no comment. just read the story at media matters.

every once in a while, chris rhodes comes online and asks: "hey, where's your fileserver again? i need "xyz". and for the longest time i've had to break it to him that it's still broken -- it has been ever since i moved all my files from empirerecords (old pentiumII) to moulinrouge (my former desktop, athlon800). but the wait is over ;-) if you have a login for this site, you can now access my private fileserver (see link above "preferences" on the right) for all those files you've been wanting to get from me.

note however that big downloads have restricted hours and if i see you chewing up my pipe (i'll notice because there's not much to chew and i use a lot of it myself) i'll just kick you.

please take a look around on it and let me know if you see any bugs, or worse, any security holes.

a while ago i talked about bullfrog power a new power company here in ontario setup to deliver power to your home from clean, renewable sources at a premium rate. well, like i said i would then, i signed up and i'm offically bullfrog powered my name's even on the site. pretty cool eh?

my good friend eden (featured here) has entered a book cover art contest and needs lots of votes. she's really talented and it'd be really cool to see her work in chapters or something so do her a favour and vote for her cover. just go to the site and scroll down to "Eden Bachelder" and click the radio button to the right of her name. do it soon though, 'cause the poll's only open for a few days.

i think i've figured out where i want to go next. the Big Idea i posted a few weeks ago is just too big to start now, given my current experience and lack of commitment to staying in toronto. so i've decided to expand my brain more down that road, so later, when i have the "street cred" so-to-speak and real life experience, i'll know what to do and how to go about doing it.

"expand my brain"... sounds pretty cryptic doesn't it? well it's not ambiguous, i try never to be that way -- too frustrating. no, the idea is to do more volunteering, this time though, with covenant house or a similar organisation in the city. you can't propose to help people unless you know where they're coming from and my thinking is that's the best place to start.

ever since i moved to toronto i've been surrounded by libras. and as of right now, we're right in the middle of their time to shine. kelly's birthday party was tonight, held at c'est what and eden held a big thing over at the bishop & the belcher so my night was booked solid.

i had a wonderful time, met a lot of very cool people who's names i'll continue to try to remember and spent very little money due to the fact that i found a screw in my french fries at c'est what (ew, but i still love the place, reminds me of vancouver).

anyway, it's 4am and i'm very sleepy so i'll let the pictures do the story telling for me. note that this post is currently marked private, but if i get approval from all those featured, i'll make it public. edit: yes, i got finally permission from those featured here so i've unmasked the post.

so i ended up going alone to see shane koyczan with tons of fun university (tofu) last night. it's too bad no one else wanted to come -- you missed an awesome show.

tons of fun university is what they call a slam poetry group. think of it as sort of a modern-day beatnick thing without the cigarettes or trendy berets. the poetry is powerful and instead of read, it's performed -- and they're inspiring.

composed of shane koyczan, c.r. avery and mike mcgee, they hold your attention with their on-stage intensity while your brain scrambles to capture everything they're saying. it scrambles because you know what they have to say is brilliant, it's profound and it's most certainly art.

unfortunately, while they are amazing with the spoken word, they seem to be under the impression that they can (and apparently should) sing as well. this is not the case (sorry guys). fortunately though, their performance was more slam than song.

the group seems to spend most of its time in vancouver, and will be appearing at the vancouver folk fest this year, so i encourage you to go if you can. you won't be disappointed.

still don't believe they're awesome? see for yourself. i recorded part of shane's performance last night (in two parts because my camera won't do more than 3minutes of audio). divx required: [part 1] [part 2].

they say
if you want a piece of the american dream
you gotta stand up
fight
scream
and holler
but if that means, fighting fictitious wars
i guess i'm glad i'm from Canada
where my dreams are a little bit smaller

and here's two bits of the whole group (just try to ignore the few seconds of singing) [part 1] [part 2].

a paraphrased snippet from a conversation at work yesterday:

for those who haven't heard, the price of gas at the pump climbed over $2/litre yesterday (some reports had it as high as $2.50) and the province went into a panic. people were lining up down the block to get gas at the "low" price of $1.20 and one guy even started hitting people with a tire iron when someone cut in line.

is now ok to say "i told you so"? maybe i should get some tshirts printed up with that for all my tree-hugging friends. it's not going to get better. in the long run, if your car runs on dinosaur juice you're going to be paying through the nose. in the coming months and years you're going to hear people calling for an end to nafta so we can hold onto our own energy resources rather than giving it all to the americans and there's going to be a lot more fighting -- both with armies and with trade barriers.

you'd best sell your car if you have one as you won't be able to sell it in the near future. if you want to save money, move somewhere where you can take transit to work and start supporting politicians who want to make this easier for you. the ride ahead, no matter how satisfying "being right" is, is going to just get uglier.

shane koyczan is amazing. i first discovered him over a year ago on cbc's zed, a showcase for young and upcoming Canadian artists. his spoken word was so impressive that i not only blogged about in a few times, but i've been following his career ever since. since i'm on his mailing list i found out that he'll be performing friday night here in toronto and i'd love to bring along anyone else interested. here's the details:

• where: the gladstone [google map]
• this friday at ten pm

i'll be able to confirm all this when now magazine comes out tomorrow, but i'm definitely going if i can get there. anyone else wanna come?

the monthly green drinks get together was tonight and unlike last time, i mingled a lot more. i met some fun and interesting people and passed around my website address to nearly everyone. i'm still relatively sure that i despise the whole concept of "networking", but the idea that i met some cool people who had nice brains is good enough for me. i'm resistant to the idea that contacts should be used and prefer the idea of co-helping friends -- does that make sense?

anyway, i took a lot of pictures, but didn't get permission from anyone to post said shots on my site, so they won't be appearing publically (unless of course they comment and say it's ok (hint, hint)). i'm looking forward to next month though. it's really quite something to be surrounded by people who not only know what they're talking about but actually share similar interests.