This is the audio for a 9'40" video-version of a presentation I gave to my AACA group. 'AACA' stands for Al-Anon Adult Children of Alcoholics.

The video is available on my YouTube page: http://youtube.com/watch?v=cKeel484IMk

My mom was an alcoholic from when I was born, and my dad was a wife-beater and a weekend-drunk.

I made the video to share the four roles adult children of abuse tend to take on, and to publicise the 13 characteristics that most of us tend to have.

It's released under a Creative Commons 'Non-Commercial, Attribution, Share-Alike' license. So please feel free to download it and hand it on to people who might need to know they're not alone.

Here are the details of the musicians whose work I've been privileged to include on the video. It's all licensed under the same Creative Commons license I use, and I'm deeply grateful for that...

o 'Schyzophrénie extatique de l'autochtone' by arnoldsrecords.
Download from http://www.jamendo.com/

o 'Lazy Sunday Morning', 'The Lonesome Death of Jonas Grumby', 'Shunned', 'Timestream Station' by Derek R Audette.
Download from http://DerekAudette.OttawaArts.Com

o 'Punk-o-Tronika' by MAIS.
Download from http://www.jamendo.com/

o 'Trip I - c'est l'heure' by Miscere.
Download from http://www.jamendo.com/

Most of the photos that didn't come out of the family album are from stock.xchng at http://www.sxc.hu

(I'm afraid I don't recall the photographers. None of them require attribution in their Creative Commons licensing, so I simply saved them. I regret that. I'd prefer to acknowledge them. If you recognise any of the pics, please lemme know, and I'll pop the names in here.)

I apologise in advance for the poor microphone quality. I've done my best to clean up the audio, and the music certainly does aid in that process. But the mic problems were entirely my own... I had the input volume up way too high, so I was unaware that I was saturating the mic. Dammit.

I owe a debt of gratitude to Garr Reynolds for his site on effective presenting -- PRESENTATION ZEN. http://www.presentationzen.com/presentationzen/

I can only hope that this presentation of mine reflects some of the insights I've learned from Garr.

Please let me know what you feel about this viddie.

Blue skies
love
Roy

This is one of my favourite performance poems.

I wrote it many years ago as part of the libretto for a Flamenco ballet that a work colleague of mine composed and choreographed. He asked me to put a story together. So I wrote a bunch of poems for it.

The musical backing here has absolutely nothing to do with the original Flamenco backing. This one is a mashup of a piece of Creative Commons licensed free music that I found on the web. I've been reluctant to put the piece online cos I lost the original music file, and I simply cannot recall who composed it, nor where I downloaded it from.

If you recognise the backing track, PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE let me know, so I can credit the muso.

All of the voice-work in this performance is by me. I laid a basic track down, then sliced and diced the music around that. Then I did several more vocal takes, which I assembled around those elements.

For some bizarre reason, I imported the music file in mono (it was my first project in Logic HitKit, so I guess I didn't really know what I was doing). Which has led me to keeping the entire mix mono. But it still works for me.

This piece is released under a Creative Commons 'Share-Alike, Attribution, Non-Commercial' license. This means you're free to download it, give it to your buddies, mix and match it, as long as you're not making money from it, and you attach my name to it as the originator. Enjoy!

I built the track in Logic HitKit, on my Toshiba Tecra M4 tablet pc, using the microphone supplied with the HitKit (it was one of those Dorling Kindersley educational packs -- book, microphone, software; a very cheap way to get a professional piece of music creation software!). Disclosure: I do not get ANYTHING from Toshiba or Logic for mentioning their products. I mention them cos I like to let people know how things are made. I'm an open source kinda guy.

Friday, 5 January 2007

A bunch of tools to help you with your multinational time-management.

Firstly, there's the freeware/shareware application, Qlock. It sits on your desktop, and is hugely configurable. So you can see what time it is anywhere in the world. You can set alarms for any of those cities. And you can hide or show the clocks with a click of your mouse.

Next in the list is a site for people who don't have a need for a clock on their desktops 24/7. If you have an occasional need to check times, this is the place to go... WorldTimeServer.com. This site also offers you a free widget to add to your blog... you can pop an analog or digital clock to your site.

And if you want to customise a countdown, and see the time displayed as days, hours, or seconds, head for TimeAndDate.com. As of this very second, I'll turn 50 years old in exactly... 382 363 170 seconds! Send me a birthday present. You've got time!

*Said the Leaning Tower of Piza to the Big Ben.

Links:

• Qlock: http://www.qlock.com/
• World Time Server: http://www.worldtimeserver.com/
• Time and Date: http://www.timeanddate.com/

Thursday, 4 January 2007

When I first came across the work of Scott Wade, I thought it was a prank. But a quick Google of his name yielded dozens of sites showing his work. He seems to be real!

He's an American artist who works in a particularly transitory medium... the dust on car windows.

He waits for dust to accumulate, and then hacks at it with paintbrushes and such to remove bits of dust to make masterpieces.

Links:

• Scott Wade's Home Page: http://www.dirtycarart.com/
• Scott Wade's Dirty Car Art Gallery: http://www.dirtycarart.com/gallery/
• Footage from K-EYE 42 of Scott at work on a 'dirty picture': http://keyetv.com/video/?id=8499@keye.dayport.com
  
• A Google search that shows how wide-spread the dirt: Google search terms: 'Scott Wade Dirty Car Art'
• A story about Scott on Autoblog, which has some really cool pics: http://www.autoblog.com -- scott-wade

Tuesday, 2 January 2007

The second day of 2007, and you've probably got some New Year's resolutions that you're still committed to. Here's a free online tool to help you do the things you want to do. Joe's Goals is a website that let's you define your positive and negative goals, and then track your progress. When you do something towards a goal, you click on the goal. And the online software keeps count.

There's also a Joe's Logbook option, which is really a goal-tracking tool for a particular project.

For me, one of the best things about the site is that you can set it up to email you a reminder if you haven't updated your goals for a while. It really helps you to be mindful.


Links:

• Joe's Goals: http://www.joesgoals.com/
  
• Joe's Logbook: http://www.joeslogbook.com/
  
• Joe's Blog: http://blog.joesgoals.com/
  

Friday, 29 December 2006

Written by Anthony Lappé, drawn by Dan Goldman, SHOOTING WAR is a tangy, vicious, sexy, gritty, frighteningly-realistic depiction of a near future.

In this gripping graphic novel, the main character is a guy who, using the video camera on his phone, accidentally vid-blogs a bombing. He's then catapulted to fame by a tv network who gets hold of his footage. They make him an offer he can't refuse... to go to the Middle East and vid-blog the ongoing war there.

Beware... if you START reading this, you WILL spend several wonderful hours absorbed in the story!

Links:

• Shooting War: http://shootingwar.com/
• The First Chapter: http://shootingwar.com/chapters/chapter-1/
• Anthony Lappé's blog, 'The Bunker': http://anthony.gnn.tv/
• Dan Goldman's site: http://www.dangoldman.net/

Thursday, 28 December 2006

In the interests of transparency, I have to state up-front that I'm a leftie. So I'm biased in favour of leftie things. That said, I'm also very much a 'devil's advocate'. I'm MUCH more interested in a balanced, well-argued opinion than I am in a one-sided opinion. So... to today's Virtual Surf Report.

We're looking at two news sources covering politics in America.

I'm a fan of The Huffington Post, a left-wing journal that takes an in-depth look at many of the issues facing Americans today. I find their opinion pieces to be very cleanly written, well-researched, witty, and clever. When I finish reading one of their articles, I come away from it with the feeling that I'm not being fed some kind of propaganda angle.

I'm NOT a fan of Right Wing News, which is an online journal dedicated to 'Conservative News and Views'. I'm n ot a fan because I really just wish they would ARGUE their points sanely and rationally. I don't really get any sense of balance from their articles. I'm left with a feeling that I've been smacked over the head with a hunting rifle. They sneer at the left, instead of answering their concerns. However, it's deeply important to get acquainted with 'the other side'. Their fears are real. Their concerns are real. Just because they don't argue them well doesn't mean they should be dismissed.

Two fascinating reads. Enjoy being caught in the middle! And make up your own mind.

(And for some help in being able to make up your own mind, you might want to read an article from one of my favourite books on thought hygiene. The book is called STRAIGHT AND CROOKED THINKING by Robert H Thouless. It appears to be out of print, but the article on the web is the core of it. It's titled 'Thirty-eight Dishonest Tricks Which Are Commonly Used in Argument, With the Methods of Overcoming Them'. A must-read.)

Links:

• The Huffington Post: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/
• Right Wing News: http://www.rightwingnews.com/
• 38 Dishonest Tricks: http://www.246.dk/38tricks.html

Wednesday, 27 December 2006
The quirky humour (and marketing savvy) of GapingVoid

Hugh MacLeod's GapingVoid blog is one of those must-reads. His quirky business card cartoons are a treat, and you can insert a widget onto your website to feed them to your own viewers.

Read Hugh's blog if you want to:

• Be more creative.
• Become a better marketer.
• Have wine and suits shoved down your throat via the eyeballs.
  
• Laugh.
• Groan.
• Nod your head in agreement.
• Change your mind.

Links:

• GapingVoid: http://www.gapingvoid.com/
• Hugh MacLeod's marketing manifesto, The Hughtrain: http://www.gapingvoid.com/Moveable_Type/archives/000823.html
• Hugh's inspiring manifesto on 'How To Be Creative': http://www.gapingvoid.com/Moveable_Type/archives/000932.html
• Get the cartoon widget for your site: http://www.gapingvoid.com/widget/

Tuesday, 26 December 2006
Print a better present for yourself with Flickr and Creative Commons

Someone gave you a present you don't really WANT? Replace it with something that works for you!

Enter Flickr, the photo sharing site, in collaboration with Creative Commons. You can browse through around 26 million photos that are licensed under one of the Creative Commons variations that allows any user to download the photo, take it to their favourite photo printing outlet (where you would take your digital pics to be printed), and make an art print to adorn your walls (or even a t-shirt, if you're adventurous).

Links:

• Flickr: http://www.flickr.com/
• Flickr's Creative Commons search section: http://www.flickr.com/creativecommons/
• My own Flickr gallery of digital artworks that you're welcome to download and print: http://www.flickr.com/photos/royblumenthal/
• Flickr photo finder: http://www.wynia.org/experiments/phpflickr/interesting.php?