The banged up emotions, banged up car, and big boom finale
As we left off the quest, I was on the back roads of southern Ontario, with the Spotify music pumped. I was taking the back roads partly because it was taking everything to keep myself together, and partly because the 410, 407, and 401 scare the hell out of me. It was at this point, I decided that seeing Niagara Falls wasn’t going to happen with the gloomy dark cloud of depression. It was also raining and cloudy too. After close to 2 hours, I arrived in Kitchener and the sun came out there. I managed to find a convenient little parking spot and walked down Festival street. I have written before about Kitchener-Waterloo Oktoberfest but there is something about this festival that in its own special way brings it over the top. There seems to even be a much higher percentage of people in a traditional dress than you…
StartUp Weekend Saint John
As most of you know I have volunteered at ROGERS tv for going on 19 years. Bi-weekly there is a talk show that I work on called What Matters most. A few weeks ago the had someone on as a guest from the Momentum Group to talk about a then-upcoming event for a Startup Weekend. Long story short that episode didn’t make it to air and was instead put on YouTube. Therefore you can watch the following 13-minute interview to get the idea of what it is about. Or not… I guess I can tell you what it is about. The premise is that you pay money for a ticket and choose if you are a Developer (can code), Designer (can design stuff), or Other (smart person, marketing person, money person, et cetera). Then on Friday you show up raid the buffet spread, socialize, network, and assess the competition. Then…
The Day I Killed the Town
This is another one of my memories while under good drugs in the hospital, most of it never happened but it is how I remember it happening. I was brought for the morning after cleanup to this glass office building that was being used to house patients. As the day went on the nurse was having trouble moving me for cleaning and the brought in a lift thing to try that didn’t work out. However, as I was on the lift and couldn’t move it had me down near the floor and beside the desk. Then this snake came out from the desk and this guy used a spinning rope on a stick thing to kill it but there were dozens more everywhere. The decided that I needed to get back to the main hospital so I was moved through the Indian spice store next door and they used a…
CBC News – NB – Review Anglo Society flag motion: language chief
CBC News – New Brunswick – Review Anglo Society flag motion: language chief. This has to be one of the most overhyped stories of the month. It would be common practice for the City of Bathurst to fly this flag. I firmly believe that every group or person has the freedom to speak their thoughts. Just as much as it is everybody elses to consider to merits, then decide if it should be accepted or driven out-of-town with pitch-forks. In this case I think the City of Bathurst is committing censorship but the few deciding without the Anglo-Society having a chance to give the Anglo-Society their moment on the soap box. Personally from the time I was in Fredericton I think the Anglo-Society should be driven out with pitch-forks but everyone should be given a chance to hear their points.
Okay, or maybe Save Local that gives a $#!+
While in my last post I may have took the position that Saving Local is not important. That is not true. I am against CTV and Global who have for the last few years, mainly CTV, treated New Brunswick as a second class maritime province in terms of share of news coverage and local programming. Now on to the main topic of this post, CBC Radio 1 in Saint John. In reality Saint John has about 4 main contacts for news CHSJ, CBC, CHNI, and Telegraph-Journal. However, only the Telegraph-Journal and CBC provide the depth of information and understanding of our community as a whole. Despite radio being close to a hundred year old technology. The style of the CBC just draws you in and is never shallow on good storytelling. Technically speaking the CBC does have a trend on over staffing on productions on the TV end but with…
Why not to “Save Local”
Today I seem ads on CTVGlobeMedia stations that are urging the government to require cable/satellite distributors to pay for distributing the signal. I think this is just plain wrong. Here in Saint John there are 4 broadcast stations CBAT (CBC Fredericton but licensed and has its main transmitter in Saint John), CKLT (Has no programming differences from CJCH (CTV Atlantic) in Halifax, NS), CIHF-TV-2 (a semi satellite of CIHF-TV known as Global Maritimes from Halifax.), and CBAFT-1 which is a re-transmitter of CBAFT the Radio-Canada Moncton feed. When it comes to local programming CTV is the absolute worst, as I have noted before at most has 2 stories from the Saint John area and 4-5 total from the entire Province of New Brunswick on a good day. Global TV despite their severe cut backs have managed to keep their news stories basically equal per province. The basics is that all…
A drop in the bucket… err… table
Who is left to tell the tail abount the drop. This may be just a little drop of coffee on the table, but who will tell the world. It was interesting to learn the only part of CBC during these layoffs are the CBC.ca department. The web seems to now finally be changing the directon of media. The idea that you don’t need huge television systems, broadcast transmitters, and printing presses to the people. To those ends there is now not a need for the content to suffe either. The question however is how will interactive benefit the telling of the news? Can the local not be lost to a global voice? Can the web emerge as a primary source for news rather than current methods as regurgitation of the news reported by old media sour we and techniques?
NASCAR vs. The Simpsons
This morning I was listening to CBC Radio 1 and one of the main stories today is that the local cable company cut off the final few laps of the Nascar race for an all new episode of The Simpsons. Let’s face it The Simpsons is one of the most important influinces of my generation. The Simpsons, teaches that it is important to think for yourself and that one voice can make a difference. In retrospect this week’s particular episode was one of the best lately and I feel bad if an cable company didn’t cut off NASCAR for it.