pointing out the obvious

I took the leap a few months back and discontinued my account with Toronto Hydro and signed up for Bullfrog Power. Bullfrog is a green electricity provider in the GTA, who sources their electricity from low-impact sources including wind and water.

While I have yet to receive my first bill, the difference in cost should be around $40/bill, which works out to be about a 33% increase. Not so bad considering the net effect - no nuclear, no fossil fuels, much less CO2, and a whole sheet of little bullfrog stickers for my water bottle. awesome.

Now here’s where I come clean - my involvement in most of these social/environmental initiatives are directly attributed to my spouse - think Bill and Belinda (minus all the money and ideas). There, I said it.

You can also thank my friend Juan at global-culture.org for encouraging this.

I received a copy of the ‘early morning manic’ album as an xmas gift last year, and can’t stop listening to it. Paul is probably one of the nicest guys I know, and has an incredible musical talent. If you get a chance, check out some of the music on his myspace page.

As you can tell from my last.fm music profile, I’m a fan of a wide variety of music. What I love about Paul’s music is the feeling you get through his raw acoustic guitar, a good example of this for me is “i don’t dream“. While not profiled on his page, he’s also an incredible piano player and has a great short piano track over a funky bass groove that works amazingly well. Overall, even if I didn’t grab brunch with him every so often, I’d pickup a copy of “early morning manic” if it were for sale. It’s one of those albums you are always looking for, but can never find.

Best of luck buddy. You’re awesome.

If anyone out there is having issues with comment spam, the akismet comment spam plug-in for wordpress is amazingly effective. 27 for 27 so far over the last 24hrs - apparently pharmacheaps.com is on a marketing rampage.

Update - 141 for 141. Awesome.

Amazon has recommendations, LibraryThing has the LibrarySuggester and other sites have other variations of this, but they are never quite right. Why is that? Do we not find the recommendations credible?

Amazon makes recommendations based on the book you are viewing, so if you like Harry Potter, you might also like what others who bought Harry Potter purchased. However, just because I purchased something doesn’t necessarily mean I liked it. LibraryThing makes recommendations based on a single book, which has the same limitation as Amazon. For members, LibraryThing also makes recommendations on all the books in your profile, matching them up against others with similar libraries - I assume your book ratings are taken into consideration. Surely this is as good as it gets?

Or do we need to go one step further and ‘decode’ a book the way that Pandora decodes music? Unfortunately, we all know how hit or miss Pandora recommendations can be. Along with Last.fm, Pandora’s recommendations are probably the best I’ve seen, but they still aren’t perfect. Maybe it’s easier to decode a book than it is to decode music?

I feel as though we can do better.

If you haven’t had a chance to see it yet - NAU.com is open for business. For those who don’t know, NAU is a clothing retailer that uses sustainable fabrics, is eco friendly and 5% of each purchase goes to a charity of your choice.

I saw some of their fabrics in the early stages of development - they were extremely interesting. NAU has definitely done their homework in terms of developing and using new renewable fabrics that perform as well as, or better, than conventional fabrics.

They also took a great step in terms of making outdoor clothing stylish. NAU’s lead designer, Mark Galbraith, did a fantastic job with the design.

The site, developed completely in flash, is pretty impressive. The imagery and transitions are nice, you get a great feeling for the people behind the clothing.

Clearly I have a soft spot for these guys.