Johnny Broadway

Blog Action Day: Fight climate change with grassroots action

October 15th, 2009

the word. In Canada, especially in the prairies, our connection to nature is very real and very felt. We experience some of the most dramatic annual weather changes in the world, with temperatures here ranging from over 30°C in the summer to lower than -40°C in the coldest months. We're attuned to our environment because we have to be. What I found when I first moved here ten years ago was a community that was active and aware of environmental concerns. Our energy sources are among the cleanest in Canada, and Manitoba Hydro's new headquarters are being built using all the latest advances in energy efficiency. We have campaigns, programs and subsidies to help home owners lower their energy use. Manitobans seem to take a very conscientious approach to the environment, and that's one of many reasons I've felt privileged to call myself a Manitoban. You can easily find the science and info behind climate change through google and many other sources, so I won't repeat them here. But I will say that it is clear to any rational observer that we've been exhausting our planet's resources at a frightening and ever-increasing rate over the past 100 years, and we are just starting to see the effects. How much longer can we go on without striking a balance before we've gone too far? If everyone does a little bit, it adds up to a whole lot. So make sure you're diligent with your recycling, turn off the tele!, choose energy efficient options whenever you can, start or join a community composting group, and be a positive change in this world for the sake of those you're leaving it to, be they your children or others. And while you're at it, check these guys out and show them some love too:

Michael Jackson monument design winner

September 12th, 2009

Backing up your stuff

September 11th, 2009

As an artist who records at home, designs a lot of their own stuff (this here site for example!), and generally creates a lot of collateral data as well (like tour plans, etc.), a good backup plan becomes a critical component of my setup. I'd be devastated if I lost all my work, or even a tiny part of it, because of a hard drive dying. And it's sad that hard drives are probably the least reliable component in a computer, and yet they're the one we rely on most. So I've come to rely on a couple really great tools for my backups, and I sleep a lot easier knowing they're takin' care of business (to quote a fellow Winnipegger). These are: If you haven't heard of Dropbox, it's the best thing since sliced bread. That's being modest. Dropbox is an automatic online backup and computer synching tool. It's the only online storage service I've seen get it right (and I ran one myself a few years back, I should know). It works on any OS and seamlessly syncs your files behind-the-scenes. Some nice features are change histories, so if you overwrite or delete a file you can get the changes back from Dropbox, and easy synching not just between your own computers, but sharing specific folders with others. I use this all the time to collaborate with people. Just save the file and they'll have it on their end before you've called to let them know. If you refer a handful of people to Dropbox (see link below), you can get up to 6GB of free storage. 50GB is less than $10/month and goes a long way. Totally worth it. (use the link and they'll also give you an extra 250MB of extra space too) As a pure backup app, Backblaze does a great job. I use it in addition to Dropbox (because I'm paranoid), but if I had to choose one it would be Dropbox all the way. Backblaze is only $5/month for your whole machine, including external drives (even an ipod!). That's a sweet deal. And if you need to restore, you just log into their site and you can get your data in one of 2 ways: Zip file download, or a DVD or USB drive in the mail. The first option is free, and lets you grab all your files or just the ones you need, but the other option can cost quite a bit since you're paying for shipping and for the physical storage to be sent to you. 100GB+ of data on DVDs will add up since each only holds about 4GB. Download is perfect for most people though. The one issue I had with Backblaze was that because uploading takes time, it took quite a while for the initial backup to finish, during which time you're not backed up and safe yet. That made me nervous. But you can throttle it and give it more bandwidth to upload while you're away, then lower it again while you're working so it doesn't slow you down noticeably. And unlike Dropbox, Backblaze doesn't do synching or sharing. Instead it just does backups and tries to do that one thing well. Another disadvantage over Dropbox is there's no change history. If you update a file, it's updated in the backups too. In my mind, Backblaze is best used in tandem with Dropbox for a full double-safe setup. Check out Backblaze at I don't trust local backups. What if there's a fire? Your shit's gone, son. Online backups from places like these use top-notch security, and you can get your data back easily. And you don't need to setup an off-site backup system like some businesses use, which are a pain in the ass believe me. The big complaint I had about Time Machine (being a Mac user) was that it would run whenever it felt like it. You can't control that, except by disabling it entirely, which got annoying to do before and after every recording session. I work at night mostly, which completely conflicted with Time Machine's schedule. Anyway, this post is longer than I expected, but it's an important topic for artists to consider. These options have worked great for me, and hopefully they help you out too.

Fun with Twitter

August 22nd, 2009

Just having some fun with the Twitter API using the written by and thought I'd set up a Twitter page for Room 213. It's now online at . Each week until the album is out (late winter, most likely), it's going to post a different quote from the album at every Saturday at 2:13 AM. If anyone is interested in how I set it up, let me know and I can send you the code. It's about 10-12 lines, really easy to set up.

Got a new Korg nanoKEY in the mail today

August 17th, 2009

Man are these little things cool! It's small enough to sit on the desk in front of my laptop (or even ON the laptop like in this photo), and it took zero setup to get working. Oh, and did I mention they're dirt cheap too? Like fifty bucks cheap. My other keyboard is a gigantic 61-key beast. It takes up so much room that most of the time I just keep it stored to free up the extra space. I'm usually only recording single-note leads on it anyway, so this is a very welcome change! I'm considering just getting rid of that one now...

It's alive! My arduino is now powering a 5-metre LED light strip

August 5th, 2009

So I'm working on a not-so-top-secret project (as in, I've been telling everyone) to connect a little electret microphone through an arduino microcontroller to a set or RGB LED lights in the hope of programming them to react to my voice. Super nerdy, but sometimes us nerds make the coolest stuff! Case in point, this quick video showing proof it's partially working (no microphone yet, that's next!): And here's a photo of my awful breadboarding skills to go with it:

Bobby McFerrin Demonstrates the Power of the Pentatonic Scale

July 31st, 2009

I just saw this awesome video from the World Science Festival 2009 where Bobby McFerrin jumps around on stage, and giving the audience only the root note to sing, they automatically know the rest of the notes with no further instruction. It's really funny when they just get it as soon as he hops "up a step". What's really interesting is at the end when he says "What's interesting to me about that is, regardless of where I am, anywhere, every audience gets that." In more ways than we understand, music really is a universal language. A language that connects more immediately to our emotions than our logic. I think the best music achieves a connection to both, in the right proportion, and through understanding as well we can reach even greater depths of emotional experience.

Poster for Saturday, August 1st with Mudhands

July 27th, 2009

My personal highlights from the Winnipeg Folk Festival '09

July 16th, 2009

I went to the lake for a few days to continue my escape from reality after camping for 6 days straight at the , but I'm back now with some of my personal festival highlights for you. I was most excited to see: I saw tons of great artists this year, but these guys totally blew me away: My biggest upset:

An old set list I found

June 24th, 2009

Just wanted to share this old set list I found from late 2003, back when I was still "Johnny Broadway and the Polyester Project". It's funny when you find songs you had completely forgotten about, but you remember how to play them again the minute you're reminded of them...