Ride to Conquer Cancer Weekend

Four good friends of mine are off on a 200 km bike ride this weekend to raise funds for cancer research at Princess Margaret Hospital in Toronto. This is a small slideshow of  the drop off day (yesterday). They are on the road right now, best of luck guys! Click the slideshow below to go to the picasaweb album containing these shots.  

Guelph Engineering Prof on CNN

One of the professors in the School of Engineering, Khosrow Farahbakhsh, has made it on to CNN for a trial water recycling system that he's integrated into his house. I had Dr. Farahbakhsh as a professor in undergrad twice and had the chance to be a teaching assistant in his thermodynamics class last fall. It's nice to see him getting recognition for his work, as he is a great professor.

Here's the link:

http://www.cnn.com/video/?/video/tech/2008/06/18/jeras.rainwater.recycling.cnn

He was also featured on daily planet on April 17th:

http://watch.discoverychannel.ca/daily-planet/april-2008/daily-planet-april-17-2008/#clip47098

Sebastien Grainger EP out!

For those of you who don't know, Sebastien Grainger was the singer and drummer of the now defunct Death from Above 1979. I got the chance to see him play at the Hillside Festival last year and it was quite a good show. I'd been following the work of both he and Jesse Keeler (The bassist) since the demise of the band. Jesse has since formed MSTRKRFT with one of their former producers, which has been putting out some interesting electronic music and hitting up clubs around the world. A while seemed to pass before I heard of any activity from Sebastien, until about two years ago when I heard that he was recording new music as 'Sebastien Grainger et les Montagnes'. Anyway...2 years later and we have an EP! It's out on 7" Vinyl and available from iTunes (DRM free too!, 256 kbit AAC files). While the iTunes option is decidedly less chic, it's cheaper, more portable and you get more songs than the vinyl (4 vs. 2). In any case, I think he's a great Canadian artist, worthy of support..so check it out:

http://www.sebastiengrainger.net/

I may of course get the record, just to have it, when I'm not so dirt poor as I am now. Also, one disappointment...the record is being sold as 'Sebastien Grainger & The Mountains', what's with this pandering to French illiteracy? Clearly 'et les Montagnes' is a cooler moniker.

David Byrne Installation

Any of you who know me on any serious level will know of my fondness for the Talking Heads. The principle creative force behind the band was, of course, David Byrne (You know, that nervous twictching guy in all their videos). Anyway, he's done quite a lot of interesting music / art pieces since the days of the band (Which, now that I think of it,is probably ~25 year ago, yep...25 years since he was part of the band). This is a recent piece I ran into at pitchfork.tv, where David has peformed sonic surgery, if you will, on an old building make the building a giant instrument. It'll make more sense if you watch the video. Apparently, he did this once before, in Stockholm.

Amazing Radiohead 'Nude' Remix entry

So Radiohead held a remix contest for their song 'Nude' off of In Rainbows.

 This guy went all out.  He rigged up a whole bunch of old electronics to 

reproduce the song. The result is nothing short of amazing, but don't take 

my word for it, check it out. It takes about a minute for the actual song to start, so just wait...it's worth it. 

Big Ideas (Don't get any) from 1030 on Vimeo.

I want this car.

The 1989 Honda CRX-HF got 50 MPG highway, that's in-fucking-credible. More than twice the fuel economy of my venerable '89 740 GL. Then again, the Volvo is more akin to a tank and I'd rather be in it in an accident than the CRX. Still it amazes me the fuel economy discrepancy here. What' I'm getting at is that it's next to impossible to buy gas cars today, in the same size segment that even approach 50 MPG. Now let's be clear, that's US gallons we're talking, not that imperial BS that's so often quoted. To clear things up, it gets 4.7 L/100 Km highway, 5.7 city. That's amazing. If you go on the EPA's fuel economy site, this thing outstrips the 2008 Civic sedan and the hybrid civic as well. I would imagine that increasing car weight from safety features, noise dampening would account for some of the discrepancy. Presumably there more sophisticated emissions control units on the end, dropping the efficiency of the engines on the newer Honda's. There are no doubt more bells and whistles inside the modern cars...but it's something to consider that we were building cars that efficient, basically 20 years ago.

This whole rant stems from a Wired article, what car would make the best apocalypse-mobile.
They chose the 1980 Honda CRX HF for it's amazning Fuel Economy and reliability.


http://blog.wired.com/cars/2008/06/what-is-the-ult.html