Merrickville

Oh, I shouldn't neglect thee.

Sorry for the lack of posts. I keep saying I'm going to keep up with blogging better, but it tends to fall through. I make no promises, but again, I will try.

What has happened in the last year since I posted? In fact it's been the most that's happened to me in many years. Shortly after I last posted I asked my girlfriend to marry me. She said yes:

 We (she) decided we had no reason to wait around so the wedding was planned and went off without a hitch in Woodstock, NB in August.

Meanwhile Krista was still finishing up her internship as a dietitian until November. One of the places she interned at was the Community Health Centre in Merrickville, ON. I have been debating moving back to Ontario for a while now and Merrickville seemed both like a nice place, and a good compromise between New Brunswick and Northern Ontario (where our parents live). We also have friends and family both in the Ottawa area. So Krista was impressed enough with Merrickville that we up and moved here in December.

We had a nice place to rent for the short term. However it had no yard and was on the main street (a lot of truck traffic). In February we put an offer in on a house just off the Rideau River and it finalized in March. Our closing date is now fast approaching at the end of May.

This is a great place to live as I've found over the last number of months. For one thing, I'm close to trains again!

Maybe too close! ;)

Many more things are in the works, we get a canoe in a couple weeks, as well as the house. Expect lots of photos and videos from that adventure!

Wind Energy & Open Data

I've thought a lot about renewable energy in various forms for some time now, especially since I moved to PEI where a good amount of our energy can come from wind. The official figure I've heard varies from 15% (source) to 18% (source). That is pretty good, but when you figure only 20% comes from nuclear (when Point Lepreau is up and running) that indicates a lot of our energy comes from oil and coal.

In 2008 Premier Robert Ghiz put forth a plan to increase our output from the 149 or so MegaWatts we currently produce to 500. That would allow us to increase our wind consumption to 30%, directly cutting from oil and coal. This has obviously not happened, as his plan called for the first 100MW to come online this year. The culprit was a combination of the recession, the failure of Canada to implement a cap and trade system on our CO2 useage, and low oil prices. The proposals by developers would have required that the energy be sold at a higher rate than what we currently pay, and that's already the highest in Canada (according to Manitoba Hydro (source), .169$/kWh).



One thing that will help out wind energy is that the price of oil is back up (~$108/barrel). The economy looks like it is slowly getting back on track as well, though how much of that is an illusion remains to be seen.

The government claims that the 500MW plan is still in effect, once they get some good proposals from developers. This is good news.

When researching information about wind energy on PEI, or anything to do with electricity, I found there was not a good source of information. I admit I don't look beyond page one of google's search results, but I do try to query the best I can to find this information. The fact that I had to go to Manitoba Hydro to find out what we pay for electricity is funny (of course I could have checked my bill, but I can't link to that). One person who also feels this pain but is doing something about it is Peter Rukavina. He is looking to open up government data, particularly how much energy is being generated by our wind farms. It turns out there just isn't any publicly available data on that. In fact, the North Cape Wind Farm isn't even permanently connected to the internet, it's on dial up! (So much for the island getting high speed internet)

Peter was able to use some data from the New Brunswick System Operator website and scrape the data into an tracking system here. That page shows how much energy and where that energy is coming from for the NB system. Of particular note is the PEI component. I've actually used the code from that page to embed a little graph on the right hand side of my blog here so you can see at any point what our energy flow with NB has been doing. If the number is positive, it means we are importing energy from NB. If it goes negative it means that the wind must be blowing and our demand is actually low enough that we're exporting wind energy to NB. That occurred for the first time since the feed went live last night.

Thank you Peter for all the work, meeting with politicians, writing the code, and the interest in our wind energy. I look forward to further developments and I'd be interested in helping out in any way I could.

Immaculate Machine No More

Sad but not totally unexpected news yesterday, Immaculate Machine, one of my favourite bands, is no more.



I first saw them in 2007 in Charlottetown (also the first time I saw Smothered in Hugs!), and then a couple times after that, every time they came back to the island. I even blogged about a couple of their shows here. Another interesting fact, they were the first band I ever photographed (as evidence by the not so great shots showcased here).

They had a lot of talent and put on a great live show, and I will miss them! They are all involved in new projects though, so I assume I'll see them again someday.

CBC Radio 3 Searchlight Nomination

As the Bad Astronomer Phil Plait would say, Holy Haleakala! Someone nominated sucktastic for the CBC Radio 3 Searchlight for Canada's Best Music Website. Though I'm extremely flattered, I don't really see my blog as a music website. Only because Canadian Indie Music is such a large part of my life does it get mentioned here so often. But I also talk about other things, food, travel, atheism, photography, etc. So I don't really think I qualify.

However, the blog where we keep The Moe and Martin Show, Canada Is a Music Mecca is also nominated! Besides our show, there is lots of great stuff going on on that blog. We have a number of contributors posting interviews, album reviews, daily music news, occational tracks of the day, and more every day.

So please, if you have a Radio 3 account, or want to sign up for one (it's free and easy), consider voting for Canada is a Music Mecca!

Music PEI Week Playlist

I took a lot of video for the Friday night Music PEI Showcases. 3 Venues, 9 bands, and 22 videos have been compiled for your viewing pleasure!



Click YouTube to go to the playlist page and watch in HD.

Metering the Internet

Some of the biggest news in Canada now is related to the CRTC allowing usage based billing [UBB] by Bell Canada and others. Many Canadians are voicing their dissent of this move, and are particularly critical of the CRTC for not looking out for the best interests the people it is supposed to protect.

I remember when High Speed Internet was first happening in Canada, sometime around 1998-99. I was on board right away when I moved to Hamilton for university. I believe I was paying $50 a month for unlimited cable internet. Sometime in 1999/2000 they switched the plan myself and many of my Software Engineering friends were on to UBB, without actually telling us. A friend of mine was the first to find out, when after a few days, they cut off his internet. Many of us followed in the days to come as we went over our quotas. We spoke out strongly against this practice, as many others did as well. Within a month or two the UBB policy was reversed in full.

It was slightly different in that older case compared to now, for one thing, they cut us off, not charged us more. Obviously their policy was very wrong, but I think charging us more for going over on our bandwidth is also wrong.

If UBB goes through people will all of a sudden have to be very concious of what they're doing online. Want to watch a movie on your paid for Netflix subscription? Well you might have to pay again on top of your subscription. Want to stream a TV show from CTV or The Comedy Network? Visit sites with lots of ads? Guess what, now you'll also have to pay for those ads to be loaded. Sure, you can ad block, but then the people who run the sites will lose out on income. This will hurt many part time bloggers and people who depend on ad income to operate.

Myself personally, I upload and watch a lot of video on YouTube, upload pictures to flickr, and I have also been spending a lot of time watching Al Jazeera's coverage of the revolution in Egypt. In a 15 minute time frame last night I tracked my bandwidth usage. I downloaded 150MB, and uploaded about 100MB. project that forward and my total bandwidth is about 1GB/hour. In total last month I uploaded about 10GB of video, and that was a light month. Maybe I'm an exceptional case, but I know if my internet were metered I would be over every month.

Overall UBB will hurt Canadians in their pocketbook, as well as stifle new development out of Canada.

For more information, and a petition to sign check out Open Media.

The Moe and Martin Show

Since last spring my friend Moe and I have had a radio show on Radio Atlantic, and available as a podcast on Canada is a Music Mecca. Recently Radio Atlantic has been having issues ensuring our broadcast goes out either on time, or at all. However the podcast has always been a more convenient way to listen to the show.

The show focuses exclusively on Canadian East Coast music, with a definite bias on the Charlottetown scene. We play pretty much anything, but tend to avoid the straight up traditional stuff, as well as jazz/blues/classical. But Rock, Pop, Country, Hip Hop, Electronic dancey stuff, etc, are all covered. Along with great tunes, you also get a lot of Moe and I talking about the music, artists, shows and the scene in general in a pretty informal (and often wine fueled) manner. Check here for all of our shows. Something I should do in the future is get a best of show list. We've had some really good ones!

Our most recent show was a recap of the Music PEI 2011 awards show, and I think it's a fun one. There is lots of great music from the winners of most of the awards.

For your part, your mission, when you choose to accept it, is to send us requests, music, links, fake news reports, real news, and any other feedback you like. Email us at themoeandmartinshow@gmail.com.

Music PEI Week 2011

Music PEI Week 2011 has ended.  As always it was filled with great music and good times.  I took my video camera around Friday night to three different venues and 9 different bands.  That'll make a lot of editing in my future, an endeavour that has already begun.  So far I have finished with two bands, Racoon Bandit and The North Lakes, both at Solid Rock Cafe.  Racoon Bandit won Best Video for their video HAT and The North Lakes won best Alternative Album.

Big winners were one of my favourite bands, Haunted Hearts.  They get played a lot on The Moe and Martin Show and I've probably seen them live more than any other band (including seeing them Friday night, stay tuned for video, they really rocked!).  They get classified as Country, but I don't think the standard classifications are working very well for PEI bands anymore.  When I think country I think twangy whiny crap music, and that they are not.  Perhaps it's just that the classification has changed while I wasn't paying attention.  Anyway, Haunted Hearts won Group of the Year, Album of the Year, Country Album of the Year, and Songwriter of the Year.

Molly Rankin, another regular on the radio show, won 3 awards herself, Female Vocalist, New Artist, and Pop Recording.  Each of her speeches at the awards was funnier than the previous.  In fact the whole awards show was hilarious.  Fraser and Lenny did another fantastic job as hosts.

Keep an eye on my YouTube channel for all the videos, but until then, here's a couple from Racoon Bandit and The North Lakes:

Flying Home

Just a quick update on things.

I'm taking the advanced pottery class at the PEI Pottery Studio this semester, and really enjoying having some direction again. So far I've thrown 10 mugs and 9 bowls (of varying quality. This is a chance to experiment after all). I'll try to get some pictures of the process soon.

Besides that I'm trying to figure out a photography project I can get into. I am too lazy for a full 365, but a friend recently suggested something to do with food photography. Combining sharing what I eat with pictures could be fun. And potentially embarrassing for those days I have nothing but a bowl of cereal for dinner.

I also have a new iPod, the one that takes pictures. So I've found I've been taking a lot of crummy mobile photos and sharing them on facebook and twitter. For instance here is my veggie madras from Churchill Arms in Charlottetown from last night:

Follow me on Twitter to see more.

Smiley Goat

Not much of a content post so much as a 'hey I really like this goat shot' post. This was from Krista and I's so called 'Belfast Day' where Belfast Mini Mills had an open house, as well as a potter.

The Mini Mills has some really fun animals, along with our favourites the goats.

Downtown Seattle at Sunset

I am finally getting around to posting all the pictures of my cross North America trip from last year.

In some ways I'm kind of glad I waited a while to post them. I feel like over the past year I've gotten a bit better at editing pictures. I get to re-live the trip by going through all the raw pictures one by one, triggering associated memories and good times. I've caught up with my Dad's cousin who I stayed with in Seattle while attempting to confirm details on his classic car.

Of course, I could have posted them a year ago and just gone through the set and re-lived the memories. Oh well, I've been busy.

I still have Vancouver and the Via trip on The Canadian from there to Toronto to go. I anticipate there will be some more pictures that I'm very happy with, just like this Seattle skyline shot.

Flowers Under Attack

is this still on?

Radio Debut

Wintersleep Acoustic Guitar from the show at The Wave in UPEI.

Hello everyone, especially anyone coming from Radio 3.  I hope you are enjoying the show I co-hosted with Craig Norris, as much as I enjoyed recording it.

I hope to post more here in the future again, with more music related stuff.  Things like show reviews, local news, that kind of thing.  Stay tuned.

For anyone who reads this before the show, it will be airing on CBC Radio 3 between noon and three eastern, February 12, 2009.  Have a listen.

Snowing

The weather here has been quite variable the last couple weeks. One day it'll be snowing, the next -10, the next raining and +11.

I saw Grass Mountain Hobo's at Back Alley Music last weekend. Tomorrow is Nudie & The Turks at the same place.

Other than that not much going on musically that I'm aware of here in Charlottetown. You know who I really feel like seeing live again (even though I've seen them 4 times this year), The Tom Fun Orchestra... alas, it will have to wait until next year.

On that same note, Tom Fun and Hey Rosetta, and Pat Deighan & The Orb Weavers, and many other great bands have all been nominated for ECMA's. Congratulations to all the nominees!

Here's a new track from K'Naan at Radio 3

Long Nights

Been too long since I've put anything here. I really need to start thinking more about just quick posts perhaps, with some music I'm listening to, or shows I've seen.

Over the last month I've seen (and sometimes photographed) Cadence Weapon, Matthew Barber with The Spades, Stars, Hey Rosetta!, Raccoon Bandit, The Lodge, Pat Deighan and the Orb Weavers, the Love Junkies, Tom Fun Orchestra, and Carmen Townsend, to name a few.

Tonight I'm seeing and photographing Sam Roberts, which should be a lot of fun!

I can't stop listening to the new single from Shout Out Out Out Out, In the End It's Your Friends.

I shot this picture with my new 30mm f1.4 lens by Sigma. I've been pretty happy with it, tonight will be the first real test of it's purpose, shooting bands.

Ghost Guinness

Just a quick post about some bands we've seen over the past week.

Last Thursday night Matthew Barber played at Baba's. I wish I'd payed more attention to the 3 different guys who opened, but I didn't. They all played enjoyable acoustic sets. Matthew Barber was very good. Especially considering the loud thin crowd. He is a great songwriter, and man, can he play guitar. He's very inspirational for me in my learning. Definitely something to shoot for.

Last night I was out to see Hey Rosetta! and Woodhands. Two very different, but excellent bands. I first saw Hey Rosetta! at the ECMA's in Fredericton, and though they were good, I really found the sound to be terrible there. Last night they sounded a whole lot better, and it was a whole lot more intimate.

I've never seen Woodhands before, but had heard good things about them on radio3, as well as enjoyed their music there. It all lived up to the live show, which was so full of energy, and great music. I'm convinced Dan Werb (keytar/singer/keyboards) is a twin of my friend Cam. Woodhands is the kind of band that I think Cam and I could have done. Maybe someday. Until then, I really enjoyed their show, and would love to see them again.

Here is their song Dancer, which rocked live:

Signs of Spring

I honestly don't remember it feeling so spring like here at this time last year, but this week has been great for weather.

I went out for a quick bike yesterday, it was good. I'm sore today, that good kind of sore where you pushed yourself.

Not much else to say, I'll share a song I'm totally hooked on and can't wait for the album to come out. Islands - The Arm:

Passion

Post Show Wrapup Post:

My friends and I saw Immaculate Machine play twice here in Charlottetown on Saturday. They first played in the small back room of Back Alley Music. I took my camera to that show, expecting it to be less crowded, and for me to be able to get a good vantage point. I was not disappointed.

Boxer The Horse opened the show, and I hadn't heard of them ahead of time. They put on a pretty rockin' show, and I enjoyed it. It also gave me a chance to be up front and take pictures and check camera settings. The keyboardist had a PBF shirt! I couldn't place it at the time, but I knew I'd seen it around somewhere before.

Immaculate Machine was up next, and they very much rocked. It was such a small room, and a lot of people in the crowd didn't know them, so I think they suitably impressed all. I was up front the whole time, snapping away, and enjoying the hell out of them. I posted a lot of pictures to flickr.

After their set I talked with Brooke (guitarist/singer) for a while about his experience in Dawson City, doing an artist in residence kind of thing. It sounds like a great place, I'd love to head up there for the Dawson City Music Festival some year.

After some chilling time at home, we headed back out to Baba's. We were there a bit late for Drea Macdonald, who was just wrapping up. Next up was Smothered in Hugs, a kickass local band. They put on a rocking good set. Even though it was even darker at Baba's, I wish I'd brought my camera, because I missed out on getting some pics of these guys.

Immaculate Machine played another great set next, and had the crowd moving (and one guy seemingly convulsing). After the show Shannon and I stuck around and chatted with Kathryn and Brooke, and I picked up their 7" single, even though I don't have a record player!

It was an awesome night, and we made it home safe and sound, which was initially in some doubt when we were almost attacked by a loose pitbull on the walk home. :/

Sunday was a bit of a lazy day on the couch. :)

I can't leave you with my favorite IM song (C'Mon Sea Legs, it's not on Radio 3), so I'll leave you with another favorite:

Another Year

We're well into another year, and lots of things have changed for me. I'm sure anyone who ever checks here and reads this knows what's new in my world, so I'm not going to write about it.

I'm looking forward to spring. This has been a long snowy winter, and I miss biking on the Confederation trail. My goal of this year is to get out at least a few times a week. I also should start looking into seeing if there are any bike races here in PEI that would be fun.

In the meantime, I keep busy, Pottery, Photography, and I've just started Painting. I guess it's the three P's. ;)

I'm trying to get out to as many live shows as I can. It's been pretty quiet her over the winter, but the highlight was the Cuff the Duke and Blue Rodeo show. This weekend is Smothered in Hugs opening for Immaculate Machine. Also upcoming, Buck 65, Cadence Weapon, Cuff the Duke, Matthew Barber and Jill Barber, and Two Hours Traffic. (too many to link to!)

We also made it to the ECMA's in Fredericton, and here is one of my highlights from there, The Tom Fun Orchestra:

Our World

Unfortunately, today I don't have a music video, or even a song. I promise the next post will have one of those. This time I want to share a video, part of a great series that I'm working my way through, and one I think everyone should watch. It's a great set of tools and information on Global Warming, and I know a lot of people are sick of hearing about it, but it's worth taking some time out to hear a bit more. The vidoes are well thought out, and I found them entertaining as well. Here is a good intro video, I hope everyone finds it as informative and interesting as I do.