The Ad·ver·sary remix disc is coming together excellently, and it’ll even be finished in time for my live set at the Kinetik Festival.
I’ve uploaded a preview track of one of the mixes: Ad·ver·sary – Waiting for Gira (Patience is a Virtue Perceived Remix by ESA)
This is going to be a great album.
Just came back from PodCamp Toronto, where Audra and I gave a presentation on Social Media in the Public Service. It went over really well, and it’ll be up on SlideShare once the video/audio archives are up at PodCamp so I can stitch it all together.
I spent a fair amount of the trip feeling ill, and to my horror, I’ve realized that I always started feeling sick about twenty minutes after having a few cups of coffee. Caffeine is one of my most treasured addictions, and I don’t know how easily I would be able to function without it. I don’t think there has ever been a period in my life where I was caffeine-free.
…
I’d like to go back and spend some more time wandering the city once it warms up a bit. I think I’m slowly coming to terms with my relationship with Toronto. We’ll never be what we were, but I think we could learn how to be friends.
+ I (finally) have an easy-to-access turntable set up in my house.
+ I (finally) am listening to Jesu on vinyl.
- I bought a Behringer preamp and now I pick up Chinese radio stations.
- I don’t speak Chinese.
+ My work will be sending me to several months of paid full-time French school.
± English has been failing me quite a bit recently.
- I haven’t been writing very much at all.
- I’m realizing that while working hard to keep calm and still over the past year or three, I’ve also been quieting a lot of anxiety and negativity that has been waiting for an exit.
- I do not sleep enough.
- I do not tidy enough.
- I am stressed about money.
+ I’m slowly correcting a year-long drift in my job responsibilities, moving it out of web development and back into web communications.
- However, transitioning between the two means I have the responsibilities of both but with the same amount of hours in a day.
+ I am giving a presentation at PodCamp in Toronto next weekend.
+ It will be awesome.
+ I make great websites.
+ Also flyers.
+ I think I’ve figured out the packaging for the Ad·ver·sary remix album.
- I haven’t figured out the name of it yet. Or the tracklist. Or who’s mastering it.
+ The remixes are fucking great.
+ I am still listening to Jesu on vinyl.
Canadian soldiers in Afghanistan will be ordered to attack opium traffickers and drug facilities when there is proof of direct links to the Taliban, CBC News has learned.
The new order follows a heated debate among NATO allies over whether the attacks could be declared war crimes.
Defence Minister Peter MacKay told CBC News soldiers would indeed target drug traffickers and drug production facilities.
First, using military force on civilian targets — even if you don’t like what they do for a living — is a war crime.
Second, our military is in fucking Afghanistan fighting DRUG DEALERS WHAT THE FUCKING FUCK ASDFKASODFKOAWEF
It has been a long winter, and I’m finding myself in places that I never thought I would be.
I don’t know exactly how I got here, and I don’t know exactly what comes next, but I’m happier and more optimistic about where things are going than I have been in years.
The next few months are going to be busy: finishing production on a friend’s album, releasing an Ad·ver·sary remix album, going to SXSW Interactive, preparing for Kinetik, and a half-dozen other Big Things — but I’m looking forward to seeing what happens next.
Good riddance to 2008.
A quiet moment from last Tuesday at Zaphods.
For the first time in 60 years, police in Iceland have had to use tear gas as protesters riot over the handing of the financial crisis:
(Photos by -alp, hauxon, and vhallgrimsson.)
restraint.org is a loose collection of writing, links, ravings, photos, news, fiction, and bad poetry by Jairus Khan. This website has been here (off and on) for ten years or so, and was around in various other forms for three or four years before that.
I spend most of my off-hours working (in Ottawa, Canada) to promote underground arts and media, and trying to keep independent music from being smothered by an anachronism popularly known as ‘the industry’. I DJ weekly, promote concerts/festivals regularly, make beep-beep noises in an industrial-metal band, and release CC-licensed albums for my industrial-slash-experimental-electronic project Ad·ver·sary, which sounds something like robots fucking to My Bloody Valentine.
When I’m not working with, promoting, listening to, or writing music, I design very angry websites, flyers, book jackets, and the sort for various arts projects. I supplement my music/design income (roughly enough to buy a pocketful of buttons a month) by developing counter-hacking courses and moonlighting as a web coordinator for the man.
I also bake very tasty cookies.
