Weblog and Playground of Gord Fynes

If you haven’t yet seen any of the brilliant experimental films of Peter Mettler, I would highly recommend that you do so. For the longest time, a lot of his earlier works, such as Balifilm, weren’t widely available. Thankfully, most of his works have been released on DVD in the past year. You can find out more about Mettler and his films over at http://petermettler.com.

I was first introduced to his work about twelve years ago when I attended a screening of Picture of Light, a documentary of his travels to Churchill, Manitoba in the dead of winter to capture the Northern Lights on film. Recently, he was also the cinematographer on the Edward Burtynsky documentary, Manufactured Landscapes, which debuted at the Toronto International Film Festival. The long opening shot alone is worth the price of admission!

It took me over half-an-hour to watch this past Thursday’s Colbert Report (even with fast-forwarding through commercials) as I laughed for at least *five solid minutes* when this flashed on the screen.

I owe someone at The Report at least a pitcher of imported beer, a mixed CDR, dinner and $20US.

Seriously, that laugh was my exercise for the day.

Numerous books, magazines, CDs and movies; _Lost_; _Prison Break_; _The Daily Show_; _The Colbert Report_; _House MD_, _The Office_; _The IT Crowd_; _JPod_ and Coupland’s other works; Vancouver; Nanaimo; Göteborg, Sweden; Nintendo DS Lite and its games, especially _Brain Age_, _Trauma Center_ and _Electroplankton_; Sudoku; Masada live; the wonderful world of torrents; dreams of moving to Vancouver; eMusic; Honda scooter; making baby #2; Gandhi roti; Burrito Boyz; Hero Certified Burger; touching base with old friends; making new friends; _Getting Things Done_; Quicksilver; Monday nights at Volo; Yacht Rock; getting into GarageBand; dipping my toe into Max/MSP; hearing a track of mine used on Boing Boing’s _Get Illuminated_ podcast; The Greenth; Mule Design t-shirts and staff; IM’ing folks on the left coast; Dethroner; 43Folders; drinks with Merlin Mann; meeting Adam Greenfield; Ze Frank and the Show; the films of Norman McLaren; first Segway ride; Flickr; VOX; Twitter; finally SMS’ing with T9; Skype; Harmon e. Phraysier; teaching Miksang; Pzizz; the Warhol exhibit at the AGO; John Hodgman; Slate, The Onion and This American Life podcasts; The Sniffer podcast; Mill Street Organic beer; my son graduating Kindergarten; Sweaty Betty’s; listening to lots of Nels Cline; Bob Ostertag and Pierre Hébert in concert; getting my M1/M2; John Maeda’s works; long weekends; sleeping in; family and friends; health, happiness and prosperity.

This past year, I took a break from playing the drums and started catching up with the 21st century with regards to music software, and also tried my hand at doing some mini-compositions. You can download a zip file of 12 tracks I’ve done using an mAudio keyboard, GarageBand and a Nintendo DS Lite using _Electroplankton_ for your listening pleasure:

Striving For Excellence (except on weekends) (50-odd megs)

As with most free music, photos, etc., a Creative Commons license applies to these works.

All the best for 2007!