording on this 4G means good things. That will be hopefully solved shortly.
This one is loud, so you are warned. Coming home the other day, this popped up on random and reminded me of how much I loved to play this song at two in the afternoon on my college radio station, completely going to a different side of the spectrum of playing something nice and mellow to something such as… Refused.
The group disbanded in 1998, and fortunately for all of us, members of this band went on to form two other projects that I thoroughly enjoy, The (International) Noise Conspiracy and The Lost Patrol Band. Look for a new album from T(I)NC at the end of November.
BarCampVancouver 2008 seemed to come up on us all too quickly, and I would have to declare the event an overall success. From the party on Friday night to the all day affair on Saturday, Granville Island was a great campus this year. We completely lucked out on the weather as well, so you can’t ask much more than that.
WordCamp was also a really great event that I got to be apart of. I tried to help out with the planning alongside Duane and Rebecca, but there was a bit more to be done the day of than expected. After some quick ghetto engineering, the screen and projector worked out great, and the sessions were all really good. Hopefully my involvement in the genius Q&A portion of the day made sense for many of the attendees, and for a really great run down on the sessions, check out Rebecca’s post.
Photocamp was another point of enjoyment for myself. I mostly caught the last few sessions with Tris Hussey, Derek Miller, and John Biehler, but they were well worth the time to learn a bit more about photo sharing sites and various pieces of gear that I’m all too poor to spend money on.
The day concluded with a brief photowalk around Granville Island, so I’ll include a few shots or you can see the entire set on Flickr.
Good times, and I can’t wait to do it again next year.
Just a quick post this morning to say that I’m here at BarCampVancouver 2008 on Granville Island. It’s turning out to be an amazing fall day, perfect for strolling around the area to see various sessions and presentations for this year’s BarCamp.
I’m currently waiting for everyone to show up at the WordCamp location at the PTC. Everything is good to go, but I’m unfortunately missing out on the scheduling session back at HQ.
It was a nice surprise earlier this week to see how the Canucks organization was going to use some of the promotional photographs that they took of The Crazy Canucks crew that I mentioned previously, but I’m not sure that we were expecting to be apart of the launch for the Canucks Fan Zone.
A place for all Canucks fans to gather and share their love for the team. That’s pretty cool, but I’m still wondering if the possibility remains of see my face on the side of a bus or on a SkyTrain poster. Scary still, my face on the jumbotron in GM Place.
This past Thursday night, Less Than Jake played the Commodore Ballroom on a double ticket with Reel Big Fish. It was like being taken back to 1998 all over again, but the show didn’t fail to deliver. RBF and LTJ can still rock it something fierce.
Even better, RadioZoom got an interview with Chris in the afternoon before the show, Rebecca being on the prowl with the recording gear. It’s a great interview explaining why they have gone the way of being an independent band on their own label as well as the type of witty banter that can only come from the front man for Less Than Jake.
The interview also gave us photo access for the show, so here are some of my favorite shots I took from the front of the stage.
It was a wicked show. Unfortunately I couldn’t take any shots of Reel Big Fish, but needless to say, they still put on a hell of a performance. I have forgotten how much fun ska/punk concerts are, mainly because of that damn corporate machine that says ska died about ten years ago. I think not.
You can see all of my photos from the night on the Flickr set.
That’s right. Early this week, we launched with the first episode of season three for The Crazy Canucks. Check it out!
We’re back. Season three of TCC kicks off with a quick gathering of the crew to has out what to expect for the coming season as well as some cool things going on with each of our various projects. We take a look back as who we’ve lost, the new faces (that we kinda think we know something about but don’t know half as much as we’d like), hash out the who does what for TV and radio play-by-play, and take assignments for new names of the team for show and tell later.
A couple of weeks ago, I was contacted about Brew 2.0, an event that was being held at the Molson Brewery in Vancouver that was to help celebrate the 50th anniversary of the operation. Even better, this little shindig was being put on for social media folks like myself, plus a lot of familiar and not so familiar faces in the tech community in this city.
The concept for the night was to invite a bunch of bloggers down to be apart of this celebration, try their beer, have some amazing food, learn more about the people behind the brewery, get a tour of the facility, and basically be treated to a rather amazing evening. That suites Rebecca and I just fine.
All in all, I was immensely impressed by not only the event, but my overall opinion of Molson has changed quite a bit. Of course, they were generous hosts, but even Geoff Molson, the great-great-great-great-grandson of founder John Molson[wiki], was there to give us a great history of the brewery in Vancouver, and good friend David Drucker was there to capture his introductory speech on video.
Probably the best part of the night was when Duane said to Geoff Molson, “You make a pretty good beer, but can you do a keg stand?” And Geoff honestly answered yes, but this remains to be seen.
The other treat of the evening was to have Gord Rickards, co-creator of Rickard’s various brews, pouring my Rickard’s Red from the tap. After spending $7-$9 per single cup of beer at Canucks games, it doesn’t seem so bad after meeting the guy and drinking his beer for free. He also gave us a wonderful tutorial on the basic ingredients that go in the various beers that they make there, even letting us sample various grains that they use.
When we took a tour of the cannery floor, I asked Gord if he ever gets tired of seeing his beer put into cans with his name on it. He didn’t blink when he said no, and I didn’t doubt that answer before I even asked it. Shortly thereafter, they pulled about 8 cans off the line before they went through the pasteurization process. We went upstairs and had Rickard’s Red that was two minutes old, unpasteurized. They were cold and very, very tasty.
Micro-brews will always have a special place in anyone’s heart (and liver) who enjoys beer, but an evening like this helps you to understand that even the macro-brew folks are working just as hard to produce great beer. The next time you turn your nose up at a Molson Canadian could be a missed opportunity of having something that isn’t as bad as you think. Additionally, the Canadian we were given was the freshest, tastiest brew that any of us had ever sampled. Maybe it’s proximity, but the truth is that it was good.
The 50th Anniversary Gold Standard is something that will not go into production as much as brewed especially for marking the occasion. Trying it out, I can say that it’s really good. Creamy, kinda like an IPA, but that’s the best I can describe it.
I can’t say enough good things about the folks at Molson. Every aspect of the night exceed expectations, and it continued the next day when each attendee had a case of Rickard’s delivered to them. Since Rebecca was invited in addition to myself, we got two. Trump card once again, Molson. Thank you!
Things really got busy on us this past week, but I can finally stop blaming work getting in the way and start pointing the finger at hockey. More importantly, we’ve been doing some neat stuff with The Crazy Canucks podcast in anticipation of the coming season.
If you’re on Twitter, then be sure to add @thecrazycanucks to your twitter stream and get all the latest updates as they are published on TCC.com, plus anything else we decide to through into the stream. Also, if you’re drinking the Facebook kool-aid, join the The Crazy Canucks Facebook group and stay in touch with our army of supporters on there.
The Canucks (yes, the organization) brought your favorite podcast crew in for a photo shoot at GM Place to get our faces and Canucks gear for some promotional stuff that will launch later this month. We can’t be sure how, where, or to what capacity these photos and video footage will be used, but it was exciting to come in and be apart of something like this, simply because we’re all fans.
Special shout out to Richard Loat, who also was invited to this promotional gathering. He’s the man (in the middle of this picture above) who created the Vancouver Canucks Fan Facebook Application. Nearly 150,000 people are using that application on their Facebook profile. Not bad for a kid barely over the age of 19.
So as we hang on to the last days of summer in Vancouver, there is some satisfaction that hockey is coming. It dulls the pain of cooler days, less sunlight, and rain, but I’m certainly beginning to get excited.
Alanah and Rebecca have their posts up about this day as well, and you should stay tuned for more stuff from The Crazy Canucks. It should be a good season.
