Davin Greenwell

I found this neat place on Hornby Island during Labour Day weekend last year. It occurred to me just a moment ago that we had gone last year and I had not posted many photos. Part of the reason was that I didn’t take very many photos because we were there only briefly, and it was raining hard the whole time we were there. Our original plans for camping were ditched in favour of a B&B – we got in due to a last minute cancellation because of the monsoon-like rain.
So this year we will be going on Saturday until Tuesday for the semi-long weekend. I say semi because we took time off work on the non-holiday to extend the weekend until Tuesday, which is a stat holiday for Canada day.
Some things:

• You can now search this site – look in the upper right and you’ll see a Search Box
• I am working with Justin (Formulate) on a special 2 hour mix for Pacific Front Sessions – it’s the show’s 3rd year anniversary
• Our guest on Pacific Front Sessions for July will be Fractal from Tide Pool
• Snapshot is in the works – I just spoke to Jason at Sunset Collaborations and it looks like late July will be the date
• We’re overdue for a photogroffee
• Bergamot Studios (the business) is rolling along nicely with business set up – we have a logo, an invoice, and the rest of the print collateral is to follow along with a spiffy new website in the fall
• Bergamot (the song) is stubbornly resisting the finishing touches, but my remix of the collaborative track with Formulate and Dustin H is done – only one more to go!
• Death to Sexy sent new parts for the remix that I will be doing of them – I’ll be sending them Bergamot for a remix treatment from them as well
• You can now follow me on whoisi.com – an interesting contact-based multi-feed aggregator
• I am still not on twitter – this post alone probably would have been at least 15 twitter micro-blogs
• I am registered for two classes at Camosun this fall – these classes will be counting towards my BBA
• I installed wordpress on anandgreenwell.com and neilgreenwell.com last night – it took about 10 minutes to do through Godaddy’s admin interface – much easier installation than Moveable Type
• I still love Movable Type but I really enjoy looking at different online publishing tools and seeing what works well and what could stand to be improved

ignore for a moment, that there is a man in the upper right quadrant of this photo. and then consider the notion:
every working person in the world is in this photo, and all the money in the world is also in this photo.
where are they? where is it?
with the chains, the hydraulics, the supports and most of all, the infrastructure to hold it all up is the role of working people in this world. the money flows over top, over all the work we do to support it, and rides smoothly to where-ever its true destination is. without it, of course there would be no need for the ramp. so in a sense it justifies those below it. sometimes a bit falls through the grates. mostly, though, the relationship between working people and money is pretty clear.
this isn’t based on anything. it’s not scientific, or researched, or pointed at anyone or any group – it’s just a feeling of living and working in an expensive part of the country, in a model of society that does not financially favour the young. if you’ve already got money – great news – you can get more. if you don’t have money, please punch in – you’ve missed the boat.

Hey – this is a post I’ve been putting off for a week and a half. I have meant to post my 2 hour Pacific Front Sessions mix for May but I haven’t been able to get ahold of the version with voiceovers yet – hopefully soon as I’ve got the mix post ready to go along with mix art etc.
In other news .. Have you heard about Bill C-61? Do you know what it is? If not – see Michael Geist’s C-61 breakdown. If you want to do something about it, write to your MP, write to Jim Prentice – you can see a sample letter here:
www.copyrightforcanadians.ca
This will also show you who you need to contact for your area of the country as well as the ability to email the letter. They encourage you to also print off the letter and send it to Ottawa, free of charge, which I will be doing.
Make sure you have a good look at the sample letter and understand everything it is saying. I didn’t agree with some of the things in it, such as alternatively supporting the ISP levy for P2P sharing, as I have previously mentioned.
You might be thinking that this all sounds too complicated and it doesn’t really matter, but I’d urge you to think a bit more about the subject despite that. Yes, it is complicated. The internet is a complex environment that allows you to do many things in many different ways. That is part of why we enjoy it so much. That also allows for many interpretations of how it should be used, as is so with our computers and devices that we connect to them.
Basically this bill will make it illegal for you to back up your DRM protected DVDs or CDs, or transfer one of your DVDs or copy protected CDs to your iPod. It will also make the software that allows you to do this illegal. There are monetary penalties for violations.
You might be wondering what the deal is with the CDr levy that we’ve been paying $10 million into for the last several years – the levy which was planned to compensate artists for the music that Canadians download. Does this new bill make the CDr levy illegal or out of date? It is a bit unclear how that interrelates. Our government has vilified us for years with the CDr levy, while simultaneously charging for it and suggesting (in the process) that it is even fine to download copyrighted music since they’re collecting a levy on the assumed behavior. The messaging is extremely conflicted. What is our government trying tell us?
Update: The Times Colonist has written an editorial (who is the editor?) on C-61 called “Made in America,” which explains how American private interests (lobbyists) have been using our conservative government to fulfill their agenda of DRM enforcement. Link by way of Michael Geist.

A week and a half ago we went for a photogroffee/hike in East Sooke Park. We parked at Pike Road’s parking lot and then went straight for the view point on the ocean. It was spectacular. The trails ended up being somewhat treacherous as we headed east along the coast so we cut in towards the old copper mines before climbing partially over a mountain on the way back to the parking lot.
Cool stuff:

• You can see more photos from the same walk here – penguin graphic
• Bergamot Studios development continues.
• VEMF continues to roll ahead with planning and marketing for August 2nd and 3rd. Demo applications for artists are pouring in and the application will continue to be open until June 8th.
• My good friend Justin (you may know him from his Shiloh project) has started up a music making business called moreh and zuhr – composition and production with a colleague named Zuhr and they’re already off to the races. They’re represented by Four Bars Entertainment, who are responsible for the music in games such as World of Warcraft, Guitar Hero III, Gears of War, Lord of the Rings, Shrek the Third, The Da Vinci Code, etc. This is a huge advance and I’m very excited for them.

Look below for sixteen more photos from the photogroffee session.

Continue reading “photogroffee: east sooke park”

There are a number of things going on right now. I guess I better make a list:

• The photo above is of one of our African Zebra Cichlids. Yes, those are eyes inside its mouth. There are fish swimming around in there – it’s a mouth brooder.
• The Victoria Electronic Music Festival is happening on August 2nd and 3rd. I am now the Creative Director of the festival and a big chunk of the responsibility is in organization and things that have nothing to do with Creative Direction. So I updated the website last night here – www.vemf.ca. The Artist Application form is open until June 8th – we pushed it back a week to give more folks an opportunity to apply, so please do so if you’re intending on playing this year. We also have the volunteer application form up for those who want to apply to join the team that puts on the event – please have a look if you are so inclined!
• The GDC Rock Awards are on Saturday and I am excited to be going to the gala event. Should be a blast to hang out with a ton of designers for a fine dinner and recognition of great design.
• Google has started showing products inline on certain people’s google accounts when they do searches. What does this mean? Well for me, it means that AFK is showing up in searches in a more meaningful way. Have a look at AFK and Dustin H here, and AFK at Juno Download. That means that I can provide more meaningful links to buy my music now, instead of deeplinks into a Beatport flash-based store. This also means that Beatport has some work to do, as compatible sites start to have their products indexed by google. This has everything to do with the principles of Data Portability and I love seeing stuff like this roll out. If you snooze on stuff like this, and you have a big store, you will ultimately lose out as this movement continues to grow and gains momentum. Sure everyone surfs for music at Beatport right now, but that may change soon enough in the future as standards for music clips and music stores on the web begin to emerge, and multi-music store browsers emerge to gain popularity. I have many more thoughts on this subject, but they’ll have to wait.
• My appearance on Proton Radio today has been postponed until Thursday of next week – May 29th at noon PST, or 3 PM EST.
• The Sunset Room is having an anniversary party on Saturday the 24th and I’ll be DJing at the stroke of midnight. Hope to see you there!
• My AFK remix of John Morgan and Kevin Shiu is coming out on Powerplant Music soon. Both the original mix and my remix will be in my mix next week on Proton Radio, so have a listen to that show if you want a sneak preview.
• You can now use gravatars on my site – this means you can automatically have a photo appear beside your comment each time you leave a comment. Gravatars work on many sites and the way it works is you associate an image with a verified email address, which Gravatar then uses to identify you in blog commenting areas. If you have a blog and its powered by Movable Type or WordPress, you can use this on your own site as well. Installation of the plugin is dead simple and I was done in about 5 minutes.
• I turn 30 on Friday
• Matt Darey has been spinning Seismic – the track I wrote with Dustin H. He appears to like the Shiloh remix. Neat to see someone who has been so influential to me (partly via Lost Tribe) return the favor around a decade later.

Okay, I really have to go now. Ciao!