Tom Hanks and Early Mornings

Well here I am up late again, or early depending on how you see it. I made the mistaken of drinking a whack load of coffee during my late night class and now I am wide awake. I won’t say it hasn’t been a productive evening. I got most of my paper on corporatism in sub-genres of indie music done, with the bones of the rest laid out. I’ve watched two movies. The first is Captain America and the second is Saving Private Ryan. Hence said title. I would listen to some music but it’s almost 4 in the fucking morning the rest of my house is still asleep. Which then begs the question, Why the fuck am I still up? I could be off dreaming of wonderful things, but no I’m up aimlessly rambling on to the Internet. Great life eh. On a side note now is a great time to text people who live back east like Toronto or Montreal, as they like normal people are just waking up.

So help me if you out there in the interwebs even mention the word homework I’m going to break something, that or try to punch you through there Internet. I’ve done all the readings for my History 241 and History 261, and I really don’t want to work on my paper any more. Again here is sit aimlessly typing. In any case I have a feeling that my class will be cancelled tomorrow as it has for the past 2 weeks, Why you may ask. Its because Occupy Vancouver is literally blocking the profs parking garage, making it impossible for her to teach the class. Now don’t get me wrong I’m all down for the protest, but I have to pay for these classes folks. I’m not made of money, for gods sake I have enough trouble keeping Montgomery on the road; let alone spend money on a class I can’t attend. You guys at Occupy might be the 99% but I’m poor.

Everything is a Remix

So I know I’m blogging a lot today, (but as you are aware from No I’m not here waiting on anyone, especially not Jessica) I have a lot of time to kill, I’m slowly counting down the hours till class and I’m down to 3 hours to go.

I’ve been following this series called Everything is a Remix.  It’s a series that looks at the Copying Transforming and Combining of previous material to form something new. Otherwise known as remixing. Everything is a Remix is made by a Kirby Ferguson, a New York-based filmmaker.The first three episodes of the series have been published and part four should be released in late November. If you wanna follow the series, you can by email, Twitter, Facebook or Vimeo.

Part 1 The Song that Remains the Same

Part 2 Remix Inc.

Part 3 Elements of Creativity

On the photo front. I forgot my laptop power cord so I wont be uploading photos anytime soon, as I need to save my laptop battery. for my eventual English class, but I promise tomorrow I will get those photos up. I ran into a guy at U house yesterday and we had a pleasant conversation about taking photo 100, he strongly suggested it, but warned that the Prof is a hard worker and its mostly about photoshop. Which is cool as photoshop is mostly what I want to learn. If you wanna see some of my photos you can find them on my Google +.

In other HUGE news 100.5  The Peak announced the top 5 of The Peak Performance Project. 5th goes to Acres Of Lions winning 5000 dollars, 4th goes to Hilary Grist  winning 10,000 dollars. The top 3 in no particular order are The Boom Booms, Current Swell, and The Matinee. Well its alphabetical order, but anyway. The artists are judged on the scale 30% based on their live performance, 20% percent based on public voting. The other 50% is based on other challenges like , writing a song for Vancouver 125.

As I’m just mindlessly rambling on here I realize I haven’t shamelessly plugged Rovers or Scouting. If you are a Rover in BC and you wanna get more involved you can join RoversBC, read OnceARover.ca, come out to the local roundtables or attend a moot. Now as for the Spring moot, a little birdie told me that it is tentatively being held on the Easter weekend of 2012 at Camp Mclean.

No I’m not here waiting on anyone, especially not Jessica

OK so on Monday’s and Wednesdays I have class at 7pm, yet here I am sitting in the offices of CIVL bored. You maybe asking “Brad, Fuck are you doing there 5 hours before your class?”. Well I offered to help someone with some production work this morning. No big deal or so I thought, the time that I was suppose to meet Chuck was 9am. As punctual person I arrive at 8:50ish. By 9:30 I know he’s not coming. AT CIVL studio time is as good as gold, so I don’t waste it.  I prerecord the show for next week. Then at 11am on the dot, Chuck roll in like nothing’s happened. So not wanting to cause a fight i just brush it off, its not like I’ve been in the studio waiting for like 2 hours or anything. We sit do record the PSA, Chuck does one take and then leaves.  I’m just sitting there dumbstruck as now I have to edit and produce this PSA by myself, Which took me till about 1pm. So what was a hour job with the two of us took me the better part of 4 hours.

If your wanting a preview of what next weeks show playlist I can tell you it involves some Florence and the Machine, Two Door Cinema Club, and some classic Radiohead. There is other musical gold on the show as well but the only way your going to find out is if you tune into Haters Gonna Hate, every Tuesday from 11am-12pm on 101.7 CIVL FM or at WWW.CIVL.CA.

Song of the day so far has to be Happy New Year by We Are The City. If you have no idea who We Are The City is, I don’t blame you…Well unless you live in Vancouver and you listen to 100.5 The Peak. Then your on the hook for not knowing.  We are  the city was the winner of the first ever Peak Performance Project, a music competition were 20 local bands compete for 100,500 dollars to forward their music career. Today at 3:15 James Sutton will announce the final 5,  so stay tuned.  For a list of all the artists you can visit ThePeak.FM.  If you have any comments or questions you can email me Brad@civl.ca or hit me up on twitter @Rovingscout

2 am Roll Call

So I’m sitting here, its two in the morning and I can’t sleep. So what is that one does at 2am you ask? Well I’m currently reading The Unknown American Revolution: The Unruly Birth of Democracy and the Struggle to Create America by Gary Nash. Its a long title for a book that tells the story of the American revolution through the eyes of  the “common” American or at that time colonist. Its rather boring but at the same time oddly interesting, well as interesting a text book can be. Nash tries to show how the common colonist felt about the events leading up to the American Revolution of 1776, but his sources seem to be lacking a fair bit. I am also rocking out to some Mother Mother,  or as loud as one can at 2am. Its Chasing It Down to be exact. Its just one of those songs that I draw parallels to in my life (see Dead Americans and Live Women). Chasing it Down is about trying to pin down one’s sense of self in a fast-moving world. Don’t pretend you know what I mean.   Other songs in this category are Changing and All I’ve Ever Wanted by Airborne Toxic Event as well as Someone Like You by Adele.  A lot of the songs I enjoy end up making my radio show on CIVL Radio, called Haters Gonna Hate and every week I post the playlist. Oh by the way  this your 2AM Roll Call

Dead Americans and Live Women

As I sit in my American History class, I am confused, not only by my course work but by my life in general. The course work I can deal with as it is “Checks and Balances” Nation and State Laws, If you don’t know what that means, its OK. My life on the other hand is a wee bit more confusing. If I put aside the fact that I’m trying to balance being a Rover, troop leader, university student, meanwhile trying to keep enough money in the bank to keep the whole thing a float. It leaves the women in  my life. I’m not blaming them for my problems but it would help if they were less confusing. Now some of you out there my be wondering why a Whore-ible person would care about the women in his life. I hate to be cliché but that’s like judging a book by its cover. I have feelings too, I not made of stone people. Enough of my problems though.

Now I have been on several photo walks around the University of the Fraser Valley, and I am beginning to feel as if I have photographed all that I can. I know this to be untrue, but it just a feeling. For a reference, over the past week I have taken over 1300 hundred photo’s. Given I have deleted most of them, you can see the photo’s I have kept on my Google +. Now some people keep telling me I should be using Flickr. So I decided to give it a shot yesterday and I signed up for Flickr. I immediately began uploading my photos, but not even through the first album an message popped up saying ” You’ve exceeded you 300mb monthly upload limit”. Lets just say that ended the debate rather quickly. The one style of photography that I have seemed to fallen in love with is panoramic photography. For you out there who don’t know what panoramic photography is, you can see examples of it on my Google +. I love the way it can change how we see the world with use of simple computer software. My goal for down the road is to get three of the Go Pro Hero cameras, and mount them on Montgomery’s dashboard, facing at different angles. Then drive for an hour or so down a country road. Next take the footage from all three cameras; break them down to their individual frames and stitch them together to form a panorama. After doing this, put all the frames back together to form a film, where the viewpoint is one which we don’t see every day. I have just finished a new set of panoramas and will either be uploading the later today or tomorrow morning. Again if you have any questions, comments, or concerns you can email me Brad@civl.ca or hit me up on twitter @Rovingscout

The First Post Dun Dun Dah

So I don’t really know why I started this…. well that’s a lie I kinda wanted a way to share my life more than just the main stream social networks like Facebook, Twitter, and Google +.  If it turns out nobody reads this that’s OK cause its the principle of the thing.

So as it is right now I’m sitting in the offices of CIVL Radio, updating this as well as imputing CD’s into our music library, which is how I get most of the music on my computer as well. I kinda don’t want to go to class, not because the lecture is boring but because of the feeling of being trapped in a room for a set amount of time really rather bugs me. However I do really enjoy walking down the halls of C building, where CIVL Offices are, because it is the art building, and the art changes Evey week and I enjoy looking at the art of upcoming artists.

This weekend was the first BC Rover moot in a long long time, and it went really well. A lot was accomplished including the first Rovers to be inducted into the Knights of Ish. I would tell you more but then I’d have to kill you.  That kinda thing you know. Mark Burge and I were kinda the unofficial photographers this weekend as we were the ones with the fancy cameras, his being a Cannon and mine is Nikon. Its name is Todd, but I’ll tell you more about that in a bit. If you wanna see photos from this weekend you can find them on my Google+ or on Mark’s Flickr.  Mark also made this awesome video called What’s a Rover. He had me going around the camp asking people the simple question of Whats a Rover?

Back to my camera’s name being Todd,  If you don’t know me well a lot of my material possessions are named.  I don’t know why I feel the need to personify my things but I do.  Along with Todd, I have my toque, which is name Bernice. Now if you have no idea which toque I’m talking about it the bright orange with blue pompom one I where all the time. If  I have to explain it past this you should probably crawl out form under that rock you’ve been living under. My brown baseball cap, that I wear when it’s not suitable weather for Bernice,  is name Bernard, and my 9 Honda Civic Hatchback is named Montgomery. Now I want you to reread the word Montgomery but this time with a old time British accent, and that’s how you pronounce Montgomery.

So now this is the point of the blog where when I’m writing  and I keep scrolling back up to the top and reading and rereading what I’ve written to see if it will inspire me to write more, but it’s not so I think I’m going to end it here for now. If you have any comments or concerns you can email me at Brad@civl.ca, or hit me up on twitter @Rovingscout.