Under your nose

I bring you a story I found while roaming the net.

The manager of a housing co-op was increasingly frustrated with her tenants. No matter how much she reminded and badgered them, no matter how many meetings she convened, no matter how much goodwill there was for the task, the tenants would not, could not reduce their energy consumption.

Finally she hit an idea. What would happen if, she wondered, if the electricity meters were moved from the basement to a more conspicuous spot right beside the front door, so that each time the tenants left or entered their home they could see how fast their meter was spinning?
The metres were moved. Lo and behold, within a few weeks electricity consumption fell 30 percent.

Why did I post this you ask? I think its true that people would not care about something if they could not see it. This brings up another idea that if you did not see it than it simply does not exist, which we all know isn't an intelligent thought.

I feel fine

I feel overwhelmed from finding my new connection to the world online. wefeelfine.org is worldwide collective of feelings that people have talked about in their blogs. This application searches the net for the words "I feel" and the sentence it was used in then gathers information about the writer and compiles it into an colourful bunch of dots. I like that in a couple of clicks you can find a person in a far corner of the world that wrote about their day based on how they felt.

An interesting facet of this is the statistics that you can gather. I found out that majority of people that feel old are between the ages of 0-9 and is closely followed by 20-30 year olds. There is also usless stuff like thousands of people who feel wet on cloudy days more than rainy days. I can only hope that I will be on this site soon.

Squirrel in a tree

Now on Chris wood photo the documentation of a squirrels' epic struggle between gravity and survival through the coming of the winter season.

Just go to the bottom right photo on the street photo page to the all the squirrelly goodness.

Dingo Fence

The great Australian Dingo fence or known to some as the Canis familiaris-exclusion fence. Is a great achievement in engineering that ranks up there as one of the longest structures in world. Its main use is to keep out dingos from the southern parts of Queensland allowing sheep to roam freely in the outback without fear of becoming lunch.

Built in 1880s it was most effective at keeping out rabbits and small animals. Consequently there was an overpopulation of rabbits in one area without any predators. The fence was later reinforced in 1914 to protect against intruding dogs, once in for all keeping the food chain under control. (except for Koala's because they can climb over and frogs because they can hitch rides on vultures) There have been books and award winning movies based on the stories that involve the hardships of this fence, all of which information can be found here. Wiki Dingo Fence

Psychedelic Mike at Graffitis's

Psychedelic Mike, and Sarah @ Graffiti's May 5th

A few weekend's ago my friend Psychedelic Mike had the opportunity to jam out a few songs while someone played piano chords with him. A few other artist's followed with mostly solo acoustic sets, that in my opinion couldn't top the humor and atmosphere of the coming together of two musicians that have never met before.

You can check out Psychedelic Mikes band The Fancy Claps on MySpace and also on my site in the live music section.

The Fancy Claps will be playing a show on June 2nd @ The Last Temptation in Kensington. Doors open at 8Pm.

Spiderman 3 Soundtrack

Peter Parker must be into indie bands now, cause the soundtrack is fully loaded with exclusive tracks from the likes of The Killers, Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Wolfmother, Snow Patrol and Jet.

I recently acquired this album through the miracle/curse of the Internet. I suggest you get your favorite Torrent Client fired up and hunt this one down, cause this one is a killer and I really think any fan of these bands would be missing out on something truly awesome.

Its cool to think that the Spiderman movies that are in the top ten most grossing movies ever made, feature music from these relatively small bands that are being introduced to a gigantic audience is too cool for words.

I'm hesitating to see the movie because I was told there was a tap dancing scene where Peter dances to My Chemical Romance (somehow available as a bonus track) This now leads me to believe that the Venom side of Spidy is an emo kid. But its all good because this movie really does appeal to a much larger fan base of all ages so it's understandable. I remember being really stoked to know that Sum 41 and Kerry King (dude from Slayer) was lending an old recycled masterpiece to the soundtrack for the first movie.

01 Snow Patrol: Signal Fire

02 The Killers: Move Away

03 Yeah Yeah Yeahs: Sealings

04 Wolfmother: Pleased to Meet You

05 The Walkmen: Red River

06 Black Mountain: Stay Free

07 The Flaming Lips: The Supreme Being Teaches Spider-Man How to Be in Love

08 Simon Dawes: Scared of Myself

09 Chubby Checker: The Twist

10 Rogue Wave: Sight Lines

11 Jason Schwartzman (featuring Kirsten Dunst): Summer Day

12 Jet: Falling Star

13 Sounds Under Radio: Portrait of a Summer Thief

14 Wasted Youth Orchestra: A Letter to St. Jude

15 The Oohlas: Small Parts

Beastie Boys Announce New Album

Listen up party people, cause the most bad-ass band in the world is making more music. It took them six years to follow Hello Nasty with To the Five Borrows. So why did it take them half the time to release this one? I think it could'nt have come at a better time considering the fact that fading 90s punk band Bad Brains is releaseing a new album with the help of Adam Yatch (aka. MCA) in the role of the albums' producer.

From what I've gathered about The Mix Up is that it's an instumental record, with no vocals or samples everything played by live instrument's. This is a change from To The Five Borrows where the boys sat behind fancy computers and over produced the hell out of that record. The Beasties have said "There's more rock on there. If you know us you can trace the influences and they're no completely surprising. Someone who listens to us casually might think 'What the hell are these guys doing?' Keep in mind that the Boys are friends of Bad Brains and have a huge history of playing punk music in the New York underground venue CGBG alongside punk heros Agnostic Front, Reagan Youth, Bad Religion.

Beastie Boys will perform at Wembley Stadium with the supergroups of Madonna, Red Hot Chili Peppers and Snow Patrol.

They will also be playing at the Sasquatch! Festival in washington with some other awsome bands.