w a s t e . t i m e . n o w

My last post for a bit brings you the best in cutting-edge journalism — the Smithers Interior News. Let’s just say I won’t be filing this link under Brain Candy.

Out of nowhere, the Work Less Party does something to suggest they might not be irrelevant, self-indulgent bourgeois posers. The VPD Public Complaints website is a “community response to the lack of transparency in the police complaints process. Unlike the Office of the Police Complaint Commissioner, the VPD Public Complaints database is not run by, or affiliated with, the Vancouver Police Department”.

Geist magazine closes each issue with a splendid theme map. Check out the Canadian Map Of Places That Sound Impolite from their last issue. Links to previous maps are listed in the menu on the right-hand side.

It is sweet to be a kid these days. My friend’s daughter rolls her eyes whenever I start down this road, but it must to be so easy to write essays in the age of the internet. Remember the encyclopedia? Puh-leeze…

When I was a lad, my most reliable second source was John Carey’s Eyewitness To History, a collection of first-hand accounts detailing dozens of historical events. In case your library doesn’t have a copy, the internet brings you “History Through The Eyes Of Those Who Lived It” at eyewitnesstohistory.com.

You can search or browse their database of historical events for articles, photographs, original recordings and other material. I particularly enjoy the It Happened This Month section.

I’m leaving for Smithers tomorrow and starting to get very, very excited about the Fall Fair. Checking around for photos from 2004, I came across this series of my sister, Brittany givin`er in last year’s scurry race — 1, 2, 3, 4 — and getting a ribbon. My other sister, Nicole, was out with a fractured collar bone, so no pics of her. But whatup with this clown? Whoah, cowboy…

Update: here are the complete photos of the 2004 Light Horse Show at the Smithers Fall Fair.

Vancouver’s Leaky Heaven Circus promises an unforgettable simian experience with Bonobo! — the story of “Kanzi, an ‘ape of genius’, and his kin, our endangered cousins, the Bonobos”. The show runs until August 21 — your chance to waste time while supporting an impressive local arts group. There’s even fortune-telling…

Speaking of bonobos, the Great Ape Trust of Iowa has galoshes full of information about our hairy kinfolk, including sounds of the bonobo (a small MP3) — and the real-life story of Kanzi, the bonobo featured in Leaky Heaven’s production.

I’ve been told file sharing is a new form of activism — see if there’s anything you like among the MP3s I’m listening to these days, comrades.

Thanks to the friend who introduced me to the legend of The Lions, those striking mountains on Vancouver’s horizon. Here is the story of The Two Sisters as written by Pauline Johnson — the link at the bottom of the page takes you to the story of Siwash Rock and other legends of Vancouver. You won’t regret the time you waste reading this. I promise.

By the way, while searching for the story online, I came across the University of Pennsylvania’s digital library — a heaping serving of electronic texts from a lavish spread of authors. Pauline Johnson’s work is included in the Celebration of Women Authors.

Maybe I *was* trying to be a bit show-offy in the previous post — because I know how to use a semi-colon, I do. I’d like to thank a friend for chastising me so swiftly, though. You keep me humble (p.s. you’re a dick).

Speaking of keeping humble, why not try the Eats, Shoots & Leaves punctuation game? It only takes a couple of minutes.

I did awesome on apostrophes, but I think the comma is far more subjective.

Abram Games was a fellow who understood graphic design. An Official War Artist in Britain during WWII, he created the most fantastic images of their kind to come out of a democracy (whatever — fascists and communists do that shit better). Games continued to be an influential designer after the war; see this exhibition overview from the Design Museum in London for more detail than his official website provides.

My favourite Games design is the blonde bombshell — a wartime solicitation for the Women’s Auxiliary Territorial Service.

Tagalog is one of the most pleasing languages to the ear I’ve heard.

The Center for Southeast Asian Studies at Northern Illinois University hosts SEAsite — a very neat project to “provide language instruction and other cultural, political, and social information about Southeast Asia”. Spend some time on their Tagalog page, which has a wide variety of information about the language, history and culture of the Philippines.

Ready to give it a go? I found these lessons available for download as MP3 files (and don’t have the ambition myself just yet, so let me know how it works out).

Prefer to keep looking? This is Baybayin, the characters used in written Tagalog before the Spanish invasion.

Free Speech Radio News pulls together a tight little newscast, Monday to Friday of each week (available for download in MP3 or RealAudio format). Previous broadcasts are available in the archive section, and there’s a few documentaries worth checking out as well.

Well, yeah Malcolm X is a controversial figure in history. By advocating extremism, he clearly established the danger that existed if white America failed to change the status quo — and bolstered the cause of mainstream activists like Martin Luther King.

While I tend to be a pacifist, I’ve always thought Malcolm X was a very logical and reasoned man. Saul Alinsky wrote that Gandhi wasn’t necessarily a pacifist — he simply chose tactics most likely to succeed, and violence against the British Empire in one of their colonies had a snowball’s chance in hell of working. According to Alinsky, Gandhi would have chosen a more confrontational approach if logic and reason suggested it had a better chance of succeeding.

I’m a simple man, and I don’t know about all that — but I do know Malcolm X is one of the most astute and stirring speakers I’ve heard. Check out these recordings of his Message to the Grassroots (in MP3 format). Also, the Ballot or the Bullet Part 1 and Part 2.

“The young generation don’t want to hear anything about the odds are against us. What do we care about odds?”

History and Politics Out Loud is a “searchable archive of politically significant audio materials” brought to us by the National Endowment for the Humanities (so it only includes “politically significant” material from the US).

The Chicago Historical Society has an amazing collection of interviews available online. Compiled by Studs Turkel and offered in RealMedia format are Conversations With America — hundreds of everyday Janes and Joes discussing their lives and the world around them.

But don’t don’t don’t use RealPlayer: that shit’s the devil. RealAlternative is compact, free software that tricks streams into thinking you’re using RealPlayer. Sweet.

One of my most reliable fixes when I need visual stimulation is provided by the Orange County Museum of Art. Their stunning web presence will soon include a directory of every exhibit hosted since the museum opened its doors in the `60s. For those of us too distant to visit, the Orange Lounge offers online exhibition space for new media projects.

I recently discovered one of the illustrators I enjoy most is actually two — Kozy and Dan look like they have a lot of fun.

P.S.
MoCo Loco — “a web magazine featuring modern contemporary design news and views” — is definitely a good place to waste some time.

Well, this isn’t the most scenic view — it is a traffic camera, after all — but here’s a little glimpse of Smithers.

I’m very impressed with the Royal BC Museum’s Living Landscapes project, which focusses research and data collection on specific regions of the province for two-year periods.

So I’m totally on about M.I.A. these days. Check out her remixes with Diplo on the Piracy Funds Terrorism album — zipped for download as a rar file (see WinAce if you don’t have a program that can unzip rar files).

And while on the topic of splendid music you can steal, ANTI- has swag on your favourite independent artists with a few MP3s available for download from each.

But if independent radio is more your thing, it’s underheard.org you want for live streams, podcasts and more. Topping my personal list of faves — Route 78 West, a two-hour weekly radio show of “Honky Tonk, Trucker Songs, Spaghetti Westerns, recycled juke box 45’s, an occasional Surf track and artist interviews”.

A couple of very nifty toys to help with layout and design:

This Web Style Guide is a must for anyone publishing in the electronic medium.

The STC Font Browser Utility is an excellent tool to help you choose or identify fonts.

The Eye Dropper Color Mixer helps you identify the RGB hex value of any colour.

If you don’t already know the great Paul Moth, better check out The Great Eastern, an hilarious series on the fictitious Broadcasting Corporation of Newfoundland.

All five seasons of this CBC satire are available for download as MP3 files, as well as video files of Town Beat — Paul Moth’s short-lived foray into regional cable. Make sure you also check out Paul’s blog.

Thanks to logogle.com for making it possible to customize the Google interface.

Despite privacy violations with Gmail and Google’s shamelessly cutting deals with foreign governments to restrict content — among other serious issues — I don’t want to be entirely negative on the web’s most popular search provider.

So, kudos to those fascists for creating a free version of the software formally known as Keyhole — Google Earth.

I confess to finding the entries of one of my fellow blogsome.com denizens strangely compelling — even though the site is devoted to the lives of his fictional, computer game-generated family.

Do you scoff in disbelief? I challenge you to witness this story of an alien encounter and remain so dispassionate.

I definitely don’t mean to promote the whole God preoccupation, but the Brick Testament is one of the sweetest little projects I’ve seen online.

How come their guys have such awesome facial expressions? Where did they get better LEGO pieces than I ever saw when I was a kid?

My first guess had a higher power involved, but as it turns out — “there are a few instances where, as a last resort, Rev. Smith has modified LEGO elements with a hobby knife or permanent ink marker. Further, there also are a few select instances of computer graphics used to enhance certain photos (besides the use of dialogue bubbles)”.

Finally, a visual representation of how concentrated media concentrates coverage.

Buzztracker is a nifty project that analyzes Google News entries by frequency and location, then maps the top 10 geographic locations for each day. You can sign up for an RSS feed, and there’s even a Buzztracker widget for OSX.

Celestia is three-dimensional software that opens up our solar system to the home explorer. Mapping the stars, comets, planets, space ships — it’s the Keyhole of the skies, and it kicks ass!

Donwload a free copy for Windows, Mac and Linux, then see the dozens of add-ons available.

The Modern Language Association’s language map of the United States displays detailed information about more than thirty languages spoken in the US — including the number of speakers, and distribution by county or zip code.