We interviewed Jim Ward last November at Richards on Richards before their big break out with their new album Threes. Quick, brief intro: He’s one of 4 band members in Sparta and since then have played Conan, Craig Ferguson, done so many events and toured across North America. I was just listening to the radio and they were interviewed on the 6 o’clock rock report – man, our interview was SO much better hehe (it’s all about being organic and grassroots eh, Dave!).
Their first single was “Taking Back Control” and one of my favourite tracks (that they’re playing on the radio right now) is “Erase it Again”. They kick ass and they’re back in town tonight at the Commodore – go get your ticket!
Update: Doors @ 8:00pm, Attack in Black @ 9:00pm, Moneen about 10:00pm and Sparta from around 11:30pm – 1:00am.
Update: FANTASTIC time thanks to Ed, the tour manager, Keeley of Sparta, and the staff at the Commodore, not to mention the entire band – what an awesome show 🙂 Pics will be up on Flickr shortly, tag: sparta
Duane Storey wrote a post about friendship etiquette, on which I’ve commented so much I just decided to write my own post and link on back to him.
Someone once told me a big part of any successful relationship, be it friendship or something deeper, is about *making* time for that person, not just about *having* time. Everyone has spare time to do random things, but it’s far harder and more important to *make* time for the things that we care about or are important to us [DS]
This day and age, everyone is connected and everyone expects everyone else to be connected. We pick and chose our content, our calls and who we interact with on a daily basis. You don’t have to read ALL the news, you can subscribe to the sites you want to receive updates from and read stories at your leisure via RSS. You can even customize that selection process by picking which of the articles coming in on your feeds you’d like to read. Out of hundreds a day, do you really read everything? Having all of those bolded “unread” stories doesn’t seem to bother anyone. It’s all about customization – choosing which information you want to put in your brain that day and with whom you’d like to interact. It used to be that we didn’t have a choice.
When it comes to Instant Messaging, do you ever put yourself as “away” even though you’re sitting right in front of your computer, typing a blog post perhaps? Thing is, why do you sign on to the chat client if you’re just going to be away? Sure, you might actually want to log in and receive messages while you’re out but if you are just sitting there I suspect we just like to know who we “could” be talking to. Who’s online, who might message me, who I might want to message, it’s all about the customization again. Selective IM’ing.
Screening your calls with caller ID allows you to talk to the people you want to have a conversation with but on your terms, if you chose it’s the right time for them to call. Does this make you a bad person? Or are we at the point in our society when people consider it rude to just “call” someone up. Sending a heads up IM or text message is becoming the norm. Our private time is noted as valuable although our status is being publicly displayed for all to see. I’m available by landline, cell, IM, and VOIP but I can’t guarantee I’ll respond. If we don’t pick up the phone on the first ring, or answer every IM – is that rude?
How hard is it to pick up the phone from time to time to say hi? How hard is it to respond to an SMS message periodically? How hard is it to write a quick email to let someone know you care? Are people in this world so busy that they go around making other people feel bad because they can’t *make* a few minutes of time to help make others feel good?[DS]
The focus of Duane’s post was to point out that even though we’re busy, “away” or haven’t answered a call, there’s always some time to give a shout back, if even just to say “I got your message, I can’t talk, will call later”, the old school “TTYIAB”, or something to that extent.
I’m not always connected 24/7. I am in the other room cooking dinner or I leave my phone in my purse and miss a couple calls. With everyone knowing your every move (thanks Twitter!) being available to talk is much different than being online or being reachable. But it’s no excuse for being a bad friend… or daughter either.
John wrote a post recently about a car alarm that’s been going off in our neighbourhood sporadically for a couple of days [audihertz]. Fly Rice (student in Hawaii, Matt Good fan, and daughter of one of our most loyal podcast listeners) left a comment about the Dane Cook car alarm (below), so of course I had to look it up on You Tube.
If you’ve heard of Dane Cook [wiki] and seen him in action, you’ve probably laughed and done the “it’s funny cause it’s true” head bob and body shaking giggle. Either that or thought he was totally lame, trying to make jokes out of everything and laughing far too often at himself. Whatever your poison, he’s saturated the market and the parodies of him are rather amusing as well.
The following video’s animation is reminiscent of Group X but the audio is from one of Cook’s sketches. Of course now I’m going to annoy everyone (maybe even more so than they would be by actually experiencing the 3-day-long neighbourhood car alarm) because when you click play 1) you might find the animation and Dane Cook audio to be horrible and offensive 2) you might like Dane Cook but you now have the “lyrics” to the car alarm stuck in your head for 46 minutes.
This was actually my very first Vancouver Blogger Meetup. I’ve been to many social gatherings before, including podcast meetups and unconferences, but on a whim yesterday John and I decided to head to the official group‘s get together at The Whip on 6th and Main.
I have to say, it all has to do with David Drucker. Since we met him at the podcast meetup in February 2006, he’s been our regular “familiar face we spot at social things and hang out with”. He’s a pretty great guy and has a lot in common with John and I.
The location was really great, and there was an abundance of yam fries and beers no one could pronounce. I think the best part of the evening was that there were bloggers there I hadn’t met before, like Tanya aka Net Chick. She’s pretty funny and knows her stuff – as is evident on her blog. I also got to see Jan and Pete again, we met at Northern Voice and all participated in Tod‘s late-night CBC tour.
Topics covered included Twitter, commenting and anonymous or dual online personalities. It was great to just head out to a new place (that isn’t 3 steps from our front door) on a weeknight just to chill with some like-minded people. For more info about the group or to join and take part next month, visit the Meetup site.
After having traveled to the UK every few months in the last year and a half I am pretty used to the slight differences in everyday life. Looking right before crossing the street, ordering your food at the bar, trousers are pants/pants are underpants (this can make for some interesting conversations) and so on.
I normally travel alone as well, waiting at airports and bus depots for countless hours I end up mainly just people watching. This past trip my friend Tanya decided to join me and make her first trip across the pond (mandatory lame ‘pond’ reference). People in shops do not ask you how you are doing or if they can help you find something. At first, as friendly Canadians it is hard to get used to, I used to think they were being rude. Now I love not being bothered while I shop. We were also quick to notice that every single meal you will get will include ‘chips’, this includes the Mexican food and everything will really cost you an arm and a leg and possibly an eyeball.
We spent a little time in Wales and the rest of the time in England. I am fortunate enough to have made some really good friends who invited us to stay with them and showed us around. Anytime after a few drinks we could not stop ourselves from mimicking their accents, luckily they thought it was cute, rather than annoying.
There is nothing better than living like a local when you are abroad. We adopted ourselves a little stuffed sheep in quaint town of Bourton-on-the-water and decided that he will forever be our travel companion. We wanted to visit some real sheep but our friend Craig insisted he would not go around asking anyone where he could find some. Apparently ‘sheep worrying’ is a crime anyway. We didn’t want to worry them we just wanted to take their photos!
We interviewed Jim Ward last November at Richards on Richards before their big break out with their new album Threes. Quick, brief intro: He’s one of 4 band members in Sparta and since then have played Conan, Craig Ferguson, done so many events and toured across North America. I was just listening to the radio and they were interviewed on the 6 o’clock rock report – man, our interview was SO much better hehe (it’s all about being organic and grassroots eh, Dave!).
I’m not always connected 24/7. I am in the other room cooking dinner or I leave my phone in my purse and miss a couple calls. With everyone knowing your every move (thanks 
