Musical things I liked at Sonar

Kazumasa Hashimoto
Black Galaxy
Chris Clark (obviously)
Nicole Willis & the Soul Investigators
Dizzee Rascal
Kode 9 & the Spaceape
Oris Jay
Skream
Spacek & Benji B (basically all the dubstep)
Mira Calix
C2C (great fun)
Flying Lotus
Bubbz & Deadbeat
An On Bast
Tiago Andrade!

some design stuff about my recent trip

Set out to write an update on the zero-waste blog about my trip and got a bit carried away. Was going to post here too but i think a link would be better in light of its length!

Sadly not going to be many photos from the trip and evry few audio recordings too. Guess I was having too much fun catching up with folk - disappointingly little to report anecdotally unfortunately anyway. Will just say that I'm glad I went, and its hard to go back to work 9-5!

Dancin'

Courtesy of Mr. McCormick , who has a new location for his blog...

Front page news!

Calgary made front page news today on Guardian Unlimited. For all the wrong reasons...
It's a fair comment, but after being here 9 months and seeing a little of what Calgarians can and are doing in regards to climate change and sustainability issues, I'm a little more optimistic that things wont be as bad as Klein makes out. I may however have just caught the Cowtown bug. Yeehaw!

MySpace Outage Leaves Millions Friendless | The Onion - America's Finest News Source

MySpace Outage Leaves Millions Friendless | The Onion - America's Finest News Source

japanese contraption - Google Video

japanese contraption - Google Video

Engrossing ball runs from the Japanese childrens' program, 'Pythagoras Switch'.

Living on the Edge

Urban spread is like no other i've seen in Calgary right now. This is a wonderful collection by the 10 cent designer on flickr that i think describes the spread better than i could ever put into words.

Lost America

Amazing photos and a guide on how to "lightpaint" at this site.

Image: ©Troy Paiva / Lost America

Kitchen Diaries

courtesy of Kath

Eerie view at Dungeness

Eerie view at Dungeness
Originally uploaded by Spherical Roy.

I've uploaded my latest film - pics from Dungeness in October 06, new year at Gilly's, and Neel, Kath and Rowan's recent visit to Glasgow.

"Reports that say that something hasn't happened are always interesting to me, because as we know, there are known knowns; there are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns -- the ones we don't know we don't know."

Donald Rumsfeld

loo in progress

loo in progress
Originally uploaded by Spherical Roy.

I've posted some photos of the flat renovations, as many have requested. Its hard taking photos indoors - my flat doesn't fit in my wee camera..

The collection is here [link might be below photo]:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/royshearer/tags/flatrenovations/

Toutes les autos de Tintin

Toutes les autos de Tintin

Testament to Herge's attention to detail, via Core77.com

Frightened Rabbit: Sing the Greys: Pitchfork Record Review

Frightened Rabbit: Sing the Greys: Pitchfork Record Review

The Ol' FR get a respectable review at Pitchfork, something thats not always easily achieved. Hooray for the Rabbit! Hooray for Glasgow!

The role of Governmental websites.

I have always thought that progressive, democratic societies are built upon fundamental ideas such as freedom of speech and the right to a decent education (amongst many others). Considering both of these points makes me think about the internet.

Everyone has the right to write anything they so wish (as I am doing right now) and publish this on the internet, a freedom of speech that is incredibly difficult to restrict. Educationly, the internet has also enlightened many, even with a crappy 28.8k connection one could imagine that access to material (granted some of dubious educational quality) never before available to some has improved vastly. Corporations, NGOs, Universities and National Governments have all used the internet to their advantage, to inform and to educate the general public in whatever way they wish.

There is the problem however of institutional bias. What an NGO and a Corporation say about the same situation could be hugely different. This, I think, is unavoidable and it is up to the reader to decide who they believe. However, should this be the case when it comes down to websites operated by national governments? Should spin be allowed? I think not. I think there is a responsibility on governments, as the bastions of progressive, democratic societies, to provide the 'decent education' as I mentioned above.

Which is why when I recently checked out the Government of Canada's official Climate Change website I was so sorely disappointed. To be fair, you can eventually get to some musings on climate change after following a bunch of links from one government department to anothers website. But I was honestly shocked that one could simply declare an issue as huge as Climate Change a closed book, one that this government has decided simply to not provide any easily accessible information on. Could you imagine if they decided to not provide any information on HIV/Aids or simply had a page for a website instructing the reader that the site is 'temporarily unavailable'?

Perhaps there is no responsibility on any government to provide free and accessible information on any issue. One could argue with the reams of information on everyone elses website that this would be pointless. Perhaps that is what institutions like the UN are for, but at least, if you have an official page on an issue, maybe it should have a link to that institution?

It's a thinker...

Ryuichi Sakamoto

Adam Buxton but no Joe

Adam Buxton

Well, having spent about the last five days with the flu, I now have a long line in stories of sweating profusely for no reason, and whats good on On Demand. One of the latter is three series of the Adam and Joe show - you know what that means: three opening episodes that you have to pay absolutely nil for! (they're free). So they're the ones I watched, but I know the rest are there for me in moments of boredom, of which there are sure to be many seeing as I am living in one room with an armchair opposite the TV, which is on the fridge. (The builders have started).

Anyway, have had fun reading Adam's blog, which Jonny Greenwood linked to on Dead Air Space. Speaking of whom there was a Late Junction special last night dedicated to, from what I could tell, 'some tunes Jonny probably likes' seeing as they never actually talked to him. Still, it was good.

Useless Dog

What a Useless Dog... But lovely to have around the place no doubt.

'Compared to this, Iraq was easy'

'Compared to this, Iraq was easy'

Guardian correspondent Declan Walsh reports from Afghanistan, embedded with the 10th US mountain division, in a series of narrated slideshows. Good stuff.

Flickr distraction

DON'T OIL MACHINE WHEN RUNNING
Originally uploaded by equipeowen.

This is from the Stick Figures in Peril group.

Also, Dave Gorman's Interesting Flickr Coincidences set is quite, wll, interesting.