Tonight I saw Daniel Lanois play at Massey Hall in Toronto. The concert was packed with people who all seemed to understand the importance of what was happening. We all cheered and hollered, but during the songs the room was dead silent as people took in every sound and fed back incredible excited energy to the stage. I must say that I have more of the albums that Lanois produced than albums of his own music. By the end of the show I think it was clear to me and everyone else that Daniel Lanois is not only a great music producer, but an incredible songwriter and performer as well. I listened intently, watched, and took in every moment of the show both enjoying the sounds and thinking about what music must mean to this man.
What a glorious day it is in the history of the world! The USA is definitely one of the most influential powers and one of the most breathtaking countries that has ever existed, not just in terms of its military power but in terms of innovation, creativity and free spirit. Although I am now very proud to be Canadian, when I was younger I wanted nothing more than to move to New York City, or Silicon Valley. But after the dot-com bust, September 11, and George W. Bush, my mind completely changed. Instead of looking south, I looked within Canada and found my home in Toronto. And more recently after knowing that we could have such a pair as McCain and Palin running things down south I wasn’t sure I would feel comfortable snuggled up beside the USA anymore.
But what the entire world witnessed not so many hours ago was something that completely changed my bad perception of the USA as a whole. Barack Obama as the president-elect who is definitely not old, stodgy or white, an election that appeared to be fair, and most importantly, an American public that believed in change if only by a small percentage. There are certainly big challenges ahead for the USA, but I believe that my faith in democracy, however flawed it might seem, has been restored. I’ll be watching with anticipation from here in the great white north to what happens next. Greetings to all Americans and thanks for putting my mind at ease!
Tonight I saw one of my favourite musicians, Dave Bidini. He was one of the members of my favourite band the Rheostatics. They sadly broke up last year so I was really glad to hear that Dave was doing some performances during October and November at the Cameron House on Queen Street. I was even happier to see Don Kerr (a former Rheo) playing drums. They did a bunch of new songs that I hadn’t heard before, as well as a lot of Dave’s older Rheos songs. They were kind of lacking without Martin on falsetto and guitar, but Dave and the band totally rocked so I tried listening in a new light.
Apparently they’re playing in November as well at the Cameron House so if you have some time you should check it out. The Rheostatics, including Dave are a big influence to me. As fellow Canadians their songs helped me feel proud to be Canadian. As great musicians and songwriters they helped me to feel good about writing music and learning the guitar myself. Dave Bidini’s solo performances are totally recommended.
In my daily pursuits I spend quite a lot of time designing new things, and hardly any time examining existing technology or taking things apart. This is exactly opposite of what I did when I was a child. I used to take everything apart and dreamed of the day that I would have enough knowledge or foresight to actually design things from scratch. This weekend I was able to get back to the fascination that comes from figuring out an existing design by reverse engineering and making work an old LED sign board.
A few months ago at the Hacklab (our local geek hangout in Toronto) one of the guys brought in a bunch of old LED boards that he got at the surplus store nearby. One evening a few months ago we rang out the wiring with a multimeter and I drew a fairly crude circuit diagram on my computer. I didn’t have all the symbols so I just labeled some things and didn’t really complete it. I got busy with other stuff and never finished it. But this weekend my friend Dan and I were hanging around with nothing to do so we stopped by the Hacklab yesterday evening and decided to have a go at it. Read the rest of this entry »
For a while I’ve needed some new lamps for my music studio. The room just has a single fluorescent fixture in the middle of the ceiling and it makes everything look really terrible so I don’t use it. On one side of the room I have installed a bunch of nice halogen lights in my shelves and an articulated desk lamp. But the other side of the room was really dark and bare. That is, until I found myself a pair of Kawartha Table Lamps! (that’s actually the name) Not only do they have very cottage-like shades with fake leather stitching pretending to hold the shades together, they also have a metal moose sticking out from the upright part! But that’s not all… if they moose theme wasn’t enough on the actual lamp holder itself, the shade also has a moose and an evergreen tree printed inside.
Although I’ve never seen a moose at my cottage in Kawartha Lakes, I have seen lots of evergreen trees, and they look just like the ones printed on the shade. Some day these lamps will probably end up at my cottage, but for now they serve as a reminder of the beauty and tranquility of the lake when I can’t be there. I believe that my personal stress level will be reduced by this purchase. What a value this was at only $24.99 per lamp! (plus bulbs) If you’re busy and live in the city, this is definitely the easiest and most cost-effective way to get away from the city, without actually having to go anywhere.
Over the past year or so I have been brainstorming and experimenting with guitar circuits in my spare time. Since starting to learn guitar I’ve become fascinated with music electronics and have been dreaming up all kinds of ideas for cool music products. I have a few projects in development right now and a few more in my head which I hope to get started soon.
The first of these projects is about to be released and so I thought I’d show you a sneak peak of what it’s going to look like. It’s called the Lush Puppy and is a high quality guitar reverb pedal with a stereo output. The photo shown here is a completely functional pre-production prototype. The sounds that I’ve been getting out of it are amazing and I’m really happy that it will be available for everyone soon! It will be sold under the name Kilpatrick Audio and there is a website coming soon where you will be able to order one. There is a limited initial production run in progress now and hopefully by early November you will be able to get one. The price will be quite competitive considering that it is a hand-made boutique product. I really want this pedal to be within reach of everyone who wants one. Other models will be available fairly soon after the Lush Puppy hits the market.
Audio samples and a complete feature list are coming soon.
Well, I didn’t really get much sleep last night as I went home around 06:00. We finished the final bits of hacking on the games and the game engine for Stereoscope on Saturday around 16:00, printed out the game phone numbers to distribute around the crowd at City Hall and then went downstairs to see the Nuit Blanche kick-off at dusk. Then at 22:00 Falk did his live VJ set which was totally incredible! I finally got the opening night tingles as I stood in front of City Hall and watched the hard efforts of the team finally demonstrated in full glory. The shivers up my spine were all I needed to know that our many late nights over the past few weeks were completely worth it.
Today I went through the telephone logs and found that we had over 1200 calls to the games last night! Once we started up games on both screens people were almost constantly playing the entire evening. Our group went to see another exhibit and when we returned to City Hall around 06:00 people were still playing!
The Stereoscope setup will continue to run content and games every night up to and including next Saturday. I’m extremely pleased with how everything has gone and am so incredibly proud to have been involved in this project. The German Blinkenlights crew are all amazing people and so much fun to work with, I really hope that we all get a chance to work together again soon.
My little test video gave a bit of the essence of how cool Stereoscope setup is, but Dan has made an amazing video show last night’s test of the VJ setup. Falk (our amazing VJ) tested out his setup last night down on Nathan Philips Square. Dan captured some of it on video and added some music.
Come down and see Falk perform live in front of City Hall during Nuit Blanche tomorrow night at 10pm.
I am very happy to report that Blinkenlights Stereoscope is running completely now and has been showing both tests and actual content for the past few nights. There are still a few tweaks to complete but it works and looks completely incredible! Everyone in the team has done a fantastic job. We have all had such a good time working together so far. And I’m grateful to Tim and Fiedel for letting my friends and I (the Canadian Team as they like to call us) get involved. Above is a video of the east tower running completely.
As some of you might know, the Blinkenlights project that became famous from its installations in Berlin and Paris is coming to Toronto for Nuit Blanche on October 4, 2008. Each window in City Hall (about 960 in total) will become a pixel in a giant low-res video screen. The project is called Stereoscope. My friends Jonathan Fuerth, Dan Fraser and I are very happy to be helping the German Blinkenlights team. We have been working on some custom software and helping in a local capacity since mid-July. We are creating a video mixing program to route and combine video streams… sort of a central hub to process all the visual content. Also, we have made an interface between VoIP and the Blinkenlights games. This will allow spectators to play games on the buildings with their cell phones.
This past week the core members of the German team arrived in Toronto and the setup has now begun! We now have the project headquarters set up at City Hall and everyone is working hard to get things in place. There are many last minute details, final code hacking, and lots of things to finish. Tomorrow more of the German crew arrive to start working on the actual artistic content that will be displayed during the event.
Check out my photo gallery for some behind-the-scenes pictures.
