DBarefoot posted a photo:

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Last week I was having coffee in John’s Place, a Victoria institution. There were a bunch of posters around the place for an upcoming appearance by a Vancouver band called Pawnshop Diamond:

I stopped to take a photo because of the blurb on the poster. As you can see, it reads:

Cowboy Junkies meets Wilco singing drunken Canadian love songs.

I like Wilco. I love the Cowboy Junkies. And I’m Canadian. It sounds like a band tailor-made for me. I checked out their MySpace page (they’re also on Facebook), and, indeed, I quite like their music. I haven’t paid a ton of attention to their lyrics, but I liked the sound of a phrase from the song “Sweet Music”: “Neil Young is a plant on my window sill, always leaning toward the sun”.

They’re not on iTunes, eMusic or even the Canadian-only Zunior. You can buy a CD or get MP3s from CD Baby, but I’ll probably go to their gig on August 30 and buy a CD the old-fashioned way.

UPDATE: I take it back, they are on iTunes.

Today Rebecca wrote a blog post and ran a poll about the breastfeeding controversy and subsequent protest at Vancouver’s downtown H&M store. I was reading through the comments associated with the blog post. Matt wrote (I added the link):

Also, Manuela Valle, the lady who got all this started here? Is a PhD candidate at the Centre for Women’s Studies and Gender Relations, so I don’t think it’s much of a stretch to think she might have a vested interest in this story becoming as big as possible.

I read several articles about this event (I was trying to catch up), and never read this fact. Doing some Google News searches, I could only find one mainstream media story which specifically referenced her area of study.

This would matter less if she were a quantum physicist, but Ms. Valle’s scholarly interests merit mention. I don’t mean to insinuate any kind of malfeasance on her part, or suggest that she was in the wrong. Nor do I wish to ascribe any particular agenda to her (besides lactivism–what a fun word). I do, however, think her background is relevant to the story.

Did the media (and the blogosphere) botch this one?

DBarefoot posted a photo:

Actually refers to Maui, not Victoria.

DBarefoot posted a photo:

This had been actually drawn in the wet cement.

DBarefoot posted a photo:

DBarefoot posted a photo:

Uploaded with AirMe

DBarefoot posted a photo:

Uploaded with AirMe

DBarefoot posted a photo:

For more details and a video walkthrough, visit my blog.

DBarefoot posted a photo:

For more details and a video walkthrough, visit my blog.

DBarefoot posted a photo:

For more details and a video walkthrough, visit my blog.

DBarefoot posted a photo:

For more details and a video walkthrough, visit my blog.

DBarefoot posted a photo:

For more details and a video walkthrough, visit my blog.

Last week we met with John, our architect. After some initial paper sketches, he renders his house plans in Google SketchUp, so that his clients can experience the project in three dimensions.

We spent a couple of hours with John walking through the house, discussing various room arrangements, orientations and finishes. Because SketchUp is free, we were able to also spend time at our leisure, mulling over options. Still, we’re probably 85% there. There’s a few changes we’d like made–the removal of a balcony, the re-arranging of a room–but the house’s essence is there. Of course, the practical realities of spiraling costs will no doubt change what gets built. For now, though, we’re pretty happy with John’s work.

We wanted to solicit feedback and suggestions from far and wide, so we made this little 8-minute video walkthrough of the 3-D model. We’re not very good at video editing, narrating or Google SketchUp, so please tolerate the rough edges. I meant to mention in the video that the property is 3.5 acres, and the 3-D model only renders the building site itself.

Here’s the video. You can see a slightly bigger version on Vimeo:

Pender House Plan Walkthrough from Darren Barefoot on Vimeo.

For those non-gamers who get motion sickness from my dodgy SketchUp work, here are some screen captures that show a few views of the house. They’re quite larger, but you can see smaller versions in this Flickr photo set.

• Garage and house
• Front side of the house
• Back side of the house
• Cutaway view of upper floor
• Cutaway view of lower floor

DBarefoot posted a photo:

Uploaded with AirMe

DBarefoot posted a photo:

Uploaded with AirMe

DBarefoot posted a photo:

Uploaded with AirMe

DBarefoot posted a photo:

Uploaded with AirMe

DBarefoot posted a photo:

Uploaded with AirMe

At first I laughed at the labels for the temperature control in my freezer, but then I decided they made a lot of sense. After all, it’s either ‘cold’ or it’s ‘colder’. It’s the ultimate level of abstraction for a freezer.

On a related note, does anybody know why Flickr decided that this photo was taken in ‘Harris Green, Victoria’ (see the ‘Additional Information’ metadata to the right of the photo)?

The Internet, as you know, changed everything. Well, not everything, but it sure disrupted the way we make and distribute art. Ever since I saw geeks posting encoded files to Usenet, I’ve been curious to watch how the web has turned content creation (an awful, generic term) on its head.

One truth of the web in 2008 is that it is a much flatter playing field for creators. If you made an independent film in 1993, and you didn’t get backing from a studio, you couldn’t imagine how, say, 100,000 people would ever see it. YouTube makes that quite achievable in 2008.

But that flatter playing field isn’t necessarily accompanied by a lot of money-wielding players. And an artist has gotta eat. YouTube and other video sites have revenue sharing programs, but I doubt even 100,000 views would generate much money. I did a few quick searches on this, but couldn’t find any sample numbers.

Email Lists and True Fans

In a lot of cases, the old economic models are shot, or in sharp decline, and we haven’t figured out new ones yet. A recent guest columnist–a musician–on the Telegraph’s blog shed some light on how his band has survived in a post-Napster world:

When we left EMI in 1995, our most recent album had sold over 300,000 units. While we were still contracted for more, EMI decided to drop us. We were no longer commercial.

Today, after the internet boom, that level of sales would get us a deal with any of the major labels. After three more badly-marketed albums with an independent label we were down to 100,000 units.

In 1999 we released our final contracted album for Castle Records and, in anticipation of the way we planned to do business in the future, called it Marillion.com. We had already collected the email addresses of more than 20,000 fans through free CDs, downloads, etc. and by asking these fans to order and pay for the upcoming CD in advance, we were able to finance the writing and recording.

The precious email list reminded me of Kevin Kelly’s excellent essay 1000 True Fans.

Indie Games Come of Age?

The video game industry has, by comparison, remained unhindered by piracy. I’m not sure why this is. I assume that the industry’s explosive growth over the last decade has more than compensated for the revenue lost to pirated games. Plus, of course, I suspect that relatively few console players have the skills or inclination to play pirated games.

In any case, I’ve seen the video game industry as kind of like Hollywood’s studio system. There are a few big publishers, and they buy development studios or license their content. Even a ’small’ development studio would, I think, have dozens of employees.

The revolution in casual gaming, however, enables smaller teams and individuals to earn more attention. There’s a ton of free casual game sites on the web now. I don’t know how much revenue a given game creator sees from advertising, but I do know that their games are constantly copied and posted on new sites with advertising wrapped around them.

Still, I recently read about a success in the relatively new world of casual gaming on the consoles. Jonathan Blow developed a reportedly excellent game called Braid. He released it on XBox Live Arcade, an in-game system where players buy and download (I gather) generally cheap games. Braid had no in-store distribution–you can only get it through your XBox 360. It cost $15 to download the game. Via Silicon Alley Insider, I read Blow’s blog post about his first week of sales:

As I write this, there are 62,242 entries on the main leaderboards. I don’t have official sales numbers for the full week, but I would guess about 55,000 people have bought the game so far.

That works out to $825,000 in the first week. Microsoft takes a cut–possibly 33%–but that’s still terrific revenue for an independent game developer. Wikipedia provides a little information about the development process, but I’m unsure of what the budget for such a game would be, and how many people contributed to it. It’s enough, apparently, so that Blog can build another game without a day job.

I’m not sure, but I guess XBox Live Arcade and its competitors casual gaming portals can (have?) become the iTunes and YouTubes of the gaming industry, enabling the little guys to get greater distribution and, hopefully, revenue. Will indie game developers be as, on average, penniless as documentary film makers, despite their new-found distribution? Or will Johnathan Blow’s experience be repeated a thousand times over?

Clearly there are more questions than answers about the new economics of content. I mostly wrote this post to point to these two developments, and two industries at, seemingly, different stages of their evolution. For anybody interested in the background or context of these shifting tides, check out John Perry Barlow’s The Economy of Ideas and The Next Economy of Ideas.

UPDATE: Speaking of casual games, Andy points to a clever game called Coign of Vantage.