Monthly Archive for April, 2011

Install a power meter monitor yourself

Aaron Fechter, Orlando resident and inventor of the Rockafire Explosion has created a power meter monitor you can attach to the box outside your house. You then get to see how much your power bill would cost (I’m assuming there is some way to program the current rates).

The Blue Line PowerCost Monitor can save you money on electricity and save the Rock-afire Explosion from extinction! As the distributor of these monitors, I am using the proceeds of the sales of these monitors to finance the creation of new shows. Those who buy one of these from Creative Engineering, Inc. will also be given access to a private website showing lots of behind the scenes footage never before seen as well as other benefits. If saving money on electricity and saving the Rock-afire Explosion are worthy of your interest, please give me a call or send a note to me at aaron.fechter@gte.net

TONIGHT: A Night of Long Form

Many people are familiar with Improv - last year's Fringe Festival featured a long-form improvised show called "Is This Seat Taken?" by the iconic David Charles and Jay Hopkins. SAK has been doing a late-night show called "The Early Show" long after their regular programming on certain weekends for a number of years now. The Orlando Improv Festival is now trying to help long form become more visible with this event.
A night of Long Form

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Potential impact of the oil lost in the Gulf

Who doesn’t love statistics? To rephrase that, who is the kind of person reading a blog like this that doesn’t love statistics? Here is an excellent video explaining what was lost in the BP oil spill last year, simply by looking at what the oil would have been used for.

I wonder if much/any of it was salvageable – this video doesn’t mention that at all.

Oil’d from Chris Harmon on Vimeo.

A year ago, a massive oil spill began in the Gulf. The entire country was glued to the news until the well was capped, and then we forgot about it.

As the year anniversary was fast approaching I became curious, just how much oil was that exactly? Where would it have gone? What I found was shocking.

So in an effort to further our discussion on oil dependency I created this short animation. I’ve spent all of my free time in the last month putting this together to help illustrate just how dependent we truly are on oil.

Designed, animated and written by Chris Harmon

Voice Talent: Kim Estes

Music: Billy Perez & Todd Stambaugh

Special Thanks to Daye Rogers and Christy Kurtz

Sources:

Environmental Protection Agency
http://www.epa.gov/

U.S. Energy Information Administration
http://www.eia.doe.gov/

http://www.bts.gov/publications/national_transportation_statistics/html/table_04_23.html

Rubber Manufacturers Association
http://www.rma.org/about_rma/rubber_faqs/

http://www.carbonify.com/carbon-calculator.htm

http://www1.eere.energy.gov/vehiclesandfuels/facts/2010_fotw617.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HDPE

http://wiki.answers.com/Q/How_much_does_one_gallon_of_crude_oil_weigh

http://www.icis.com/v2/chemicals/9076455/propylene/uses.html

http://volunteerguide.org/volunteer/fewhours/used-tires.htm

http://earth911.com/recycling/plastic/plastic-bottle-recycling-facts/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_cities_by_population

Fringe Preview 2011

Matt Palm form the Orlando Sentinel has posted a blog recap of the Fringe preview, which was staged as a Pep Rally this year to fit with the 20-year high school reunion theme.fringe_preview.jpg

Orlando Fringe Festival: Pep Rally Preview gives us a peek

There was even extra applause for an act that finished right on time as the cheerleaders joined them.

There’s always much merriment at the annual preview, which raises funds for the Fringe Festival as well as anticipation. Co-host Beth Marshall, the Fringe producing artistic director, started out proudly saying, “I am vertical this year,”

fringe_cheer.jpg The festival tickets are now on sale, and they were very proud to announce that the preview was successful for them, raising a surplus of $3000 over their goal.

I have been looking for video shot during the event, but Google is returning some weird results - the official Orlando Fringe website doesn't even show up in most search results. I ended up locating several videos on YouTube. If you are reading this and you have a YouTube video that is not on this list, I will be happy to add it. My YT username is "liberatr". I will be adding new video to this playlist throughout the season.

This year's festival is going to be exciting. More experimentation, lots of returning artists, lots of past Patron's Pick artists, and lots of visiting and International artists, who are the real icing on the cake. I love that local artists have such a great outlet for their work, but the fact that this festival brings in so much original material from outside of our state and country is one of the real selling points for me.

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Nerdapalooza 2010 – Corey Clark

I believe it is safe to say that Nerdapalooza is a phenomenon not often witnessed around the world. The video I am posting here, created by South Florida’s Corey Clark, is a great overview of the atmosphere and mission of this premier Nerd Music festival, and it’s a winner of a participant-submitted video contest from the 2010 festival. I believe 2011 will be their 4th year, and their mixture of national, international and local acts draws a large, passionate crowd of geeks, nerds, otaku-heads, comic lovers, and so much more. At the same time, this is not a “con” in the traditional sense – it’s a sub-culture event, and from what I understand the community is much tighter than many big conventions you might come across.

I’ve been to several of the “Road to…” Nerdapalooza events, but not the actual festival itself. This year, I’m proud to say I will be participating in one of the performing groups, as I am the current drummer for Marc with a C, whom we have mentioned several times on this blog.

The 2011 festival is July 16th and 17th at the Orlando Airport Marriott. Not the most likely place for a music festival, but convenient airport access is a huge plus. I’m excited to see it for myself this year.

FLCreatives 32: Terry Pappy and the Better3 Write Shops

Length: 
41:21

Terry Pappy is putting on a series of Write Shops to inspire you to action in your personal or professional life. Terry also shares some stories from her career and how they led her to Florida and her unique brand of consulting.

Links mentioned in this podcast:

Books:

Download Podcast 32

Trackback URL for this post:

http://www.floridacreatives.com/trackback/1465

FLCreatives 32: Terry Pappy and the Better3 Write Shops

Length: 
41:21

Terry Pappy is putting on a series of Write Shops to inspire you to action in your personal or professional life. Terry also shares some stories from her career and how they led her to Florida and her unique brand of consulting.

Links mentioned in this podcast:

Books:

Download Podcast 32

Trackback URL for this post:

http://flcreatives.com/trackback/1465

FLCreatives 32: Terry Pappy and the Better3 Write Shops

Length: 
41:21

Terry Pappy is putting on a series of Write Shops to inspire you to action in your personal or professional life. Terry also shares some stories from her career and how they led her to Florida and her unique brand of consulting.

Links mentioned in this podcast:

Books:

Download Podcast 32

Trackback URL for this post:

http://floridacreatives.com/trackback/1465

OUC Random Acts of Greenness Video Contest

Check out oucrandomactsofgreenness.com, a mouthful of a URL, but a contest by the local power company where I live to put their customers’ videos on Facebook. Submissions open Friday – Earth Day.

This wasn’t obvious at first – what does the contest get you? Apparently, the winner will be a future TV commercial for OUC. Get out those cameras and start submitting!

DrupalEasy Podcast 56: Going Vertical

Sean Larkin, one of the maintainers of the Watershed Now Drupal distribution, joins Andrew, Ryan, and Mike in this week's podcast. Watershed Now is a highly targeted (vertical) distribution whose goal is to help conservation organizations get useful web sites up-and-running quickly. Sean talks about his background in various watershed projects, some of the features of the distribution, as well as the business model for this type of Drupal product. 

In addition to the interview with Sean, the group discusses Acquia's push for more usability, April Fools Day in the Drupal community, a potential competitor for Views, as well as a few other topics and their picks of the week!

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conduit: make orlando better

Just based on dates from their website, this project has existed for nearly a year. They don’t make any mention of coworking that I could see, and one of the people tweeting about it hadn’t heard of Urban ReThink. That doesn’t mean much in the grand scheme of things, but those are two movements in the world and locally that are very sympathetic to conduit, and I would love to see us working together, at east to share ideas and experiences.

conduit is also trying to raise money via kickstarter