Someone named Meghan wrote to me about this Electronic Music Festival:

My name is Meghan I am writing because I am doing my first event on my own here in Buffalo on August 29th. Silent Exchange will be an all day electronic music + art event taking place at the new eco-friendly collegiate housing entertainment space "The Yard" down near Black Rock. I am wondering if you can possibly put this on estrip, or simply pass the word to those you think would be interested I really appreciate it!! Please email me anytime at silentexchange AT ymail.com

Below you can read more information about why I am doing this event.

What is Silent Exchange?

Silent Exchange will be an all day open air electronic music + art event taking place on August 29, 2009 from 12pm-10pm with five DJ's that have tickled dance floors all over the world, with local artist work up and around in a one day installation.

Why Silent Exchange?

After living in NYC and Berlin for the past four and a half years, I returned to Buffalo, NY, only to find a commercial side of the electronic music scene. Not that there's anything wrong with that!

My plan - the Silent Exchange concept - is meant to focus on what is missing: the simplistic, low key, underground, and more accessible side of the music and art scene. Buffalo does do a great job in introducing people to the mainstream sound but Silent Exchange will open the door to a new experience - to an encounter with unconventional and unexplored surroundings where people can have direct access, and a unique connection with the music and art around them.

What Silent Exchange wants is for art to show its true face - inspiring, dirty, raw all simultaneously. Artists can freely manifest their sound in an artistic and unpretentious environment, where their techniques and interpretation aren't bound to any commerical expectations. International, as well as up and coming talents, will bring their edge and unfiltered sound to Silent Exchange, and artists will have the opportunity to display their work in one day exhibitions - with the perpetual message in mind: "actions speak louder than words."

It doesn't matter where we are all from, which backgrounds, interests, worlds we belong to - this is a connection between the people and music + art. Words are not needed for the exchange that takes place on a dancefloor. The smiles, the winks, the hugs, the kisses between strangers - all these create the vibe.

Where is Silent Exchange?

Silent Exchange Electronic Music + Art event will team up with Rock Harbor Commons Village "The Yard" for the debut. Rock Harbor'is a new ecologically friendly and safe student environment that will incorporate a blending of art, history, nature, and social actives. The village will soon house 300 students in the first phase along with plans for a cafe , student entrepreneurial offices, food court, fitness center, game/recreational room, big screen TVs, 24-hour security, Wi-Fi, monitored private parking, and eco-friendly shuttle buses. August 2010 marks the beginning of a remarkable future for Rock Harbor and the Black Rock community.

Line Up:

Mazi-Gourmet Recordings/ NRK (Chicago)



Soul Clap- Airdrop/ Wolf + Lamb (Boston)

http://www.discogs.com/artist/soul+clap

Nico Jaar-Wolf + Lamb/ Circus Company (NYC)



Mike Parker- Geophone Records (Buffalo)



Bill Bacon- Sunset Sundays (Buffalo)


Local Artist for Installations TBA soon!

Rain or Shine, this will be unforgettable!

Blog: For updates, news, previews info..


Facebook Fan Page:


Facebook Event Page:


Buffalo Rising Article of Silent Exchange

The ATM in elmwood and Bryant is in this permanent state.

Now I know there are lot of things to compare in google maps vs bing maps. One being street view which bing just doesn't have, the other being birds eye view which Google doesn't have. Or photographs or 3d buildings or live data, etc. But I am not comparing that. Here I am going to compare apples with apples, so to speak. I am looking at my house in arial, in the most zoomed version on each and am sadly dissappointed in the crap imagery provided by google.

See for yourself:





I know its not the same for other place though. For example flagstaff, AZ is only black and white and low res on bing and normal looking, yet hazy on google maps.

I was cleaning the attic with (e:terry) in prep for the new roof and
found a couple surprises.

1. The squirrels have eaten have re insulation which I think leads to
number 4.

2. A new sumac tree started growing in the chimney and was removed.

3. Who the frick, fucked in my cage? I never had sex in there but
someone at one of our parties must have and left a yellow used condom
in it which melted to the floor. Thanks jerk. At first, it just
looked like some debris so I picked it up to throw it out. It then
melted to my hand as it has somehow started to degrade. Ya I had to
use mineral spirits to remove it, yuck.

4. Just when roadkill started to get cliche, I bring you attic kill.
I wondered where those flies were coming from.

There is really no excuse for me to be such an idiot, I am a computer guy after all and I was bamboolzed by the verizon marketing gimmick. For some I thought 20/5 FIOS was 20MBps download by 5MBps upload. I couldn't understand why I was getting uploads speeds of only 500KBps for upload on the server. Turns out its 20 mbps/5 mbps. Notice the lowercase, it then read as bits where the bytes were. Read more about bits and bytes here

e.g. What they should say is that verizon high speed business FIOS is 2 MBps down by 0.5 MBps up but who wants to advertise in 0.5 when 20/5 sounds so much sexier.

Here you can see the results I am currently getting from speakeasy speedtests on the server:

Last Result:
Download Speed: 19397 kbps (2424.6 KB/sec transfer rate)
Upload Speed: 3049 kbps (381.1 KB/sec transfer rate

I mean I thought it was too good to be true. Now I am wonder if I ever even needed FIOS to begin with as the backups aren't that much faster than they would be dedicated with DSL or cable. I mean for a server its only the upload speed that matters.

Arghs.

I have been so busy with work. It seems to somehow take up my entire life on most days. Lots of awesome stuff got done but mostly I am just tired right now.

The roof is going to start this or next week. There goes $20,000 - at last it isn't the $30,000 I thought it was going to be.

My work is making me use a blackberry because the iphone is too insecure

The upside is that he blackerry is for work only and comes with tethering which which means my iphone's battery will probably last longer.

I found this awesome ibm site that tracks visualizations. Its pretty neat.

It's 12:45am and that blur near the street is my neighbor who just started mowing his lawn. What the fuck?!

It's been going on for like 40 minutes, at first I thought it was a helicopter but then it just kept going.

I am so freaking angry about this. It ruined almost every pear ;(. I
wonder if the insides will be okay?

Shakespeare in the park is jammin. There are so many people.

On another note, The water in Hoyt lake is fucking disgusting.
Normally I would say freaking but seriously the disgustingness really
deserved the upgrade.

There are so many cans and bottles jammed up in the weeds. Who throws
their garbage in the water. I think those people deserve to be tazered.

I wonder if there could be any hope in cleaning it up by making the
water flow better. I mean I have seen lakes in other city parks that
wernt so sick.

When at walmart in new hampshire, I was fascinated by three things.

1. The prices, we never go to walmart but holy crap shit is cheap -
still I think a lot of it is lesser quality. A good example is that
the Hanes cotton t-shirts we bought at walmart are definately thinner
and more cheaply seamed than the ones we got at target. It's obvious
to the eye.

2. Just how trashy, white trash can get.

3. That this woman with revealing cleavage on the cover of cosmo is
not too revealing to be shown but the word sex and all the article
titles are.