Category: British Columbia

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Doing my part in documenting local history

Jason Vanderhill[flickr] is a guy I met at the Vandigicam event that Rebecca and I attened a few weeks ago to do a podcast[rz#110] during. A short time ago, Jason contacted me to aid him in a project he is working on with members of the Vancouver Historical Society. I wasn’t completely sure I was volunteering for, but the idea of lending my knowledge of recording in the field sounded like fun.

Turns out, the oldest film of Vancouver is the same piece of footage that I heard about from Dave Olson when we hung out during the Celebration of Light.

Last week, I was helped Jason capture some audio that is to go into a project about this film that was discovered in the basement of a house down in Australia. Nine minutes of a movie where William Harbeck[vancouverhistory.ca] put a camera at the front of a cable car as it goes through Vancouver in 1907. Very cool stuff, and it made me overly happy to have ventured over the Granville Bridge by foot on such a gorgeous day.

The film has been shown publicly, but I have yet to see it. I’m not sure what the whole plan is for the final project, but this is something I am very lucky to have a hand in. I’ll be sure to update here when I know more. If you can get a chance to see this piece of history, I’m betting that the images of Vancouver from one hundred years ago is a trip.

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William Elliot Whitmore is coming to Vancouver

Whitmore (photo credit: cucamonga.be)I was parsing through my iTunes library when I came across the two albums that I have by William Elliot Whitmore[wiki]. When I did the public radio thing back in the states, he was a guest a few times on the show that we did at a local coffee house every Friday. Super nice, and one of those artists that were able to detract my attention from the levels on the mixer and completely pull me into his performance. Not too shabby for ten in the morning.

I thought I’d check him out on the web to see what he’s up to. He’s originally from southeast Iowa, so southeast that he grew up on the “penninsula” of the state, surrounded by the Mississippi and Des Moines River. These roots make their way into his music from time to time, but that’s not why I’m a fan of his music. Some people say Tom Waits or Johnny Cash when they talk about him, but I think that’s way off. He’s William Elliot Whitmore. Once you get to see him perform, you get it.

Whitemore (credit: ranhar2[flickr])Quite fortunately, he’s coming to Vancouver. October 5th at the Red Room. With hope, I’ll be able to make it out to see him.

Whitmore is my age. When I shook his hand to introduce myself as his sound guy, I thought that his voice might still be suffering from just waking up not long ago. Deep, raspy, and almost struggling for air. That’s just how he talks. How or why, I’m not sure, but whiskey might have something to do with it.

I set up three mics for him. One for his vocals, another for his banjo or guitar, and a third for his foot. He stomps the floor as he plays, getting the stage to boom like a kick drum. Head tilted up and eyes closed, it was like magic. On his song “Cold and Dead”, he doesn’t play anything. It’s just him singing. It gets me when I’m listening to the recording, just like I did the day I saw him perform it.

Oh sure, you might think that it sounds lame. Guy from Iowa with a banjo on stage. Tell that to all the fans of the hardcore band, Ten Grand[wiki], that have become some of his biggest followers. Imagine going out to a show in some of the seediest clubs in Europe with the intention of seeing a band with loud guitar noise and screaming, only to see this guy come on stage as the opening act. It happened many times, and people loved him.

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Just another day, but I’m another year older

Canucks vs. Anaheim for my birthdayWhat can I say? It’s been an incredible weekend of birthday happiness.

There was Snow Patrol on Thursday night(which I have yet to make my review post about yet), dinner with my Canadian family on Friday, Mexican food with my Canadian friends on Saturday, and the Canucks vs. Ducks at GM place tonight. I’ve said it a lot already, but you only turn twenty-eight once, right?

There are so many thanks that need to go out to so many people. So many good times were had over the period of four days, not to mention the cards, gifts, and alcohol, consumed or given as presents, from everyone.

Just before the puck dropped tonight at GM Place, my parents called me on my cell. It was a moment of true analogy. The beer we had just purchased was foam all the way to the brim and slightly spilling over as my folks wished me a happy birthday. That’s what today had climaxed to, and I don’t think it could have gotten better than that, not to mention that the Canucks preveiled, 4-3 in a shootout.

Poncho's! As I write this, The Reverend Don Deeley is making his way through his weekly radio show at WYEP in Pittsburgh, dedicating a good portion of the selections my way, all for my birthday. He emailed me to give me a heads up, thinking I wouldn’t be listening, but I’ve been streaming in from the beginning. That means a lot, and I thank you so much, Don. Anytime I can take over airwaves through the use of my voice or a barrage of song requests, I’m so there.

I also want to mention thanks to some fellow bloggers for extending some birthday wishes. J.J. from the Canucks Hockey Blog met up with us ahead of the game tonight, providing me with another, frosty beverage for my other hand. Yvonne sent in an email as well as getting a voicemail from Uncle Weed. Even the woman who cuts my hair called me, but Minoo was more concerned about how Rebecca liked the coloring of her hair after there were some issues with getting that all done.

Rebecca had her hair coloredMost importantly, Rebecca has made this an amazing birthday. This has been the first time that we’ve been able to be together for it, and she has made it more incredible than I could have ever imagined. Everything you could probably imagine about her being a wonderful person is true, but I have that and a lot more with everyday that goes by.

Thanks to everyone. Just because your name isn’t on here and the exact contribution to this weekend isn’t listed, that doesn’t mean that it’s insignificant. There’s just so much, and I’ll keep those for myself. Memories are always the best gift that can be given.

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Collection of blogs to feed your Canucks need

Welcome to September. Ok, the month is nearly over, but pre-season hockey kicked off this week. On top of that, my birthday is on Sunday. Rumor has it, Rebecca might have gotten us tickets to the Canucks game for the same day against Anaheim. This might be a secret, but I am almost positive that we’re going to be there. I’m almost shaking with excitement as I type this. An amazing way to celebrate my first birthday in Vancouver.

The hockey blogs are ramping up for the coming season, so I thought I would do my best to share some of my favorites for getting news on the Canucks. I should also mention that the commentary is the best thing about these sites. Afterall, what else are blogs for if you can’t share some of your personality while posting away about the team, or teams, that you love, not to mention the team, or teams, that you don’t.

  • Vancouver Canucks Op Ed [http://www.vancouvercanucksoped.com]
    • I liked Alanah’s stuff before we interviewed her on the podcast[radiozoom#108], and she is an incredible source of what’s happening with the Canucks. Readers chime in with comments, and she responds with more insight to what she’s posting. That conversation alone can give you more about what you want to know.
  • Canucks Hockey Blog [http://canuckshockey.blogspot.com]
    • J.J. knows his stuff. The guy worked at GM Place for a number of years and has season tickets for the Canucks. Do you need anything more to tell you that he loves this team? J.J. offers great insight into what’s going on with the team, and I loved his coverage on the salary cap situation. I had the opportunity to meet him recently, and he is a super cool guy. We hope to interview him on the podcast in the very near future.
  • Canucks Outsider Podcast [http://hockeynw.com]
    • I can’t fail to throw a podcast into this, but DaveO does do some blogging on this site as well. The guy knows his stuff and has done a lot to teach me about the history of the team. Hasn’t been much since the Hurricanes won the final last season(of which he totally called from day one of the playoffs), so I hope he starts back up when the season returns. Plus, I know the guy. Go check out his stuff because I said so.
  • Miss604 [http://miss604.com]
    • Gotta plug Rebecca’s blog because she does some great blogging about the Canucks, and she is, afterall, my wife. Expect more as the season kicks into full swing.
  • Waiting for Stanley [http://hockey-madness.blogspot.com]
    • Three guys contributing to one blog makes for a lot of content coming from this site. They cover more than just the Canucks, but the things they cover give you a good overview with what is going on with the teams that will be coming up against Vancouver. “Waiting for Stanley” refers to the Stanley Cup, of course. With the Sedin twins pictured in the banner at the top of the page, this is the story for much of Vancouver fans.
  • Orland Kurtenblog [http://orlandkurtenblog.blogspot.com]
    • These guys crack me up. They’re new to the scene, as of July, but I like their take on the Canucks. They have a lot of knowledge in terms of the history of the team, and the commentary is hilarious. I dig the posts about Canucks players of past, and stuff like Celebrity Hockey Look Alikes crack me up.
  • Canucks.com Blog [http://blog.canucks.com]
    • Last, but not least, the official Canucks blog. However, there is a lot to be desired from this one. It’s a tad messy to sort out, and I’m not sure who the guys are that are posting, officially, on behalf of the organization. They also do live blogging of the games and have players do their own posts from time to time. It’s a great resource, but finding all of those elements that I just pointed out can be a little difficult.

That’s all I have for now, and I know that there are more blogs about the Canucks out there. Feel free to post a comment about them, but the ones that I just listed are the ones that I’m reading on a regular basis. I have so many RSS feeds that I check up on everyday, so if there are others that you think I should be paying attention to, let me know.

All of that being said, it’s going to be a crazy season coming up. Nothing is on TV until the regular season kicks off in October, so I have no way to judge anything except what I read about it in the blogs or catch from the media.

Yo! Luongo(that’s for you, Alanah) makes his debut in a Canucks jersey tonight in San Jose, and my favorite boy, Anson Carter, made his way to the Blue Jackets(where Federov just went out for the next six weeks with an injury SUCKER!). I don’t know what to expect. Maybe the game against Anaheim on Sunday, that Rebecca might be taking me to, will tell me more.

With hope, I’ll be doing my own posts from time to time about the Canucks, but keep listening to RadioZoom. Rebecca and I always love talking hockey there.

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Sponsor us in the Run for the Cure 2006

CIBC Run for the CureOn Sunday, October 1st, I’ll be participating in the CIBC Run for the Cure 2006 in Vancouver. The run is held in various communities across Canada helps to raise money for breast cancer awareness and research. It will be a heck of a way to finish out my first year in Vancouver, the next day being my one year anniversary since moving here.

Technically, you are unable sponsor me directly if you would like to make a donation online. With there being two of us, it makes more sense to donate to one of us rather than deciding which person you like more, me or Rebecca. I also have a sneaking thought that she’d win in that debate.

What we have decided to do for the event is have all donations go to her, as she needs to raise at least $150. Of course, we would love to raise more than that.

To make a donation, go to the “Support a Participant” area of the CIBC Run for the Cure website, put “Rebecca Bollwitt” into the corresponding fields, our location is “Vancouver”, and follow the rest of the instructions to donate online. Credit cards seem to be the only way you can make your contributions via the web, and you also get a tax receipt for doing so.

The last 5k run that I did, I finished around 22 minutes. I’m not sure that I can do this one as well as the last, but if there were a challenge made in terms of a donation, you’re welcome to entertain the possibility. I’ll step up the training these next couple of weeks in anticipation.

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Podcasting and the Meta Argument

At BarCampVancouver, Ryan Cousineau[wiredcola] led a session called “Sturgeon’s Revelation”[wiki]. The idea that “ninety percent of everything is crud” was the center piece of this session, applying it to pretty much everything that exists in the world of Web 2.0[wiki]. The main topic of focus, however, was podcasting[wiki].

Darren Barefoot made a recent post regarding social networks and podcasting, citing that the resources are not there for the medium as there is for photo, video, or link sharing. This idea speaks a lot to what Cousineau was getting at with his session, and much of his thoughts on the topic is posted on his blog.

When it comes down to it, there is not an easy way to share content within a podcast unless you listen to it. You can’t Google search for information that can be found in a podcast. There are such things as show notes and tags that people apply to the material that they publish, but not everyone does it, nor does everyone do it the same way.

The only solution to this problem is to transcribe podcasts in their entirty so that anyone searching for a topic can locate it in your podcast as well as anywhere else on the web. Quite often, this is where people with low opinions about podcasting derive their argument, and I’ve heard this thought propelled by a lot of bloggers. Yes, blogging is a very quick way of publishing information for the world to read in nearly real time. It is instantly indexed, searchable, and archived.

Generating audio for a podcast can be done in the same way, but often is delayed and ineffective with being timely. The podcast itself, in its raw form, is a bunch of ones and zeros, and no one has developed a way to index the contents of a podcast so that it is searchable across the internet. No matter how great of material that you have in a podcast, some one finding that gem of information inside forty minutes of a mp3 won’t happen unless they download it and listen.

This is where I start to agree with the point that Cousineau is saying and the thoughts presented in Barefoot’s post. The conversation that you can get from podcasting is vastly different for the ones that happen through blogging, Flickr, or YouTube. “Feedback” is the better word for what goes on with a podcast. Continue reading “Podcasting and the Meta Argument”

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The press and emergency services in B.C.

I am consistantly impressed with the way that the press interacts with emergency services in British Columbia, and the same can be true about the rest of Canada.  Sitting here and watching the news coverage of the recent shootings in Montreal, the amount of information coming from the police, in near real time, is really interesting compared to the news coverage I am used to in the U.S.

First off, I should say that my heart goes out to those people affected by this.  Regardless of who or why, things like these are shocking and scary.  While the CBC was covering this, I had sirens going off all around the west end.  Kinda spooky.

The media seems to be included on these events as they unfold, at least for the most part.  I so often see the morning news where there was a fire the night before.  While there are still firemen putting out the flames in the background, someone is talking to the camera, giving an update as to what happened, possible causes, and preliminary info about people affected.

What I’m used to back in the states is official statements that get released to the press or press conferences that happen hours, if not days, after the fact.  That gets printed up in the papers or some person with overly perfect hair tells you the facts on TV.  In between that time, everything is uncomfirmed and speculation.  You get some of that here, but the involvement of people on the scene is much higher.  It’s not some guy, outside of the whole situation, who has the job to collect the information and report it to the press.

It impresses me.  Maybe there is more confidence in the whole spectrum of distributing information, meaning the people on the scene, the media, and the person taking in the news, in Canada.  There is a lot more scrutiny in American media, always making sure that the right people are saying the right things at the right time.

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Lolo has a new job, and I got new sunglasses

Crossing the Burrard BridgeLaura[lolod] is a mighty fine chick in my book.  She got herself a new job and had her farewell gathering last night with, now former, co-workers and me last night.  I wanted to take a moment to wish her congratulations on the new job.

More importantly, I also want to thank her for being super cool and giving me these new sunglasses.  My old pair busted the other day, almost a year to the day that I bought them.  I’m a big fan of buying cheap because the less I spend on shades, the longer they last.

She got these for herself not long ago, but found other ones she liked better.  They’re mine now, and I really dig ’em.  Gave them the full test today.  Passed with flying colors.

Thanks, Laura!  And congrats!

And by the way, I took a bunch of pics today while taking care of some errands.  Check them out here.

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Vancouver could do Wi-Fi better

I’m surprised that there isn’t city-wide Wi-FI already established in Vancouver. I could stand to never have the need to hunker down in a cafe and avoid people trying to peak over my shoulder. It’s a pity that Toronto will have this before we do on the west coast.

Toronto Hydro rolled out the city’s free Wi-Fi – or wireless Internet access – Wednesday morning. The service will be free for six months – and will allow people wireless access to the World Wide Web throughout the downtown rather than solely at pre-existing Wi-Fi hotspots, generally cafes and restaurants.

The project is the largest of its kind in North America, and Mayor David Miller is enthusiastic it’ll be successful.

The signal will be available from Jarvis St. in the east to Spadina Ave. in the west, and from Front St. to the south, north as far as Bloor St. Customers will also be able to make phone calls over the Internet and, in time, watch video. [citynews]

Being such the tech friendly city that Vancouver is, there is probably talk that I’m not aware of. Still, everything I have experienced up to this point, in terms of the tech community that exists in this city, tells me that a Wi-Fi setup like the one going up in Toronto could be dwarfed by one setup in Vancouver.

A good friend of mine from college, Andy Stoll, was apart of a non-profit group trying to setup something like this in the “technology corridor” of eastern Iowa(the area between Cedar Rapids and Iowa City) I’m not too sure how well the operation is going, but the initative was pretty bold. cFree Wireless Network still exists, but I can’t say anything about the network itself.

With the amount of high rises that populate downtown Vancouver, one would think that this could be easily done. You just have to get past the asethetics police and those that feel the frequencies used to transmit wireless signals don’t cause tumors to grow all over your body.

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Sticking to a schedule for podcasts

Allow me to continue a long standing discussion among podcasters and critics out there in the medium, but when is the best time for putting out podcasts?

It all comes down to a schedule, right? There should be certain things that people can count on with your podcast. Content, style, quality, frequency(as in how often you publish new material), and location. I could have said five, distinct elements, but there is way to much to consider or even begin to argue over what is and isn’t more important to think about. If you’re not careful, you can fall into a vicious circle, and I’m saying that based on experience.

For the most part, I like to have subscribers and listeners count on me to publish one, new episode every week. That is not as easy as it sounds. No matter how much or little that you create, you are constantly fighting with what is coming up for your next production.

RadioZoom is what it is, and I love creating content for it. The name itself will never limit me from doing what I want with it. It’s my creation to do what I see fit. Even that doesn’t make everything that much easier.

Continue reading “Sticking to a schedule for podcasts”