i am so excited for NYE i can't sleep!!

Posted by davin at 4:24 AM | Permalink | Comments (4)

i had an eye exam today that included ultra high res shots of my retina. that is one of them; what you see in the bottom right are my eyelashes. i have a slight tear in my retina and i think i have mentioned before on here that if it gets too much worse i will become blind. two years ago it stopped tearing for whatever reason. the news today is that i am still fine. woot. i have dreams where the retina tears and detaches and i lose vision, one eye at a time. then i wake up and i am pretty glad i can still see.

weird dreams.

i got new contact lenses finally -- with that xmas cheque from santa i was able to pay for my eyes for one more year. thank you, old bearded fellow.

it is nice to have my peripheral vision back..

i had a great time with matt on monday night, cruising locations and looking for shtuff to shoot. i love that kind of thing and it's cool to do this with someone who is as excited about it as i am. yeah i love it.

it occured to me, as i looked out over the calm waters of the juan de fuca (which was out in an unusual low tide with the full moon overhead) that the .. words are failing me .. the tragedy that happened in the indian ocean over the last few days is just unreal; it's hard to fathom, and even tougher to swallow. some islands have not even been visited and searched yet. the death toll continues to rise.

.. $40 million in aide from canada so far .. $35 million from the US .. i am not pointing out these figures to criticize the US's contribution, but rather to put canada's massive contribution in context.

please see julie's blog as it says much of what i would like to say myself, and a lot more: www.perpetualkarma.com -- i am not feeling super articulate about it, however, the conversations i had on monday with julie at qv's are reflected on her site.

feel like you're being watched? yeah. that is the same stone lady as pictured a few months ago .. different angle this time.

i am doing some prep for NYE now, sorting details, arranging a rendezvous at Swartz Bay, looking for a place to sleep after the party, listening to records to figure out my set, polishing off pieces of the new Tiebreaker tune (called "Settle The Score" .. this one is huge!) which myself and Anand wrote on Xmas Eve in a fit of creativity on a night that is typically hard to sleep on anyways.

sorted innit m8 know what i'm sayin!

i went to re-bar today for breakfast with em-dawg and it was really good. last time i was there years ago with brian it was so-so, if not kinda sucky. this time was different; i had never had breakfast there before. mmm.

so my costume for hallowe'en is set. oh yeah this is gonna be cool. and it fits with my nickname, which is great. so if you know my nickname, then this will make sense. if you don't know my nickname, and you're going to be at the same party as me on NYE, then you will soon know my nickname. heh!

arpegio arpegio arpegio arpegio arpegio

Posted by davin at 7:05 PM | Permalink | Comments (7)

Posted by davin at 2:34 PM | Permalink | Comments (5)

that's shannon, someone i used to hang out with 4 or 5 years ago. time flies. she is living in calgary, going to university now and studying business.

nice.

besides hush, i moseyed down to dj mischiff's retro night at the u.c.

last night was dancing to unlikely music and driving to the usual suspects.

sweet!

listening to: michael burns - see me fall [matthew dekay vs. proluctors trousy mix]

it's almost the end of the week.. certainly i have noticed that it is the 24th today.. so merry xmas eve everyone!

it's bizarre.

i don't really have a lot to say.

if someone wants to do something today, i am wide open. lets do something. everyone sounds so busy now tho... spending time with their family. that's cool. i have to say that it's sad that this will be the first xmas without my brother krishen around. :( so it feels incomplete here. i think this would be around the time that we'd be *doing* something together.

at times when it feels like so many people who are so important to me are so far away, i remind myself of all those who are wonderful and still around. there are many. that is no replacement but i am grateful for those people i do share close proximity of living with.

Posted by davin at 1:24 PM | Permalink | Comments (5)

last night was my first episode of good sleep in the last 4 months i would say. vacation. finally it is real. i had a dream that i was driving a viper, but i was in a parkade. there was a gas pedal and clutch, but no brake.

i drove, faster and faster, not really too concerned about being in a parkade or not being able to slow down. dude it was a viper, and i wasn't about to waste it. so i curved around corners, dodged backing out cars, and drove until there was only a concrete wall in front of me. i messed around with the gears but it was pretty obvious i was going to hit this wall. so i put my hands out in front of the car to absorb the impact, and it worked. the car was scratched only slightly but it wasn't a big deal. taking the impact didn't hurt at all in the dream, i was more concerned about the scratch.

how messed up is that?

the dinner last night at mike and steve's was as predicted. unbearably delicious food and lots of stories shared with great friends. many echoed what i had said yesterday on here about it being one of the best things about the winter holidays.

paxton's food was crazy crazy crazy good.

myself and matt got up to some photogroffee-esque activities late in the evening (matt is pictured up there with brother and host mike) and we messed a bunch with his slightly puzzling canon A60. it's only puzzling because i couldn't get the focusing brackets / focusing square dohicky to stay on the screen. sometimes it would, some times it would not.

i didn't get it.

however, we got some cool-ass shots and are plotting to go out with our tripods and capture the hood as we remembered as kids. minus all the people we went to school with. i am verimuch looking forward to that. mind you, i remember it at night more than that day time if it is to be without people, which it is.

tonight myself and a few others are getting together to plot for the photogroffee website and also blogbc. we are jamming on a few different ideas for the sites and i am looking forward to it 'cause i believe they will be fantastic sites and a lot of fun. maybe a tonne of work or maybe not.. i am not certain yet. i want to do a new design for blogbc.com when i get back to my design studio in Vancouver in January. something much more CSS-esque and less table design driven. though table design is invincible and attractive, good CSS design can go a long way and affords some modularity that table design can not compete with, and that's important when working on a collaborative site. okay that isn't totally true. the pacific front recordings website is a collab between me james and justin and it was marvellously simple to work together on. i think what i mean is there is some rad stuff you can do with dynamic sites, div id's, and design.

i want to explore that a bit more. i can see the potential in the coding style and i like it.

i am listening to steve porter's "home grown" EP and i have to say, once again (if i have said it before) that it is fantastic.

other music nerd stuff: matt darey who was once known as "li kwan" released a track about 8 years ago [i think] named "point zero" -- a classic epic trance tune that set the path for darey's production career for at least 4 years to come (before he mysteriously disappeared into a ditch beside some UK hard house club in ibiza) and it just got re-released on darey's new label (Darey Products, haa haa nice one) with yet more epic-ness from an agnelli and nelson remix (which i don't care for so much) and a fantastic treatment from the men of the moment, Leama and Moor.

well, i suspect they are the men of the moment. i went for coffee earlier with braeden and he suggested that Leama might be a woman. to which i thought, you know, Leama is a pretty feminine name. maybe it is a chick. in that case, they'd be couple of the .. century ? uh. very good producers at any rate.

speaking of braeden, hush is open on Saturday (christmas) and is currently distributing a poster that headlines "SICK OF CHRISTMAS?" and has a picture of a Santa holding a crying baby. if you see it, well .. check it out. that is too funny. i'll probably swing by Hush in the evening on xmas with a few of my hausier records and drop a mini-set. see whoever there!

Posted by davin at 6:40 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

schlopping two backpacks and one packed record bag, running to the bus, running to the seabus, running to the skytrain, running to the PCL bus .. drifting on the ferry. taking shots.. got some good ones.

the superferry from vancouver to victoria is a lot more vibratey (that's a word now if it wasn't before :P) on departure than the ferry from tsawwassen to duke point. (vancouver to nanaimo). i think that's because the superferry backs out of the vancouver harbour. oh yeah it's true, this huge 2000 person ferry does back out ........ well it has to because of the way the ferry docks in victoria (also notably backwards). anyhow.

i am madly jonesing for some studio time. myself and charles are going to spend two hours polishing off the Ghosted ambient mix (Obakeh) and it's going to be a piece of a rather massive 4 part Pacific Front Recordings release. number oh oh four.

i hung out last night with emmy, adam, bay, lexi and nick at the Canoe Club. we had some appy's, enjoyed a beverage and the atmosphere and had some pretty damn compelling conversations actually. it is nice for a change to really drill at a few topics for a few hours with intelligent folx.

monday evening i hung out with ria and erik and plotted about NYE. erik is having a cruise, which i think would be fabulous to go to. if i wasn't going to Saltspring i would be there; it sounds like it is going to be a blast.

this is in no particular order.

as soon as i got in on sunday, charles and nathan came by to pick me up from the house in the hood. we went to their place and i checked out the latest bits of music they were working on. charles has finished this mad mad madly cool radiohead remix of kid a, and he also played me a few other bits, including a remix that hrdvsion did. really quite cool. nathan is making some really cool drum and bass lately and he has made some more .. it seems to be a big thing for him, and it really sounds natural for him -- very cool. it's great to be able to go over to their place and walk from Room1 to Room2 and hear the sheer volume of creativity in that place. it is intimidating in the best possible way.

we're a bit festive at the office today. alison picked up eggnog and christmas cake and i invited a couple of visitors .. jason from yea and randy from hemlock came by. though really i should kill all this techno and put on hrdvsion's xmas album.

i need to get it first.

this evening i am headed to mike schmitz's and steve ireland's for xmas dinner. we do this every year and every year it is one of the very best experiences of the winter holidaze. i am looking forward to good friends that i only see every now and then and killer food to boot.

at first when i thought of xmas, i was like . . what would i want if i had a list. well it's time to be honest and finally acknowledge that i want need these things:

• Canon 20D
• High quality microphone
• Logic Audio Pro
• A car

lately i haven't been taking that many pictures of people. part of this is because i have been meeting a lot of new people lately and i don't really want them to think of me as The Camera Guy or The Camera And That Guy so i've been hiding it. really. and that kind of annoys me. i used to not give a crap really, and as a matter of fact when i used to whip out the camera two years to a year ago it was an object of conversation and excitement. "cool camera!" of course they wanted to be shot. now it's just another silver camera with a flip-out screen. i believe i take much better shots now, but the mood of your subjects is thoroughly more important than the equipment in quality of shots, i would say. so i have been returning to the macro shots, the object shots, the landscape shots.

about a year ago, gurton gave me one of bendy little mini-tripods. was that ever handy for night shots, time exposures specifically. i have done much less of those since i lost the tripod at a club earlier this year in manchester (sasha @ the red light) and i miss it. yeah those tripods are only $5 and they are -totally- worth it and then some. it fit in my camera case!

that being said, the photogroffee group is getting together to plot tomorrow evening about a new website (actually a couple of new websites) .. between the bunch of us, we have done quite a few websites and we're really interested in concepts for these websites that will really work in terms of interest, traffic, and sustainability in terms of updating and expansion.

i am starting to take root in vancouver a bit more seriously in the last couple weeks and feel a bit more comfortable about being in two cities. of course, a certain situation being resolved really helps..

yay victoria!

Posted by davin at 2:54 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

hello all who are bound for saltspring, and others so-far tempted;

here is the official DJ lineup for the best night of 2005:

• 9 PM - 11 PM: Wookie
• 11 AM - 1 AM: Freya
• 1 AM - 3 AM: ariz0na
• 3 AM - 5 AM: Josh
• 5 AM - 7 AM: Yoseff

oh yeah! expect maaahsiveness from me. (i can only really speak for myself.) but i think you get the idea. it's NYE and it is time to party! woohoo!!

u know y ..

tickets are 25 bux and you can get them from jimi or josh. this is a costume party too, so if you are inclined in such ways, make it happen! wizzord to the bizzord.

update: josh has just passed on that there will be shuttles from the saltspring ferry terminal (there are three different ferry terminals on saltspring island -- the shuttle will be at the terminal that the ferry from victoria arrives at so don't worry about that) for the 7 PM and 9 PM sailings going directly to the venue. also: it is a black-light extravaganza (a few extra black-light-canons are being brought in) so if you want to make your costume black-light responsive .... it will work well.

personally i will be headed over on the 5 or 7 because i want to enjoy the island a bit around dinner time. dinner on the island, oh yes! wait a minute.. it will be insanely hard to find a place to eat on NYE on saltspring island, wont it? suggestions, anyone? help! :)

it looks like there are permanent new night busses from downtown (georgia and granville) to my place (keith & lonsdale) .. the first bus from downtown is at 2:09 AM, another at 2:39 AM, and the last at 3:09 AM. that makes living in North Vancouver waaay more barable on a weekend. the 2:39 AM got me home by 3 AM. not bad considering the fare is $2 (i have a transit pass so it's nothing) as opposed to taking a $26 suicide cab trip (they drive really fast at that hour so they can speedily pick up more people downtown) which is only about 5-10 mins faster. hooray translink has done something right. the next thing they can do right is make a skytrain route from north vancouver to victoria. uhh yeah. i can dream, right? :o

that's all for now. time to make the new MOAB (mother of all breakfasts.)

Posted by davin at 1:19 PM | Permalink | Comments (7)

oh yes, the lonsdale q. symbol of going home from somewhere probably more fun (ie: anywhere other than north vancouver).

i think i forgot my gloves at julian's housewarming last saturday.

oops.

i could use those tonight, they keep my hands warm.

um.

so i am burning a bunch of promo CD's for tonight and testing out one of them .. is not working on my stereo, is working on my CDJ100-S, hummm.... what could be wrong? anyhow i hope it isn't buggy CDr's.

*fingers crossed*

i am hungry, don't want to cook, i am hungry, don't want to cook (repeat times a hundred).

i am headed back to victoria on sunday, mid-day. it's gotten to the point now where if i go to victoria, i am missing something in vancouver, and if i stay in vancouver, i am missing something in victoria. so there. i am officially divided. it's actually good .. well wait, it's bad too, but lets call it badgood. or goodbad.

as you might know, i like keeping busy and getting things done. it would seem i am able to do this in both cities now. rad! bad = feeling like i am missing something. oh yeah i am. oh well, can't have it all...

so lets have it, what are your NYE plans? and if you are going to Something on Saltspring, do recall that it is a costume party. that being said, what is your costume?

i am going as earl grey tea.

ta ta!

Posted by davin at 9:13 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

oh yeah. the doggie, the modular eggman, and the rock. but i did meet some new friends tonight at the park royal executive suites xmas party. that was cool. mix cd's for all!

me and jay just grabbed a coffee and shot down at the quay. we have plotted for the new year and have a few exciting prospects for shooting more on the north shore.. rad-ass! he just got a canon digital rebel. the techno-envy oozes from me (obviously).. a digital SLR is in the cards for me .. just not any time soon ..

Posted by davin at 10:50 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

..to look at my bed in total and complete disdain..

Posted by davin at 12:54 AM | Permalink | Comments (13)

have a listen to UFO.

i'm cruising around in a flying saucer!

i'm lifting space objects with my tractor beam!

ahh yes, all in a days work. i am so cool.

Posted by davin at 10:07 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

after three months of plotting, scheming and dreaming we have, start to finish, reinvented the image of Pacific Front Recordings in a collaborative effort with James Roy of Linear Design. this is huge -- our logo is new, our type treatment is new, our website is new.

new sections, new features, and i really feel that it deservedly puts us on the playing field that we need to be on considering the calibre of music production quality that we are into.

the other thing i want to say about this website is that it features a new message board, so please sign up and chatter! we want this to be interactive and community based as we believe in the strength of a healthy music community.

please let me know if anything does not work or if you spot a typo!!

yay!

Posted by davin at 8:41 PM | Permalink | Comments (6)

i went to the massive change exhibit today. it is showing until spring 2005 at the Vancouver Art Gallery downtown before it goes to Toronto and then Chicago. it's really compelling and one of those really positive things that just sneaks up on you. one of the main questions it asks is "now that we can do anything, what will we do?"

one thing i recommend is to give yourself time, enough time, which means around 4 hours at least. myself, mike and kristen zoomed through in 4 hours but there were bits that we all missed. i will likely go again in the new year to absorb more..

Posted by davin at 7:16 PM | Permalink | Comments (8)

hiya, so this is a lil update to say that we're now concentrating our efforts on www.blogbc.com now instead of blogvictoria.com. blogbc will feature links categorized by community (wouldn't it be cool to read blogs from Atlin or Kitimat or Kispiox??!) so it will be more inclusive ergo more interesting.

that combined with the fact that jodie mysteriously doesn't maintain the victoria blogroll anymore and has been irresponsive to any of my messages pretty much means we're moving on to bigger and better! ;)

Posted by davin at 3:54 PM | Permalink | Comments (4)

sometimes i think in order to write something, i just have to sit down and do it. no particular thought comes to me as to what i am going to write about -- usually, in fact, in these times, there are plenty of thoughts, just none of which i want to share on the blog. which is fine, i have people to talk to about that. if i didn't have people to talk to, then ironically i'd probably be fine writing about whatever i wanted on here since i would have no one to tells the secrets of, or embarass, or whatever.

that being said, i am really looking forward to the next few days. dinner with jaime tonight, lunch with john and thor tomorrow, movie with natalie in the evening, then meeting up with quentin and thor for coffee, then going to see jason and the other dude from influenza play at a club on hastings, then a visit from the emily on saturday, housewarming party at julian's on saturday night, 'massive change' exhibit on sunday with mike and kristen, and that's as far as the weekend goes. my evening on sunday is open, but i think i'll probably want to hang out at home as i am going out monday night to go see nerd MC somewhere downtown. that's plenty. for someone like me who likes to be on the go go go, this is good, this is the way i want it.

next week is starting to take shape as well.. i am also trying to find a way to be in victoria for more than a few days at a time during late december as a lot of my friends will be coming back for the 'holidays'.

last night i got a fair bit of work done on an ambient version of Ghosted. Charles picked a name to release it under -- "Obakeh" which means Ghost in japanese. cool beans. i listened to it last nite on anand's system and am going to make some adjustments to it later this evening. filtering is needed and a slight bit of resequencing.

the picture at the top is me, yeah, i have grey hair! just kidding. i photoshopped the shadows a bit and it turned out like that. this is one of a few hundred that adrian took on the weekend at the pacific front recordings photoshoot. it was neat being shot instead of doing the shooting. i had some idea of how i wanted to appear but my goofiness shined through and so most are of me making some face. that is fine, as adrian says, that is who i am. and it's true, we were having a great time at the photoshoot, as is true as any time we spend time together. i think that says a lot.

the new PFR (v2) site is coming along -- i have been working on it every day for the last bit now and things are coming together. still a lot left to do but i know what needs doing, how to do it so it is just a question of time now. i can't wait...

"We don't like their sound, and guitar music is on the way out."

- Decca Records, rejecting a demo from a band named the Beatles, 1962.

Posted by davin at 2:11 PM | Permalink | Comments (5)

Hard to believe this track is around 4 years old now. I remember hearing it for the first time when Justin (Formulate) played a set at a Willis Point fire hall party. It thumped big time so I asked to do a remix when the time came. Listening to it now I hear a lot of things I would do differently but it's a pretty good snapshot of where we were around that time. Speaking of snapshots, I was working in North Vancouver when I took this photo. It was around 2005 and I was walking up the Capilano River, looking for the dam. I never made it to the dam, and looking at Google Earth recently revealed that it would have taken a very long time for me to get there. I did get to this bridge, though..

1. Formulate - Rising Edge (Original mix)
2. Formulate - Rising Edge (AFK remix)

Listen and Buy (beatport.com)

Posted by davin at 4:47 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

AM Ale!

remember that? heheh. good morning 'n stuff.

morning thought: i'd like to see dido and sarah mclachlan mud wrestle. i am sure sarah would be down.

Posted by davin at 6:48 AM | Permalink | Comments (5)

stuff to look at:

• salad fingers 5 - excellent mouthwords.
• bananafingers - spoofin' the silly.
• bush and blair at the gay bar - haha. clever.
• canada from a bimbo and a himbo's point of view - oh yeah fox news here we go. upholding their fine reputation as a news authority. and then some cnn. can you believe that wolf tried to save tucker? but there is no saving tucker. haha.. wolf why did you degrade your show by inviting tucker on? too bad.. what do you expect.

Posted by davin at 12:18 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

friday night: dinner party at jacob and jessicas, then radio show where i did a guest mix of my own trax and remixes. extra special and fun to be back at the station, almost like i never left. except nick forgot his nerd cards. nick!!

saturday: a little bit of work, then coffee with james roy @ demitasse, then off to ogden point to meet justin, charles, adrian and neil for the Pacific Front Recordings photoshoot. that was a blast. after that i met emily at QV's for coffee, went home, had dinner, then went to jasons for a party where i met a bunch of cool people. then to vertigo for reindeer games, where kevin shiu, john morgan and yoseff were DJing. after that i actually went to an afterparty at martin's (yah i never go to afterparties) and then met up with my pal amalia and hung out til the wee hours of sunday morning. great conversations. many banana fingers references.

sunday day when i woke up, i went for a drive with richard and we listened to tunes. okay i lie, we listened to the 'miniset' that i made for friday and i discovered i needed to tweak the mix quite a bit before it does anything else. well it isn't going to do anything else because i am making a newer bigger version for an exclusive proton radio release. uh huh. then after the drive, me and richard met up with justin who thought we were listening to uk hard house but i will continue to swear up and down that it was an underworld remix of depeche mode's 'barrel of a gun.' oh yeah. more good conversations, this time, global shuffle parameter control was the indicator. haha..

pretty packed weekend. my victoria lifestyle is still a lot different than my vancouver lifestyle. hopefully vancouver can catch up.. mad mad mad good times were mos def had.

Posted by davin at 9:41 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

great weekend, i will post pix and stories tomorrow. in the mean time..

Posted by davin at 11:28 PM | Permalink | Comments (6)

i didn't make it anywhere tonight. that's fine. i talked to tim on the phone for 2 hours. he is in saskatchewan and he's figuring out how to make tunes. awesome.

i am catching the 11 AM ferry to victoria and making an appearance on resonance tomorrow nite with a rather special mix that you'll only be able to hear if you tune in.

tired, going to sleep soon.. time to charge the batteries .. metaphorically and not.

bye!

Posted by davin at 10:19 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

tomorrow night is a vancouver bloggers meet up which i am on the fence about whether or not to go. yes, the meetup is downtown somewhere. i forget where, but what i am definitely going to see is the jazz trio down at mo'butta at 8:30. join me if you like. also downtown.

you know, this red and white thing, and all the amber from the city lights which has made itself so apparent on the blog is a long ways from the spooky midnight-blue shots of victoria along with the old cool-blue layout.

that being said, this design is neat, but i don't think it's here to stay. my original idea in the redesign was to go cool and dark. and i think i will.. but there are so many other things to do right now. such as homework. yes. homework.

other things not here to stay: me, here in north vancouver. i don't like having to choose between having a productive night, or going out to town for a bit. and i think, yah, that's fine, people can come visit me. but that really does not happen.

and i am not a hermit by nature.

yes, change is in the cards for me; i am thinking west end or just plain downtown. no difference in commute time, perhaps even faster. the one cool thing about being where i am is my brother is close by. and that is worth a bunch to me, but it'll be simple enough for me to visit him anyhow. four more months. i don't really want to move again but i really can't see myself staying here and continuing like this..

and in the mean time .. i'll continue to crave the fresh air and try to avoid listening to dido too much.. she's so bloody emotional and drops it all into a tune like it ain't no thing.

"I know you think that I shouldn't still love you,
Or tell you that.
But if I didn't say it, well I'd still have felt it
where's the sense in that?

And when we meet
Which I'm sure we will
All that was there
Will be there still
I'll let it pass
And hold my tongue
And you will think
That I've moved on.... "

by the way david, i am totally interested in doing a re-interpretation of your poem in lyric form. open source lyrics, how cool is that? soooo freakin' cool.

Posted by davin at 11:36 PM | Permalink | Comments (7)