Head Tale - Yet Another Library Student's Blog About Me
AddThis Social Bookmark Button

Search
This Month
February 2010
Sun Mon Tue Wed Thu Fri Sat
1 2 3 4 5 6
7 8 9 10 11 12 13
14 15 16 17 18 19 20
21 22 23 24 25 26 27
28
View Article  Saturday Snap - Archival Footage of "Sask Sampler Book Archive Launch"
I recently bought a gizmo to convert old VHS tapes and other analog signals to a digital format.  As I was getting it set-up for the first time, I picked a couple clips I had from around ten years ago - one where I'm featured fairly prominently and one where you get to see my backside!  

Here's one from when I worked for the Saskatchewan Publishers Group circa 2000.  Two interesting things to note - even back then, I was talking about the information economy and the role of books in it.  And the place where we held the launch?  The Dunlop Art Gallery at the Regina Public Library!  (Oh, and Shea makes a cameo as does one of the best hairdos of all time!) 

And here's a clip from a press conference held by the Amnesty International G8 Observer Team during the G8 Summit which was held in Kananaskis Alberta in 2002.  My only appearance is a brief shot of me with my back to the camera standing between two women, one in a white shirt and one in a green shirt, around ten seconds in.  But the guy who does most of the talking is someone I got to sneak into a protest site with along with a carload of reporters from the Independent Media Center.  Good times! 
View Article  Friday Fun Link - Winter Olympics Begin (February 12, 2010)
Not sure if you heard but apparently the Wet & Rainy Olympics are in Canada this year and the opening ceremonies are tonight. 

The Olympics are once again a lightning rod of controversy and having them on our own doorstep has perhaps brought this home in a way that doesn't happen when they're in Italy or Japan or even next door in the US.  

Even Vancouver's libraries aren't immune, a controversy having stirred around a directive from VPL's marketing department about which sponsors to use during the period when the Winter Games are happening and which to avoid as well as asking staff to put pieces of tape over non-sponsor logos on things like electronic equipment.  (I wonder if they were asked to do the same as what happened at the last Olympics when black tape was apparently placed over the logo of the urinal maker in the bathrooms at Olympic venues since Moens or Delta or whoever weren't the official plumbing sponsor of the Olympics!) [Edit: or worse]

I'm mixed in my feelings towards the Olympics.  I like the idea of what they're supposed to represent - the pinnacle of athletic achievement taking place on a global stage for international competition within international cooperation.  But I'm not naive enough to dismiss the rampant commercialism and corporatization of the Games  which has long replaced the ideals of the games as the most important thing.  That's not even mentioning the massive expenses associated with hosting the Games and long-term debts that are always incurred (I think Calgary 1988 was the only modern Olympic Games - summer or winter - that ended up being debt-free at the end of it.) 

I've got lots more thoughts but I won't get into them there.  I will say that I also have mixed thoughts about nationalism and patriotism.  But one of the places where I don't is in regards to the Olympic hockey tournament.  So Go Canada Go and here's a little clip to get your blood stirring, not least because whoever picked the song chose a great under-the-radar Canadian songwriter named Mike Plume...(ffwd to 2:57)

View Article  Saturday Snap - RPL Joins SILS (from local CTV station)
Used a poor man's hack to get a clip from our local TV news about RPL joining our new province-wide consortium onto YouTube.  Sorry for the crappy sound...

View Article  Student Brings Typewriter to Class
We went to Indian Head to have an early Christmas with my folks this weekend and at one point my mom suggested renting a movie to keep Pace entertained.  It did not even cross my mind that she meant VHS movie instead of DVD (let alone streaming video or BitTorrent or some of the other technologies I tend to use to watch movies these days.)  But that's indeed what we ended up getting.  It was a good reminder that people live at different technological time points even if we're all at the same time point on the calendar. 

This experience reminded me of this video which does a great job of capturing how different technology time points might intersect when taken to the extreme:

Student Brings Typewriter To Class - Watch more Funny Videos
View Article  Music Monday - UTwo-be
Is there any other link today than the archive of the live U2 concert that was broadcast on YouTube last night?  I haven't seen any final figures yet but some media outlets were reporting that there was likely an audience of  hundreds of thousands of viewers watching live around the world and that figure will reach the millions once viewings of the rebroadcasts and archive of the concert are factored in.

This was the first major live music event carried by YouTube and yet another milestone in the world of online broadcasting, which is an area of particular interest to me, having given me my single highest mark for any major project I did in library school.  (Of course, it was a Media Studies course but we won't think too deeply on the implications of that!) 

This presentation is getting a bit dated now but I'm happy to see that most of the points I made stand up quite well, nearly three years later. 
View Article  Music Monday - "I was sitting there watching TV/Wendy came and sat on my knee."
In honour of the last episode of "Corner Gas" tonight, here's one of my favourite songs by the Odds, the former band of Craig Northey who wrote the "Corner Gas" theme song, "Not A Lot Going On".

(Unfortunately, the clip is from MuchMoreMusic who have more crap around the edge of the screen than the Business News Network.  Probably fortunately for those viewers with sensitive ears, this clip is the adapted-for-TV version.  On the album, the lyric definitely isn't "I was making love to Wendy under the stars".)
View Article  Little Mosque on the Prairie & Indian Head, Saskatchewan
My hometown served as a backdrop for many of the exterior shots of the CBC comedy, "Little Mosque on the Prairie". (Saskatchewan has a film tax credit that gives incentives for productions to shoot here and increases the benefit if you shoot a certain distance outside our cities.  Indian Head is just outside this zone, about forty-five minutes from Regina, so has received a lot of film production since the tax credit came into effect.)

Now that the show is finished, they put up a thank-you note on the show's blog with a photo of the cast & crew (many local - hey, there's my grade eight shop teacher!).
View Article  The Daily Show Looks at the Canadian Political Crisis
Comedy Central in the US won't allow Canadians to watch their clips so if you want to be legal, you have to watch The Comedy Network version of this clip that is viewable by Canadians...or, like everything else, you can just watch it on YouTube.  Great system there, guys.  Way to go!
View Article  The Monty Python Channel on YouTube
This is pretty funny and also somewhat groundbreaking.  (I'm sure some other entertainment entity has put everything they own the rights to up on YouTube by now, haven't they?)
View Article  A Celebrity Filled Day (Yes, In Regina)
Went over to the downtown mall for lunch today as I forgot my customary lunch o' leftovers.  It was packed in the food court so I ended up sharing a table with a guy who turned out to be the guitarist from a band who were a bit of a one-hit wonder in the early 2000's.  (They did end up getting a song on the 90210 soundtrack so you can't do much better than that!)  To hear their big tune, click on this link then select "Rock" then "May B Ted - Wet". 

Then, at Beer Bros Pub for "Books to Beers" after work, who's sitting at the bar but Corner Gas's 
Officer Davis?  (I was there before everyone else arrived but was still too chicken to go up and thank him for being the poster boy for Sask Library Week last year.) 

And to top it off, the waitress mentions that she recently worked on the set of Stephen King's "Dolan's Cadillac" which was shot in Regina earlier this year.  Christian Slater was the star and when I look up the film when I get home, it turns out it was directed by a guy I went to University with (which means I have a Kevin Bacon number of 3!)

Anyhow, life sure is exciting in the big city!

My web site dedicated to four great Canadian singer-songwriters (but currently only featuring guitar tab for two of them - Fred Eaglesmith and Hawksley Workman.)

free counters
www.flickr.com
This is a Flickr badge showing public photos from shealisahammond. Make your own badge here.