As a guy who loves the sound of small Ampeg amplifiers (I play through a B-100R), I’ve been curious to hear how the “cute” new Ampeg Micro-VR actually sounds. Now, thanks to The Swell Season and the Onion AV Club, I know:
The Swell Season covers Neutral Milk Hotel
That’s Joe Doyle (from The Frames) on bass.
(via Merlin)
Compliments of Mr. Tristan Homer, a new episode of Jim Dupree: Enthusiast. This time, Jim is enthusiastic about the city of Pickering, Ontario:
So basically, every Wednesday for a bunch of weeks now, I’ve been going to the Corktown Ukulele Jam. It’s just down the street from my house at the Dominion on Queen, and it’s awesome.
A few weeks ago, the videotaped the whole night and put it on YouTube. Here’s me, doing a ukulele cover of “She’s Dead” by Jim’s Big Ego:
There’s a contest for these YouTube videos — the most viewed after a month wins a dinner at the Dominion, if I recall correctly. So feel free to watch this multiple times.
Via Robert Paterson’s weblog, a great video of NPR’s Adam Davidson, explaining how they approached the incredibly complicated subject of the housing crisis for This American Life’s The Giant Pool of Money and the Planet Money podcast:
As you’ll see in the video, Davidson thinks that journalists are too reluctant to acknowledge their own ignorance when approaching complex stories. “The Giant Pool of Money,” on the other hand, felt like a learning process for Davidson and Blumberg as much as their listeners.
Well worth watching.
Jim Dupree is back in full force for season five. Three new episodes since I last mentioned the show. As always, you can subscribe via RSS or subscribe in iTunes or subscribe in Miro. Here are the latest episodes:
Episode 42 – Jim Dupree: Balloon Enthusiast
Episode 43 – Jim Dupree: Tree Enthusiast
Episode 44 – Jim Dupree: Polka Enthusiast
It’s been a long while, and our original Fibonacci-based release schedule has been abandoned. But this week, almost an entire year after the first episode, Tristan posted the thrilling finale to season four of Jim Dupree: Enthusiast, Jim Dupree: Nickname Enthusiast:
So now it’s on to season five (which will be posted according to no regular schedule). To kick things off, Cat Enthusiast:
With the purchase of a brand-new (to us) HD camcorder, you may be able to look forward to higher-fidelity videos from Collective Productions in the future.
From Al’s Morning Meeting (a daily read of mine) comes this video called How Al Tompkins Produces His Video Blogs.
The secret? A Flip Video camera.
The crew at Spark has been wanting one of these little cameras for a while now, but we haven’t got our hands on one yet. You see, as far as I can tell, they don’t ship to Canada. However, Al had a good idea: buy one on eBay. A quick search yields several sellers willing to ship to Canada.
Wait, scratch that. I just checked, and it seems TigerDirect.ca has them in stock.
This past weekend, the Spark team and Tristan showed up at the CBC and made a little behind-the-scenes video to explain how we make the radio show every week:
It’s great, because now I don’t have to explain what I do all day.
Via the Spark blog, a very funny video from Kirby Ferguson:
Not only is it chuckle-worthy, but it features CC music from Halifax synth popsters Windom Earle. What more could you ask for?
Ever since the final episode of Jim Dupree: Enthusiast about a year and a half ago, people have asked, “Are you ever going to make more episodes?”
The answer for a long time was, “No.”
But as of yesterday, that answer changed. Starting on Groundhog Day 2008 (yesterday), we started to release season four of the podcast series, on a schedule that can only be described as “Fibonacci.” Here’s the release schedule:
Season 4, Episode 1: February 2, 2008
Season 4, Episode 2: February 3, 2008
Season 4, Episode 3: February 5, 2008
Season 4, Episode 4: February 8, 2008
Season 4, Episode 5: February 13, 2008
Season 4, Episode 6: February 21, 2008
Season 4, Episode 7: March 5, 2008
Season 4, Episode 8: March 26, 2008
Season 4, Episode 9: April 29, 2008
Season 4, Episode 10: June 23, 2008
That’s right. The time between episodes gets exponentially longer.
Head on over to the Jim Dupree website to check out the new videos or subscribe.