Beyond Somebody That I Used to Know

So most of us who listen to the radio or fully aware that the song of the spring and summer of 2012 was Gotye's, Somebody I Used to Know.  With many group covering the tune, the summer tanners who had it blasting out of their SUV's, and the amount of times it came on the radio, this song ruled the summer.  I too was sucked in and purchased the CD only to find out that there are several songs that I enjoy even more.  Here are the two I find just as compelling as the aforementioned song.

Save Me

Official Video on Vimeo

An artful and creative animation that is scare-crow-man-esque.

Eyes Wide Open

The end of the world with Star Wars-like characters trying to find the fertile soil of yesteryear. 

Manitoba Prairies

For the past two months I have been conducting visitor and learning experience research at the Farm Food Discovery Centre (FFDC).  The only centre of its kind in North America spreading the knowledge of the world of agriculture, one visitor at a time.  It is part of the larger Glenlea Research Station, and the station has been situated south of Manitoba since the 1960's, but the interpretive centre itself is celebrating its one year anniversary this year in September 2012.  We have adults who grew on farms and in rural communities bringing their children, grandchildren, nieces and nephews, who often live in urban spaces, to teach them about rural life and where their food comes from.  Your food does not just show up in a gigantic store wrapped in plastic and cellophane.  Shocking!   The FFDC is one place you can learn about agriculture, farming, food processing and the like, processes far more complicated than freezer-ed cellophane wrapped meat.

The research is similar to the festival work I have been completing all summer, asking people to create mind maps.  Most of the children know exactly what I am talking about because schools, through the work of teachers, have been asking students to use mind mapping to connect ideas and broaden their thinking for about 8-10 years now.  Previous to this, mind maps were not used in schools, so many adults are unsure about this research technique and look at me funny, except for the teachers, they know mind maps.  I am getting all sorts of interesting responses and it is fascinating to see people really think about what they have learned while walking around, reading, talking with others, touching objects, looking at animals, asking questions and engaging in a casual learning environment.  We forget that we are learning all the time, this work reminds people of this.

On the way to complete research today, the Manitoba prairie put on a show.  A stunning view of the sun, barely peaking through clouds, but spilling its rays over the clouds onto the barrels of crops below.  Of course I pulled over to a side road, stopped my vehicle and began taking pictures.  I was trying to figure out how to get all of the sky in one shot when I remembered an App on my iPhone that let's me take 6-8 pictures in succession, stitches them together, then presents the viewer with a panorama of beauty in one photo.  It's called Photosynth and very fun to play with.  

Photosynth by Microsoft

After you take the first picture, you don't have to take anymore as you simply drag your phone/camera to the next section and when the box on the screen turns green, you pause the phone/camera and it clicks a picture automatically.  Move the phone/camera again and continue with this process until you have a series of panoramic shots.  As I said before, the program stitches them together and you have a wonderful shot ready to post, email, save and enjoy.  I then imported into my iPhoto area, cropped it and posted it to my blog.  Oh the joys of technology!

I have not had the time to look at all of the pictures I took this morning but here is one that turned out quite stunning, I must say.  Manitoba prairies showing off.  The beauty on the intricate flat ground.

Check out the Farm Food Discovery Centre next time you are in Winnipeg.
Check out Photosynth.
Keep taking and playing with pictures.

APA Formatting: In Love

Turns out the best people to teach you how to format in APA style in academic writing comes from the blog of the very same group.  I love this blog!  If you too are formatting a paper, thesis, document using this style, the blog has up-to-date information about how to format blogs, websites, press releases, internet video broadcasts, and how to format all other documents needed to refrain from plagiarizing (which I would like to encourage you to do, not plagiarize).  If there is something missing, ask them a question.  The answers are well written, easy to understand and short.  Can it get any better?  Probably not.  Use it.  Use it well.

APA Format Blog

Flickr

Yep, I joined Flickr.  The thought has been in my head for a few years now but I wanted to investigate the site for a while.  I am adding my name to the really good pictures I post there and will only be posting my favourites of the one's I take.

T. Bates on Flickr

So far, it turns out a know a few people on the site and have started making new photography friends.  Here is the first of what I hope becomes many:

Beauty Surrounds You

Christoph Fischer on Flickr

Oh the rush, joy, fun and high of photography!

Dead Grandmother's

All my three grandmothers are now dead.

It is harsh but true.

Never met my maternal grandmother.

Lucky enough to have two paternal grandmothers.

Both paternal g's, very different from each other.

Opposite sides of the spectrum.

I am more like the one who birthed and raised my father, Grandma Billy.

None of them are around to provide me with advice anymore.

Don't worry.

In today's day and age, all you need is a good website or blog to replace a loved one.

(I can't believe I am posting that sentence.  Lightning may hit me as I strike the publish key.)

In particular you may enjoy this blog.

A rollicking good time reminding us of the progress society has made over the past few decades.

Advice as my grandmothers, I am sure, would give me if still here to provide it.

HERSTERIA

And enjoy!

Thank the creator after you have picked yourself off the ground 

when the giggles have moved onto laughter, 

the laughter onto guffaws, 

thence on to crying with sobs of hysteria.

Have a box of kleenex at the ready.

I Don't Buy Books, Thank You Libraries!

It has now been about a decade since I discovered that sharing books through a public library keeps money in my pocket and less heavy clutter in my life.  Since my conversion to the public and academic libraries and the wonderfullness of their existence, I visit at least 1 day per week.  When is the last time you visited your local library?  Read an actual book?  Touch and smelled the pages of a good read?  May I suggest you give it a whirl.  Find your local library.  Walk, bike, drive to it.  Walk the isles and peruse the possible books to read.  Try a new genre.  If you don't have 3 -10 books as possible reads at the end of your visit, look a little harder and the library will deliver.  Pay your $10 fee for a card.  Take them home and dwell in happiness as you expand your own mind.  I also discovered the art of books on CD which are also available from the library.  I know, I know, kinda old school with podcasts, Kindles, and other electronic devices but you can't beat the smell, touch and enjoyment of a good, physical, delightful read.

If you live in Toronto, you may want to jump on the rescue project to save public libraries as their budgets are about to be cut and a petition has started.  Keep in mind, what happens in major cities like Toronto, Montreal and Vancouver often become the trends seen in less large cities in a few years.  Therefore, people in Winnipeg, Regina, Calgary, Halifax, etc will want to start visiting their local libraries if you love libraries and want to continue seeing them as part of the public spaces available to citizens.

I do enjoy electronic media and it is important to acknowledge change and progress but I don't want to cuddle up with a Kindle, I want paper, printed words and a cover I may or may not have judged well.

The Twit Did Not Last Long

My experience on Twitter was brief.  My account was hacked and to be honest, I need to be doing other things with my time at this point in life.  I must also do some research to protect my account in case I join again to avoid the hackage.  Even so, I may take a peak once in a while.  Cheers to Twitter users and have fun with the 140 characters!

The Cult of the Amateur: How today's Internet is killing our culture by Andrew Keen
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

While a good read the premise of the book concerned me. Essentially the author is concerned that the growing voice of alternative and amateur voices, as opposed to well-trained professional voices, are increasing in volume and opinion on the Internet, sending Western culture into a downward spiral of less knowledge and fact based reasoning. While there is merit in this argument, one of the most interesting parts of the Internet is the multiplicity of varying voices on it and the idea that it was first a place where marginalized, dissenting and alternative voices found a space to be heard. These voices need to be heard as professional voices have often had easier access and better access to education, employment and spaces that train then deem them professional voices, while others have not. Which of these voices is therefore more important? Those who have had priveledge, thise who face added struggles with access, or bot? This author would rather see the amateur voice less audible on the Internet. I disagree. Is needs to remain an open access space for all people to contribute even the nutters out there.

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Grown Up Digital

Grown Up Digital: How the Net Generation is Changing the World by Don Tapscott


Very interesting book if you are older than 31 to help you understand the reasons why the Net Generation is always connected and online.  Full of positive opinions about the generation now 11 - 31 years old and the powerful voices they are developing to use Web 2.0 to influence companies, governments, schools and institutions to be transparent, forthright, accountable and demonstrate a concern for people and the world.  Held my interest and helped me understand, as an individual just older than this group, the perspective of many in this age group.  I would suggest that not all children, teens and young adults are as attached to the internet, creating information, and holding organizations accountable, but there is a large number who are.  Great read!


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The Holy Grail

Doing research for my thesis.
Found this in the footnotes of an article on blogging.
The Holy Grail of Blogging
One of the original blogs.
Where is began.
Simple.
Crude.
Partly unintelligible to the non-programming eye.
Cooooooool.

Robot Wisdom
by Jorn Barger
(www.robotwisdom.com, if link does not work)

Today's lesson?
Read the footnotes.
Always read the footnotes.
Then follow the links.

rebecca's pocket
by Rebecca Blood
(www.rebeccablood.net, if link does not work)

Another original.
Blogging since 1999.
Wasn't there a song, blogging like it's 1999.....

Vinyl Recreations at Winnipeg Fringe

My friend Wanda, the owner of Estudio Luna (Facebook link), whom I met through another friend Darren, the CEO of Solalta Advisors, introduced me inadvertently to Ashleigh and Scott, owners of Vinyl Recreations, as I arrived at Wanda's studio one night to go out to The Academy's UK Pop Night.  Funny enough it was a mistaken meeting as I showed up at Winnipeg Fringe on the wrong day, but at the right time and volunteered for the wrong shift that lead me to these new people as friends.  If I had arrived a day later for the correct shift, I would have missed their incredible work at Estudio Luna and would have missed meeting Ashleigh, Scott and Ryan.  This mistaken meeting made Fringe Fest ever so much more fun than it would have been without them.  Chance meetings, leading to good friends, leading to several evenings of brilliant times!

Vinyl Recreations

Ashleigh and Scott have collected 20,000 and researched methods to turn these now antiquated objects into interesting, fun, and useful products.  In their first roll-out of reused records they have created necklaces, earrings, clocks, rain sticks and bowls.  In their second roll-out Scott discussed an attempt at making lamps, earring holders, and more complex necklace patterns amongst other creations.  Holding on to the records that are still playable, they only manipulate and reshape records which no longer make music due to scratches, scrapes, etc.  I made a few purchases for gifts and bought myself a pair of earrings made from old 45 inserts.  If you are male and you wear jewellery, this will look good on you too as it has an interesting mix of retro cool factor and solid heteronormative maleness wrapped up in a simple black design.  In all, an amazing show within a fantastic festival.  Take a peak and Vinyl Recreations website and remember: be open to plans changing, fresh opportunities and new people.

Blog Theory

Blog Theory: Feedback and Capture in the Circuits of Drive by Jodi Dean
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

One of those books for my thesis that I will have to read again because I have the gist of it, but I need to re-read it so that I can understand the underlying ideas that further define the books thesis.  In essence the author states that blogs are a contemporary medium that is a "strange convergence of democracy and capitalism in networked communications and entertainment media" p. 4.  Some people say that blogging is dead but Dean suggests that there is still a great deal of activity in the sphere, and an increase of the private and large corporate influence in blogging as it is now part of a capitalist agenda.  She also states that being part of the blogipelago is "parasitic, narcissistic and pointless" p. 37.  While I agree that there are elements of each of these characteristics, I would argue (as does Dean) that the sense of community that can be created that we have lost in our neighbourhoods and actual communities is being replaced with such parasitic and narcissistic behaviours, which in itself does have merit and is point-ful.  Dean also speaks to Jaques Lacan's Four Fundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis wherein we learn that symbolic efficiency is defined as knowing who you are and how you fit in socially in the world.  Once again, blogging is defining this space for many people, just in an alternate format.  Lastly, Dean suggests that as more non-professionals participate in the creation of the blogipelago, as a culture, we have to decide whose voice and opinion has more merit, the trained professional or the individual with less training.  Good read.  Excited to use it in my thesis!


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Fixed It?

I have been in Ottawa enjoying the debates involved in student governance, seeing old friends, and visiting sights I dearly love.  A post about that to come later.  For now, a new website for me:


see more There I Fixed It

For more hilarity, check out:

There, I Fixed It

(A part of the Fail Blogs)

New Mantra

As I work on my thesis I am finding that I am drawn towards travel and tourism via the internet.  How people gather information about an upcoming trip; whose stories do we read and whose do we believe; is there a community to be found on websites such as Matador, Gadling, and Offexploring, how is the community shaped and what influence does it have on the industry; what about those people who quit their lives to travel and experience, what kind of people are they and why do they do what they do; why do they recount their travels through blogs and websites?  All questions I have, not all of them I can answer it is only a thesis remember, not a lifetime of work....not yet....

In taking a Sociology class in Media and Consumer Culture with Dr. Sonia Bookman my ideas have been opened in the ways in which we communicate through objects and symbols, the ideas we perpetuate in our consumptive practices, and the theories that surround the identification of self with a group.  Incredibly interesting course, kick-your-mind-in-the-brain-until-it-hurts readings, and a amazing weekly discussions, I want to take pieces of this course into my thesis research.

I gravitate to the library and find the following book:  Blog Theory by Jodi Dean.  Having now consumed the inside words I am amazed at how much I did not understand, how I will have to read it again, and wonder who might this critical look at communicative capitalism within the sphere of blogs influence how we look at travel, tourism, our expectations, experiences, and shared stories of far-away lands.  I also found a new mantra:

Speaks to my heart.  Always question.  Always wonder.  Do not accept that you hear, see, think and feel at face value.  Dig deeper.  Demand more information and explanation.  Think it through.  Work it out.

Choosing to go back to school, taking inspiring classes, heading to the library every week, and extending my learning from books to the online world has lead to changes.  Change is good.

Bodega

A classmate of mine encouraged me to download Bodega the other day.  She said that her partner had developed this website for phone Apps, a unique idea at the time, then disappointment struck as Apple created their own App store.  Download it.  Check it out if you get the chance.  Share the money, power, capital, production and consumption of goods in North America.  Give as much as you can to the littler people like you and me.

Bodega

"They Are Young. They Will Heal Fast."

Several years ago a talk was posted on the TED.com website that had me laughing and saying, "yes, we should do that!"  This week I was reminded of this talk with my Aunt as she posted on a family blog a chat with her daughter and granddaughter concerning children playing with fire.  Gever Tulley was the speaker and the talk was titled: 5 Dangerous Things You Should Let Your Kids Do.  Yep.  Dat's wat eet iz!  Playin' wit fiyaaa!

He ensures that his listeners are aware that we are making larger and larger safety bubbles around each child, to the point that we stifling their creativity, ability to learn, understand how real objects work, and ability to manipulate objects with their hands and minds.  This type of childhood training reminds me of the difference between one of my siblings and I.  After dinner with family members, my brother Trent and I, when we approached what appeared to be a moving waterfall landscape picture in the restaurant, had very different reactions.  He was up close to the picture looking behind it, trying to figure out how it worked, and I was further back looking at the artistic rendering of the landscape, absorbing its beauty and interpreting its meaning.  Trent was ready to pull it apart and discover its inner guts, which Tulley suggests each parent should do with their child when appliances and other objects no longer work.  Disect them and learn together.

The most important message that Tulley suggests in addition to remembering the art of discover, is the reality that parents could be passing this work on to their children, do so with safety and supervision, have fun, and create shared meaningfulness between the scientific dissectors.  His best piece of advice if someone does accidentally sustain an injury: "Don't worry.  They are young.  They will heal fast."

Several years have passed since my initial viewing of the videocast, there is now a website and a book, both titled Fifty Dangerous Things.

Enjoy the information and get dissecting!

Photography with Freeman Patterson

After my quick trip to Costco during which I bought excessive amounts of prepared foods as my time is limited over the next month, I came back to my apartment to begin the organization of said foods in grab-and-go containers.  There is no television in my apartment as it is a distraction from actually completing my Master's Degree and I live alone, so listen to CBC radio quite a bit.  Local radio here consists of 1970's classic rock (ugh!), a sports radio station (no thanks) and some post World War 2 station I happened upon once.  Interesting station for an hour or so but I am not a 1950's war vet and I have no memories with which to associate their tunes.  So CBC Radio it is!

Strangely I sound quite interesting and intelligent lately as I am learning many current and historical things on our government sponsored radio station.  While preparing foods a show I have not often listened to with a host whose voice is as deep at the Grand Canyon,  had a special photography guest on, Freeman Patterson.  He reminisced about growing up on a farm, then attending theology school while in his early 20's.  During this time he purchased a camera and began taking a few pictures.  He eventually came to love the process and creativity of photography, which he quickly incorporated into his education.  His story continues through words, sounds, stories and 36 trips to Africa as he builds an accidental then purposeful career while creating an incredible body of work.  Currently living in the Maritimes, Patterson shares with the listening audience his many talents, including being an eloquent speaker, published author, well-known Canadian photographer, lover of nature, and meaningful advice giver to current photographers.

May I suggest you listen to the podcast: Ideas with Paul Kennedy

Then look at his website and stunning work: Freeman Patterson

When I am done school, I am going to add the bottom row of these to my book collection: Books

Glad I went to Costco and don't have to cook for a month.
More excited that I turned on the CBC.

RSA

The tiles on my blog have been acronyms lately.  Here is a link to an innovative way to present academic information.  Combining a professional speaker, video, and animation those individuals who are auditory and visual learners receive a double whammy of information.  Sent to me by a professor for whom I am working this term in a Philosophy of Sport and Leisure course, the message concerns human beings innate natures.  We may not always see people's actions as empathetic but do we in fact all have a propensity to be individuals who, after all that transpires as we breathe, live, interact, have a biological need to help and be part of a the group rather than the importance of the individual?  An old age question revisited below by a new organization to me who is educating in a rather unique way.

   

There are more videos like this one on YouTube through the organization Royal Society for the encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce (RSA).  A new favourite website and organization for me.  Enjoy! 

Sir Ken Robinson, Part Deux

Once again, here to teach us through humour to "bring on the learning revolution"!

Is Your Body a Way to Get Your Head Around?

Academia.  

What a place.  

People in their own heads.

Eventually to share their thoughts.  

Questioning oneself.

Questioning others. 

All in hopes to have a new creative idea.

But does education support creativity?

Or squeeze it out of people?

Sir Ken Robinson shares his thoughts on the subject.