We’re very excited and a lot humbled.

How I Learned to Drive, the play we produced last year at Performance Works on Granville Island picked up two Jessie Richardson awards last night in Vancouver.  Both in the ‘small theatre’ category.

Allan Morgan got the award for outstanding performance by an actor in a lead role, and Eileen Barrett won for outstanding performance by an actress in a lead role.

Four years ago when Eileen read Paula Vogel’s Pulitzer Prize winning play How I Learned to Drive, she couldn’t understand why it had never been done in Vancouver. Our answer was, “lets do it” and so began a wonderful experience with some of the city’s best actors, director, lighting designers and stage managers. 

It’s a real tribute to the acting community in Vancouver that this kind of self-funded theatre can still be done, and done to critical acclaim. 

New forms of broadcast, and new business models for these new forms, are showing up faster and faster. Steve Rubel spotted this high def show out of Argentina…

It’s recorded, edited, and distributed in the full resolution of the 1080i HD standard. More importantly, because of its size the show is distributed on BitTorrent. The content can be viewed on a PC, HDTV, or a video iPod. full story here

Even the big record companies are trying their hand by creating their own web broadcast outlets…

the record labels might have a new business model for music videos. Instead of giving them away for free to MTV as promotional vehicles in order to sell CDs, they can now be revenue vehicles as well (through advertising) full story here

Roland is the coolest co-presenter ever. As we were introducing ourselves at our session on EverythingCasting, he had his phone on video mode and zapping it up via Shozu. Check this out.

My niece is here from North Carolina and she’s sporting an iPod supplied by her university. She’s in a dance program and her and other ‘arty’ types get the iPods free for the year as they integrate music with their art.

There is absolutely no connection between that bit of info and this next bit. Or is there ?

Technology surpassed beer drinking as the most “in” thing among U.S. undergraduate college students. According to USA Today and Student Monitor’s Lifestyle & Media Study, iPods are more “in” than beer across American college campuses. full story here

This is a very sad state of affairs. And just when I’m thinking things are really going to crap, I see this story…

A US firm has invented a new iPod accessory which combines the portable music player with a toilet roll holder. full story here.

Clearly, things are well past the ‘gone too far’ stage.

Another recent escapee from the CBC, Loc Dao, president of Randomlink Interactive Inc. outside the partnering forum at VidFest 2006 in Vancouver.

Roland Tanglao and I did a session on “EverythingCasting” (with thanks to Eric Rice for the title) at VidFest in Vancouver today.

The session was packed and thanks to everyone who came.  You can get a PDF version of our slides here.

You’ll find a list of resources related to podcasting and videocasting at del.icio.us/tag/everythingcasting

I’m so impressed with these guys.

I’ve bought stuff from Vistek.ca a few times. Although I always prefer to buy from local suppliers, these guys have great prices and quick service.

10 days ago I bought a new camera from them.  They pay the shipping and it showed up a few days later as promised.  Fantastic. 

This morning, as I was looking for something online, I discovered that they just put the very same camera on sale, reducing it by 500 dollars. 

Wow, that’s a big difference.  I figured I’d get on the phone and see if I could get them to adjust my price, even though the deals been done.

Unlike a lot of online sales operations I’ve encountered, I was able to reach a sales person right away.  I explained the situation, and without even a pause, he said he was pretty sure he could offer the savings, but had to check with his boss.  A few minutes later, I got an email confirming that indeed they would give me the reduced price, and credit my account.  Just like that.

I’ll say it again.  Wow.

It doesn’t get much better than that, and they’ve got my business locked in, that’s for sure.

This is by far the most fun I’ve had in days. This is a very cool applet that takes any web site url and turns it into a graphic.

Here’s what this blog looks like.

And the dots represent:

blue: for links (the A tag)
red: for tables (TABLE, TR and TD tags)
green: for the DIV tag
violet: for images (the IMG tag)
yellow: for forms (FORM, INPUT, TEXTAREA, SELECT and OPTION tags)
orange: for linebreaks and blockquotes (BR, P, and BLOCKQUOTE tags)
black: the HTML tag, the root node
gray: all other tags

This story about one of the films at Cannes should make you feel a bit better about YOUR day.

Morally and metaphysically confused, unfunny, heavy-handed and as prone to waste, excess, idiocy and decadence as the emphatically allegorical world it imagines, it comes across as the dopehead nerd hipster’s alternative to ‘The Da Vinci Code’

Ok. I took the test.

Here are my results, eh.

***Your Linguistic Profile:*** 55% General American English 20% Yankee 10% Dixie 5% Midwestern 5% Upper Midwestern

What Kind of American English Do You Speak?

Poaching the Big Boys…
How big is the mobile phone business ? Big enough to scoop one of the world’s top bankers.

World Follower…
Even though Canada is a world leader in broadband connectivity, it’s wired connectivity. In the US, citywide wi-fi is all the rage. New York is seeing some interesting development, and here for Philly and New Orleans.Meanwhile, in Canada, proceed at your own peril. Maybe we should just let Starbucks do it.

iWiFi…
Stranger things have happened. The iPod seems to be saving the music industry. Maybe this is what will eventually drive citywide wi-fi.

Breaking story…
The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation in Manitoba discovers a new “high-tech phone”. Wow, who knew ? You can use the Internet to call people.

Speaking of Manitoba…
Someone there should get onto these and make a bundle this summer.

Speaking of Canada…
Here’s what we’ll all be watching on TV next season.

If It Isn’t On Fire It’s a Software Problem…
LA’s most ambitious opera delayed due to computer. I guess it ain’t over until the FAT partition sings.

Broadcasters – Nervous Yet ?
Audio on the Internet grows by 50% from a year ago, and they aren’t listening to traditional radio stations online. Video on the Internet clocks 165% increase in 3 months.

Vinyl Never Dies, It Just Gets More Expensive…
When all we had were vinyl records, we longed for music that wasn’t filled with snap, crackle and pops. It’s been 25 years since the first CD players hit the consumer market. And still we’ve got vinyl envy.

Is this BC’s version of outsourcing ?
Why import 1600 keys of pot into the pot capital of Canada? The RCMP acknowledges that Mexican pot isn’t as potent as BC bud but “some people like domestic wines, and I guess some people like imported wines. There’s a market for this. That’s why it’s here.”

Last year Eileen and I produced How I Learned to Drive at Performance Works on Granville Island.

Today, that production received an amazing five nominations for the Jessie Richardson Theatre awards.

The nominations are in the small theatre category and include:
(drum roll)

Outstanding Performance by an Actor in a Lead Role – Alan Morgan
Outstanding Performance by an Actress in a Lead Role – Eileen Barrett
Outstanding Performance by an Actress in a Supporting Role – Kelly Metzger
Outstanding Direction – James Fagan Tait
Outstanding Production – Overdrive Productions

The web site for the production is online here.

This is an interesting example of how passion and people make things happen, not necessarily big budgets or access to cutting edge technology.

Overdrive Productions is the epitome of small theatre – it’s really just Eileen and I.  Our 2 boys ran the concession at the theatre, one of them had to stand on the cash box because he couldn’t see over the counter.  The actors and director and lighting designer all got involved because they were passionate about the script, and felt they could do it on a world-class level. Performance Works made it possible by partnering with us on the venue. Friends helped out on all sorts of levels, including helping put together the opening night goodies.

The production got rave reviews and it was gratifying to see critics acknowledge that good theatre can be done on small budgets. I’d like to personally thank everyone on the Jesse committee who nominated the production.

The awards will be announced June 19th at the Commodore Ballroom in Vancouver.

Wearing my At Large Media hat… 

One of the many benefits of working with Sara Bailey is that our ALM “Out Loud” newsletter looks better than ever. Here’s a screen grab of the first page – download the PDF by clicking on the image.

You can subscribe to the newsletter via the web site or grab the At Large Media RSS feed.

It would be great to think the Wall Street Journal picked up on some pithy comment or earth-shattering insight made here on bigsnit.com.

Turns out  my post about using a power washer to blast dandelions, and a neighbourhood friend, are my path to WSJ fame.

Here’s what happened.

Last weekend I noticed a ton of hits on the blog coming from the Wall Street Journal.  I don’t subscribe to their pay site, so I wasn’t able to follow the link back to see why I was suddenly getting all this traffic from WSJ.com 

Turns out my friend Keith Gardiner had commented on one of their articles about pesticide free lawn care, and suggested that “anything that gives a guy a chance to use his power-washer can’t be all bad” and tipping them to my post about blasting my front yard dandelions. They ran his comment and a link to my blog entry. 

See mom, this blogging thing isn’t a waste of time.

(actually, that’s a bit unfair.  My mom proudly tells everyone I have a ‘blob’)

Nathan Sellyn is guest blogging over on the Raincoast Books blog.

The neat thing is, he’s answering questions people send in.

So, if you’ve got a question for one of Canada’s hottest new authors (you’ll be able to say you knew him when), stop by the blog and fire off some questions to him.

PS: If you haven’t heard his podcast yet, check it out here.

An excellent article on the future of TV by Robert Young in Om Malik’s blog.

…there will be a mini-disruption in the near term. To be specific, it is likely that most of the hundreds of channels we get today via our cable & satellite subscriptions will disappear and there will be only 10 to 20 broadcast channels left standing. Here’s why…

Here’s the full article.

I’ve been shooting a lot of flowers this year, mostly because the garden keeps popping up with surprises.

So, here’s a special Flowers Screensaver.  Native resolution is 1920 by 1200 but it will scale to your screen or multiple screens, and it has a number of options you can change.  The the .zip file here – it’s 16 meg.

Sorry – windows only.

When we worked on the Get Your Vote On campaign last year, one of the applications we developed with Exponentia was instant polling via SMS.

At a live event, we could use our web display on big screens to pose questions, and let those in the audience vote in real time using their cell phone.

Kevin Millsip from Check Your Head had a brilliant idea on how to get people interesting in taking part. He suggested the first poll question: “Should the guy next to you buy you a beer ?”

According to The Register, Virgin Mobile in the UK is on the same page:

Virgin Mobile is offering its gig-going punters free beer and kebabs this summer as part of plans to be nice to its customers.Virgin Mobile punters attending certain youth-oriented events will be invited to text the word “beer” or “kebab” to a short code number. In return, they’ll receive a text containing a voucher for two free beers and a kebab.

So, if we had it to do all over again, maybe the question would be:
“Should the Virgin next to you buy you a beer?”