Category: Miscellaneous

From the Committee to Protect Bloggers comes Free Mojtaba and Arash Day.

“Free Mojtaba and Arash Day is a day set up by the Committee to Protect Bloggers to create awareness for two Iranian bloggers who are imprisoned in their country.”

Seeing as I have become more aware of Iranian culture through my old roommate and some new friends I made at school, not to mention the fact that I’m a pretty big fan of blogging, I thought it appropriate to give a little attention to my fellow bloggers in the Middle East.

Excellent trailer for a CC-licensed documentary on sampling culture.

I volunteered to canvass for the Heart and Stroke foundation again this year, but alas I didn’t find very many people home when I went around this evening. I plan to try again tomorrow.

I think that there are a few charities that are important to support and this is one of them. Here some interesting information from the Heart and Stroke Foundation’s pamphlet:

It’s a sobering thought: almost 40% of Canadians will develop some form of cardiovascular disease and despite [their] best efforts, it remains the leading cause of death. Today, someone in Canada falls victim to a heart attack every 7 minutes.

My own grandpa died during heart surgery and so it’s an issue that hits close to home. Chances are, there is someone in your family that has had heart problems, so when you see folks like myself out canvassing, please give. If you can’t afford to donate a lot, remember even a few dollars help.

Here it is, my Flickr album.

I came across a page today that has default router usernames and passwords for commonly used routers. It’s a handy reference if you ever need to help someone access their router but they don’t know their own default password; it’s surprising to me how often that happens.

This guy… oh wait this is the Sucker of the Year award, my mistake.

Funny post about how volunteering to help someone move turned out to be a lot more than he bargained for.

From the Discovery channel comes one very smart bird.

(via Swimmer’s Life)

I took on a new part time job selling beds. Tonight I sold my first bed! I work for “Word of Mouth Beds” here in Lethbridge and the way it works is, the beds are stored in a warehouse that in turn saves money for the customers. It may not be the nicest place to shop but it is probably the least expensive. It’s a good deal for both the people shopping and for me because while I help them save money, they help me pay for University. Talk about Win/Win!

As anyone that has been to my blog before today can tell, I have updated to a brighter fresher appearance tonight. I’ve also added a cool elf icon for IE’s bookmarks and Firefox’s regular display. There are still some bugs to be worked out, but as far as a much needed update goes, this one has me very satisfied.

Today in my “fundamentals of Art Making” class we watched a video called “Culture Jam” (IMDB link). It is a documentary that depicts a group of individuals and their efforts to thwart The Man.

Basically there were three types of culture jamming happening. One group known as the Billboard Liberation Organization took it upon themselves to alter billboards in an interesting or humorous way usually creating some kind of social or political commentary. Another group, through dramatic performance, raided The Disney Store in Times Square and announced that they were from the Church of Stop Shopping. He told the people shopping there not to buy anything because of their bad labor practices. He was consequently arrested. The third Culture Jammer shown was a girl from Toronto that put “no logo” and other anti-commercialism stickers on the ads and buildings around her.

Personally, I tend to think that the billboard guys were by far the coolest. My reasons – which didn’t seem to go over to well with the class – were that the Billboard Liberation Organization created a new piece of art that was well thought out and esthetically pleasing. It also was often humorous or thought provoking. They don’t believe in actually damaging the billboards and other than “time lost for advertising” there is no harm done. In fact it could be argued that they do the original ad a service because it brings more people’s attention to the modified ad.

The girl with the stickers on the other hand is in a lot of ways nothing more than a self-righteous vandal. For example there was a TV advertising something in a bathroom and so she wrote, “Never stop shopping” or something like that on it with a black felt marker and to top it off stuck an Enjoy Debt sticker on the screen. She also stuck No Logo stickers on a La Senza ad at a bus stop. She stuck them right over the woman in the ad’s chest and face. Seeing those stickers there doesn’t inspire any anti-corporate or anti-consumerism attitude; instead it makes me hate the person that vandalized the bus stop.