"From the Ridiculous to the Sublime"

How to Save Yourself $7,500

noreply@blogger.com (Jonathan (Scooter) Clark) — Sat, 30 Jan 2010 21:28:00 +0000

A few months ago, I sold my house. I spent about a day of effort putting the information online myself, and saved myself $7,500. Well, almost half of that amount, anyway. Let me explain ...

In Canada, when you buy or sell a house, the seller usually loses about a 6% commission to the real estate agent. My house sold for about $130,000, but I didn't have to pay any commission to an agent. It's not that hard to save yourself the same money if you're selling. Here's how:

I started off by making a web page about the house. Granted, I find it pretty easy to throw together a quick web page, and I have my own server account, so that's not exactly the easiest thing for everybody. But if you're trying to sell, you don't have to create your own personal website to benefit from this post. There are ways around that, as I'll explain in a minute.

Once I had the web page together, I put an ad on Kijiji. Anybody can figure out how to do this. You don't even need your own web page - you can let Kijiji "be" the web page. The only reason I made my own was so I could add a bunch of additional information (several pages worth, plus a ton of photos) so interested buyers could figure out more about the house themselves, without having to pester me with questions. Basically, I wanted a filter to save myself some time.

Once the Kijiji ad was posted, I decided to invest a bit of money. I spent a little under $100 and got some major extra publicity for the ad with things like highlighting and home page rotation. You don't actually need to do this, because you can post an ad for free, but I figured that if I was [hopefully] going to save myself several thousand dollars in commissions, it would be worth trying to make sure that more eyes saw the ad.

After that I sat back and waited. I got my first call from someone wanting to look at the house about seventeen MINUTES after it was posted. I definitely did not expect those kind of results. That person didn't turn out to be solid lead, but over the next month I had about a dozen calls. And one of those calls led to the sale.

I wasn't in a huge rush, otherwise I probably would have throw a few extra weapons at the fight. For instance, I had considered buying a professional listing on PropertyGuys.com - a full-package there is definitely more pricey than just putting an ad on Kijiji, but at $1,400 they agree to market your house basically "forever," until it sells (and they also have much cheaper packages). After a bit of investigation, that seemed like a smart idea, although as it turned out I sold the house before getting to that point. I was also considering using Google AdWords to bring more traffic to the Kijiji ad, but again, I wasn't in a big rush.

Of course, most people don't have their own real estate agent training, and selling a house is a complicated issue. I went down to one of the local lawyers, explained what I was doing, and he took care of everything for me for a total of under $700.

The reason that I am mentioning this is because I just read an interesting article in Report On Business that talks about the major changes that are about to happen within the Real Estate industry due to the influence of the internet. If you think you might either buy a sell a home in the next five or ten years, it's definitely worth a read:

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/the-battle-to-unlock-the-housing-market/article1450088/

And by the way, remember something else. You may think that you're not going to benefit if you're a buyer, because only the seller saves the commission. However, when I was picking a price to sell, I had originally wanted to list it for $134,000. But then, when I realized I was going to lose almost $8,000 in commissions, I thought that I'd "split the difference" and list the house for four thousand less, to help sell it faster, and still come out $4,000 ahead. So if you're thinking about buying a home, it's definitely worth your while to go through Kijiji and the other non-MLS websites out there.

Good luck ...

Why I Like Living in Sackville

noreply@blogger.com (Jonathan (Scooter) Clark) — Thu, 07 Jan 2010 02:10:00 +0000

There's a certain charm to living in a small town, instead of in a big city.

Take this conversation, which I had about 20 minutes ago:

Phone: "Atlantic Towing."
Scooter: "Hey, is this Bubba? It's Scooter."
Phone: "Yup."
Scooter: "My car just died, can you take it to Amherst Toyota?"
Phone: "Yup, I saw it there on the highway a few minutes ago. Keys in it?"
Scooter: "Yup. Do you want a credit card?"
Phone: "Nope, stop by the shop sometime. All taken care of."

Try getting that kind of service in the Big Smoke ...

Every Bird Needs To Fly

noreply@blogger.com (Jonathan (Scooter) Clark) — Sun, 22 Nov 2009 21:20:00 +0000

I love birds. This is a great commercial:

If you can't see it on my Facebook feed, click on this link:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Og5saE-D5QE

Thanks Monica!

Remembrance Day

noreply@blogger.com (Jonathan (Scooter) Clark) — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 21:43:00 +0000

Remembrance Day is coming on Wednesday of this week. In light of this important day, I thought that I'd post an article here that I really liked. It was written by Kevin Myers in 2002, and was published in the London Telegraph. Some of you might remember the friendly-fire incident that prompted this article:

"UNTIL the deaths last week of four Canadian soldiers accidentally killed by a US warplane in Afghanistan, probably almost no one outside their home country had been aware that Canadian troops were deployed in the region. And as always, Canada will now bury its dead, just as the rest of the world as always will forget its sacrifice, just as it always forgets nearly everything Canada ever does.

It seems that Canada's historic mission is to come to the selfless aid both of its friends and of complete strangers, and then, once the crisis is over, to be well and truly ignored. Canada is the perpetual wallflower that stands on the edge of the hall, waiting for someone to come and ask her for a dance. A fire breaks out, she risks life and limb to rescue her fellow dance-goers, and suffers serious injuries. But when the hall is repaired and the dancing resumes, there is Canada, the wallflower still, while those she once helped glamorously cavort across the floor, blithely neglecting her yet again.

That is the price which Canada pays for sharing the North American Continent with the US, and for being a selfless friend of Britain in two global conflicts. For much of the 20th century, Canada was torn in two different directions: it seemed to be a part of the old world, yet had an address in the new one, and that divided identity ensured that it never fully got the gratitude it deserved.

Yet its purely voluntary contribution to the cause of freedom in two world wars was perhaps the greatest of any democracy. Almost 10 per cent of Canada's entire population of seven million people served in the armed forces during the First World War, and nearly 60,000 died. The great Allied victories of 1918 were spearheaded by Canadian troops, perhaps the most capable soldiers in the entire British order of battle.
Canada was repaid for its enormous sacrifice by downright neglect, its unique contribution to victory being absorbed into the popular memory as somehow or other the work of the "British". The Second World War provided a re-run. The Canadian navy began the war with a half dozen vessels, and ended up policing nearly half of the Atlantic against U-boat attack. More than 120 Canadian warships participated in the Normandy landings, during which 15,000 Canadian soldiers went ashore on D-Day alone. Canada finished the war with the third largest navy and the fourth largest air force in the world.

The world thanked Canada with the same sublime indifference as it had the previous time. Canadian participation in the war was acknowledged in film only if it was necessary to give an American actor a part in a campaign which the US had clearly not participated - a touching scrupulousness which, of course, Hollywood has since abandoned, as it has any notion of a separate Canadian identity.

So it is a general rule that actors and film-makers arriving in Hollywood keep their nationality - unless, that is, they are Canadian. Thus Mary Pickford, Walter Huston, Donald Sutherland, Michael J Fox, William Shatner, Norman Jewison, David Cronenberg and Dan Aykroyd have in the popular perception become American, and Christopher Plummer British. It is as if in the very act of becoming famous, a Canadian ceases to be Canadian, unless she is Margaret Atwood, who is as unshakeably Canadian as a moose, or Celine Dion, for whom Canada has proved quite unable to find any takers.

Moreover, Canada is every bit as querulously alert to the achievements of its sons and daughters as the rest of the world is completely unaware of them. The Canadians proudly say of themselves - and are unheard by anyone else - that 1 per cent of the world's population has provided 10 per cent of the world's peace-keeping forces. Canadian soldiers in the past half century have been the greatest peace-keepers on earth - in 39 missions on UN mandates, and six on non-UN peace-keeping duties, from Vietnam to East Timor, from Sinai to Bosnia.

Yet the only foreign engagement which has entered the popular non-Canadian imagination was the sorry affair in Somalia, in which out-of-control paratroopers murdered two Somali infiltrators. Their regiment was then disbanded in disgrace - a uniquely Canadian act of self-abasement for which, naturally, the Canadians received no international credit.

So who today in the US knows about the stoic and selfless friendship its northern neighbour has given it in Afghanistan? Rather like Cyrano de Bergerac, Canada repeatedly does honourable things for honourable motives, but instead of being thanked for it, it remains something of a figure of fun. It is the Canadian way, for which Canadians should be proud, yet such honour comes at a high cost.

This weekend four shrouds, red with blood and maple leaf, head homewards; and four more grieving Canadian families know that cost all too tragically well."

Here's the link to the original:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/personal-view/3575633/The-country-the-world-forgot---again.html

A Day In The Life

noreply@blogger.com (Jonathan (Scooter) Clark) — Sat, 03 Oct 2009 05:47:00 +0000

I'm sitting in the Vancouver airport, trying to quickly inhale a draught and a couple shots before a flight to Montreal, which boards in fourteen minutes. I was going to do a quick Facebook status update, something generic like "today was hectic" and then I figured that something that generic didn't tell a story. And since I'm a fast typist, and bored, let me tell you about a random day in the life of Scooter, in excruciating detail ...

Background: I just finished a tree planting contract in Alberta yesterday. So today was my "in transit" day on my way back to the East Coast. The past week was interesting - 80 km/hr winds, crazy ranchers, pre-daylight safety meetings every morning, eating gas station salads for a week, and I may have even run into KD Lang in town.

4am: Up early to hit the road from Consort, Alberta (beside the Saskatchewan border). Side note about Consort - you know how some towns have creative and uplifting slogans like "our people are our best asset"? Consort's is "really rural." No kidding, it's on the sign coming into town, which also says that the town's population is 679. I didn't see that many people though.

6am: Quick stop at a Tim Hortons. Tried their soup with bun. The bun was amazing. I went up to ask how much it would cost to buy another. Fifty cents. I was tempted to buy twelve, to see if I'd get a baker's dozen, but I only had $5.00 in change left. Besides, the last thing that I needed for today was a distended belly. The steering wheel on my truck wasn't adjustable.

7am: Had to pull over to put pants on. I was driving the 5-ton, and the heater was broken, and a couple hours of seeing my own breath in the cab was too much to take. Mental note: always wear pants in October before the sun comes up.

9am: Just past Calgary, heading to a nursery to drop off the truckload of flat garbage tree boxes for recycling. That took about 45 minutes. The nursery probably didn't recycle them, probably just burned them for heat, but who am I to be hypocritical?

2pm: Saw a coyote, and shortly afterwards, two wolves.

3pm: Saw what I think might have been a blue heron, but not positive.

4pm: Lots of domestic llamas and alpacas on the farms that I've been driving by.

4:15pm: Saw three brilliant white mountain goats. Those things are pretty odd-looking (although not as odd as an alpaca, come to think of it). Weather getting nasty - I hope they don't blow off the cliff.

4:30pm: Blizzard in the Rockies. Snow sucks in early October.

5pm: Just before Jasper, saw about eighteen elk. I also saw a retarded tourist, decked out in full camo gear, taking photos of the elk with a tripod and a telephoto lens that was also camo'd, who was taking his pictures from BEHIND a big white suburban. Idiot! Does he not realize that the camo gear does not help if there is already a two ton white gas-guzzler hiding him? I was tempted to pull over and go stampede the elk off into the bushes, or some other tom-foolery, but I was on a tight schedule.

8pm: Arrived in Prince George, had a few minutes to drop off my truck at the office and empty the quad and all of my other gear out of it, then bolted for the airport.

8:44pm: Arrived at check-in, one minute before my flight started to board. And by the way, there was a time change in there, so this was actually about sixteen hours on the road so far. Cutting it close, but really, they even let me check my back-pack, so I guess I still had several minutes to spare before I would have missed the flight.

By the way, I wasn't alone in this whirlwind tour. There were seven of us in a convoy of five trucks making the voyage - myself, Jackie, Nate, Kyla, Al, Matt, and Dana.

Anyway, I'd like to embellish this post with a lot more of the fun details along the way, but I have one minute to finish my drinks and run to gate C38 for boarding.

PS: God bless YVR - best airport in the world for free internet, lots of sushi shops, and one of the cleanest airports that I've ever been in.

PPS: Next stop, Montreal, then Moncton. Trying to make it to Sackville by Saturday afternoon so I don't miss my cooking shift at the Olive Branch at supper, and then my bartending shift at the Pub on Saturday night. Can't miss the Pub on a Saturday night! Kati, if you read this, please have a "voldka-bomb" (or four?) ready at 11pm ...

Cheque This Out

noreply@blogger.com (Jonathan (Scooter) Clark) — Mon, 14 Sep 2009 16:36:00 +0000

My frustration with the global banking system reached a new peak today.

It all began two weeks ago, when I had to order new cheques for the Pub. We had a change of mailing address, because of our move last year, and I was finally getting around to ordering new cheques with the correct address. I went to the Scotiabank and dropped off a sample cheque with the new address information, and they said that they’d take care of it. A week later, my new set of cheques arrived in the mail. Easy.

A few days later, I noticed that my cheques at the Olive Branch were also out-of-date from the move to a new address there eighteen months ago (ok, so I’m a little behind in my work right now). I decided to get new cheques there too, and while I was at it, I figured I should also order payroll cheques, which come on a different type of paper.

I took the cheques to the bank and dropped them off with an explanation of the required address change. A few days later, I got a phone call – the bank couldn’t order them for some reason, because the Davis & Henderson (cheque printing company) website was down, and I’d have to call in the order myself on their toll-free number. I went to the bank the next morning to pick up the blanks that I had dropped off, so I had all the correct account info to work with when I placed the order. No luck – the bank had accidentally shipped my void sample cheques off to Halifax, but I could get them back next week.

So this morning, I picked up the cheques after their vacation in Nova Scotia. I called the David & Henderson customer care number. I started off with the payroll cheques, and got them re-ordered with a relatively low number of questions. They actually had our old order on file, so they knew which number to start off with, and the color of the cheques and everything. They said that they’d have to FAX me a form to confirm the change of address, which I would need to take to the bank to get signed. I don’t have a FAX - that's outdated technology, and everyone should be scanning and PDF'ing these days. So they agreed to email it. I went to check email, and the internet was down. I called back to ask if they could re-send the email to a different address, so I could go down to the University to print it out and deal with the problem. They said that they had no idea what I was talking about. I tried to explain the problem to the lady on the phone, and she said that what I was trying to do was impossible, because those cheques have to be ordered directly by the bank and customers can't order over the phone. At this point, I tried to refrain from screaming. I was only moderately successful.

Eventually, after another visit to the bank, the girls down there were able to help me out, and assured me that my cheques would arrive soon. I’m not holding my breath. Oh, and by the way, the cost for all these new cheques? A bit over $600. SIX HUNDRED DOLLARS.

For any of you would-be entrepreneurs out there, I would strongly recommend that you change your mind and look for a less frustrating career, like teaching cats how to do synchronized swimming.

ETA, September 15th: I just got a call from Davis and Henderson. They said that they just got a call from ScotiaBank, trying to order more cheques for me. The bank wasn't allowed to do it without authorization from me. Unbelievable.

Splitting the DJ Bolivia Blog into Two Blogs

noreply@blogger.com (Jonathan (Scooter) Clark) — Thu, 30 Jul 2009 04:40:00 +0000

Starting effective immediately, DJ Bolivia will be splitting his blog into two separate blogs - one for music and one for personal thoughts.

Because of the popularity of DJ Bolivia's fan page, it makes sense to have one blog, Soporific Airs, feed to the Facebook page. That blog will deal exclusively with music-related posts.

Any personal posts will remain confined to the previous blog, From The Ridiculous To The Sublime, which will continue to be viewable to the general public and which will also feed specifically to Jonathan Clark's personal Facebook profile page.

DJ Bolivia Career Changes

noreply@blogger.com (DJ Bolivia) — Mon, 29 Jun 2009 02:30:00 +0000

[Voy a tratar a incluir traducciones en espanol después del inglés, abajo de esta página].

Hey everybody,

This is a very exciting time for me I’ve decided to pursue my music career (as a DJ & producer) more seriously in the near future. Right now, as many of you know, I have several jobs - bartending, restaurant, and silviculture. I’m going to try to separate myself from a couple of them over the next eight to twelve months, to give myself a lot more time to work on song-writing, DJ’ing, producing, and video projects. So here's a brief look at what's happening or about to happen:

First, I just set up a fan page on Facebook a few days ago. The initial response has been absolutely overwhelming, and I’d really like to thank my many friends who have signed up as fans. My challenge now will be to keep adding fresh content to that page.

For the next four weeks, I’m still working at my job on Canada’s West Coast, supervising a camp of tree planters. I love the job – it’s healthy, it’s good for the environment, and it gives me a good tan. I always feel like I’m incredibly good health at the end of every summer, thanks to this job. And as you can see from the photo below, which I took earlier this afternoon on a cut block that we were replanting, the scenery is absolutely beautiful. You'd never want to work in an office again. You can see another of our blocks at the base of the mountain across the valley:

During the next month, while I’m still planting, I can’t do a lot of music-related work. However, I plan to be doing some filming of DJ Dan and Dave Dresden on July 3rd in Calgary, for video projects that I’m working on for each of them. I'll have those videos available for the public in mid-August. I’ll also have photo galleries of that night’s show available in early July.

In August, I return to the studio, both to work on DJ mixes and self-produced tracks that I’ve written. To give you a sneak preview, I think that I might put up a blog post in a week or two about some of the tracks that I’m working on, with either lyrics or vocal samples as a teaser. I’m also planning to start a regular progressive house/trance radio show, which I’m going to call the "Five O’Clock Cock Block" show (I kid you not). I’ve also been asked to do guest mixes for a couple of other well-known radio shows, which I’ll tackle as soon as I get back home.

For upcoming shows this summer and fall, I’ve got confirmed dates in Las Vegas, Seattle, Toronto and most Atlantic Canadian cities, and I am tentatively planning shows in Buenos Aires, Australia, and Japan this fall or winter, if time permits.

So that’s what you can expect from DJ Bolivia in the near future. In the meantime, enjoy your summer and keep checking my fan page and website, especially after August 1st.

Hola a todos,

Primero, permítanme a disculparme por mi español malo, tengo mucho que aprender.

Este es un momento que es muy importante para mi, porque he decidido dedicarme a mi carrera musical (como DJ y productor) mas seriamente en un futuro muy cercano. En este momento, como muchos de ustedes saben, tengo muchos trabajos – a el bar, el restaurante y la silvicultura. Voy a tratar de separarme de algunos de ellos durante los próximos ocho a doce meses, para poder tener mas tiempo para la composición de canciones, mezclando música, produciendo y proyectos de video. Entonces aquí esta una breve mirada a lo que esta pasando y lo que esta por pasar.

Primero, hace algunos días lance una fan page en facebook. Los resultados iníciales estan muy excelente, y yo quiero dar las gracias a todos mis amigos que se han registrado como fans. Mi meta ahora es seguir actualizando la página con nuevos contenidos.

Por las próximas cuatro semanas, seguiré en mi trabajo en la costa oeste de Canadá, supervisando el campamento y los sembradores de arboles. Me encanta mi trabajo – es sano, es bueno para el medioambiente, y me deja con un buen broceado. Gracias a esta trabajo, yo siempre siento que mi salud esta muy bien al final de cada verano. Y como pueden ver en la foto de abajo, que tome hace un rato en uno de las zonas de corte que estamos reforestando, la vista es absolutamente hermosa. Ustedes nunca querrían trabajar en una oficina nunca más. Se puede apreciar otra de las áreas de trabajo en la base de la montaña al otro lado del valle:

Durante el próximo mes, mientras sigo sembrando, no tengo mucho tiempo para hacer trabajo relacionado con la música. Sin embargo, tengo planeado filmar a DJ Dan y Dave Dresden el 3 de Julio en Calgary, para algunos video proyectos en los que estoy trabajando para cada uno de ellos. Los videos van a estar disponibles a mediados de Agosto. También voy a tener galerías de fotos de esa noche disponibles a principios de Julio.

En Agosto, vuelvo al estudio, para trabajar en mezclas y canciones producida que yo mismo escribí. Para darle un pequeño adelanto, creo que voy a publicar en el blog en una semana o dos algunas de las canciones en las que estoy trabajando, con sus respectivas palabras o ejemplos vocales. También estoy planeando empezar un programa de radio de house progresivo y trance, el cual voy a llamar el "Five O’Clock Cock Block" show (no se como se dice en espanol). También me han ofrecido hacer mezclas para algunas de programas de muy conocidos como invitado, de los cuales me encargare apenas vuelva a mi casa.

Para próximos eventos en el verano y el otoño, tengo fechas confirmadas en Las Vegas, Seattle, Toronto y la mayoría de las ciudades de la costa Atlántica de Canadá, y estoy planeado algunos proyectos tentativos con una amiga en Buenos Aires, Australia y Japón para el otoño y el invierno, mientras el tiempo lo permita.

Entonces esto es lo que pueden esperar de DJ Bolivia en un futuro muy cercano. Mientras tanto disfruten de su verano y sigan visitando mi fan page y mi pagina web, especialmente después del primero de agosto.

Me disculpo por mi malo español, y le agradezco por escuchar mí. Hasta pronto ...

www.djbolivia.ca

Armin van Buuren Photos

noreply@blogger.com (DJ Bolivia) — Sun, 29 Mar 2009 01:15:00 +0000

This past Sunday night, I got a chance to see Armin van Buuren in Halifax, Nova Scotia, courtesy of Underdog Productions. I wasn’t actually playing on the bill that night, I just went to relax and take some photos. It was my first night using a new camera (a basic Canon XSi digital SLR), but I managed to get a few decent shots. Here's the link:

http://www.djbolivia.ca/photos_armin2009a.html

I owe a big thanks to Armin for being so accommodating with the photography.

Armin has been ranked by DJ Mag as the #1 DJ in the world for the past couple of years. To lend credence to this assessment, consider this: his signature A State Of Trance radio show is listened to by thirty million fans - every single week. Wow. I’ve had my website online for about seven years and I’ve only had around fifteen thousand mixes directly distributed during that time (although I’m sure with pass-alongs, the number is probably a lot higher).

Armin is Dutch. He’s got a law degree, but wanted to give up that career to pursue his love of music. He’s a producer, who has a number of huge hits, both as singles and from the several albums that he has self-produced. He doesn’t use an engineer – he does all of his own production work. He loves his fans, and is always happy to sign autographs and shake hands at the end of his shows.

Some of Armin's well-known hits include Love You More, Blue Fear, Exhale, This World Is Watching Me, Communication, In And Out Of Love, Burned With Desire, Serenity, and Yet Another Day (and a few of the older tracks in this list have only been officially released on YouTube very recently, so they haven't had a lot of views yet). But that's only a very short list of tracks that I could quickly find videos for. For a full look at his portfolio, check out Discogs. The list of work that he has produced is simply staggering.

Check out his website at www.arminvanbuuren.com

Subterranean Homesick Grooves

noreply@blogger.com (DJ Bolivia) — Wed, 11 Feb 2009 21:50:00 +0000

I just put together a new DJ mix earlier this week, which is now available on my website and MySpace page. Sadly, it's the first mix that I've done in, oh, about a year and a half.

Actually, that's a bit of a misrepresentation. I put this mix together at the end of last summer, around August 24th. I was almost finished and about to put it online, but then I suddenly got distracted with my bar moving into a new building, and the constant headaches and 18-hour days for the next couple of months kept me from getting around to spending the last hour that I needed or so to put it online. Anyway, I just remembered it recently, so I re-recorded it on Tuesday morning to tidy it up, and now it's done. I also kind of regret using the "Looking At The Stars" title for my last mix. Considering the "stars" and "angels" themes of some of the songs on this mix, the titles should have been reversed for my last two mixes. Oh well, too late now - I didn't realize when recording "Looking At The Stars" that there would be several great star-themed songs coming through the pipeline so quickly.

The mix is not the type of music that I'd play in a club, yet it is a great mix of electronica tracks to listen to in your car or warming up for a party. None of these tracks are particularly new (obviously, they're all from the summer of 2008 or slightly earlier) but I found a really good group to mix together. There are several tracks on this mix with female vocals that just blow me away.

Here's a track listing:

01. Solarstone, "Rain Stars Eternal" [Original Mix].
02. High Torque, "Sparks" [Original Mix].
03. Morgan Page feat Norah Jones, "Angels" [Morgan Page Remix].
04. Boza, "Twisted Mind" [Alex Celler Tech Dub].
05. Cream Sound, "Always" [Stereotip Edit].
06. Python, "Expectation" [4Mal Premonition Remix].
07. R-Tem, "Cloud Of Sound" [Natlife Nu School Remix].
08. Kenshin, "Afraid."
09. Bolivia feat Mike Allison, "When I Grow Old" [Prince Avitar Electro Aftershow Vocal Mix].
10. Section 75 feat Penny, "Locked Heart" [Lynx Remix].

If I had to pick a favorite track from this mix, I couldn't. Maybe "Twisted Mind" or "Angels," but it's so hard to choose because there are so many good ones. Also, this is the notably the first time that I've ever put one of the songs that I've written myself onto one of my mixes - that needs to start happening a lot more later this year.

Anyway, thanks to the headaches at my bar, I've been pretty delinquent when it comes to music lately, however, I'm going to try to fix that in the next few weeks. I've got shows in Moncton & Saint John coming up in a week and a half, then two or three shows in Seattle the following week, then I'm on a bill with DJ Dan in early March. I also hope to get a few more mixes together this spring, before the summer hits. And of course, now that I have more time to catch up on my life, I have a backlog of other projects that I want to tackle in the coming weeks, including some long overdue video promos for DJ's such as Dave Dresden, Josh Gabriel, & Heavygrinder.

Anyway, my apologizes to Bob Dylan, and I hope you enjoy some Subterranean Homesick Grooves ...

Basic Wine Appreciation

noreply@blogger.com (DJ Bolivia) — Wed, 21 Jan 2009 02:33:00 +0000

I was going through some old videotapes this past weekend, looking for something for a video project that I was working on, when I found some of my old "wine appreciation" series video masters. These were originally filmed in 2003, but I realized that with the advent of YouTube, it would be quite easy to publish these videos for the world to see, so I got them all prepped and online earlier today. I know a few people who watch these are going to get quite a laugh when they see me in a suit and tie in one of the videos, but I guess I'll have to live with that.

The original intent for this project was to be able to present inexperienced wine drinkers with the basic information about wine that would make them comfortable in selecting and assessing different brands of wine. Learning about wine is actually fairly easy, and tasting different brands can obviously be pretty fun, so it was a worthwhile project to put together. And filming the project was pretty fun too, with Koren's help.

The videos have basically been broken down into a series of beginners, intermediate, and advanced wine education topics. The basic videos are all available online right now, with nine separate segments totalling just over an hour in length. We haven't quite finished filming the intermediate and advanced videos, but we did all the prep work for them, so hopefully I'll find some time to make those videos available soon too. Please click here for more detailed information about what is being presented. Or if you don't need the written reference material, just grab a bottle of wine and watch any of the videos listed below!

Basic Wine Information, Part 1
YouTube Link:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eLVnLf5ee_4

Basic Wine Information, Part 2
YouTube Link:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9kzdB_Lo434

Basic Wine Information, Part 3
YouTube Link:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pRS5J7Q4YMg

Basic Wine Information, Part 4
YouTube Link:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sCEZdo5Tqio

Basic Wine Information, Part 5
YouTube Link:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p67Q7YifGVw

Basic Wine Information, Part 6
YouTube Link:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ji66hK5uZQY

Basic Wine Information, Part 7
YouTube Link:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ieHlLS0u-E4

Basic Wine Information, Part 8
YouTube Link:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zi5X5Ob7aNM

Basic Wine Information, Part 9
YouTube Link:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CSqA0DM-T_Q

Embedding a Music Player in your Blog

noreply@blogger.com (DJ Bolivia) — Mon, 29 Dec 2008 03:11:00 +0000

Embedding a very simple music player into a blog posting is extremely easy. Although this posting will make no sense in my Facebook Notes feed (it will only makes sense in the original blog), here's how to do it:

First, you need an mp3. You'd better make sure that it's legal, just to keep yourself out of trouble. So make sure that it's one of your own personal musical works, or get permission from the author to use it.

Once you have the mp3, upload it onto a server somewhere. Yes, I'm assuming that you have a little bit of technical know-how at this point. If you don't, start scouring the internet and come back once you've learned how to perform this magical hocus-pocus. But if you already know how, either put your mp3 onto a free server, or if you want a more permanent home, buy an account from an ISP (internet service provider). One example would be Netfirms. They are the company that I use to host all of my sites. You can get a pretty basic plan for $5/month US, which allows you 10 gigs of storage and something like 250 gigs per month to be transferred. If you have grandiose dreams, they have a major plan right on sale for $99 right now (maybe only for the holidays) which gives you a full year with 250 gigs of storage and 2500 gigs per month of bandwidth. Just to let you know, that's a lot. My entire DJ Bolivia website doesn't even quite use that much, although it's getting pretty close.

Anyway, once you have the mp3 on a server somewhere, you need to put the following html code into your blog posting. Just cut & paste the whole thing, directly from my blog here:

<embed src= "http://www.odeo.com/flash/audio_player_standard_gray.swf" quality="high" width="300" height="52" allowScriptAccess="always" wmode="transparent" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" flashvars= "valid_sample_rate=true&external_url=http://your_server_name/name_of_the_mp3.mp3" pluginspage="http://www.macromedia.com/go/getflashplayer"> </embed>

Of course, in the middle of that code you'll see a section of a URL that says "your_server_name/name_of_the_mp3." Make sure you change that info to your own server/host and filename. And I only put the underscores in there to make it readable, but you don't have to do the same.

Here's what the player will look like on your blog posting:

It's very simple, but that's all there is to it. Good luck.

James Sadoway Artist Album Released

noreply@blogger.com (DJ Bolivia) — Sat, 20 Dec 2008 23:07:00 +0000

A friend of mine, James Sadoway, has just released his first full-length album of self-produced electronica tracks. And for a limited time, he's offering free downloads of the entire album here on my website:

http://www.djbolivia.ca/jamessadoway.html

The album itself has quite a bit of diversity, from deeper house to faster breaks-influenced tracks. For those who like remixes, he's got four tracks remixed from Holden & Thompson (Nothing), Ace Of Base (Cruel Summer), Gabriel & Dresden (Tracking Treasure Down), and Plummet (Damaged). Of those, I'm especially fond of the energy that James put into Tracking Treasure Down.

Of course, James also has a number of his original tracks on the album, many of which feature the vocals of Vancouver pop vocalist Armstrong Jr. Two that I enjoy in particular are "Shut Up" and "Float Like A Butterfly."

Anyway, if you enjoy electronic dance music, I suggest you download the full album and check it out. To listen to "Float Like A Butterfly," click on the player here (visible in the original blog only, not in the Facebook notes feed).

Stupid To The Last Drop

noreply@blogger.com (DJ Bolivia) — Tue, 18 Nov 2008 23:08:00 +0000

When I first learned about Stupid to The Last Drop, by William Marsden, I knew that I had to read it. Not only did it relate to the oil and gas industry, it specifically focused on part of Canada. And even better, it was about Alberta, a province where I work every summer. In fact, I work in the oil fields (although I work for forestry companies, not for the energy industry). And saying that I work in “the oil fields” is probably misleading or non-instructive, since just about the entire province qualifies for this descriptor.

The product description for this book gives you a good idea of what it’s all about: “In its desperate search for oil and gas riches, Alberta is destroying itself. As the world teeters on the edge of catastrophic climate change, Alberta plunges ahead with uncontrolled development of its fossil fuels, levelling its northern Boreal forest to get at the oil sands, and carpet-bombing its southern half with tens of thousands of gas wells. In so doing, it is running out of water, destroying its range land, wiping out its forests and wildlife and spewing huge amounts of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, adding to global warming at a rate that is unrivalled in Canada or almost anywhere else in the world. It’s digging, drilling and blasting its way to oblivion, becoming the ultimate symbol of Canada’s – and the world’s – pathological will to self-destruct.” Well, at least there is no misunderstanding of the author’s opinion about what’s happening in Alberta.

This book is not really focused on peak oil issues, although it touches on them. Rather, it is more written as a hard look at the current state of the industry, and mismanagement of the existing resources. The book has several separate sections which didn’t necessarily flow into one another, but which rather should be looked at as separate aspects of Alberta’s past and current history:

Thermonuclear Oil Extraction – believe it or not, in the late 1950’s, geologist Manley Natland proposed a plan to extract oil from the sands by detonating nuclear bombs under the sands, allowing them to collapse and collect into a spherical reservoirs, for easier extraction. Ironically, the science behind the plan was quite sound, although Natland was fairly dismissive of the consequences of radiation. The proposal was almost carried through, with the US government selling a test nuclear device to a Canadian company, and the federal and provincial government appeare to endorse the experiment until Diefenbaker’s Conservative government turned the tables by banning nuclear testing on Canadian soil.

The Importance Of The Oil Sands – the Canadian/US energy relationship is discussed, and a number of external international implications are brought into light, in an effort to explain the importance of Canada’s supplies of oil and natural gas. The book makes clear the value of oil to the United States, and talks about NAFTA and GATT implications.

Provincial Politics In Oil – a few chapters are devoted to Jeff Tonkin and a slew of Alberta O&G industry scandals including Stampeder Energy, Westar Petroleum, and Big Bear Exploration. I generally found these chapters to be pretty irrelevant and boring.

Reserve Depletion – everyone knows that fossil fuels will run out someday. Former Geological Survey of Canada geologist has speculated that Canada’s natural gas reserves could run out by 2014, if not earlier. “We have to drill an increasing number of gas wells just to keep up with demand. In 1996 we drilled four thousand productive wells to get 15.7 billion cubic feet per day of gas. By 2001 we were drilling 10,757 wells to get 17.4 billion cubic feet per day. These drilling figures have continued to rise. In 2005 we drilled fifteen thousand wells to get 17 billion cubic feet per day. Coal Bed Methane, which is another form of natural gas, was supposed to be the savior … [Hughes] came out with figures that showed recoverable gas was … enough to replenish our reserves for maybe another eight years at most.” This section made me want to re-read “High Noon For Natural Gas.”

Fort McMurray – there is all sorts of discussion about “Fort Mac” and the municipality of Wood Buffalo. Fort McMurray has suffered immensely with the problems that face any boom town with a rapidly expanding population and an inability to develop supporting infrastructure in a timely manner. What surprised me was the relatively low financial support levels that O&G companies in the area provide to the municipality. I would have thought that they would want to contribute a lot more funding to improving the city, because of the dividends that it would pay off in managing their work forces more effectively.

Contamination Of The Environment – there are several chapters devoted to groundwater contamination, the deleterious effects of drilling and “frac’ing” wells, and the general environmental destruction that the O&G industry is causing. Specific references have been made to the Rosebud River Valley’s water well contamination problems (water so saturated in combustible chemicals and gases that it will support combustion, right out of household taps), and Wiebo Ludwig, the “oil patch terrorist” who bombed sour gas wells in 1998 due to his belief that they were harming his family.

All in all, the subjects are fairly disjointed, but appropriately, the book has been segmented somewhat into different sections. Being able to identify with a large number of the locations discussed, and the “grass roots” implications of the problems identified, I found this book to be a pretty interesting personal read. However, the book doesn’t seem to have any real editorial “conclusion” to it. At the end of the day, I got less of a sense of “so much for a sustainable future” and more of a sense that “you can’t mess with oil & gas.” I think the book would have benefited from a final chapter that discussed how readers or Albertans could take specific steps to improve the future of the province. Nonetheless, I was glad that I took the time to read it, and I did learn quite a bit in doing so.

2008 Tree Planting Video

noreply@blogger.com (DJ Bolivia) — Thu, 13 Nov 2008 15:30:00 +0000

I just finished editing the 2008 version of the Tree Planting video from my summer job.

Here's a link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SOBps6I1iaQ

The tree planting and silviculture industry in general is being devastated right now by poor economic conditions. The sub-prime crisis and the low American dollar are contributing to the bankruptcies of a huge number of mills and logging companies in Western Canada, and of course, anyone who plants trees is trying desperately to trim costs if they are still in business. I'm a little bit worried that I might not have any work with my regular company for this coming season, so this might be the last of my annual planting videos. I hope not, but the situation is a bit worrisome right now.

Anyway, I hope you enjoy the video ...

Airline & Airport Closures

noreply@blogger.com (DJ Bolivia) — Wed, 29 Oct 2008 21:24:00 +0000

It's time for another random energy-crisis related posting. I know, the price of oil has dropped to less than half of what it was back in the spring. But trust me, this decrease is very temporary. You all know that for years, I've been warning about the impending oil crisis. And it's only in the past year that it's become mainstream enough that people finally are starting to believe the doomsayers such as myself. But rather than talk about the gradual decline in fossil fuel supplies and rising fuel prices, let's get into something a little more specific. Today, I'll dig out the crystal ball and talk about the effects of the energy crisis on the airline industry.

A couple years ago, I suggested that in the long term (ie. a three to five year horizon), a person could make a lot of money shorting airline stocks. Now for this posting to make sense, I need to explain what "shorting" a stock means. In the stock market, the traditional way to make money is to buy shares in a company, then to hope that the company either increases or is perceived to increase in value over time, so the shares are perceived to be worth more. You then turn around and sell those shares to someone for more than you originally bought them for, because that person thinks the shares are going to appreciate further in value. Simple. But in such a limited market, people can only make money when their stock is increasing in value. That's no fun. What if there was a way to make money when shares go down in value too? Well, there is. It's called "selling a stock short" or "shorting." Shorting a stock is intended to benefit you when you believe (correctly) that the shares of a company are going to decline in value. Essentially, what you do is "borrow" shares from a third party who owns shares. You've borrowed the shares, so they can't turn around and sell them, because they've loaned them to you. So anyway, you have these borrowed shares. You think the stock is worth more now than it will be in a few months. So you sell the shares on the open market for the current price. Then, assuming that you're correct, let's assume that the shares go down in price. A few months later, you buy them back on the open market for the lower price. You then give those shares back to the person that you originally borrowed them from. In effect, you've sold shares at a higher price, which you bought at a lower price, even though the chronological order of the two transactions is backward. I know, this is a moderately confusing concept, but hopefully I've boiled it down to the very basics that will make sense if you think about it. Not every investor in the stock market is savvy enough to be able to do this, but institutional and wealthy investors generally are qualified for this kind of trading. Incidentally, although I understand the concept, I've never dabbled in this kind of trading. My knowledge of trading is somewhat more extensive than my personal wealth.

So anyway, back to shorting airlines. Fuel prices have started to increase significantly over the past year (ignore this month's temporary decline). The airlines are all admitting that they are getting hammered on their financials. About a third to a half of the total operating costs of any airline right now is the cost of the aviation fuel. This is up from between ten and fifteen percent a few years ago. Needless to say, if your operating costs increase by twenty to thirty percent, and your profit margin was only a few percent in the first place, you're suddenly losing a lot of money. No other global industry is so heavily affected by fuel prices, and thus, no other global industry is likely to suffer financial catastrophe as quickly as the airlines when fuel prices rise. Therefore, as oil goes up in price over the next few years, the increased fuel costs are unquestionably going to drive a large number of airlines into bankruptcy.

The interesting thing about the US airline industry is that they historically have embraced "bankruptcy protection." This is a legal status whereby an airline asks for temporary court protection from their creditors because they are on the verge of financial ruin. In theory, this situation can give the airline a few months or years to make significant changes to their operational procedures, to allow them time to restructure or become more profitable. This practice has become especially common since the 1978 Airline Deregulation Act. Anyway, a number of the major US carriers have successfully used this "Chapter 11" protection in the past as a last-ditch effort to keep from true bankruptcy. But this avoidance measure is going to become increasingly ineffective. The financial pressures that the airlines are starting to face are simply too overwhelming. There are too many airlines competing for passengers' money, at the same time that the economy is stalling and people are flying less.

So who is going to go out of business first? Simply picking random airlines to "short" might prove effective, but you would be better off specifically picking the worst companies. In a general sense, it will be the leisure and travel specialists, and the commuters. Economy fares (especially for travel and leisure) are generally the cheapest and therefore least profitable. Smaller airlines and tour operators are in a bad position. The commuters are also handicapped because they run some of the least efficient fleets, out of the most marginal airports. The rising fuel prices are already causing airlines to drop their least profitable routes, reducing capacity, and parking planes (it is estimated that about five hundred planes are going to be permanently grounded this year, which is about ten percent of total US capacity). That's good, because the least fuel-efficient and oldest planes can be retired. But it's bad too, because that's not nearly enough of a reduction in supply. The industry needs to contract more than that, and ground more low-volume and low-profit routes.

In terms of the major airlines, I think that US Airways is in the worst position. Almost every North American airline is projected to sustain staggering losses for the next couple of years. US Air has a hub in Phoenix, which I've used many times. Some of their more popular airports are LaGuardia in New York, and McCarron in Las Vegas, which again are airports I've frequented numerous times. I will go out on a limb here and suggest that US Air is famous for being the most disliked airline in America. Although it is probably one of the five largest US airlines, it consistently ranks the lowest in consumer satisfaction surveys. It has eliminated free services with a vengeance since 9/11 and a subsequently temporary Chapter 11 protection period. However, US Air generally has an older and less fuel-efficient fleet, has less advantageous gates and routes than most of its competitors, is disliked by consumers, and doesn't have a large cash position to get it through the next several years. So I will put my reputation on the line and say that I predict that US Airways will be the first major US airline to fail. My guess would be in the fall of 2009, approximately twelve months from now. Of course, US Air does have a habit of hanging on by their fingernails. Regardless, my prediction is that the only thing that could possibly save them would be government subsidies or consolidation, both of which are politically difficult. Perhaps a merger with United (a good fit) would delay the end, or maybe US Air could sell their international routes to United to buy more time, but ultimately, for the long-term health of the airline industry, some major competitors need to fail so overall capacity is reduced. Of course, nobody really wants to merge with United, because they think they are worth a lot more than they really are. Continental thought about it, but pulled back.

So that's my medium-term assessment of where the airlines stand. In the long-term (five years plus) there will be fewer players in the field. The majors may not be the first to go, but they will still be susceptible. Fuel prices will be much higher, and ticket prices will be much higher. Fewer people will fly, and since the airlines benefit from larger volumes, it will be a catch-22 situation. Many existing routes will eventually be cancelled, so that less than a decade from now, only the very most popular routes will be remaining. It would not surprise me if fully one-quarter of US airports were to completely close within five years. Mind you, some of the smaller commuter airports and seasonals could close without a significant impact on the American way of life.

The "global marketplace" is going to become a thing of the past in another three to five years. Expect global trends towards regionalization of services and production. We're watching the sunset of global jet-setting, except for the wealthy. If you've ever dreamed of traveling to foreign countries or to see the world, and you're on a tight budget, I would strongly recommend you do it in the next year or two, before it's too late. And if you've got lots of frequent flyer points, use them while you can, before the airlines start making it impossible to get the best benefits from your points.

Thanksgiving in Toronto

noreply@blogger.com (DJ Bolivia) — Sun, 19 Oct 2008 19:16:00 +0000

Thanksgiving Weekend in Canada (last weekend) was pretty interesting for me. I’ve been completely swamped for the past six weeks with my bar moving, so this was my first chance to get out of town in quite a while.

On Friday morning, I flew up to Toronto. I flew on Sunwing this trip, instead of the usual Air Canada. I was curious to compare the two airlines. Ignoring all the unimportant things, like the plane and the ticketing process and customer service, I focused on the really important differences: the drinks on SunWing were only $5, instead of $6 on AC. I was quite happy with this, especially after having several mini-bottles of rye. It’s not that I care about the cost of the drinks – I just feel bad for all those AC flight attendants who have to make change all the time for a $6 drink. There aren’t a lot of places to go to find some extra change when you’re at 37,000 feet.

We got to Toronto and spent a couple hours in the airport, working on the laptops and having more beverages. After that, my host (Drew Dudley) took us to Hemingway’s. We met a few MTA alumni there, and the night was mildly entertaining. Actually, that’s the understatement of the year.

On Saturday, we went back to Hemingway’s for the afternoon, to continue the festivities. I didn’t want to get too exuberant, since I had to “work” that evening. After supper, we went to Filthy McNastie’s for some beverages and to watch the hockey game, then finally we headed off to Circa for the rest of the evening. Dave Dresden was playing at Circa that night, and the whole point of the weekend was to get some more video footage of him for a short promotional project that I’m putting together for him. Click here if you'd like to check out one of Dave's promo DJ mixes.

Circa is a pretty decent club, although I wasn’t that impressed with the clientele. It was too much of a “club crowd” for my taste, and not enough of the “party” crowd of people who pay more attention to the music than to their own appearances. Regardless, the staff at Circa were pretty cool, and the club itself was set up nicely. The layout was certainly confusing, but the number of unique rooms and themes was good. The only thing that I really disliked was the DJ booth itself. The booth was very, very dark – it was really difficult to get good footage. They did bring a portable light into the booth eventually, which helped, so the night wasn’t a complete loss. However, as usual, all sorts of things were happening around us. One of the girls that we went to the club with managed to slip in some vomit and break her arm. She wasn’t too impressed with this development, needless to say, but I think she’ll look back on the incident quite favourably. It will be a great cocktail story for her a year or so from now.

On Sunday, we drove off somewhere to the middle of nowhere in Ontario for Thanksgiving Dinner. On the way, Drew stopped by a random church for photos. Now this might sound ridiculous, but I was a bit curious about this particular church. I used to be a church organist. Don’t judge me – I don’t consider myself to be particularly religious, but it was an interesting job. And someday, I’d like to buy an old unused church and convert it into a massive recording studio. Anyway, this church was a six-seater. Yes, you read that correctly. Maybe twelve if you squeezed two thin people into each pew.

On Sunday night, we had to head back to the airport, but I was really tempted to go back to Circa before we left. The lineup was good, and since I didn’t have to think about filming, I thought it would be pretty fun. Victor Calderone, Roger Sanchez, and John Acquivava all played. Thank goodness that I decided to stop into the club before heading to the airport. I have literally wanted to see John Acquivava play for about fifteen years, but have never been in the right city at the right time. As far as electronica goes, Acquivava is probably Canada’s top historical DJ, thanks to both his solo work and his work with Richie Hawtin. Well, let me say that it was well worth the time. Unquestionably, Acquaviva played one of the most enjoyable sets that I’ve heard in a long time. Here's a photo of him, looking very relaxed behind the decks:

The trip home was fairly uneventful. I was looking out the window as we were about to land and was a bit surprised to see trees about twenty feet below us as we were still descending through the fog, but the pilots quickly jerked the plane up in an emergency manoeuvre and announced on the loudspeakers a few minutes later that they had a missed approach, and would try again. Lucikly, I don’t think that many people were looking out the window at the time, because I think that some of them might have had heart attacks. Anyway, the second attempt was perfect, so I made it home in one piece, and just in time for a second Thanksgiving Dinner with my own family in Nova Scotia.

Using A Seatbelt

noreply@blogger.com (DJ Bolivia) — Sat, 27 Sep 2008 15:30:00 +0000

I drive around quite a bit. Between my various jobs, I probably rack up about fifty thousand kilometers a year. Not nearly as much as a full-time truck driver, but it adds up. In my lifetime, I’ve definitely driven more than a million kilometers. And I’m quite proud to say that until yesterday, my driver’s abstract was completely clean and free of tickets or violations or accidents.

I’m a pretty big supporter of the use of seatbelts. The simple fact is that they frequently save peoples’ lives in major accidents, and they also prevent a lot of injuries in minor fender-benders. In my job supervising the camp of tree planters, I have about ten to twelve trucks on the road any given summer, driven predominantly by young males in their early twenties, driving large pickups on dangerous dirt logging roads. It’s a recipe for disaster. I try to force all of my employees to wear belts all the time, because the odds are that some of these vehicles will get into accidents. Over the years, my camp has completely written off about nine trucks. Several of my employees have been killed, although our track record has improved greatly in the past ten years or so. But even this summer, we had a roll-over for the first time in over a decade. Luckily, all five occupants of the truck were wearing their seatbelts, and all five got out without a scratch.

Anyway, last March, I got a ticket in Sackville for not wearing a seatbelt. It was a strange set of circumstances (I’ll explain in a minute). Since I was working out west all summer, my court date wasn’t until yesterday. I wanted to fight the ticket. When I got to court, the crown prosecutor suggested that I plead guilty. He said that if I did that, I could probably get out of the fine completely although the ticket would still go on my driving record. He also said that if I did contest the charge, the judge would have to impose a minimum fine but could alternatively charge a higher fine at her discretion (seems reasonable, as it probably would cover court costs). But I’m stubborn, so I decided that the principles were more important than the money.

I got up on the stand and told the judge what happened. I had been driving at the time (past the RCMP station, ironically) and stopped at the stop sign at the end of that street. My cell phone started to ring, while it was in my jeans pocket. I had my belt on. I looked in the rear-view mirror and there was nobody behind me, and since the car was stopped, I figured that I could answer it. I took my seatbelt off (partly) so I could dig my phone out of my pocket. As I was about to answer it, an RCMP cruiser drove past me around the corner. I had heard something in the news about it being illegal to use a cell in a vehicle, or that such a law was on the verge of going into effect, so I got worried and put the phone back down so the officer wouldn’t see me and give me a ticket. She drove by, then I put my belt back on, then started driving again.

A minute later, I got pulled over. The officer had turned around and chased me down (well, it was only about a block and a half away). I figured that I was either in trouble for the cell phone or maybe my registration stickers were expired. I was a bit startled when she said that she was pulling me over for the seatbelt, but of course, it immediately made sense. So off to court I went.

The judge found me guilty, despite the circumstances. I wasn’t really surprised, but as I said, I had to fight it on the principle of the matter. The judge reminded me that she could have fined me a higher amount, but graciously kept it at the minimum. She appeared to be a bit sorry about the matter. The RCMP officer also appeared to be a bit embarrassed, and had been extremely polite when she was on the stand. I didn’t really care about the fine ($172.50) but I was frustrated that I still got the points assigned against my license.

So much for the clean driving record. I now feel like a criminal. I guess that the moral of the story is that you should always wear your selt belt. And of course, don’t answer your cell phones while you’re in a vehicle.

PS: If any of the employees from the Town of Sackville happen to read this, please register my disapproval of the large tree at the west end of Union Street, which makes it almost impossible for drivers to see traffic coming from the north end of Salem. Somebody should cut that tree down. If I had been able to see the traffic coming more than twenty feet away, I probably would not have gotten this ticket. Half of the people in town hate that tree because it blocks the view of the road.

Lehman Brothers in Bankruptcy Protection

noreply@blogger.com (DJ Bolivia) — Mon, 15 Sep 2008 06:20:00 +0000

A year ago, there was an unobtrusive item in the news about the Bear Sterns mortgage hedge fund crisis. I wrote about that when it first happened, because although it didn't make the major news at the time, it was something that conspiracy theorists quickly jumped upon as the "straw that would break the camel's back" and finally expose the underlying weaknesses of the US financial system. Little did I know just how right they were.

Last week, the US government intervened to prop up Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae, the two mortgage giants who hold almost half of the mortgages in the United States. Quite simply, the government could not allow them to fail.

A few hours ago, Lehman Brothers filed for Bankruptcy Protection in New York. The global financial implications of this are staggering. Lehman is a giant - a firm that is more than 150 years old, and an integral part of Wall Street. The company recently listed its assets as being worth almost $700 billion dollars. Yes, that's billion with a Big B, not million. Compare that to the assets of something like MicroSoft - about $72 billion. Yes, they are different types of companies and assets, but you get the picture. Lehman is/was Big League.

Then, shortly after that bombshell, another press release just notified the world that the Bank of America, after failing to come to a deal to rescue Lehman (as many had hoped), is going to buy Merrill Lynch (another Goliath) in a deal valued at $50 billion. There is little doubt that today, September 15th, is going to be one of the most gut-wrenching days in history for global financiers.

On a positive note, the Federal Reserve is taking extraordinary measures to try to calm markets. They have been wary of intervening too directly, after they got involved in the Bear Sterns mess and were highly criticized. But they are taking behind-the-scenes steps to steady the markets, through changes in debt collateralization rules. But even so, I doubt that they can have as much of an impact as they would like. Today is a holiday in Asia, so the Asian markets are closed, but Europe opens shortly, and when Wall Street opens, some financial analysts are predicting a bloodbath. A lot of people might shrug and say, "Who cares?" but the bottom line is that the fallout from this weekend's events will send ripples through the global economy for months and possibly years to come.

And don't think that this is the end of it. More American banks are going to fail in the next year. The economy will get worse. With the run-up to the American presidential election in November, chances are that the economy will enjoy a temporary two-month "grace period" where the shocks aren't as bad as they could have been, but 2009 looks like it could be a very ugly year. We'll see large jumps in businesses scaling back operations or folding, large jumps in unemployment, and rapidly rising food and gas prices at the same time to deal a double-blow to everyone. The worsening American debt crisis is reaching a global tipping point. It's not just mortgages and energy, it's the entire financial system that is not-so-slowly collapsing. As I've said before, America is an empire in steep decline. As Ernest Hemingway said in 1932, ""The first panacea for a mismanaged nation is inflation of the currency; the second is war. Both bring a temporary prosperity; both bring a permanent ruin. But both are the refuge of political and economic opportunists."

Sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but brace yourselves ...

ETA, 15 hours later: The Dow Jones dropped over 500 points today (biggest point drop since 9/11), the TSX dropped over 500 points today, and other markets around the world are also reeling. In the US, my bet is that Washington Mutual will be the next giant to fall.

Google Turns Ten

noreply@blogger.com (DJ Bolivia) — Sun, 07 Sep 2008 22:23:00 +0000

Ten years ago today, Google was incorporated as a company. At the time, it didn't appear to have much for assets: a $100,000 bank account, four computers, and the ingenuity of its founders, Larry Page and Sergey Brin. However, since then, Google has gone into the history books as being the fastest growing company in history (taking in $20 billion in revenue this year).

Google's search engine has always been the core product for the company, but as any computer geeks know, Google has expanded into many other niches – Adwords/Adsense advertising, GIS offerings with Google Earth and Google Maps, the purchase of YouTube, free Gmail email accounts for the world, and hundreds of other examples. In fact, Google has become so ubiquitous that it has become the de facto standard for people trying to check if their internet connections are working. If Google doesn't come up, the internet must not be working.

However, it isn't what Google has accomplished in the past that is important, it's what it will accomplish in the future. Management at Google have some pretty lofty goals:
- Digitizing copies of all of the world's books.
- Further improvements to its search engine, so it can fully understand questions in "plain human language."
- Providing software to businesses over the internet.
- Fully extending their data platforms and applications to cell and other mobile devices.
- Leading the change from fossil fuel reliance to alternative energy sources (this one seems to be a bit of a tangent, but do some research, and you'll be surprised at some of the investments that Google has made).

The company is not without a sense of humour. For its IPO several years ago, it picked a seemingly random number to value as its initial float - $2,718,281,828. Wall Street scratched their heads. Geeks everywhere instantly recognized this number as "e" – the complex number that represents the natural logarithm. And if you go to the Google Pranks page on Wikipedia, you can read about a lot of their other practical jokes and April Fool's Day pranks. One of my favourites was the fake "Google Romance" application in 2006. Their splash screen introduction was a classic: "Dating is a search problem. Solve it with Google Romance." And of course, another classic joke happened on April Fool's day this year, when Google rickrolled the world.

Happy Birthday, Google! And happy birthday to my nephew, Evan, who also turned ten on Friday.

The OhMiBod Vibrator

noreply@blogger.com (DJ Bolivia) — Fri, 05 Sep 2008 14:07:00 +0000

Watching the growth of the iPod over the past several years, it’s been amazing to see just how pervasively it has entered and affected many peoples’ lives. And speaking of “pervasive entry,” I’m going to introduce a neat little iPod accessory today that some girls have already heard of: the OhMiBod.

The OhMiBod is a vibrator that hooks up to your iPod. Turn on the music, and the unit pulses to the beat. What could be more simple? For the girls who enjoy music, and who also enjoy sex, this is definitely a winning combination.

I meant to write about this several months ago, but I got distracted at the time. However, the well-known vocalist Marcie emailed me last night about something else, and it reminded me of a certain OhMiBod commercial, since she did the vocals for the music in the commercial:

YouTube link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X6oYmSG-ccs

If you want to buy the track that accompanies the commercial above, here’s what to search for:

Tyler Michaud feat Marcie – Dirty Girl (System Recordings, 2007).

Beatport has a package of five different remixes available – search for Tyler Michaud and then go through his library.

I’ve gotten some feedback from female friends of mine who use the OhMiBod. It’s been suggested that albums like Madonna and Nine Inch Nails are good. Music that has some variation is more interesting, so house or trance music with a straight four-four beat wouldn’t be that great. But some heavy drum ‘n’ bass music might be very stimulating. The volume of the iPod controls the strength of the vibrations. Music that has been heavily compressed with a hard limiter would have an almost constant output, so tracks that have been compressed that way wouldn’t be that great. Of course, if you aren’t intimately familiar with music production, you’d have no idea what that means, and it would be tricky to sum it up here so I won’t bother. I’ll just say that sticking to classic rock would provide much more variation than heavily over-produced dance music. As far as the product itself, one of my friends said, "It’s obviously very much a novelty vibrator, and does not really compare to the more 'complex' ones such as the Jack Rabbit, but in comparison to other vibrators, the power is great. The different pulses are very interesting - teasing perhaps."

And if this isn’t enough to intrigue you, check out the company’s new vibrator that attaches to your cell phone. It’s designed to add a whole new dimension to phone sex …

The "Chrome" Browser

noreply@blogger.com (DJ Bolivia) — Wed, 03 Sep 2008 01:01:00 +0000

Today, Google made another bold move in the global computing scene. Google now has a free internet browser available to the public, called “Chrome.”

Want to download it? http://www.google.com/chrome

I was kind of curious to see how they set up the browser, although I didn’t really expect that I’d want to use it in the long term. Most of the time, I use MicroSoft’s Internet Explorer. After all, I work on several different computers in various locations, and IE is pretty common for any Windows-based machine. And it gets the job done in most cases. I also use FireFox occasionally, but that’s more for when I’m downloading larger files (because of Mozilla’s download manager). I don’t really like the bookmarks layout of FireFox, compared to IE’s favorites table, otherwise I would probably use it more often than IE.

But so far, my initial impressions of Chrome have been pretty positive. First of all, downloading and installing Chrome is fast – the whole process took well under two minutes on my first machine.

Chrome also has a very simple and clean interface. There are far less visible options than in Internet Explorer or FireFox. I think that quite a few options are fairly irrelevant anyway, so keeping the screen lean and clean is probably a positive move. And of course, think of Google’s search page – a simple search box on almost empty white space. Nobody has had better success with that approach. Keep it simple.

Under the hood, Chrome’s big advantage (especially for intense users) is that it loads pages many times faster than IE or FireFox. And for someone who surfs the web constantly, that is going to make a big difference. In fact, it will make a big difference for a lot of people from business users to casual surfers, not just for the internet junkies. Google (and other companies) have done a lot of studies and it has become very clear that when pages load faster, even if it is only by milliseconds, even casual users who can’t even really notice the difference will browse more frequently. And, lest you think that Google has become completely altruistic, remember that increased browsing often leads to increased placement of Google Adwords, since they have practically taken over the internet. Google is, after all, a $150 billion company – they do make money with some of their activities. The importance of fast page-loading also applies to searching, not just browsing, so it’s no surprise that Google would put such an emphasis on making sure that its browser is blindingly fast. Oh, and by the way, for the tech-savvy readers out there, Chrome is very JavaScript friendly, just like FireFox.

Perhaps Chrome’s biggest attraction is how Google has seamlessly integrated both the URL (address) bar and the search bar into a single search box called the “omni box.” I won’t lie – I really disliked the Google Toolbar, but mostly because it took away a line of screen space when I was browsing. So I’ve always avoided that add-on like the plague. However, the whole idea of being able to do your web searches without having to go to a bookmarked page (or having to type Google into the address bar) is quite appealing. And after playing around with the functionality of the omni bar for a few minutes, it certainly seems to work.

Of course, no matter how good or bad the browser turns out in the end, there will be mixed feelings about it. Some people will use it even if it isn’t that good, because they appreciate what Google is doing to make end-users’ computing experiences better. Some people will not use Chrome no matter how good it is, because “Google is evil and taking over the world.” Chrome will probably never take over the dominant market position from MicroSoft’s Internet Explorer, but I have no doubt that it will gain a devoted following pretty quickly.

So in short, I haven’t fully road-tested Chrome out yet, but my first impressions were pretty positive. Lean, clean, fast, and robust. Give it a shot …

Hurricanes and Gas Price Pains

noreply@blogger.com (DJ Bolivia) — Sat, 30 Aug 2008 15:46:00 +0000

The National Hurricane Center has a website which has some pretty interesting tracking tools, if you are curious about the status of tropical depressions, storms, hurricanes, typhoons, and cyclones around the world. In the next few days, they are probably going to get an incredible surge of traffic as people around the world watch the progress of two significant storms, Gustav and Hanna.

A tropical depression is a “baby storm.” It doesn’t have the “eye” that a hurricane does, nor does it usually have a photogenic spiral shape. A depression usually has sustained winds of under 63 km/h. Once a depression gets stronger, it becomes a tropical storm. It probably still won’t have an eye, but the spiral shape usually has formed by now. Maximum sustained winds for tropical storms are in the 63 km/h to 117 km/h. Once the storm becomes even stronger than that, an eye usually forms, and there is another name change. In most of the world, the storm becomes a hurricane. If the storm is in the northwest Pacific Ocean, it is usually called a typhoon instead of a hurricane, even though they are really the same thing. And if the disturbance is in the southern hemisphere or Indian Ocean, it gets called a cyclone.

There have been a number of famous hurricanes in the past century. One in India in 1970 was estimated to have killed up to a million people. Katrina devastated New Orleans in 2005, and was estimated to be the third costliest hurricane in history (based on current dollars). Hurricane Andrew in 1992 destroyed a large part of Florida, so much so that as a tree planter on Canada’s west coast, our amount of work surged two years later to reforest the blocks logged the previous year to rebuild after the storm.

For the last seven days, I’ve been watching the track of a storm called Gustav, which is going to be a household name by the end of this weekend. This is due in part to two reasons. First, it is heading almost straight toward New Orleans. Second, the largest and most concentrated part of the US energy infrastructure is in the Gulf of Mexico, just west of New Orleans.

New Orleans is a city that should not exist. The average elevation of the city is a couple of feet BELOW sea level. This was only made possible by a massive system of dykes, levees, and pumps, which began to be put into place in the early 1900’s. Up to that time, settlers stayed on higher ground, above sea level. So it appears that people were perhaps a little more intelligent a century ago than they are today. Katrina certainly reinforced that theory, when a major portion of the city was pretty much destroyed. However, it appears that some people learned their lessons, because the population of New Orleans today is probably only two-thirds of what it was before Katrina.

Why would people choose to live there, knowing that chances are high that another hurricane could come along and do same thing? Well, I can’t really criticize all of them. If you’ve lived there all of your life, it’s your home, regardless of the dangers or challenges of living there. And if you’re too poor to move, there isn’t much that you can do. It’s really only the people that are moving there nowadays of their own initiative that really need to give their collective heads a shake. I hope that this weekend doesn’t prove to be a lesson for them. Hopefully Gustav will lose strength or miss New Orleans, although I wouldn’t put any bets on that.

There is a possibility right now that Gustav might swing sufficiently to the west to avoid hitting New Orleans head-on. If that’s the case, then it’s just the rest of the United States that really has to worry. You see, just west of New Orleans, all the way over to Galveston, Texas and beyond, lies the richest energy production zone in America. The oil and gas production from the Gulf of Mexico is unbelievably critical to the proper functioning of the American industrial empire and financial infrastructure. You see, the Gulf is responsible for fifteen percent of American natural gas production, twenty-five percent of American oil production, and one-third of American refining capacity. The following graphic shows just how concentrated the production fields are. All those little blue and red things in the water are oil or gas rigs, and the line shows the current predicted path of the storm. You can also click on the graphic for a link to the original, larger-size version:

After Katrina and then Rita came through the Gulf in 2005, oil prices jumped overnight. More importantly, gasoline and diesel prices also skyrocketed. If a storm shuts down the region, imagine what will happen across the United States when one-third of America’s gasoline production is suddenly unavailable for a period of time. It’s a classic supply/demand problem – less supply for the same demand means that prices rise. And when prices of oil or gasoline rise, America’s economy goes into the toilet.

There are a few positive factors that could help. For one, maybe the storm will weaken, or veer off and miss the critical energy infrastructure. Even if only Gustav’s edge passed through the area, the industry would recover almost overnight. Also, the industry learned a lot from Katrina. For instance, at the time, most oil platforms were anchored to the floor of the Gulf with only eight mooring lines. Nowadays, twelve to sixteen lines are the norm. A storm would still damage a lot of the surface infrastructure, but at least there might not be so many loose oil rigs floating around the Gulf this time around. Needless to say, it is a bit of a challenge to tow an oil rig back into the exact proper location and tie the production pipeline back into the wells on the floor of the Gulf.

On a less positive note, there is a lot less "spare production capacity" in the world right now than there was in 2005. This is evidenced by the price increases in oil since then. Oil was less than $50 per barrel before Katrina hit, and immediately jumped to new records. Oil is down to around $115 per barrel today, but was almost at $150 per barrel earlier this year. Because of the lack of spare production capacity, the impact of a major industry shutdown this month would be far more serious than it was after Katrina. It's a good thing that the industry has taken major steps to protect its physical infrastructure from the possibility of further hurricane damages.

The amount of news coverage of the Democratic Convention this week, then of McCain’s VP pick, has certainly been astounding. It’s too bad that it has almost completely overshadowed the potential economic disaster that may hit at the start of next week.

Remixes of -When I Grow Old-

noreply@blogger.com (DJ Bolivia) — Thu, 28 Aug 2008 18:33:00 +0000

I sponsored a contest on my DJ website during the summer to encourage people to submit dance remixes of Mike Allison’s “When I Grow Old” track. We provided the raw clean vocals track for producers to download, to make things easier. We got a lot strange entries, ranging from drum & bass, to breaks, to atmospheric lounge music, to trance and dance. We also got some really high quality, creative remixes.

I’ve picked three of the top entries here. Not all of them are available yet from my website, but I figured I’d let my blog readers have a “sneak peek” at the tracks. The first track listed below (Bit Funk’s) is a great club track, and starting to get a fair amount of play in venues around North America. The other two mixes are trance-oriented - Prince Avitar did an incredible job creating the backing track, and the judges for the contest liked the Zodiacal Light remix for the winning entry:

      Bit Funk's Club Remix

      Prince Avitar Electro Aftershow Vocal Mix

      Zodiacal Light Vocal Remix

If you want to learn more about the guys who produced these tracks, and links to their MySpace pages or websites, check here.

The tracks are a good example showing how different a song can sound when you give it a different drum track and tempo. I hope you enjoy them ...

Mount Allison Pub Moving

noreply@blogger.com (DJ Bolivia) — Wed, 13 Aug 2008 13:02:00 +0000

The MTA Pub, where I work, is moving into a new location this month. Although there are going to be some shortcomings with the new location, there are also going to be a lot of improvements to our infrastructure. I'm putting together a blog for the next few weeks to track progress for all of the students who are curious to see what the Pub is going to look like when they come back to university in September. Here's the link:

http://mountallisonpub.blogspot.com

For the time being, I have allowed the comments to be turned on and unmoderated. If we start getting much spam, I'll switch to comment moderation, but it shouldn't be too bad at the start since it's a brand new blog and most of the attention on it will only be in the next two to three weeks.