Archive for April, 2008

Ani and a xylophone

Last Monday night, we went and saw Ani DiFranco at the UBC Chan Centre. I’ve seen Ani in concert 5 times, and this time was definitely not a disappointment. She played a lot of material from her forthcoming album and it was truly excellent. I think that it’s pretty rare to see an artist in concert and like their new material just as much as their old songs — especially for a musician as prolific as Ani DiFranco.

Her new band consists of an upright base, drums, acoustic guitar and a xylophone. I wasn’t sure how the xylophone would work, but it sounded great and it was a nice enhancement to the sound of her older material.

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Filed under life : Comments (0) : Apr 28th, 2008

Earth Hour

At 8pm Saturday March 29th, people around the world turned out the lights in support of Earth Hour. Earth Hour is a campaign organized by the WWF to raise awareness of the connection between energy use and global climate change. The event encourages people to take action by turning off their lights and power to any non-essential devices for the 60 minutes between 8pm and 9pm.

This year’s Earth Hour was a very busy event for me and my new company Small Energy Group. In partnership with the University of British Columbia, Vancouver City Hall, and the Village of Hartley Bay, we monitored the energy use over the day for each site to quantify and make visible the energy savings impact of their actions. UBC had committed to powering down non-essential services over the entire day; City Hall shut off the floodlights lighting the art deco facade for the building; and in Hartley Bay, they turned off the diesel generator that supplies power to the whole community plunging the village into darkness.

You can see the results of the savings achieved by each site by checking out the web site: http://earthhour.smallenergygroup.com/.

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Filed under environment, life, technology : Comments (0) : Apr 10th, 2008