keith planting garlic at 719

keith is going to look after the garden while i'm in van over the next few months - what a relief, i've been wanting to plant the garlic for a couple of weeks now.

BURNING PANTS - another CON flagration

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a fitting end to bogus elections where our only choice is not to vote cause the whole thing is a con or vote to prevent the worst of the cons a majority.

ray's big fish

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it's been a while but ray finally caught a chum today, he's happy and we get to feast on fresh salmon.

july at 719 - let it be

the garden is lush and bountiful, almost all the potted plants (tomato, pepper, cilantro, dianthus, lettuce, etc) have been placed and there's little room left for anything else until the garlic, rutabaga, fava, potato, and peas are finished - then it's time to plant winter crops.

dandelion haven at 719

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birds (pine siskins) love our bit of wild surrounded as we are by poisoned wasteland (aka lawns) - ever watch birds up close eating dandelion seeds?

jumble of fish

yesterday was a meltdown day, picked dandelions in the morning, had some shrooms and went to bed a nd cried for the rest of the day - not a total loss since i got to thinking about how women cry more than men and therefore clear their ducts regularly and perhaps see more clearly.

it's been a long time since i had a good cry and this one was for everything, and i mean everything, life as we know it and all that.

today i'm back to my somewhat usual self and have been quite productive - just finished potting some beautiful tomato and pepper seedlings, 2nd generation on this little corner of the world.

the dandelions are another matter, they've been here a very long time and this year they are big, fat and juicy - ray and i have picked about 60 quarts so far, most of it for 20 gal of wine and some for fritters and pie.

what prompted this blog was Bernard Lunn's Main Street Web which got me to thinking about twitter and various other social media like this blog and that i need to use them and learn about their utility as tools for om/cc development rather than avoid them cause of the complications - time is of the essence, and i fear we're not keeping up - everywhere i look i see apocalypse and i can't look away.

so now i'm going back out to pick some more dandelions cause they just keep coming up - they're so beautiful and i get to commune with the bees, ants and ladybugs that are feeding on the rich nectar this incredible plant exudes.

i tried uploading some pics yesterday to picassa but couldn't for some strange reason - will try again today, maybe shoot a vlog out there.

earth day critical mass komoux

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riders came from cumberland, comox, courtenay, royston, and other parts of the komoux valley for the second earth day critical mass ride through downtown courtenay to the fair grounds.

waterboard challenge #2 03/08/08

this i put together and uploaded in short order (2 hours) - not much raw vlog to process, all i had to do was cut a bit here and there - abrupt beginnings, transitions, and endings but it's up, whatever that's worth.

the only additional equipment cost so far has been a used camera for $110 and have i mentioned the $300 computer running kubuntu.

waterboard challenge march 1/08

waterboard challenge

i now have my own camera, a sony dsc p150, found on craigs list (thanks a lot) for $105 - have shot lots more than what's up but as i get better with the linux editor, kino, i intend to get my garden vlogs up soon - good discipline for learning, thank semanal.

cv peace demo feb 9/08

every saturday for over a year now the cv peace group has held a noon hour demo in downtown courtenay, bc.

this is the third vid for semanal, shot with a borrowed sony cybershot 4.1 and edited using kino on a kubuntu linux system.

success methinks

it's still technically terrible (tt) but it is a short story that i managed to put together after several days of frustration, mainly due to rank ignorance.

this 2.6 min video is about the comox valley peace group at the world community film festival in courtenay, bc a couple of weeks ago.

raw footage shot with a borrowed sony cyber 4.1 or something like that - distilled 10 raw segments down to 7 scenes which i then cut and pasted together using kino dv editor on a $300 linux box running kubuntu.

this is the second vlog for semanal, which is responsible for motivating me to actually produce and publish these early film experiments, despite the fact that it's consuming my whole life - i have to start some seeds soon!

all of this so that we can learn to use these powerful new media as a way through the waves of propaganda that the msm spews forth.

got some more vid in the can from last week's demo which i now have to edit and put up before shooting the greenhouse move, feeding the worms, and the waterboard challenge.

3 days lost

big excitement, kino, the video editor for my linux kubuntu system seemed to work like a charm when i first tried it and now 3 days later i'm still trying to export the vids i have put together - the cutting/adding in kino was a snap but i had trouble with the import and export functions - sometimes i wouldn't get the whole clip imported, sometimes it cut off an export, and sometimes there was nothing there at all.

don't know why i'm bothering with this blog except i said i was going to record the process.

back to kino.

ern's world

i finally got this uploaded to youtube after being unable to upload it directly here...

vloging and blogging

i'm about to start vloging and i'm going to use this blog to annotate the experience and to throw up (regurgitate) stuff of interest that i come across in my explorations in this new magical world of free expression - or not. i've been here before without much continuity, but i'm thinking the discipline of putting up a weekly vlog will force me to write something - we'll see.

i'm not a maker of films although i know the front end of a camera so i can point and shoot, which is all that's required it seems and i'm going to use a borrowed cybershot until i can buy my own - i don't know how to edit nor do i have the equipment, cinema verite with my own narration.

there's a bit of a learning curve here what with blogging, vlogging, twittering, and ninging but the only way i'm going to get it is to do it, so here goes.

i'm going to focus on my garden which is in the deep freeze right now but spring is coming and this will be a weekly diary of sorts, watching the garlic and dandelions growing - the other theme is going to be the torture challenge for which i'm going to have to create yet another blog and/or ning - blogtalkradio as well, perhaps.

and homelessness in the valley - it's bloody cold out there, i don't know how they survive.

if you want to do your own vloging, check out rupert howe - he's the bloke what turned me on..."Every week in 2008, we're posting videos. 52 videos by the end of the year. Post on your blog, on Seesmic, Facebook, YouTube, whatever, wherever and however. You can do anything you want. As long as it moves."

i'm trying to upload my first vlog and it's taking forever, like maybe it's not going to do it - na, it's not, on to youtube.