littleBits Electronics: DIY hardware kits and more

littleBits Electronics is a cool concept for hardware hackers and DIYers. The company was founded by Ms Ayah Bdeir, originally from Lebanon and Canada but now living in New York City. In 2014 Popular Mechanics named her one of 25 Makers Who Are Reinventing The American Dream.  Designed to be be plug-and-play and using solderless connections, the parts and kits are pricey, so for those who know what they're doing it would probably be less expensive to source from Radio Shack or The Source. littleBits Elections also has a section called BitLab where designers can submit their projects for the public to vote on and if accepted, littleBits will put them into production and the designer will share in the revenue.

Camera Workers is live again

The newer version of Camera Workers is live again. There was a disconnect between the hosting company and its billing system and my e-mail back around 2011, so I owed 3 years worth of hosting. I think the company was sold at some point as when I started with Webserve.ca in 2009, it was based in North Vancouver. Now it's in Oakville, Ontario, and Niagara Falls, New York. When I tried to pay money I owed in December 2012 I was told an invoice would be sent, but it never was. After accessing the backend and generating a backup on August 31, I found the site was suddenly inaccessible the next day, both the public part and the backend. The bills have been paid. At least it's now less expensive to run than it was 5 years ago when I first started with Webserve.ca.

"Spaghetti Western Heaven Excerpt" uploaded to SoundCloud

Finished off a piece, my first real full-fledged song, this morning. Created entirely with the amazing compositional aid Rapid Composer along with some unusual software synth sounds from Modelonia and Kontakt. No music loops were used or harmed.

Have a listen to "Spaghetti Western Heaven Excerpt". The whole piece is just under 3.5 minutes, but due to the file size I couldn't upload the whole thing as a 320kbps MP3.

New music excerpt uploaded to SoundCloud

I was stuck for a title, so I just called this excerpt "Downtempo Demo". The whole piece is just over 5 and a half minutes. The excerpt is just over 1 and a half minutes.

Two things in life are certain: U.S. taxation and that other thing

Here's a very strong and clear statement from the organization American Citizens Abroad on why the United States should switch from citizen-based taxation (CBT) to residence-based taxation (RBT). It was presented to the U.S. Senate Finance Committee Hearing on July 22, 2014. The U.S. is only one of two countries in the world that practice CBT. The other country is Eritrea. http://americansabroad.org/files/8414/0732/2332/aca-statement-hearing-on-tax-reform.pdf

The end of Canadian sovereignty is in sight

Are you aware that ANY Canadian opening a new bank account at any of the major financial institutions will be asked invasive questions about their citizenship and sometimes their place of birth? This all thanks to the Harper government caving in to pressure from the United States and the banking industry as part of the United States Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act (FATCA). See this IRS site for details about this draconian legislation that makes a laughingstock of Canadian, not to mention other countries, sovereignty: http://www.irs.gov/Businesses/Corporations/Foreign-Account-Tax-Compliance-Act-FATCA 

The law imposes penalties on non-compliant financial institutions doing business in the United States. In order for this legislation to work, however, a little extra legal twist was needed, an Intergovernmental Agreement (IGA). Canada was I believe the last of the G-8 nations to sign an IGA on February 5, 2014 (http://www.treasury.gov/resource-center/tax-policy/treaties/Documents/FATCA-Agreement-Canada-2-5-2014.pdf) and it was made official as part of the omnibus bill C-31 which received royal assent on June 19, 2014. 

Now you might think it bad for Canadians to be asked those questions or you might think them perfectly innocent, however, for anyone falling under the definition of a "U.S. person" (U.S. Internal Revenue Service terminology), which includes anyone who was born in the U.S., the tax consequences could be severe. Unless you can prove you're no longer a "U.S. person", you'll find your new bank account data heading out of country via the Canada Revenue Agency to the IRS. 

The Alliance for the Defence of Canadian Sovereignty (ADCS-ADSC: http://www.adcs-adsc.ca/) is planning a lawsuit against the Canadian government around the enactment of FATCA on Canadian soil through the IGA and is appealing for donations to fund the lawsuit through its own site and that of the Isaac Brock Society (http://isaacbrocksociety.ca/).

New piece of music uploaded to SoundCloud, "Ethnic Harmonies"

Had some time to work on a new piece of music today, "Ethnic Harmonies". I've uploaded an excerpt, about 1:45 minutes to a SoundCloud account. Hope you enjoy it.

Information and Privacy Commissioner for BC releases special report, "A Failure to Archive"

Elizabeth Denham, the Information and Privacy Commissioner for BC, released a special report on July 22, 2014 titled "A Failure to Archive: Recommendations to Modernize Government Records Management". The report deals with three issues:

1. the decade-old backlog of 30,000+ boxes of records awaiting transfer from government to the BC Archives, which is part of the Royal BC Museum, a Crown corporation. The RBCM established a fee of $454 for the transfer of a box, so government offices decided to warehouse the records which was less expensive. 
2. "the lack of a practical method for archiving government’s electronic records", especially on the part of the BC Archives, which "does not have the capability to accept or archive those records. This challenge has been addressed in other jurisdictions, but B.C. [the province] has yet to make any significant progress in managing the archiving of electronic records."
3. modernization of the legislative framework for records management.

You can download the PDF report at https://www.oipc.bc.ca/special-reports/ and a press release is available for downloading at https://www.oipc.bc.ca/news-releases/

Springpad shutting down, June 25, 2014

Yet another reason not to trust your data to a startup: Springpad has announced it's shutting down effective June 25, 2014. They are providing some options on exporting your data.

Lucy meet Neo meet Will Caster

I was intrigued by the similarities between the July 2014 movie Lucy, the 1999 film The Matrix (Neo) and April 2014 movie Transcendence (Will Caster). Lucy combines elements of both films and even shares a co-star from Transcendence, that of Morgan Freeman. Of course The Matrix also featured Black co-star Laurence Fishburne who was Neo's teacher regarding the terrible truth of the world in which he lived and learned to manipulate just as star Scarlett Johansson's character does in Lucy. In Lucy and Transcendence Freeman's character is a scientist, though more of a professor in the former. I was somewhat disappointed by Transcendence, which also had an element of the TV series Revolution in it. The trailer I saw for Lucy showed Scarlett Johansson at her formidable best a la her Black Widow character from The Avengers.

New, full track, "Into the Clouds of Jupiter", uploaded to SoundCloud.com

I worked on this one for a few days. It's mostly comprised of some royalty-free music loops along with some sounds generated by software synthesizers. I called it "Into the Clouds of Jupiter" as it's supposed to evoke the first descent into the clouds of the planet Jupiter. I uploaded the full track, just over four minutes, and disabled downloading.

Uploaded dancehall instrumental excerpt to SoundCloud

Here's a short excerpt from a dancehall instrumental piece I've been working on and uploaded to SoundCloud. Have a listen.

Another piece of new music posted to SoundCloud

Don't know what's gotten into me, but I really like the simplicity of Sony ACID Music Studio and being able to throw some loops together and get a track down very quickly. Of course I'm not a sound engineer so my mixing and mastering skills are about at an elementary level.

I posted another piece new music to SoundCloud, simply an except of an uptempo, chillout piece created today (February 10, 2014). Hope you enjoy it.

My new music on SoundCloud

Seems like forever since I created some music for posting on SoundCloud.com. What can I say. Retirement's been keeping me busy as has a part-time job I started in September 2013. Last year we also sold our house and downsized.

Since I'm running out of title ideas, I just called this one DowntempoChilled-Feb092014. This is an excerpt taken from the last 1:45 minutes; the total duration of this track is 5:45 minutes.

Update about 8 hours later: I noticed that this piece has already have 4 Favoritings, which I think is pretty good for an older newbie.