From my friend A.C., a great dining companion who is a fountain of knowledge about certain subjects…

Long forgotten fact:
Sour milk is 100% SAFE to drink. Spoiled milk is not. Sour and spoiled are not the same, and spoiled milk is not always sour. What do you think yogurt, sour cream, and cottage cheese are made of??? In fact, today’s sour milk is MUCH SAFER than sour milk from, say 250 years ago.

There are old fashioned sour milk recipes available online and in cook books if you don’t want to waste milk that’s been sitting in the fridge for days past expiry date. Can also be used in alcoholic drinks too, if you’re having guests over.

Visit A.C.’s bookbinding website here.

PROJECT EMPTY BOWL
presented by Coast Capital Savings

to support A Loving Spoonful: providing free nutritious food for men, women and children living with HIV/AIDS.

Thursday, July 7th, 2011 – 6:30 pm
at the Coast Coal Harbour Hotel

Gourmet cuisine served in a hand-crafted souvenir bowl (yours to keep)
Master of Ceremonies: Deborra Hope, Global TV News BC
Live & Silent Auction, Auctioneer: Hugh Bulmer from Maynards

Tickets: $85 if purchased before June 24, 2011, $100 if purchased after June 24th
For more information or to purchase tickets online visit alovingspoonful.org or call 604.682.6325

Join us at the Project Empty Bowl Live Art Preview Exhibition
at the Waterfall Building – 1540 West 2nd Ave, Vancouver, BC
June 27th – July 1st (8 am – 5 pm Open Daily)

A Loving Spoonful hopes to provide over 100,000 meals to men, women and children living with HIV/AIDS in our community.

Monkey Taunts Tigers and Spiderman Theme – Instant Mashup Generator

Dalai Lama Interview and Mcferrin Don’t Worry Be Happy – Instant Mashup Generator

In my favorite book, On Photography (1977), Susan Sontag changed how I think about photography, and reality, forever.

A photograph is a freeze-frame, a thin discrete slice isolated and preserved out of continuous, relentless time. For me, photographs of people carry an inescapable sadness about them. This is because the real person will continue aging and changing, and will eventually pass away. But the photograph remains frozen, the visible traces of that once-present moment still as clear as when the photo was taken. Photographs remind us about the past, but they also invite us to romanticize the past. I find that looking at a photo taken at any time in my life creates a longing to somehow return to the exact moment when the shutter was pressed.

I am increasingly reminded how brief, transitory, and beautiful our lives are on this earth. I feel a sense of urgency that I must focus on doing things which really matter. Today someone asked me what I want to do with my life. I am still not sure if I have a single goal in mind, but to me the most important thing is to form and nurture deep, loving relationships with my family, my partner, and eventually – if life takes me down that path – my children. I also want to have a positive impact on the world – to provide tools through the creative output that I produce to allow people to lead better lives. I am gifted with a creative spirit, and I feel one purpose of my life is to utilize this gift, through software development, design, music, video, and photography to create products, works of art or interaction that people will enjoy using and experiencing, and will allow them to better achieve their goals.

-Geoff Peters, January 19th 2011

I’ve created a website that allows easy discovery of interesting Youtube videos. It’s at FindInteresting.com.

Videos are shown in a collage of thumbnails as in the screenshot at right. It starts off with your favorite videos or a search term. Then if you click a video it will load more thumbnails on your screen, in particular: the favorite videos of the person who created that video.

To start, enter your youtube channel name to show your favorites, or enter a search term like “jazz”. Then click videos to load more thumbnails. You can hover your mouse over a video to read its title. Double click a video to load it in a popup player.

Once the player is open, you can click the link in the top right corner to watch the video on Youtube instead, where you can write comments below the video, “like” it, or add it to your favorites.

Here is a video where I explain how to use the site:

Why is this cool? For a number of reasons I think:

• Showing only thumbnails and no text allows the eye to quickly scan over hundreds, or even thousands of videos to pick out the ones that might be interesting to watch. We have a much better visual ability to pick out patterns and process large amounts of information from images rather than text. Also the fact that no text is used breaks down language barriers, especially for music videos.
• The Pop up player makes watching the first 5 seconds of a video really easy (the user can click away from the player and it will disappear, or click the X button in the popup to close it). This allows you to check out a video to determine if it is worth watching, and easily dismiss it, if it isn’t what you expect.
• When clicking a video, the favorites of the video’s creator are loaded below as thumbnails. This works really quickly to discover videos that will be interesting to you, on the principle that if you like a video, you’ll enjoy watching the videos that its creator likes too.

Since creating this site, I have spent many enjoyable leisure hours watching lots of videos and discovering some wonderful music from around the world. I really recommend trying it out, and please let me know what you think.

The site can be accessed for free at FindInteresting.com. Be sure to send comments or questions to geoff@gpeters.com – thanks!

I had a neat idea as I was driving to a gig. I get really fed up with the recordings (stack of cd’s) in my car as I’ve listened to them so many times, and every time I listen to them, they are the same!

I thought, why not make a recording that sounds different every time you play it?

Sound crazy? Well, it’s really quite possible to do, and wouldn’t be very hard.

Usually when a band records a song, they might do multiple takes, say 4 or 5 takes. For certain sections of the song, such as an instrumental solo, it would be cool if it would sound different every time. The artist or recording engineer could “program” the song to play a different, random take for a certain section of the song, each time the recording is played, or combine together parts of any of the takes in a new or somewhat random way. A single solo section could be further broken down into segments, such as a certain number of bars, and each segment could be swapped in with a different take, as the music is played.

There are a bunch of extensions to this idea:
- if this is on a website, allow the user to save their particular performance that they heard, and share it with others (and rate them, etc)

- instead of a purely random choice of the takes, the user could give input into the choices such as “I’d like a really upbeat and lively version of this song”, or “I’d really like a version of this song with a longer sax solo and less Britney”.

-if the “intensity” of the performance was hooked up to a foot pedal (e.g. the recording would become more excited as the pedal is depressed lower, and more relaxed as the pedal is released) an actual live musician could play along with such a recording, while controlling the intensity of the background recording, and have the background music follow his/her performance.

Please – let me know what you think!! And please take this idea, expand on it, and develop something new, as I mostly have time to think these days and not implement something, even so cool as this!

Geoff

Update, Sept. 11, 2010: I’ve created a player which implements this concept, and made it open source. Check it out at MultipathAudio.com. Includes an example song.

One thing I really love about digital media, and media in general, is the power to repeat.

Jazz musicians learn the language of jazz by repeated listening and transcribing of recordings. Writers learn from closely re-reading books, poems, or articles. Video editors and filmmakers learn from closely analyzing and re-watching TV commercials, short films, or movie scenes.

With basic TV, you can’t repeat – you have to blindly accept all the images that are being force-fed into your mind. Digital TV has given control to “Pause” live TV, and to some degree repeat.

Youtube is awesome because there is no limit to how many times you can repeat a video – just click the play button again.

Streaming radio annoys me because I find I really only enjoy a song once I have heard it 5 times.

Live concerts sometimes frustrate me – I find I don’t have the brainpower to remember or perceive all the complexities of a live concert, but if I had a video recording or even an audio recording I could absorb everything the artist is trying to convey.

Of course I love live music for the spontaneity and feeling the presence of the performers.

Without the ability to repeat I feel helpless. With it, I can master my role as an audience member in perceiving art and media, and truly improve my own ability to create.

I tried out my new video camera (a Panasonic AG-DVX100A) and filmed my stuffed animal frog which I bought at the Daiso Japanese dollar store in Richmond, BC, Canada.

The very same evening, I christened my green friend with the name of TonyFrog. So here is TonyFrog’s debut performance on video.

The rather “epic” classical music for this video was composed, orchestrated, and recorded by me, about 5 years ago. I used Cakewalk Sonar and the Edirol Orchestral module, along with my Yamaha P-80 keyboard hooked up to my PC via MIDI. I always intended for this piece to be used in a film, and its time has finally come! The credits music is another song that I wrote, an electronic dance music piece called Birds in the House that I recorded with my synthesizer (Korg MS-2000B) and mixed with some drum sounds from the Roland Virtual Sound Canvas (VSC).

The video was recorded in 60i mode and recorded directly into iMovie on a Mac using Firewire. I used a white balance card to calibrate the color settings (using the AWB button on my camera). I had to increase the Gain Boost on the camera to Medium because of the low light, and used the Auto Iris setting. I used iMovie to edit the footage and pick out parts which would go along with the music. Starting from the beginning of the music track, I edited clips to fit with the rhythmic and thematic changes in the song. I added a few effects such as a ripple and blur, just for fun.

Hope you enjoy the video!!
Until next time,
take care!
-Geoff Peters

Pizza

I saw a post on the imeem home page about an electronic pop band called Owl City (which, incidentally, is really popular: their Myspace page has over 12 million views).

Adam Young from Owl City has put together a music playlist on imeem entitled “Music To Eat Pizza To”, and I think this is a fantastic idea!

Click here to visit imeem to listen to full playlist (with full length songs, free account required), or you can preview the songs using the player below.

Look out for my next original composition having to do with pizza, or maybe even sushi (coming soon, Geoff Peters: “Song to Eat Sushi To”).

I am currently writing a short film (under 10 minutes). Meet Robo Robert. He’s an eccentric fellow who loves a good chip and defrag. Suprisingly well connected, RR plays chess, goes for walks, and even takes care of the mouse. Robo’s life is simple, but something is missing. Something electric. One day, RR goes to a park for a chat with Lindy. Their exchange will change his outlook forever.

(Actors and helpers needed – inquire within)