Larry Beasley - Carleton’s 2010-2011 Forum Lecture Series – Ottawa’s Quest: A World-Leading Green Capital

Carleton’s 2010-2011 Forum Lecture Series – Larry Beasley by arch1000

I just attended and recorded a great lecture by Larry Beasley that was held at the National Gallery of Canada, by Carleton University’s 2010-2011 Forum Lecture Series. The title of the lecture was: “Ottawa’s Quest: A World-Leading Green Capital”

Larry Beasley is the former director of planning for the City of Vancouver; a city “…known as one of the most livable cities in the world”(source). For this achievement Beasley was made a Member of the Order of Canada, and, Today, is considered as one of the worlds most acclaimed, urban planners. He is a holder of numerous awards for architecture and city planning, and spends his time as a planning adviser on multiple national municipal projects as well as a number of high profile international commissions, such as Abu Dhabi, Dallas and Rotterdam.

Beasley, is a propagator of sustainable life style, intensification and densification of urban centers, emphasis on the pedestrian experience, and broadening economic opportunities.

In his lecture, Beasley, makes an interesting analysis of Ottawa’s current condition. Highlighting some of the city’s more prominent natural and existing urban features, he argues that Ottawa is great contender for the status of “World-Leading Green Capital”. The lecture is highly insightful, and offers many alternative ways of thinking about how economy, community and collaboration are all instrumental in helping with Ottawa’s transformation.

Please, enjoy the recording.

iShelf, Top Shelf, or the Currently Listening section

Since the very begging of the MP3 revolution I had always felt a little concerned about the future of the music enthusiasts. No, it isn’t the debatable sound quality that concerned me, as I had always known that sooner or later this aspect will get somehow resolved. Each person will inevitably find the perfect technology and quality in which they would feel comfortable to keep their music collection.

Something different made me feel uneasy about the fact that the music was made immaterial and perceivably size-less. I had a hard time accepting that one’s mp3 library would no longer depend on the size of the container(CD racks, and folders). This meant to me, that there would be no way to quickly visually gauge someones collection size or quality, by simply skimming through heuristically. Moreover, the physical organization would not have an organic quality to it where records aren’t necessarily organized alphabetically by author, album title, or date, but rather according to ones priorities.

For example, my CD collection at home always has the most current, and most favorite albums at the top shelf or on top of my stationary CD player, while the rest of the albums are progressively subdivided further into groups which would otherwise be hard to verbally categorize. How would one tell the iTunes that I like to keep my party music away from my commute music, and away from the office working music. After, all there are not genres associated with these gradations, but rather some impulsive ideas help me divide my music into such groupings.

As the time was going by many of my peers had switched to the software music, for such reasons as the ease of sharing, attaining, storing, breadth of choice and ease of carrying around. Many handy tools had become available, such as theiTunes, Windows Media Player, Foobar2000, and many more where the experience of listening to music was brought very closely to owning an actual physical collection, and in some cases made it even more interactive to own an MP3. For example, the amount of album art. and lyrics that I now carry around on my iPod is impossibly large - something that I could have never imagined to carry along with my  CD’ in my backpack.

And, yet, something is still missing. Nothing can compare to carrying a bunch of your 10 most favorite CDs around while keeping a large collection at home.

The fluidity with which one can simply grab a new set of disks off a shelf and leave for a day, is unmatched with even the snappiest synchronization abilities of the modern players. As a result, most either resort to carrying around a small collection of songs on their MP3 players, while syncing every evening to prepare a new set for the following day, or they simply carry their whole 160GB collection around on their favorite iPod, and shuffle throughout the day.

Today, an idea struck me. Why not introduce a service, an app., or a new MP3tag customized to help create the effect of a CD rack top shelf. It could be called the iShelf to complement the iTunes, or simply Top Shelf for generic MP3tagging system. The iShelf would hold albums and singles, rather than playlists which are only capable of holding single songs.

As a temporary solution I’ve lately resorted to upending a “!” in front of my album titles to bump them up in the album view on my iPod. However, this solution is not the prettiest. There is no feeling of a personalized set. It would be great if I could intuitively order my top 10 in my own way; not alphabetically or chronologically.

Therefore, I propose that somebody with the right abilities would please design an iShelf like tool. Would somebody with the right skill set like to help me design a such a tool. Is there an obvious solution that I managed to miss this whole time?

Please advise.