There’s this guy at my church that takes amazing photos. I just checked out his site, and it’s everything I like to see in a portfolio: full sized images, easy to navigate, and lots of beautiful photos to look at.
Take a look: stephenkiers.com
What happens to digital media when it hits the border? It stops. Those cool media streaming sites like Hulu.com, where you can watch hit shows and movies, they don’t work in Canada.
I’m still trying to figure out why.
I’m not the type of purchase things impulsively. I’ll stew over something for months: reading reviews, checking prices, and thinking about whether the old budget can take it.
Last week I finally caved in and bought an Apple TV. I got it off Craigslist, new in the box, for $60 less than buying it from the store.
I wish I’d bought one ages ago. My wife and kids can easily use the interface to watch TV shows, photos, podcasts and movies. We’ve also found purchasing and renting movies quite convenient: click “rent” and the movie is ready to watch (almost instantly).
Blockbuster recently joined the digital media game with its own box. I can see Blockbuster having a slight advantage in that they have existing retail stores from which to promote their new box. However, I think a lot of this is about how “cross-platform” a given solution is.
When I buy a movie on iTunes, it becomes available to my wife’s iPod, my iPhone, our home iMac, my work Macbook and our Apple TV. That makes it a convenient, and attractive, choice for homes that already own one more of those Apple products.
This kind of cross-platform functionality just isn’t there for the competition: Vudu, Roku, Xbox 360, TiVo, or Blockbuster.
My friend Gregg mentioned to me yesterday that he saw a young guy on “So You Think You Can Dance Canada?” that I might know.
In 1999, my friends Adrian, Garner and I ran a drop-in hip hop club in Edmonton’s city center. It was called the “First Element Hip Hop Club.” We started with any empty church hall, a PA system, and the desire to create a place for kids to come and break, scratch, and freestyle.
Well, I’m not exactly sure how it happened, but word spread and soon we had 20-30 people coming every week. We taught basic breakin’ moves to whoever showed up, but we also had some really incredible dancers show up.
James Jones was one of those kids. He was one of the handful of First Nations kids that showed up from north east Edmonton. And he is an unbelievable bboy.
Well, on September 18th, he appeared on “So You Think You Can Dance” and charmed the judges. He’s off to Toronto for the competition. It was really cool for me to watch the clip; he’s got a great spirit.
According to his blog, Graham Linehan has just delivered the finale episode for season 3 of The IT Crowd, probably the funniest sitcom ever made.
Right now he’s looking for prop suggestions for this season’s IT office. You can email them to: ben.capel@talkbackthames.tv.
Now remember, I’m talking about the UK version of the show. NBC had tried to bring it over to North America last year (and stole one of the best characters, Moss, from the British version), but apparently that’s all over now. The British show is back; which is good.
You can purchase the first two seasons on DVD, or if you’re so inclined, find them floating around the net.
Welcome. This will be a melting pot of different creative projects I’m working on as well as random thoughts and events from my life.
As promised, there will be lots of tantalizing projects that are sure to scandalize you.