Gordon McDowell
Latest post Thorium Molten-Salt Reactors and the Importance of Uranium-233
Uranium-233 is important as seed-fissile for dual-fluid “Pure Cycle” Thorium Molten-Salt Reactors. U-233 does the fissioning in the core-salt (FLiBe salts containing U-233), and basically operates like ORNL’s MSRE seen in this…
2014
House of Cards and Rare Earth Elements
Netflix’s “House of Cards” has characters fighting over a rare earth refinery in China. This is a welcome pop-culture introduction to the challenge facing North American high-tech manufacturing: no domestic supply of HEAVY…
Ontario done with coal
Ontario has burned their last ton of coal. Ontario’s carbon footprint is miniscule. This was pointed out to me by an Australian. I worked with Ben Heard to create the above video, but I’ve never met him. He was about to deliver…
“Th” Thorium Doc Chapters: “Greens”, “MSRE”
Generally I don’t post updates concerning the thorium documentary “Th” here, as it is still a work in progress and my updates are so incremental they’re really only worthy of short tweets. But I think a couple of the chapters…
2013
Adobe Premiere Pro vs Very High Shooting Ratio
I switched from Sony Vegas to Premiere Pro CS6 (PPro) because I am very dependent on multi-cam support. The Vegas multi-cam approach forces all media (for a given multi-cam event) to be included and put in perfect sync before it…
Iterative Thorium Documentary in a YouTube Playlist
YouTube allows videos to be strung together in playlists. YouTube allows embedded playlists to refer to video by index, as opposed to video UID. For my thorium documentary, I’ll be improving chapters, and deprecating old…
2012
Thorium Remix 2012 – Semi-Raw Footage
Am hard at work on THORIUM REMIX 2012, the working title of my upcoming thorium documentary. One cost came up I hadn’t prepared for, so I launched a new Kickstarter campaign to cover it. As you can see, yes I will be traveling to…
Alberta 2012 Leadership Debate
On 2012-04-12 (April 12th, 2012) the leaders of Alberta’s political parties faced off for a debate. All except Glenn Taylor for Alberta Party. I’d spoken to Glenn previously, and would have very much liked to have seen him…
Kickstarter 2012 THORIUM Documentary
I’ve just launched a campaign to help fund THORIUM REMIX 2012 (a working title), a documentary to help propagate the science behind Liquid Fluoride Thorium Reactors, just as THORIUM REMIX 2011 did last year. If you have never…
2011
LFTR in 5 Minutes – A video about THORIUM created for Elizabeth May and Canadian Greens
LFTR in 5 Minutes starts with a fast-paced summary of why thorium needs to be developed as an energy resource. If you follow gadget, technology or science blogs, then you’ll likely find thorium a fascinating subject. In a…
UberHaus Kitchen Faucet – Hose Adapter Click
This easily wasted an hour of my time. And made me ill thinking I was about to break our new sink just before I finished installing it. Hopefully helps a few other people. Here is the owner’s manual for the UberHaus 80375034…
Alberta Party Leadership Forum 2011 Calgary
Alberta Party’s leadership convention in Calgary featured 4 obviously competent candidates. Chelsea Pratchett was already streaming this event for OpenFile Calgary. However, I had a specific question to ask. I was there taping…
2011 Calgary-Centre-North all candidate forum at Wild Rose United Church
A potted plant no more, Conservative Michelle Rempel joined (Green) Heather Macintosh, (Marxist-Leninist), Peggy Askin, (Liberal) Stephen Randall & (NDP) Paul Vargis for a very lively debate. I don’t live in Calgary-Centre-North,…
2011 Calgary-Centre all candidate forum at Killarney-​Glengarry Community Hall
On April 23th, the 2011 federal candidates for Calgary-Centre attended (another) forum at Killarney-​Glengarry Community Hall. Although the audio in this video starts off poor, it gets better and ultimately is easier to follow…
TEDxYYC Video – Kirk Sorensen on Thorium
On April 1st, Kirk Sorensen spoke to a Calgary TEDxYYC audience about the potential of Thorium as an energy source. Kirk’s TEDxYYC video is now available. skipto newwindow sub-topic 0:50 0:50 10 years working at NASA, designing…
2011 Calgary-Centre all candidate forum at Knox United Church
On April 13th, the 2011 federal candidates for Calgary-Centre attended a forum at Knox United Church. (A second Calgary-Centre debate took place at Killarney-Glengarry Community Centre, with better audio quality.) NDPMarc Power…
Kirk Sorensen in Calgary to speak about Liquid Fluoride Thorium Reactors (LFTR)
Kirk Sorensen is coming to Calgary to speak about Liquid Fluoride Thorium Reactors, on March 31st 2011 at Protospace and April 1st at TEDxYYC! In a nutshell, I believe of all Canadian provinces, Alberta has the most to gain by…
2010
YYCCC 2010-12-13 Calgary City Council
I’m creating a simple index of Calgary City Council archives & live audio stream. And Christopher Harper is also independently indexing City Council sessions. My own blog entries are not meant to be a complete index of council…
YYCCC 2010-11-29 Calgary City Council
Calgary City Council live audio stream. Will be active from 9:30 AM onward on November 29, 2010. This is an experiment to illustrate how an audio stream can be offered up to smartphone users. Previous experiment was delivered…
YYCCC 2010-11-08 Calgary City Council
Monday November 8th’s City Council meeting is the first regular City Council meeting of Mayor Nenshi’s term (earlier meetings in his term being of a more organizational nature), and as such is an excellent candidate to illustrate…
Calgary Mayoral 3 Candidate Debate
Here’s is the debate video most Calgarians have been waiting for. The top 3 candidates: Ric McIver, Naheed Nenshi and Barb Higgins. Source material was culled from the 6 mayoral candidate debates I’ve posted to my own account.…
VoteCalgary (housing construction) Mayoral Forum
VoteCalgary (funded by Calgary’s housing construction industry) presented our mayoral candidates with questions which allowed candidates to pitch “consumer choice” and “freedom” against sustainable growth, should they so choose.…
CivicCamp Mayoral Forum
Our mayoral candidates faced off in University of Calgary’s MacEwan Hall for what must have been a grueling 2 hour plus debate. CivicCamp‘s inclusion of Oscar Fech and Gary Johnston brought the total participants up to 10 (out of…
ArtsVote Calgary – Mayoral Forum
An optimal candidate debate probably has some similarity to an optimal team size, too many members result in confusion, and ultimately… despair. “The organizers had to make arrangements to get the candidates quite early. There…
We Should Know Naheed Nenshi
Since February 2008, local artist and community-builder Mark Hopkins has hosted “We Should Know Each Other” parties in his living room. “We Should Know Naheed Nenshi” was an event Mark organized (Sept 15th) to help undecided…
Calgary Leadership Forum’s Mayoral Debate
Derek McKenzie joined the mayoral race! Anyone else? Anyone? Anyone? C’mon folks, there’s still a month to go. What else are you going to do with your time? The embedded video was shot & edited by Chelsea Pratchett (with help…
Calgary Mayoral Forum by Golden Age Club
12 candidates for mayor is a lot. Maybe a few could drop out? Please? The table below the video offers hyperlinks to particular moments in the debate video. Hold the mouse over a candidate’s name or question summary, for more…
SONY HDR-SR1 Picture Utility Download
SONY included a utility with their HDR-SR1 camcorder for copying video clips from the camcorder’s hard drive to PC hard drive. On many occasions I’ve needed to copy footage from my HDR-SR1 to someone else’s PC. To do so without…
Calgary Mayoral Candidates Forum
On August 12th, Calgary’s mayoral candidates met at Holy Trinity Family Centre to compare their platforms, and answer questions posed by the local community. This footage is released under Creative Commons Attribution Share-Alike…
By Any Means Necessary – Calgary Film Race
Before I vent, here’s our video. Our team featured many-a-fan of Shane Carruth’s Primer, and we were eager to see what we could pack into our Film Racing submission (which the rules cap at 4 minutes). We’re pretty darn happy with…
Calgary mayoral candidate Naheed Nenshi
Having seen Naheed Nenshi speak at TEDxCalgary on the subject of “Calgary 3.0”, I wanted to hear his mayoral pitch. His July 7th reception at Art Central was my first opportunity to do so. I was too busy taping to get an answer…
TEDx Talks pertaining to Calgary’s 2010 Election
TEDx, is the license used for independently organized TED Talks. Already in 2010, Calgary has experienced TEDxYYC followed by TEDxCalgary. I shot & edited the videos found on their respected YouTube playlists, so when I recently…
COSSFest 2010 – Calgary’s Open Source Software Festival
On April 9th & 10th, Calgary Open Source Software advocates held a 2 day festival to discuss the challenges facing open source software, and promote its adoption. Interested in OSS, I volunteered to create video archives of the…
DemoCampCalgary17 Coverage
Here’s coverage of the Calgary DemoCamp held on 2010-04-27. Of all the demonstrations, the one I found most interesting was Big Nerds In Disguise‘s presentation of the iPhone game “Own This World“. This is mostly because of my…
Trilogy of Failure: CUFF 2008 to 2010
When you bring up the subject of failed movie trilogies, most people immediately think of Star Wars prequels. But I’m here to tell you of an even bigger failure. A trilogy so bad, it even failed to rake in 2.4 billion dollars in…
TEDxYYC – Calgary’s TEDx Videos
I’ve finished editing all the TEDxYYC videos, but they’re not yet indexed on the official TEDxYYC website. Until they do, the 2010 TEDxYYC videos can either be found at YouTube’s TEDxYYC Playlist, or right here (in chronological…
Sony Vegas 9.0c Bug vs Hottie Hookups
Hottie Hookups is a new iPhone game by Calgary’s own Big Stack Studios. It features some pretty innovative gameplay mechanics: Swiping, shaking and tilting are all used to keep swarms of nerds from disturbing the mating rituals…
TEDxYYC – Coffee and Leaping Sideways
While helping provide video coverage of TEDxYYC, I learned more about the sociological aspects of coffee houses than I’d bargained for. Did you know that Calgary is on the cutting edge of coffee subculture? No, really. Did you…
2009
Oil Sands Extraction – LFTR in Alberta?
THORIUM REMIX 2009 has been well received, so I’ve cut it down further to 10 minutes and put the subject in a Canadian context: How about using a liquid-fluoride thorium reactor to power oil sands crude extraction? Bill Dickie…
Oil Sands Debate with Elizabeth May
“Is Oil Sands Development Ultimately Irreconcilable with the Environmental Agenda?” was the question posed by Calgary Enterprise Forum. The discussion was held at Calgary Petroleum Club featuring Elizabeth May, Deborah Yedlin…
Thorium Remix 2009
Update: Further trimmed video’s length to 16 minutes! That’s as brief as I can possibly make it. Kirk Sorensen’s Google Tech Talk “Energy from Thorium” made a big impression on me. But when I recommended it to others, the typical…
DemoCampCalgary15 Coverage
DemoCampCalgary is where programmers and startups can expose their work to Calgarians, and put out an open call for various forms of assistance. Feedback? Beta testers? Looking for seed capital? A DemoCamp is just what the doctor…
YoctoRide previewed at DemoCampCalgary
Calgary’s 15th DemoCamp was particularly fun for me, as it was the first time I’ve demonstrated software at one. Nervous? Check. Stressed? Check. Capable of completing app store submission process before beginning the demo… not…
yoctoRide post zero
Wondering why yoctoPlay.com and yoctoRide.com are currently directed here? It is the company name I’ll be writing small apps under. Milliplay. Centiplay. Nanoplay. All taken. Fortunately, the metric prefix gods are generous gods.…
iPhone Banking & Contracts for Canadians
In May 2009, Gazzard and Richerd assisted MJ teach a weekend-long iPhone development course. At the time of the lecture, I had only just bought a MacBook and hadn’t started any iPhone development. In fact, I hadn’t even set up my…
Beefart & Cheenkaw
If you see one movie this year, but District 9 is no longer playing in your neighborhood, be sure to check out BEEFART & CHEENKAW – The Motion Picture. Blaise Kolodychuk is a renaissance man. Musician. Director. Father. Master of…
Calgary’s Low Carbon Future – The Summit
I haven’t had too many opportunities to stream live video since WireCast days at Cambrian House, so Calgary’s Carbon Summit was to be a live test of my new configuration: Dual core MacBook Wireless microphones feeding both the…
Calgary Film Racing 2009 – Do It Yourself
We won a slew of Film Racing awards! The contest was in June, and I’d assumed we’d won nothing (or we’d have heard about it by now). So this is out of the blue and awesome. Team BRING-ME-THE-HEAD-OF-DON-HOLMSTEN consists of: Wil…
Protospace vs YouTube Thumbnails
So I’m adding a logo to Calgary’s Protospace teaser video, and none of the YouTube thumbnails look particularly appealing. I don’t want a split-screen of a hacker. I want a Protospace logo dag-nab-it! At some point in early 2009,…
Comedian Allyson Smith’s Creative Process
In November 2008, a co-worker talked the office into checking out a comedian named Allyson Smith at Calgary’s Comedy Detour. Being a video guy I asked “should I tape it?” Obviously I was impressed, or there’d be no blog post…
Green Party’s Elizabeth May in Calgary
July 2nd to 4th, the leader of Canada’s Green Party, Elizabeth May visited Calgary to attend fund raising and community events. After a fundraiser, Elizabeth allowed me to record a quick Q&A with her regarding one of my concerns:…
Vista’s Windows Explorer Crashing
My Windows file explorer (“Windows Explorer” as Microsoft calls it) was crashing when I looked at folders containing MPEG-4 (.MP4) video files recorded to H.264 spec. This has not always happened to me. I can confirm while many…
MJ Lecture: Buying Money
Shortly after the economy tanked, when people lost the spring in their step and life’s soundtrack became an endless loop of O Fortuna… MJ gave a lecture. “Your landlord doesn’t want your stock, Safeway doesn’t want your stock.…
Calgary iPhone Developer’s CRUSH FACTOR
A couple weeks ago I created a commercial for MJ’s (Michael Sikorsky’s) iPhone application, “CRUSH FACTOR“. Today the app is available on iTunes, and I can finally show off the video! Friends of Michael and Camille also submitted…
DemoCampCalgary14 Coverage
DemoCampCalgary is a get together for those crafting new software in Calgary, and anyone looking to support upcoming Calgarian businesses. I performed a video capture and summarized the event, which is available in full at…
Alternatives to the CBC?
The above video is R4NT.com’s coverage of a April 17th Calgary rally protesting cuts to the CBC. A downloadable remix is available at Internet Archive. See OpenSourceVideo.BlogSpot.com for more footage links and Creative Commons…
SONY VEGAS vs AIPTEK 720P
Aiptek video cameras are great for picking up extra angles of coverage. Their low cost makes them ideal for placement where they might get smashed, submerged, gnawed on or stolen. Sometimes video quality is simply not one’s…
SONY VEGAS vs SONY HDR-SR1
When connecting the HDR-SR1 to your PC, you may be tempted (as I was) to navigate directly into the camera’s video storage folder. This is a recipe for FAIL.