Memories of the Future – Volume 1 by Wil Wheaton

My rating: 5 of 5 stars
A ridiculously entertaining read. This is made all the better if you subscribe to the podcast and listen to Wil enthusiastically read from the book. It makes the whole experience that much better. Reading him put down his own character (let’s face it, Wesley Crusher wasn’t the easiest character on ST:TNG to love) time after time attests to the fact that there is no person on earth better fit to write this book. Good on ya, Whil Wheaton, good on ya.

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Purchase the book here.
Subscribe to the Memories of the Futurecast podcast here.

How many friends do you know who have started a blog? Of those friends how many of them actively update them? Chances are those blogs are a lot like this one, with sporadic monthly updates, most of them saying “I PROMISE TO UPDATE MORE FROM NOW ON”, but that post is from 3 months ago and now you’re left to ponder if it’s even worth checking that blog anymore.

I’m not going to pretend like this post is any different. I do have at least one cool thing to talk about in the near future, like the awesome home network/media center I just picked up and put together this past weekend which I promise will constitute a real blog post within the next few weeks. Let’s face it, I’m blogging this really quick post from work, but work is not where I should be blogging from, in fact I feel guilty blogging this right now (my excuse is that I’m waiting for a test model to alarm so I can capture a few data points), and when I’m home I usually don’t spend much time on the computer, so realistically, no, don’t expect much more in the way of frequency of updates, except when I have something to cool to blog about or I feel like talking about the Oilers.

There’s only 12 days until the start of the Oilers regular season, and their training camp roster still sits at 42 players. With a maximum allowed roster of 23 players come opening day, there remains 19 more cuts to make. Some of these are easy, such as Dean Arsene, Ryan O’Marra, Taylor Chorney, etc. Some however will not be so easy. Jordan Eberle has seemingly played well enough to merit a further look much as Sam Gagner and Andrew Cogliano did at training camp in 2007. Not to mention the Brule/Pouliot debate for the 4th line centre position. And then the grand daddy of all: What to do with Robert Nilsson?
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This edition of Bergtrax 4000 was a lot easier to put together than the last. Again, this is thanks to eMusic and all of the wonderful indie music with which I’m now filling my iTunes library. 8 of the 9 songs featured here were purchased (as part of full abums) from eMusic.

As much as I’m in love with CBC Radio 3, last month I started to feel that my musical mind might be becoming a bit too closed. That’s not to say that I am going to completely forget or even stop listening to Canadian music for any period of time. No no, I just felt like I needed to expand a little bit and maybe find a few international artists (American or otherwise) to broaden my musical horizons.

I decided to post a request for musical suggestions on Twitter:

To which I got exactly zero replies. Go Twitter! Luckily I found a few on my own, but in an unlikely place. A movie blog who’s RSS feed I subscribe to in Google Reader.

Although I think I’d heard of them prior to this, I was watching the trailer for New York, I Love You and fell in love with the song in the trailer. I tried using Shazam on my Android but it couldn’t recognize it with all the talking over top of the music. Luckily the site I watched the trailer at, FirstShowing.net, has great commenters who had already mentioned what the track was. I immediately added it to my Save For Later list on eMusic and downloaded it once I was at home.

This is also how I discovered Zooey Deschanel’s band She & Him. FirstShowing.net put up a music video that Zooey and Joseph Gordon-Levitt made for the song I’m featuring in the playlist. The two actors are currently starring in the indie film (500) Days of Summer. I’ve been meaning to go see this while it’s in Edmonton but it doesn’t look like I’ll make it. Guess I’ll have to wait for the DVD.

If you’ve got any bands you think I’d be down with please leave me some links in the comments. I’m fairly open to suggestions.

Ok, here’s the playlist:

1. Phoenix – 1901 (Versailles, France) #
2. She & Him – Why Do You Let Me Stay Here? (Portland, OR) #
3. The Rural Alberta Advantage – Don’t Haunt This Place (Toronto, ON) #
4. Glen Hansard & Markéta Irglová – When Your Mind’s Made Up (Dublin, IR & Valašské Meziříčí, CZ) #
5. Reverie Sound Revue – An Anniversary Away (Calgary, AB) #
6. Paper Moon – Say It’s All Over (Winnipeg, MB) #
7. The Most Serene Republic – Heavens To Purgatory (Milton, ON) #
8. Tegan and Sara – Call It Off (Vancouver, BC/Montreal, QC) #
9. Metric – Gimme Sympathy (Toronto, ON) #

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So it’s been one full week since I started Project 158 and so far things are going well. I can already tell that if I can keep this up I’ll learn to better master both of my cameras. In fact today I was looking at some 35mm and 120mm film specialty cameras at Urban Outfitters. One was a fisheye lens camera and although it would be awesome to and hipster-like to have a film camera again, I just can’t see myself being able to use it for this project. I’d much rather upgrade to a digital camera that I can add lenses to (or even make some day projects to build my own which is even more unlikely) than buy a film camera that I have to get developed and scanned within the day the picture’s taken.

Here’s week one of Project 158 in Pictures (click to embiggen):

Project 158 - Taking a photo a day from July 27, 2009 to December 31, 2009

Project 365 is basically a challenge to take at least one photograph every day for an entire year. I believe the idea came from photojojo.com. I had been wrestling with this idea but never felt I would be able to keep up with it. I decided yesterday that I’m going to attempt it but I will call it Project 158 (number of days from July 27 to December 31), and then if all goes well I will start over in the new year with a Project 365. You can follow my progress on flickr, and every month or so I will update on the blog how my progress is going. You’ll also be able to see each picture in my Lifestream, as well as on my Facebook news feed (as I have Facebook notified of my flickr uploads) as they are uploaded.

I also expect this to be a mix of pictures taken with my HTC Magic cellphone and my Canon Powershot S3 IS, so the quality from picture to picture will change. The majority will most likely be from my cellphone. Wish me luck.

Location: Kelowna, BC
Genre: Indie / Pop / Rock
Website: treelinesmusic.com
Links:

I’m having a love affair with this band. If you’ve checked out the new Bergtrax 4000 mixtape I posted yesterday Vol 04: You’re The Man Now, Dog you’ll notice that this band got the coveted #1 spot. This player below is from their page on bandcamp (which I mentioned in my Indie Artists: Beginner’s Guide to the Internet tutorial) where you can download this entire album for a very fair price of a minimum of 8USD (you can offer to pay more if you’d like). Please enjoy the fruits of their labour.

Pressing play will play the entire album through.