Make Internet TV, from the same people who bring you the Democracy Player, brings together in one place almost all the information you need to make your own television show on the Internet. Put this together with the secret cache of video gear at UPEI and there’s nothing stopping you.

Over the years I’ve heard rumours about a collection of audio- and video-production gear that’s been accumulated, under various projects and grantings, in the basement of the Robertson Library at the University of PEI. Today, after a meeting upstairs in the Library, I got a cook’s tour of the secret multimedia bunker, and I was floored: there’s enough gear down there to let you film and edit a Hollywood movie.

There’s a full-fledged sound-dampened audio booth with mixing board, digital recording setup, complement of microphones and speakers and next door there’s a ProTools audio editing setup. In other words, you can record everything from a podcast to an album and not have to leave the basement.

And around the corner there are digital video cameras, an AVID non-linear editing suite, and, it would seem, enough mobile gear to let you set up a decent location shoot.

There’s also enough unused computing power to let you run a small anti-ballistic missile program.

It would appear that, for most intents and purposes, the equipment is sitting there left fallow. Although it might require navigating a bureaucratic thicket to figure out how to secure permission to put the gear to use for your own webcast / podcast / documentary / television show / solo acoustic album, I can’t imagine it would be all that difficult.

Often when People Of Ideas get a new one — “I’d really like to make a documentary about…” or “someone should really made a live weekly podcast about…” — they run up against a problems with resources, funding, and/or infrastructure. And if they try to solve those problems they can find all their energy sucked away by the task.

The gear at UPEI — just sitting there ready to be used — dispenses entirely with almost all of these problems. What are you waiting for?

Through an intriguing set of twists and turns (mostly due to the good works of [[Karin LaRonde]]), I’ve got 10 minutes on the agenda of the Annual General Meeting of the Charlottetown Farmer’s Market tomorrow night to talk about things we can do to encourage customers of the market to leave their cars at home and take the bus, walk or cycle to the market.

This all started from a wacky idea I presented to Karin last fall where I suggested that, in an effort to get more people than just [[Oliver]] and I riding Bus #3 to the market every week, I would offer to pay the bus fare for anyone else who wanted to join us. Over the winter I expanded my thinking to include other non-automobile ways of travel.

I’ve prepared a handout for distribution at the meeting wherein I briefly lay out the effects of all that driving, and provide some information about alternatives, and some suggestions for small actions the market can take.

If you have any additional practical suggestions that I can take forward, please let me know.

Every since reading about Viridian Electricity Meter contest in WIRED magazine in 2001, I’ve wanted one. Except that the designs were all imaginary. It seems there’s now an Newfoundland company that can sell me what I want: look at the PowerCost Monitor:

With a PowerCost Monitor you can tell at a glance how much electricity your home is consuming - moment-to-moment and in total. This is the advantage of real-time feedback on your electricity. Why wait for your electricity bill when you can see what you are spending on electricity as you spend it! Tests in Ontario and elsewhere have proven that householders who use real-time feedback can reduce electricity use by as much as five to 20 per cent.

Best of all, it seems that you don’t even need an electrician to install these units: they strap over top of both electromechanical and electronic meters.

Thanks to the kindness of the [[lads upstairs]], my [[Mom]] and [[Oliver]] got a chance to experience the Nintendo Wii this afternoon. Mom and I bowled a couple of rounds, played tennis and golf, and went head to head in baseball. During our baseball game it came to pass that I was batting as Jesus (in the baseball game the batting order runs through the “Mii” characters that earlier users of the console have set up; Jesus was batting third). I scored a home run on the first pitch, and Jesus ran the bases. This must be a Sign. A good time was had by all.

Suggesting that media now really is global, I read about (Wallpaper founder and expat Canadian) Tyler Brúlé’s new magazine Monocle on André Ribeirinho’s weblog and then, two days later, found it on the newsstand at Indigo here in [[Charlottetown]].

I’ve only begun to make my way through the first issue — it’s huge — but on first blush it seems to be a cross between The New Yorker and COLORS. The design and organization of the printed magazine and the Monocle website are very compelling. I’ll report back after I’ve finished the issue, but early signs are positive.

Daj mi kino! — Give me the cinema! — is a project of the Croatian Film Clubs’ Association and the Zagreb Film Festival with a goal of saving Croatian cinemas. Part of their work involves the production of a series of short films by a dozen Croatian directors; here’s the one from Tomislav Rukavina:

The elevator door in our apartment in Lisbon made a most curious sound. Here’s a short video of a ride in it: at the beginning [[Oliver]] does his impression of the sound; at the end, you hear the sound (when the door is opening) itself.

Bloomberg reports Ryanair Chief O’Leary to Start Trans-Atlantic Airline:

Ryanair Holdings Plc Chief Executive Officer Michael O’Leary plans to start a discount trans-Atlantic airline, offering fares as low as $12, following the “open skies” accord between the U.S. and European Union.

Scanning the [[Prince Edward Island]] headlines in my RSS reader this morning, I note that there’s a broad spectrum of opinion on whether we’ll be having an election here this spring:

Although we’ll be involved again deep in the thick of the electoral process, albeit in the calm inner waters of non-political election logistics, we hear about the election call at the same time as everyone else. To get some idea of what this means from a planning perspective, imagine that you’re going to have a child, but that the birth could happen either any minute now, or in six months. But you’ve got to be ready.