Silicon Palms

Author: Aaron

  • Thievery Corporation

    Thievery Corporation

    Thievery Corporation give way more than they take! Saw them live tonight WOW! can’t stop thinking how cool they are, like an adventure in music. This band takes you on a tour from the first beat to the last strum.

    Thievery Corporation is an American electronic music duo consisting of Rob Garza and Eric Hilton. Their musical style mixes elements of dub, acid jazz, reggae, Indian classical, Middle Eastern music, hip hop, electronica, and Brazilian music, including bossa nova.

    History

    Thievery Corporation was formed in the summer of 1995 at Washington D.C.’s Eighteenth Street Lounge. Rob Garza and Lounge co-owner Eric Hilton were drawn together over their mutual love of club life, as well as dub, bossa nova and jazz records. They decided to see what would come of mixing all these in a recording studio, and from this, in 1996 the duo started their Eighteenth Street Lounge Music record label.

    The duo drew attention with their first two 12-inch offerings, “Shaolin Satellite” and “2001: a Spliff Odyssey” and with their 1996 debut LP, Sounds from the Thievery Hi-Fi.

    The duo has publicly stated their fondness of the Brazilian culture in interviews and liner notes of their releases, especially of the 1960s Bossa Nova music movement. Some of their earlier recordings even had specific artwork paying homage to classic releases by bossa nova artists like João Gilberto (His self-titled 1973 album) or Tom Jobim (Stone Flower).

    They also released “Sounds From The Verve Hi-Fi” in 2001, a ‘best of’ compilation of 1960s–1970s material of Verve Records that includes Jazz, Bossa Nova and Latin Jazz works from artists like Cal Tjader, Wes Montgomery, Sérgio Mendes & Brasil ’66, Luiz Bonfá, among others. Their 1997 debut album is also dedicated to the memory of Antonio Carlos Jobim, who died three years earlier.

    In 2002 they released The Richest Man in Babylon on their ESL label. This fifteen-track album is similar in sound and timbre to their earlier 2000 release, The Mirror Conspiracy, and features performances by vocalists Emilíana Torrini, Pam Bricker, and Loulou.

    In 2004, they released The Cosmic Game, which has a darker, more psychedelic sound than The Richest Man in Babylon. The album also featured more high-profile guest singers on it, including Perry Farrell, David Byrne, and Wayne Coyne of The Flaming Lips.

    In 2006, the group released Versions, a selection of remixes by Thievery Corporation for other artists. They toured around the United States, playing at Lollapalooza.  The tour was photographed by Rob Myers, Thievery Corporation’s sitar and guitar player, in the Blurb photo book Thievery Corporation 2006. In 2006, the band also recorded “Sol Tapado” for the AIDS benefit album Silencio=Muerte: Red Hot + Latin Redux produced by the Red Hot Organization. As well, in the 2006 release of Tiger Woods PGA Tour for Xbox, their music was featured as the soundtrack to the game.

    Also, in 2006, Puma Ptah, then known as Ras Puma, joined and toured with Thievery Corporation and continues to tour with them today.

    The group released their fifth studio album, Radio Retaliation, on September 23, 2008. It was nominated for the Grammy for best recording package. Thievery Corporation’s tour started out with five consecutive sold out shows at the 9:30 Club in Washington, DC.

    The language of the group’s lyrics throughout their career include English, Spanish, French, Italian, Persian, Portuguese, Romanian and Hindi. This reflects the group’s world music influences.

    They were the opening act on August 1, 2009 for Paul McCartney at FedExField in Landover, Maryland.

    On July 27, 2010, Babylon Central, the cinematic directorial debut of founding member Eric Hilton, was released. Set (and shot) in Washington, D.C., the film follows tripwire events in the interconnected lives of its characters, each influencing power brokers’ schemes to manipulate international currencies.

    In June 2011, Thievery Corporation released their sixth album, Culture of Fear, which also featured the vocal stylings of Puma Ptah, then known as Ras Puma, on the tracks: “Overstand” and “False Flag Dub.”

    In January 2012, Thievery Corporation launched a remixes contest in conjunction with Dubspot.

    Additionally, Eric Hilton from Thievery Corporation produced the debut album, Archives, for the Washington D.C. based reggae band, “The Archives,” which released in July 2012. The four main bandmates which formed the band, “The Archives,” included: Puma Ptah, formerly known as Ras Puma, Darryl Burke, Lenny Kurlou & Mateo Monk.

    The band released Saudade on March 25, 2014 via ESL Music.

    On January 11, 2017, the band released the song “Ghetto Matrix” from their album The Temple of I & I, which was released on February 10, 2017, again via their own ESL Music label.

    On April 20th, 2018, the band released Treasures from the Temple via ESL Music.

    Politics

    Thievery Corporation has taken progressive political stances on various issues, opposing war and what they regard as exploitative trade agreements, while supporting human rights and food programs.

    In September 2005, the group participated in the Operation Ceasefire concert, with the objective of ending the Iraq War.

    From their press release regarding their album Radio Retaliation, Garza said:

    Radio Retaliation is definitely a more overt political statement […] There’s no excuse for not speaking out at this point, with the suspension of habeas corpus, outsourced torture, illegal wars of aggression, fuel, food, and economic crises. It’s hard to close your eyes and sleep while the world is burning around you. If you are an artist, this is the most essential time to speak up.— Rob Garza

    Thievery Corporation are vocal advocates for the World Food Programme, seeing hunger as “…something basic, really elemental, that transcends boundaries around the world.”

    Members

    Full members

    • Rob Garza – bass, keyboards, guitar, production
    • Eric Hilton – guitar, bass, keyboards, production

    Touring and studio musicians

    • Jeff Franca – drums
    • Rob Myers – sitar, guitar
    • Frank Orrall – percussion, drums, vocals
    • Ashish “Hash” Vyas – bass

    Touring and studio vocalists

    Discography

    Studio albums

    Compilation albums

    • Dubbed Out In DC (1997)
    • Covert Operations (1998)
    • Abductions and Reconstructions (1999)
    • Jet Society (1999)
    • Rare Tracks: 18th Street Lounge (1999)
    • DJ-Kicks: Thievery Corporation (1999)
    • Thievery Corporation and Revolution Present: Departures (2000)
    • Sounds from the Verve Hi-Fi (2001)
    • Modular Systems (2001)
    • Den of Thieves (2003)
    • The Outernational Sound (2004)
    • Frequent Flyer: Rio De Janeiro (2004)
    • Babylon Rewound (2004)
    • Frequent Flyer: Kingston Jamaica (2005)
    • Red Hot + Latin: Silencio = Muerte Redux (2006)
    • Changed To Lo-Fi (2006)
    • Warning Shots: Digibox Set (2007)
    • It Takes a Thief (2010)

    Singles

    Singles released on ESL Music, unless noted.

    “The Foundation” (1996)”Shaolin Satellite” (1996)”2001 Spliff Odyssey” (1996)”ESL Dubplate” (1996)”Encounter in Bahia” (1997)”Lebanese Blonde” (4AD 1997)”.38.45″ (A Thievery Number)” (4AD 1998)”Halfway Around the World” (1998)”So Com Voce” (1998)”Incident at Gate 7″ (1998)”DJ-Kicks EP / It Takes a Thief” (Studio !K7, Rough Trade, 1999)”Focus on Sight” (2000)”The Lagos Communiqué” (2000)”Focus on Sight” (2000)”Sound File 001″ (4AD 2000)”Sound File 002″ (4AD 2000)“Shadows of Ourselves” (4AD 2000)”DC 3000″ (2000)”Thievery Corporation Vs Nicola Conte – Bossa Per Due” (2001)”The Richest Man in Babylon” (2003)”The Heart’s a Lonely Hunter” (2005)”Revolution Solution” (2005)”Warning Shots” (2005)”The Time We Lost Our Way” (2005)”Sol Tapado” (2005)”Originality (2006)”Supreme Illusion (2007)”Radio Retaliation Extras” (2008)”Sound the Alarm / La Femme Parallel (Sonik Magazine 2009)”Vampires” (2011)”Culture of Fear” (2011)

    Thievery Corporation photo credit: djdroga on VisualHunt.com / CC BY

  • Intellectual Prostitutes

    Intellectual Prostitutes

    Intellectual Prostitutes

    It would seem that Paula Craig Roberts has been proven correct!

    John Swinton, former Chief of Staff of the most powerful and prestigious newspaper on earth, The New York Times, when asked to give a toast to the “free press” at the New York Press Club stated:

    “There is no such thing, at this date of the world’s history, in America, as an independent press. You know it and I know it. There is not one of you who dares to write your honest opinions, and if you did, you know beforehand that it would never appear in print. I am paid weekly for keeping my honest opinion out of the paper I am connected with. 

    John Swinton

    Others of you are paid similar salaries for similar things, and any of you who would be so foolish as to write honest opinions would be out on the streets looking for another job. If I allowed my honest opinions to appear in one issue of my paper, before twenty-four hours my occupation would be gone. 

    The business of the journalists is to destroy the truth; to lie outright; to pervert; to vilify; to fawn at the feet of mammon, and to sell his country and his race for his daily bread. You know it and I know it and what folly is this toasting an independent press? We are the tools and vassals of rich men behind the scenes. We are the jumping jacks, they pull the strings and we dance. Our talents, our possibilities and our lives are all the property of other men.  *”We are intellectual prostitutes.”*

    Intellectual Prostitutes photo credit Pixabay

  • Babalon Working vs A Course in Miracles

    Babalon Working vs A Course in Miracles

    “Freedom is a two-edged sword of which one edge is liberty and the other responsibility, on which both edges are exceedingly sharp,”

    Jack Whiteside Parsons an American rocket scientist.
    Jack Parsons in 1938, holding the replica car bomb used in the murder trial of police officer Captain Earl Kynette.
    Anonymous – Los Angeles Times. This image is published in John Carter’s Sex and Rockets: The Occult World of Jack Parsons without attribution (2004, p. 187) and appears on the front cover of George Pendle’s Strange Angel: The Otherworldly Life of Rocket Scientist John Whiteside Parsons (2005) also without a copyright notice, indicating that it is in the public domain.
    Los Angeles Times publicity photo of John Whiteside “Jack” Parsons during the murder trial of police officer Earl Kynette.
    Public Domain – Created: 30 April 1938

    Self-Government is the challenge, when people are given complete freedom and coupled with free-will, in such an over-stimulated world, far too many of us will make the wrong choices too often and can’t come back from the cycle of pain and drudgery.

    A return to faith is so important and understanding how far the attacks on faith have gone is fundamental to healing our society & culture.

    A Course in Miracles provides software for your mind that enables it to observe concepts, theories and ideas to ask if it’s real and/or does it exist? Then compare feelings to those of peace, knowing that with this new discernment (ACIM) and assuming that you do experience peace through that test…. then conceptually anything can be explored without fear.

    By hacking your moral code related to guilt and sin to expand the circumference of your own perception. Knowing everything already exists, and that all we’re really doing is bringing light of understanding to ideas. For this reason, if you have evil intentions, you’ll experience evil results. The enlightened way is more fun and less pain.

    Channelling exists without a doubt, and in my mind a Course in Miracles was sent from Jesus Christ. However, believing so, doesn’t add or diminish the effectiveness of the course. The methods contained in the course are reliable, it doesn’t matter who produced them or how.

    Faith is one thing but experience is another, therefore you must personally validate your own true happiness. Perhaps you need an Aleister Crowley type experience like Babalon Working in order to understand who you are, why you’re here and what your purpose might be.

    Jack Parsons is a fascinating man that died far too young and before he could share his discoveries, which may have subverted the entire Babalon Working project, as it certainly turned macabre, as we’re told in the recent stunning revelations shared in a video by STG report.

    The Babalon Working was a series of magic ceremonies or rituals performed from January to March 1946 by author, pioneer rocket-fuel scientist, and occultist Jack Parsons and Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard. This ritual was essentially designed to manifest an individual incarnation of the archetypal divine feminine called Babalon. The project was based on the ideas of Aleister Crowley, and his description of a similar project in his 1917 novel Moonchild.

    There’s so much more to our universe than we can begin to comprehend, which is why the framework contained in A Course in Miraclesactually work, albeit a little heavy in forgiveness, whereas some of the entities we learn to exist deserve zero forgiveness. In spiritual battle it’s all, or nothing.

    Evil exists, it’s natural and necessary to free will, which is fundamental to liberty. The key is that the power of the light of love is embedded in the universe itself, whether we be a thought in the mind of God, a controlled play like in the matrix, or just random chaos, the fact is; energy is coming from somewhere, and therein lays the ray of love and beauty.

    Who cares where the ray comes from, we want the love, each one of us, from the first gasp, to the last breath. We all want what we want, which is more of what makes us feel happy. This is where self-government needs to come in, since evidently, we are not evolved enough to live in peace.

    Some people prefer to rage against the machine than face the daunting work of upgrading themselves to adapt to a world that changed around them, faster than they could adjust. Plus, science and technology replaced the majority of the workforce and food growing skills and knowledge deleted and removed from the equation. So now it’s zombie time.

    Worst thing of all that has happened, somehow or another, is a sense of entitlement that our Government has a responsibility to solve everything, feed and shelter the sick and help immigrants while keeping the law and order, here and all over the world. We’ve become a nanny state.

    As in all things of nature, every dog has it’s day. What’s a great day for the dog, may not be so great for the tick that’s been burrowing into the dog but none the less everything must return from where it came. The question is; do you prefer to go singing and dancing, or kicking and screaming?

    Babalon Working Photo by SpaceX on Unsplash

  • Memento Mori and Vanitas

    Memento Mori and Vanitas

    Día de Muertos

    Día de Muertos (day of the dead) recently passed and reminded me of Memento Mori, which I thought was made famous by Roman Generals but can’t find proof, however I did find the cool painting called Vanitas (below) and more nuggets of knowledge about life, death and time.

    A memento mori (Latin ‘remember that you must die’) is an artistic or symbolic reminder of the inevitability of death. “The expression ‘memento mori’ developed with the growth of Christianity, which emphasized Heaven, Hell, and salvation of the soul in the afterlife.

    Philippe de Champaigne's Vanitas (c. 1671) is reduced to three essentials: Life, Death, and Time
    Philippe de Champaigne’s Vanitas (c. 1671) is reduced to three essentials: Life, Death, and Time

    Albert Camus stated “Come to terms with death, thereafter anything is possible.” Jean-Paul Sartre expressed that life is given to us early, and is shortened at the end, all the while taken away at every step of the way, emphasizing that the end is only the beginning every day.

    In Buddhism

    The Buddhist practice maraṇasati meditates on death. The word is a Pāli compound of maraṇa ‘death’ (an Indo-European cognate of Latin mori) and sati ‘awareness’, so very close to memento mori. It is first used in early Buddhist texts, the suttapiṭaka of the Pāli Canon, with parallels in the āgamas of the “Northern” Schools.

    samurai

    In Japanese Zen and samurai culture

    In Japan, the influence of Zen Buddhist contemplation of death on indigenous culture can be gauged by the following quotation from the classic treatise on samurai ethics, Hagakure:

    The Way of the Samurai is, morning after morning, the practice of death, considering whether it will be here or be there, imagining the most sightly way of dying, and putting one’s mind firmly in death. Although this may be a most difficult thing, if one will do it, it can be done. There is nothing that one should suppose cannot be done.

    In the annual appreciation of cherry blossom and fall colors, hanami and momijigari, the samurai philosophized that things are most splendid at the moment before their fall, and to aim to live and die in a similar fashion.

    In Tibetan Buddhism

    Tibetan Citipati mask depicting Mahākāla. The skull mask of Citipati is a reminder of the impermanence of life and the eternal cycle of life and death.

    In Tibetan Buddhism, there is a mind training practice known as Lojong. The initial stages of the classic Lojong begin with ‘The Four Thoughts that Turn the Mind’, or, more literally, ‘Four Contemplations to Cause a Revolution in the Mind’. The second of these four is the contemplation on impermanence and death. In particular, one contemplates that;

    • All compounded things are impermanent.
    • The human body is a compounded thing.
    • Therefore, death of the body is certain.
    • The time of death is uncertain and beyond our control.

    There are a number of classic verse formulations of these contemplation meant for daily reflection to overcome our strong habitual tendency to live as though we will certainly not die today.

    Living life to it’s fullest is what Memento Mori means to me. Carpe Diem!

    Vanitas photo credit Philippe de Champaigne – Web Gallery of Art:   Image  Info about artwork

  • The Law of One

    The Law of One

    The Law of One

    According to Ra we are each a mind, body, spirit complex and we’re here on earth in the 3rd density, to learn about our past incarnations, as well as to assist in the ongoing transition to the 4th density.

    Consider this, if you will, Ra says…

    The universe is infinite. This has yet to be proven or dis-proven, but we can assure you that there is no end to your selves, of your journey of seeking, or your perceptions of the creations

    Ra

    Naughty Beaver is to thank for prompting me to take another read of The Law of One channelling of Ra, which I had browsed many times over the years and even remember my uncle talking about this information way back in the late eighties. Serendipitous to learn about it now.

    The thing is that Naughty Beaver is connecting dots for me, on things I just never would have connected. My evolution of understanding the universe is accelerating, I’m able to drift in and out of my optimum peace frequency with ease and devote allot of thought to infinity.

    Every day I ride my bicycle while practising specific breathing techniques learned from yoga. For over a decade I’ve been learning how to optimize my ability to meditate while bike-riding. Plus, the idea that the brain is a super-computer, so use the time to process ideas by intentionally letting the mind chew on it while simultaneously balancing and exercising the body at a steady high RPM, like a high-performance engine powering the brain.

    To my mind, the range of questions I process, cover an extremely broad spectrum which always includes God. More and more I ask questions of myself about God and try to see things from the perspective of a creator.

    Now I realize evil must exist to enable love. Good people make bad decisions and others follow, then when too many are going the wrong way a correction takes place to atone for the mistake. There needs to be new ideas to evolve and it’s through creative innovation that the cycle repeats.

    Ra teaches us that we are entering an era of service to others being the replacement to service to self. This is obvious to me, for example when I was youth there was a common poster theme about the person with the most amount of toys wins and it shows a beachfront home a line of cars, jet and helicopter. This was the dream vision of many a baby boomer.

    Our creator would see his beautiful creation with us in it, flourishing, like a vine growing up a tree, bending and curving, with clusters of leaves in the appropriate places and dying branches haphazardly bending towards the dirt. We require the criminally insane in our population to make us curve upwards and grow with force to overcome the negative pull of evil.

    The love of light and the light of love is so much more powerful than the darkness that it’s impossible to stop mankind from evolving towards it. All the world’s malevolence does, is make the love of light grow stronger.

    Peace revolution is happening, with or without you.

    Law of One Image by Roland Winkelmann from Pixabay

  • Terence McKenna and Stoned Ape Theory

    Terence McKenna and Stoned Ape Theory

    Terence McKenna and Stoned Ape Theory

    In the early 1990s, psychedelic advocate and ethnobotanist Terence McKenna published his book Food of the Gods in which he surmised that homo sapiens’ cognitive leap forward was due to their discovery of magic mushrooms.

    Can’t get rid of Terence McKenna in my mind lately, then it dawned on me that the reason I’m meant to write about him, is that someone is meant to learn about Stoned Ape Theory. After all, if conscientiousness works in the way, then there’s a reader out there who needs to know.

    Singularity was the reason I had started thinking about Terence McKenna, so recently I kept reminding myself to go back and learn more myself, about this great thinker, since I want to understand what compelled him to devote so much of his life to the i-Ching and what did he learn, besides that singularity was in the future.

    Botanical Dimensions ethnobotanical preserve in Hawaii.jpg

    By Zac White – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, Link

    The I Ching or Yi Jing, also known as Classic of Changes or Book of Changes, is an ancient Chinese divination text and the oldest of the Chinese classics. There’s a study, that requires study, before you study. Still, the singularity concept is just so far ahead of anyone else and yet he found it from something written in the way distant past.

    The I Ching uses a type of divination called cleromancy, which produces apparently random numbers. Six numbers between 6 and 9 are turned into a hexagram, which can then be looked up in the I Ching book, arranged in an order known as the King Wen sequence.

    The interpretation of the readings found in the I Ching is a matter of centuries of debate, and many commentators have used the book symbolically, often to provide guidance for moral decision making as informed by Confucianism, Taoism and Buddhism. The hexagrams themselves have often acquired cosmological significance and paralleled with many other traditional names for the processes of change such as yin and yang and Wu Xing.

    The amount of work that Terrence McKenna produced in lifetime is staggering and especially at a time when he would have been met with maximum resistance to much of what he was ascribing.

    Hanna jon 1999 mckenna terence.jpg

    By Jon Hanna – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, Link

    Terence Kemp McKenna (November 16, 1946 – April 3, 2000) was an American ethnobotanist, mystic, psychonaut, lecturer, author, and an advocate for the responsible use of naturally occurring psychedelic plants. He spoke and wrote about a variety of subjects, including psychedelic drugs, plant-based entheogens, shamanism, metaphysics, alchemy, language, philosophy, culture, technology, environmentalism, and the theoretical origins of human consciousness. He was called the “Timothy Leary of the ’90s”,[1][2] “one of the leading authorities on the ontological foundations of shamanism”,[3] and the “intellectual voice of rave culture“.[4]

    McKenna formulated a concept about the nature of time based on fractal patterns he claimed to have discovered in the I Ching, which he called novelty theory,[3][5] proposing this predicted the end of time, and a transition of consciousness in the year 2012.[5][6][7][8] His promotion of novelty theory and its connection to the Maya calendar is credited as one of the factors leading to the widespread beliefs about 2012 eschatology.[9] Novelty theory is considered pseudoscience.[10][11]

    Stoned Ape Image by DarkWorkX from Pixabay

  • What I learned at WordCamp

    What I learned at WordCamp

    What I learned at WordCamp

    WordPress Rocks! and WordCamp is as much knowledge and information as can be consumed in a single day, when it comes to learning about WordPress and web publishing.

    What I learned at WordCamp was profound, that really it’s about the written word and spinning a yarn, then publishing it. The technology is now so incredible, for developing the most amazing communication platform ever. Blocks are here now and Plugins for everything.

    WordPress and it’s Plugins dominate the world wide web development and web site design

    WordCamp Vancouver 2019

    Among the mistakes that I learned in WordCamp that I’ve been making, is to assume that I knew what content would build an audience online. Truth dictates that blogging about the daily life will have an audience, over time. The key is consistency, same as writing well, it takes discipline and also “getting over” what anyone else might think about what you write.

    The key to blogging is to blog, so it’s so important to stand in your own authority, as an authentic but flawed human, and tell the story of what the world looks like, from your perspective. Realize though, that your voice needs to be either motivational, or inspiring, since there’s no audience for negativity (well, not in my way of thinking).

    Other simple things I learned, like not to have an “About” link but rather an immediate and clear call to action, with explanation of why a person should respond to your. That is if you’re offering a service or selling a product but mostly what I’m referring to here is the pure art of blogging.

    What I learned at WordCamp

    When I started this blog in 2004 it was as a corporate style of message, these ideas came from designing websites, for small businesses, starting back in the 1990’s. I had never shed those basic but wrong ideas.

    The best thing I learned at WordCamp is that there’s legions of bright, enthusiastic experts, in every single niche of every aspect for both web design and development, not to mention writing and creative, insanely talented graphic artists can create wild designs that can be turned into awesome websites.

    The future is ours with WordPress and the web! Ideas can reach the entire planet, lifting the masses with our good news.

    WordCamp Photo by Jake Noren on Unsplash Ostrich Image by Stefan Zier from Pixabay

  • Raincity WordCamp, Vancouver 2019

    Raincity WordCamp, Vancouver 2019

    WordCamp Vancouver 2019

    Did I say how much I love WordPress? And how excited I am to go to WordCamp? A web geek at heart and incredibly excited to go to this event, first time in my life I’m happy to go to a camp of any kind but today I was walking around the UBC campus (in downtown Vancouver) where they will host WordCamp Vancouver 2019 and can’t wait to attend.

    To help plan for WordCamp Vancouver 2019, here’s what sessions there are to attend this year. They’ve created five categories and placed each session into at least one category. The Categories are:

    • Development
    • Development (Advanced)
    • Design
    • Business
    • Blogging / Site Owning

    They will have the following poster up at registration and in front of each room to help you decide what topics would be beneficial to you. You can also scroll past it to see some suggested itineraries for each category.

    A reminder but these are just suggestions you are free to attend any session you’d like at WordCamp Vancouver and we encourage you to try attending topics you’re unfamiliar with to learn something new!

    Development

    9:00AM
    Beyond the Block: Creating Blocks with ACF & Integrating Page Builders with Gutenberg

    10:00AM
    Let’s Learn Git. No More Excuses OR Digital Wheelchair Ramps: Tools for making your website ADA Compliant (Demo)

    11:00AM
    The Layman’s Guide to Optimizing Your WordPress Website

    1:00PM
    Having Fun (But Not Too Much Fun) with Viewport Units

    2:00PM
    Introduction to WP-CLI OR Design Principles for Web Developers: How to Make Your Websites Look Good

    3:15PM
    How We Can Make Our Website More Fun and Engaging by Learning from Game Design Techniques OR Using Hooks in the Real World

    4:15PM
    Tempted by the Dark Side OR WordPress Security

    4:50PM
    Closing Keynote: Where We Go From Here

    Development (Advanced)

    9:00AM
    Business, Development sessions or networking!

    10:00AM
    Blok Bilding Basiks 4 Basik Blok Bilding

    11:00AM
    Migrating, Converting, and Managing Blocks in PHP

    1:00PM
    Everything I Wish I Knew Before Using WordPress as a Headless CMS

    2:00PM
    Business, Development, Design, Blogging/Site Owning sessions or networking!

    3:15PM
    WordPress, the Automated Way

    4:15PM
    Development, Design, Blogging/Site Owning sessions or networking!

    4:50PM
    Closing Keynote: Where We Go From Here

    Design

    9:00AM
    Business, Development sessions or networking!

    10:00AM
    Digital Wheelchair Ramps: Tools for making your website ADA Compliant (Demo)

    11:00AM
    Business, Development sessions or networking!

    1:00PM
    Having Fun (But Not Too Much Fun) with Viewport Units OR How To Design WordPress Themes To Increase Sales and Convert Visitors Into Customers

    2:00PM
    Design Principles for Web Developers: How to Make Your Websites Look Good

    3:15PM
    How We Can Make Our Website More Fun and Engaging by Learning from Game Design Techniques

    4:15PM
    Tempted by the Dark Side

    4:50PM
    Closing Keynote: Where We Go From Here

    Business

    9:00AM
    Understanding Your Customer Using Personas and Empathy Maps OR Freelance Hacks!

    10:00AM
    Design, Development sessions or networking!

    11:00AM
    Blogging/Site Owning, Development sessions or networking!

    1:00PM
    How To Design WordPress Themes To Increase Sales and Convert Visitors Into Customers

    2:00PM
    SEO for WordPress: It Ain’t Yoast

    3:15PM
    Design, Development sessions or networking!

    4:15PM
    Blogging/Site Owning, Design, Development sessions or networking!

    4:50PM
    Closing Keynote: Where We Go From Here

    Blogging / Site Owning

    9:00AM
    Business, Development sessions or networking!

    10:00AM
    Design, Development sessions or networking!

    11:00AM
    Keeping Your Content Accessible OR The Layman’s Guide to Optimizing Your WordPress Website

    1:00PM
    Design, Development, Business sessions or networking!

    2:00PM
    SEO for WordPress: It Ain’t Yoast

    3:15PM
    Design, Development sessions or networking!

    4:15PM
    How to Blog About Anything and Get a Million Views – It’s Never Too Late To Start A WordPress Blog

    4:50PM
    Closing Keynote: Where We Go From Here

  • Wisdom of words

    Wisdom of words

    owl

    Wisdom of words was brought to mind when I saw this owl photo. Owls trigger me to think about wisdom. I seek wisdom and realized that whenever I stop blogging here, I don’t feel complete at the end of my day. As I have said before; the only way to become a writer, is to write.

    Practice is the only way and Blogging is the best way to practice.

    “Knowing yourself is the beginning of all wisdom.”

    Aristotle

    Besides, I’m mostly writing for myself. What I learned from experience, is that even a badly written blog post, is better than an excellent draft. I can make this story better in the future, as I have done with some posts going back as far as 2004.

    There’s nothing as nice as ink on paper, especially a nice ink pen on a fresh page of my Moleskin journal. So as you can tell, I aspire to write well and the main thing I’ve come to learn, is that less is more. Brevity has power. The most powerful writing, succinctly articulates complex ideas.

    Wisdom conveyed in words, doesn’t requite very many. Nothing on earth is new, just an evolution of something else. Setting the context is primary and then filling in the blanks is the description of the evolution. Before you can sell a new idea, it’s important to describe the genesis of that idea.

    Great writing comes from creating a large block of content, then chiselling away the excess words, discarding fluff statements and articulating just the raw information of the idea.

    The art of writing is among the noblest of crafts, in my opinion because it connects your dreams with your reality. Simply put, if you’re a writer and can’t describe what you want, in words, why should you expect to be able to manifest your ideas in real life?

    A word to the wise though, about the wisdom of words; every document that you need to do anything you can imagine, has already been written by someone else. Your job as an artist is to craft new documents from older ones. Be warned though, you must express your own ideas, not the person from who you may be borrowing words, so do not plagiarize!

    Write more and the better your writing will become.

    Ernest Miller Hemingway, July 2, 1961

    Hemingway’s Advice on Writing, Ambition, and the Art of Revision

    “In any art you’re allowed to steal anything if you can make it better.”

    Ernest Hemingway

    “As a writer you should not judge. You should understand,”Ernest Hemingway (July 21, 1899–July 2, 1961) counseled in his 1935 Esquire compendium of writing advice, addressed to an archetypal young correspondent but based on a real-life encounter that had taken place a year earlier.

    In 1934, a 22-year-old aspiring writer named Arnold Samuelson set out to meet his literary hero, hoping to steal a few moments with Hemingway to talk about writing.

    Samuelson recorded the experience and its multitude of learnings in a manuscript that was only discovered by his daughter after his death in 1981. It was eventually published as With Hemingway: A Year in Key West and Cuba (public library) — the closest thing to a psychological profile of the great writer.

    Wisdom of words Photo credit: left-hand on Visualhunt.com / CC BY-ND Hemingway’s grave Photo credit: Thomas Hawk on VisualHunt / CC BY-NC

  • Left Coast Media and the Slacklife Series

    Left Coast Media and the Slacklife Series

    60 meters taller than Mount Robson, standing at 4019 meters, Mount Waddington is the 3rd tallest mountain in British Columbia, after Mount Fairweather and Quincy Adams peaks on the Alaskan border. The mountain also has the second highest prominence in BC, at 3289 meters. Standing at the head of the Bute and Knight Inlets, the mountain is surrounded by such rugged, remote terrain that it is rare to even be able to see the peak.Mount Waddington
    60 meters taller than Mount Robson, standing at 4019 meters, Mount Waddington is the 3rd tallest mountain in British Columbia, after Mount Fairweather and Quincy Adams peaks on the Alaskan border. The mountain also has the second highest prominence in BC, at 3289 meters. Standing at the head of the Bute and Knight Inlets, the mountain is surrounded by such rugged, remote terrain that it is rare to even be able to see the peak.Mount Waddington Photo credit Kevin Teague (kteague)

    Thank YouTube for giving us such an amazing platform for Left Coast Media, even if YT made mistakes with censorship and for unfair practices (towards some content creators) we can forgive them, or we never would see the Levi Allen video of a Man Riding a Walmart Raft off a 1000 ft. Waterfall.

    Left Coast Media and the Slacklife Series was something I stumbled on today as I was seeking BC sailing videos and for the first time saw Levi Allen, and totally dug his style immediately.

    Hunlen Falls, British Columbia
    Hunlen Falls, British Columbia

    Hunlen Falls is a waterfall in the Pacific Ranges of the Coast Mountains of British Columbia, Canada. It is located in Tweedsmuir South Provincial Park, west of the communities of Tatla Lake, Kleena Kleene and Nimpo Lake, and east of Bella Coola. It one of the tallest waterfalls in Canada when measured as a continuous unbroken drop. Sources vary, but the official BC Parks measurement is 260 m (853 ft). Other waterfalls such as Della Falls on Vancouver Island are higher, but are of the cascading type. Hunlen Falls drops from the north end of Turner Lake via Hunlen Creek into the Atnarko River, a tributary of the Bella Coola River. Erosion of the canyon below Hunlen Falls has created an alluvial fan into the Atnarko Valley.

    The falls were named in 1947 after a Chilcotin Chief named Hana-lin, who used to fish below the falls in the autumn with a fish trap, and trap game nearby. In the 1930s it was sometimes called Mystery Falls and before that occasionally called Bella Coola Falls

    Left Coast Media and the Slacklife Series create content that takes you into these incredible super natural places.