Soo, I just found out my fam from Brock University are coming down for NYE !! And when i say fam, I really just mean close close boys. We definitely made last year at Brock, a year we will never forget. lol. But yeah, I'll be doing photography for Club Lg and it's going to be an amazing night. Come out, show love. Special shoutout to Stephen and Jackie at Club Lg!
LMFAO -yes ... amazing song, I like how the video parallels one of my favourite movies, DodgeBall: A True Underdog Story. Awesome movie btw. Everyday I See My DREAM x infinity!!!!
So I went to Exhale last night, and I was actually blown away. If you enjoy house music .... You should 140 % check out Exhale Lounge. The DJ lineup was dope, and they kept the HOUSE music *blazing* from start to finish. I met a lot of cool people, shout out to DJ Ruckus, who just got back from touring Brazil, Venezuela and some other legit spots... Hugeee props to all the DJ's (Gilles Bernards, DJ Alaudhi, DJ PS and of course Ruckus)... The DreamNLive team definitely will be coming back to Exhale after the break...
If you enjoy house music, like I do & you're going to be in London during the break, like I am.... lol then you should definitely come out to Exhale Lounge. Its going to be good vibes and good music all night long !
T.dot, t-dizzle, T-O, however you say it....Toronto is amazing! I went to Toronto`s Junction area to visit a friend a few days ago, and it was definitely a memorable time. So I`ve been to this bar once before and thought it was totally DreamNLive worthy. The name of this ultra-chic, modern karaoke-bar is ... The Hole In The Wall and they welcome local *talented* artists, to get up and do their thangggg.... Lucky for me, I stopped by in time to catch some local talent, and I encourage everyone to check Jimi Maze and his work! Well here are a few pics of the spot! (Oh i forgot to mention, its nice and cozy inside!)
Who are they? Univerity duo from Philly, Chiddy (the rapper) and Xaphoon Jones (producer/dj)bring an awesome twist of rapping over indie electronica beats. Check out these other favourites of the DreamNLive team...
So DreamNLive has recently teamed up with The Barking Frog, one of UWO's popular student bars/club. We'll be popping in a lot during the new year/second semester!
We just hit 1000 hits on the blog (after only 10 days), so we thought we would have a celebratory blog post to thank everyone, and to give an update on what is coming soon. We are expecting the website to be launched early in 2011, along with the DreamNLive charity foundation. As for now, stay tuned and enjoy the blog!
Mark Zuckerberg was recently named Time Magazine's person of the year for 2010. The BBC news article link is here. Let me be the first to say that I think Mark Zuckerberg is THE shit. I saw The Social Network again earlier this week, and even though you have to take the movie for what it is: A movie, I still think he is the pretty awesome.
The movie aside, I have done some reading on him, and this is my take of him: He is an absolute genius, and he does what he wants to do because he knows the chances of him being right are greater than the chances of other people being right. To some, he might come across as being arrogant, but where is the fine line between arrogance and confidence? After all, how much confidence would you have if you took a simple idea and ended up connecting the social lives of more than 500 million people around the world in the span of a few years, and earned a net worth of several billion dollars, all in his early to mid twenties? You shouldn't need to think twice about that.
He also doesn't care much about money, and is not influenced by greed at all (talk about Karma). He recently joined a group of wealthy individuals, founded by Bill Gates, that pledged to donate the majority of their wealth to charity. Makes me wish we had a charity too...
"...And I always find, yeah, I always find somethin' wrong
You been puttin' up wit' my shit just way too long
I'm so gifted at findin' what I don't like the most
So I think it's time for us to have a toast..."
I had to reference the song because of the title of the post.
Unlike Kanye, I'm also gifted at finding things that I DO really like: People that go out of their way to help others, for the sake of doing good.
So it snowed another 30cm last night in London (fml), and my van was a disaster again. It took me a good half hour to clear the snow of the windshields and the sides because I did not have a shovel and was using my good old hockey stick. So obviously, there was still some snow left on the roof that I just couldn't clear with the tools that I had.
Anyways, I went to get some gas, and while I was pumping, this random guy pulled up in a truck and was like "The police have been hiding and giving $75 tickets to everyone for driving with any snow on the roof of their cars". He then asked me to pull to the side, gave me his shovel from the back of his truck, and waited while I cleared off the top of my car. He then drove away, and I didn't catch his name or anything.
What makes this story better? A few blocks later, I saw a police car pulling out of a side street to stop another car that had some snow on its roof, just as I drove by.
Moral of the story: Go out of your way to do good for yourself, and for others. Not only does it make YOU feel good, but if you believe in any sort of Karma at all, how can you not be rewarded for doing so?
"Yo... this is Kid Cudi, aka The Rager and this is my go-show Dim the lights on that m----rf----r."
I have attached a link to the lyrics of the song too.
This song/video is awesome. He starts off by doing a behind the scenes for his go-show performance at the Bape store...a place where he used to work when he had nothing and was living in NYC trying to make it big. He announced the show a few hours earlier on his blog and twitter... and check the turnout. I think it is one of the first live performances for the actual song REVOFEV (before the album release). I say that because if you fast forward to 3 minutes.. everyone is just like wtf? is that actually part of the song? haha.
"...I am your big brother, What do I have to say to the kids?
Lets go, life does get tough, No need to stress, Hold you back too much, Lets go I heard they found a solution Where'll you be for the Revolution?..."
This song, just like a lot of his other songs, has a distinctly inspirational message (which is why I think Cudi is the best rap/hiphop/soul artist around). So what kind of revolution is he talking about? Is it a personal revolution of self? Is it a political/socioeconomic revolution? or is it Both?
The beauty of it is that you could interpret it any way you want to. I think the most important and relevant one would be a revolution of self. This album was formerly called Cudder: Revolution of Evolution, before he settled on the name Man on the Moon 2: The Legend of Mr. Rager. If you listen to it from start to finish, you can see that he essentially sings about his own evolution of self. It starts off dark by nature, discussing his cocaine addictions and many problems growing up, and then it evolves into his inspiration for continuing to make music, and to make a positive change for himself and for others, as he underwent his self revolution.
How does a former cocaine addict end up making some of the most inspirational and meaningful music in pop culture? One of my favorite Einstein quotes is: "Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one". In other words, it means that ones perception has the ability to control ones reality. Thats another powerful statement. It basically means that there is no such thing as an objective 'reality', and that you have the ability to control your own reality, by choosing how you perceive your life. I think that this 'self revolution' is merely the breaking of common misconceptions that our reality is 'real', and there is little we can do about it to avoid the day to day stresses in our lives. Think about it. It's a very similar idea to the post I wrote about happiness a few days ago.
So what other kind of revolution could he be talking about? An actual political socioeconomic revolution? The idea sounds just as crazy as the thought that society doesn't need a revolution of this sort. I can't help but relate this to something that I'm sure most of you have already read about... Wikileaks!
"...I am happy today, This not like other days, Some how I feel okay, Some how I feel okay..."
Before you read the rest of this post, I would suggest you all to listen to this song:
It might even help to listen to it with the lyrics. In case you didn't know, some of Asher Roth's previous songs include I Love College, and Blunt Cruisin. He always had good flow, and the songs were catchy, but I gained a ton of respect for him after this song. He does rip it. His message fit perfectly about something that I have been thinking a lot about lately.
So what exactly is happiness? Why does every single person in the world want to experience this feeling of happiness all the time?... and more importantly: How do you achieve the pursuit of happiness?
I totally understand that the idea of explaining this largely abstract and undefined sensation of happiness goes way beyond a simple blog post, this can be a good starting point to get you thinking.
So what is happiness? Merriam-Webster's dictionary defines it as a state of well-being and contentment. Psychology texts define it as 'subjective well-being'. In other words, one's perception of their state of well-being and contentment. But what does that mean?
A good starting point is to identify some underlying truths about happiness, that apply to every single person on earth.
"...Yeah, yeah, yo, yo, This one's for the people
All the bees that'll bleed, And they sleep and they eat
Shit, Breathe, The thought we all equal
Ain't a man on the God's green be underneath any other..."
So the first step is to question whether or not you think the same concepts and rules of happiness apply to every single person on earth, irregardless of region, society, culture etc. Lets leave religion out of this for now, but Asher thinks that because we all sleep, eat, breathe etc., that we are all inherently the same. Taking that as evidence, lets proceed with the assumption that the same rules apply for happiness.
This implies, that in theory, the same rules of achieving happiness apply to a wealthy north american youth, and a poverty stricken orphaned youth in a developing country. That seems to be a very powerful statement on the surface, but it is this disillusioned view of happiness that rejects the idea of such statements of equality.
"...Bout time to change a few things
We enslaved to the bank and we only wanna buy new shoes
The way that we think
We can do anything that we really wanna put our minds too
The american dream, the dream is a pyramid scheme, scheme
And it feels outta reach when it's hard and times are tough
But change starts with us yep, yep..."
I think those lines are pretty much self explanatory. In the United States, the top 20% of households by wealth, own upwards of 85% of the countries wealth. A common response to this is: "Of course, everyone knows that money doesn't buy happiness". Yes, that may be the case. But... not many people really know enough about happiness and how to achieve it, and so if you market a product or service effectively enough, you can convince the population that they need to spend money in order to increase their perceptive state of well-being. Welcome to the capitalism. Oops.. now I am getting side-tracked again.
Now that I have outlined a common contradiction in the pursuit of happiness, we can get back to figuring out what happiness is, and how to pursue it. From what I have covered so far, happiness is a perceptive feeling of contentedness, that leads to positive emotions, like joy and satisfaction, and the ideal pursuit of it must be achievable by every single person on earth, irregardless of circumstance.
"...Yea it's all about believing, full steam ahead
Because I know the worst times are behind me
I don't wanna sound cheesy, but, but, but
It's just, I really mean it, eh, eh, yea
I'm tellin' I can feel it, eh, eh
It's the reason I don't sleep, I'll be way too geek tonight..."
This blog post is getting too long, and so I'm going to leave it with those few lines. Next time, I will get into Aristotle's philosophy of happiness, in which it is contentedness and the ease of satisfaction with ultimately makes one happy. I also have some great link's about this stuff that I will share in the future too. Stay tuned.
"...I don't wanna play preacher
But, but I swear they turn their ear when we talk about peace and love
Sometimes might need a hug, yeah
We all wanna come on up above..."
For now, next time you feel unhappy, get someone to give you a hug and tell you that everything will be okay. If you can convince yourself (believe) that is true, then how can you not be happy?
The title of the post is from the song Wiz Khalifa - Real Estate. Devan got this new camera today: the Canon Rebel T21.. its the one from the Canon commercial! is what he told me. Apparently it's pretty crazy. I only believed it after I saw some of the pictures he took. We went out to downtown London tonight to test it out. Pictures are below.
Did you know that close to 70,000 of the 750,000 Canadian healthcare workers experience a needle-stick injury each year. Thats about 200 injuries per day! The cost stemming from each injury, which includes diagnosis, treatment, insurance and legal fees, is about $2000 per injury, and upwards of $140 million per year for all needle-stick injuries. But do you know what is worse than that $2000? The risk of being transfected by a blood borne pathogen (i.e. Aids, Hepatitis etc.) from the needle, and the associated costs and stress.
Why is this the case? Because every needle or sharp used in every hospital, clinic, lab etc. all over Canada (and around the world), is disposed of in these plastic sharps containers right at the point of use. A healthcare worker then comes along and puts the whole needles or intact sharps into a larger plastic sharps container, and this process is repeated until the needles or sharps are disposed of at certain sites... and then you wonder why 200 healthcare workers get injured every day in Canada alone.
A set of different sized plastic sharps containers
What is the solution you ask? Not to worry, I have already found one. It is called *drum roll...* The Sharps Terminator. I know what you are thinking... but unfortunately, its not actually Arnold Schwarzenegger going around from clinic to clinic disposing of all the needles. That would be quite the proposal though. Its actually just an innovative, safe, and simple technology that disposes of most needles at the point of use.
Sharps Terminator
When I first heard of this... I was perplexed as to how this simple, safe, and efficient technology isn't already available, and that too in the same industry that constantly pushes the envelope in emerging technologies (I sometimes use the new 320 slice computed tomography scanners for my research, which can acquire a CT image of the entire chest in less than a second... isnt that amazing?).
So... I saw the opportunity, and took on the project of trying to market this revolutionary technology. We just launched the website, so check it out!
www.nomoreneedles.ca
(PS. I am doing some upgrades on the site, so it may be down when you click on the link)
I'm on the Earth for a reason, and today's purpose was to teach me to appreciate the weather and NEVER complain about it unless it snows at least 50 cm.
It was absolutely brutal out today in the wonderful city of London, Ontario. It has snowed 60-70cm in the last 20 hours or so, and another 30cm are expected tonight. To put that into perspective: the Canadian record for a 24 hour snow-fall is 145cm at Tahtsa Lake, BC in 1999.
Lucky for me, I had to walk into the lab at 9am. I have a few snapshots of my day outside:
Richmond St at 8:45am. The sun is just coming up.
Snowvan
... Snowvan again
...and again. It kinda looks like a rhinoceros, with the horn.
House mates building the igloo in the backyard.
Igloo again right before sunset. We stopped for the day, and will continue in daylight tomorrow.
[Chorus]
Oh ohhh, oh,
hey my mojo so dope b-tch
hey my mojo so dope
yep we live it, live it
yeh we on it, on it
give a f-ck about your lifestyle,
give a f-ck about a muthaf-cking lifestyle cause n-gga
we, we live this sh-t
One of my favourite songs from Man on the Moon II.
Live life, learn, then live life some more, repeat until your life is perfect.
If you didn't notice, thats a paradox, because your life can never really be 'perfect', and even if by some magical alignment in the universe, if you think your life is 'perfect' for some period of time, you will never have any way of logically reaching that conclusion.
I recently discovered the limitation of logic (For all of you that are convinced that logic and reasoning is the be all and end all of everything).
I will use the example of child repeatedly asking one word over and over again in seek of answers. Lets say the child asks, “Why?”, if you put a knife beyond his or her reach. You then explain that you did so because the knife is sharp. The child will then again ask, “Why?”, and so you then explain that the knife is sharp so that it may be used to cut food. The child will then again ask, “Why?”, and so on and so forth. This example illustrates the dilemma of applying logic, and that is that when we apply logic, we first have to set standards of proof, which are decided for by ourselves. Therefore, the answer incorporates the thinker’s perception as to what constitutes the standards of acceptable proof at each step of the process. Did I confuse you?
It basically means that you can never reach any 'true' conclusion with logic, instead you can keep setting standards of acceptable truth, and use those standards to conclude if the answer is true or false. I'll ramble about this stuff now and then.. its really interesting the more you think about it. It highlights the importance of intuition, creativity etc. (whatever you want to call it), i.e. the ability humans have to reach conclusions without using logical deductions. I think that this is the basis for the belief (or non belief) in a purpose of life (religion), because you have no way of using logic to prove or disprove religion, and at some point, you have to make an intuitive decision to believe or not believe in it. Anyways.. more on this stuff later too.
Sorry, I get sidetracked easily. Back to the song. There is a part in it that goes:
...A whole new legion of some n-ggas
aiming high pass the idea slangin
praise Allah for keeping me awake man
I lot of my n-ggas fell victim to the dope game...
Hmmm.. there is also a line that mentions Allah in one of the songs from Kanye West's new album, My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy: Kanye West - So Appalled.
...That know the day that you play me
Will be the same day MTV play videos
That was a little joke, voila
Praises due to the most high Allah
Praises due to the most fly Prada
Baby I'm magic ta-da...
Both albums were released the same month, and highlight more or less the same issues: that we live in a time of global greed, power, social injustice, increasing immorality, and an increasing ignorance towards religion, spirituality etc. I think it's interesting that both of them would mention Allah (Arabic word for God). Anyone have any thoughts on why that is? I have to get back to some actual work haha.. so I'll expand more on this some other time.
My parents always told me to start everything in the name of god, but I never really figured out what that actually meant until recently.
I have a terrible habit of cutting people off in conversation. I justify it because I feel like I have a lot to say, and I am passionate about what I have to say. So... I have decided to write more.
I just drove home from spending a weekend at home in Ottawa. My 6 hour-long drives back and forth between Ottawa and London are a great time to listen to new albums. Today I chose to listen to Kid Cudi's second album, Man on the Moon II: The Legend of Mr. Rager. I personally liked the first one better, but I love this one too. It's so.. inspirational, relevant, and I really feel like I can relate to a lot of his music.
Fast fact: The album was originally called Cudder: The Revolution of Evolution. Interesting name? It starts to make sense once you listen to it. It is structured articulately, with five acts:
Act 1: The World I Am Ruling
Act 2: A Stronger Trip
Act 3: Party On
Act 4: The Transformation
Act 5: You Live and You Learn
It made me think, in particular about this project that me and my friend Devan have been talking about. It is titled *drum roll...*Dreamnlive. Its just.. meant to be an outlet for ourselves and what we believe will inspire others to be themselves and achieve their dreams. Nothing more to it (ha ha)!
If you don't try, you won't succeed. If you do try, you may succeed. I like the increase in odds from 0% up to greater than 0%. With that said, we have decided to introduce this blog to get the ball rolling on our idea. The blog will be our way of expressing ourselves and the DreamNLive project, and it will contain your dose of cool random stuff about anything and everything (according to us).
