Im talking Electro (commonly known as Electronic, House & Techno for those who are not that in tune with the music world – get it? yeah I’m corny) and Dubstep in the Orlando, Fl area. So as far as I know here is the following line up for the month of March get ready O-Town sh*ts about to get wild:

March 17, 2011 (Thursday): Liquid Stranger AND Sluggo (brought to you by the one and only Steez Promo) @ Roxy Night Club

For those of you who are not familiar with the genre of Dupstep (well its more of a life style than a genre) one can only describe it as dirty, gritty, grimy bass with a lotta bit of WHOMP.

Liquid Stranger aka Martin Stääf is originally from Varberg, Sweden and according to Generation Bass is “the epitome of Transnational Dubstep covering everything from Latin, Asian, Eastern European and  Jamaican Dancehall dubs”.  Some some of my favorite tracks by Liquid Stranger include: Bully, Shake My Ass, Dance On The Petals Avoiding Nettles, and  Get To The Point – a collaboration with Excision.

Sluggo aka Nick Suddarth has been hitting the dub scene hard for over a decade and man does it hit.  Turn on a track and the bassface is instantaneous. Sluggo is the definition of dark, dirty, grimy bass. *WARNING* if you are not into semi to hardcore dub you may not like these tracks but if you do prepare to be hit hard: Over (sluggo dubstep remix) – Drake, I Get Violent, Slugstep, and This Is Dirty

Should be a sick show, can’t wait to get my ticket and pledge my allegiance to the bass. Oh and its St. Patrick’s day what better way to celebrate?

March 19, 2011 (Saturday): The Disco Fries @ Roxy Night Club

Okay so personally I didn’t know that much about the Disco Fries before I saw that they were playing at Roxy when I was looking into the show above.  But anyway The Disco Fries are made up of two DJs (DJ Piklz & Danny Danger) and their style is more House/Electro so for all you dubheads out there sorry but for all you fist pumping types these guys are right up your alley.  Some of their more popular tracks include: Ayo (Disco Fries Remix) – Hyper Crush, Sugar (Disco Fries Remix) – Flo Rida, OMG (Disco Fries Remix) – Usher feat. Will.I.Am, and G6 (Disco Fries Remix) – Far East Movement.  So to recap if you’re just looking to get a table and buy bottles and party this is definitely the show for you.

March 22, 2011 (Tuesday): DADA LIFE @ Roxy Night Club

Personally this is one of the only nights that I am looking forward to in the month of March. Dada Life hits f*cking hard and gets you dancing no matter what mood you were previously in.  Stefan & Olle make up Dada Life and those guys are hilarious (well as far as I can tell from their videos).  You’re probably wonder what genre you would put Dada Life in well let me put it their way “Dada Music”. Plain and simple they do their own thing and there’s no label that will do them justice.  Some of their more popular tracks: Hello (Dada Life Remix) – Martin Solveig, Symphonies (Dada Life Remix) – Dan Black feat. Kid Cudi (one of my all time favorites), Where’s The Party At (Dada Life Remix) and finally the sneak peak of their new track Fight Club Is Closed (It’s Time For Rock ‘n’ Roll) – skip to 0:37 of the video to hear the preview. As they say “electronic sh*t hits harder” and damn right it does, hide your faces cause they might just melt off.

March 24, 2011 (Thursday): DJ Chuckie @ Roxy Night Club

Damn I don’t think there could be a better line up of shows than the week of the 20th to the 27th in March, Dada Life the 22nd, Chuckie the 24th and Pretty Lights the 25th who needs Ultra?! Dj Chuckie represents the dirty, dirty dutch music and there’s not much more I can say (its pretty self explanatory). Prepare for bangers galore with drops that will make you go bonkers. Some of Chuckie’s more popular tracks include: Let The Bass Kick, I Like It (Chuckie Remix) – Enrique Iglesias feat. Pitbull, Let Me Sip My Drink (Chuckie Remix) – Robbie Rivera feat. Fast Eddie and I Got My Eye On You (Chuckie Remix) - Nari & Milani & Cristian Marchi ft. Luciana.

March 25, 2011 (Friday): Pretty Lights @ House of Blues

Aaaaaand this would be the second night that I am anxiously awaiting in the month of March.  I’ve already seen Pretty Lights twice before  and man I cannot WAIT for this show.  The genre: electrohiphopsoul. The guy: Derek Vincent Smith. Why am I so excited about this show, well lets head on over to the info section of the Pretty Lights facebook page to find out…”Pretty Lights is giving the people what they want; electro organic cutting-edge party rocking beats that fill venues with energy and emotion and send dance floors into frenzies.” When I go to these shows I like to let loose, feel the beat and dance like no one is watching…but seriously I do that. Here are some of my favorite tracks to listen to at any time of the day, and no matter what mood I’m in: Kanye West All Of The Lights Remix, Double Love , Hot Like Sauce, If I Gave You My Love, Finally Moving, Electro Cali and Forever Lost.  Prepare to let the music take over your mind, your body and your soul.

March 29, 2011 (Tuesday): Steve Angello and the Size Matters Tour @ The Beachman Theatre

Steve Angello is one third of the group Swedish House Mafia (ever heard of them? yeah that’s what I thought) and if you’re into House music then halloooo what better  way to end the month of March!? Okay I’m not gonna lie I’m getting pretty sleepy so I’m going to keep this last one short and sweet, skip the filler and get right to the tracks. So here you go people listen and get pumped: Show Me Love collaboration with Laidback Luke feat. Robin S, Knas, Rolling (Original Mix), Tivoli (Original Mix), and hopefully we’ll here some SHM so here’s one just incase you haven’t heard it (I’m joking people) – Miami 2 Ibiza.

So even if you weren’t fortunate to purchase a ticket to Ultra Music Festival the month of March (in Orlando, Fl) is still going to be an epic one. Here’s to hoping that the music pumps, the beats flow and the eargasms never stop.

*Photo By Lucy Samperton

At 6:10 this morning, before my body even thought about waking up, a truck carrying 8,000 gallons of printer ink flipped over on the interstate in Peabody, Massachusetts.  This little inkcident (okay you got me I didn’t come up with this clever phrase but I wish I had) is said to be the “most colorful car crash in history”. And for all you worry warts you can be rest assured that no one was injured in this crash, not even the driver (lucky son of a betch).  But back to the important stuff, the clean up crew quickly responded and began soaking up the flowing rainbow (okay the only colors were blue, yellow, and red but whatever) with pounds of sand. Joe Ferson, the spokes person for the Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection, said the spill would not harm the environment they still have officers on site overseeing the unfortunate clean up.  I say unfortunate because, I for one would LOVE to drive on a highway, or interstate that looks like a rainbow, but then again that’s just me. For more information on this colorful accident check out the full story on The Boston Globe Online.

*Photo taken by Winslow Townson for The Boston Globe

This past summer I worked at my old high school in the Head’s office, I was the assistant to the Head’s assistance (pretty nifty of course it helped that my mom is chair of the board and was able to get me the job but thats besides the point).  At first I had no idea what to expect, I figured I’d just be filing, running errands or getting coffee, you know the typical assistant stuff, and for the first week or two I was right.  Then Janice (my boss) came up with her brilliant idea.  Apparently in one of the traffic committee meetings the committee members had discussed the idea that they should have students who live nearby one another carpool to school in an effort to lower the fuel emissions rates.  The parents who participated in the carpool groups were told that they would be rewarded for doing so (in either the form of a gift card, or being able to cut ahead in the carpool line).  The parents wouldn’t be the only ones receiving special benefits, the school would receive some as well because if the school reported to the neighbors, or whoever else they report to, that they were making an effort to go green and help the environment they would most definitely receive some type of award or pat on the back.  So of course Janice overheard this and she took it upon herself to compile all of the students names/addresses and somehow figure out who lived near whom and be able to send parents emails with their carpool groups.  And guess who got to do that lovely job? Yep that’s right…ME.  And surprise, surprise neither one of us knew how we would be able to create these groups – thats we’re the trusty technology department came in.

We set up a meeting with the chair of the department (Brad) and he told us that we could use either Google Earth or Google Maps but he recommended Google Earth.  So then I had to get on Janice’s ANCIENT laptop and download Google Earth.  Thats when the fun began.  When I first opened Google Earth I wasn’t alone, I was with another employee who said she had used it before…she hadn’t, she didn’t know that you were supposed to ignore the pop ups so I’m pretty sure she clicked yes which caused us to shut down the program and restart it.  Then I had to go to the admissions office and put together a HUGE list of all of the students, their parents names and addresses as well as their phone numbers – I had to get a separate list of all the parents’ emails.  After I collected all of this I was finally ready to begin…the only thing I had left to do was learn where to type in the address and how to plot a point with a girl’s name on it.  Over time the process became easier and easier and soon I was able to plot an entire Upper School grade in one day (the average number of students per grade is 76).  Once I finish plotting all of the girls’ addresses (including both of the addresses for divorced parents) I had to figure out how to measure the distance between each house and determine which groupings they belonged too.  I called so many different carpool agencies (you know the ones you see ads for all the time) but the software they used was “government property” so I was going to have to do it all by hand and by hand I mean measure each plot point one by one.  There were so many complications that slowed down the process that I just get annoyed thinking about it.  For instance if they hadn’t updated the application in a few months some streets weren’t even listed or I would just get directed to some random business.This process took the rest of the summer, technically I’m still not even done with it.  This is because Janice wanted to update the carpool lists every sports season or whenever there was a play/musical.  I wasn’t able to continue my work because the files didn’t transfer onto my new Mac and I couldn’t figure out how to work Google Earth on here either.  After this past summer I never wanted to see another Google Map again, so I was dreading the section in CMC 350 where we discussed Google Maps.  In the end, however, I realize that learning how to use Google Earth was a really good thing that I could probably use if I got an internship that deals with Social Media/Social Networking.  So thanks Janice for having Google earth drive me insane but mostly for giving me one of the most educating jobs I’ve had in a while.

Here are some Articles that can be found at Mashable.com that deal with Google Earth:

Unype Launches Google Earth Virtual World For Facebook by Kristen Nicole

Google Earth Updates Layers by Kristen Nicole

For our final mapping project, we took a deeper look at the various brands that are sold in our local community. By visiting various stores on Park Avenue, we gathered the information that we needed to research just how environmentally conscious designers, brands, and retail stores are. After our research was completed, we found that there are a number of clothing brands sold on Park Avenue that do more than keep us looking good; they keep our environment beautiful as well.

During our research, we found that various designers, corporations, and brands supported foundations dedicated to environmental sustainability. The following are links to these charitable organizations:

Rainbow Sandals:

• San Onofre Foundation: http://www.sanofoundation.org/site/
• Na Kama Kai: http://www.nakamakai.com/

Reef Sandals:

• Reef Redemption: http://www.reef.com/reefredemption/

Deckers:

• www.charitynavigator.org

Von Zipper:

• Surfrider Foundation: http://www.surfrider.org/whatwedo.asp

White Sierra:

• Outward Bound West: http://www.outwardbound.org/
• Outdoor Industry Foundation: http://www.outdoorindustry.org/
• Great Old Broads for Wilderness: http://www.greatoldbroads.org/
• American Hiking Society: http://www.americanhiking.org/

Lilly Pulitzer:

• Lilly Green: http://www.lillypulitzer.com/page/greenpartners

Gap:

• Ceres: http://www.ceres.org/page.aspx?pid=705
• National Resources Defense Council: http://www.nrdc.org/
• Clean Water Program: http://www.gapinc.com/GapIncSubSites/csr/Goals/Environment/Program/En_Clean_Water_Program.shtml
• Climate Leaders Program: http://www.epa.gov/climateleaders/

C&C:

• EcoStar: http://www.ecostardevens.com/

French Connection:

• Volpak: http://www.volpak.com/public/index.jsp

Trina Turk:

• WaterAid America: http://www.wateraidamerica.org/

Kenneth Cole:

• aWEARness: http://awearnessblog.com/

Merrel:

• Rothbury Festival (a GREEN music festival): http://www.rothburyfestival.com/

Vera Wang:

• Oceana: http://na.oceana.org/
• Conservation International: http://www.conservation.org/Pages/default.aspx
• Natural Resources Defense Council (link above)
• Central Park Conservancy: http://www.centralparknyc.org/
• “A Bid To Save The Earth”: http://www.abidtosavetheearth.org/

Nicole Miller:

• Rocky Mountain Institute: http://www.rmi.org/rmi/
• Robert Kennedy Jr.’s Riverkeeper: http://www.riverkeeper.org/about-us/our-team/robert-f-kennedy-jr/
• EcoFabulous in the East End: http://www.groupfortheeastend.org

Sue Wong:

• Before I say what/where she donated to let me give you the background story:
  • The fashion designer bought the 35 acre historical coastal property known as “Kīpahulu Landing”  in Kīpahulu, Maui. The property belonged to The Nature Conservancy since 2005 when its previous owner passed away. Wong agreed build a home, an associated unit and a few agricultural buildings all on 5 acres of land. By buying this property Wong single handedly secured the protection of the property.  After purchasing the property she  set up “a $1 million ‘Kīpahulu Endowment’ as a Trust through the Hawai‘i Community Foundation, with annual proceeds from the Trust available for Kīpahulu community projects. She will also make an additional $1 million donation to The Nature Conservancy of Hawai‘i early next year” (Timmons, 1).

PICTURES FOR FINAL MAPPING PROJECT:

My Personal Ending Note:

So I’d like to end this by saying that I did not participate as much as I would have liked due to the fact that I have four papers and three projects due Tuesday (aka tomorrow or today depending how you look at it).  I didn’t sleep at all Sunday night and it was beginning to look the same for tonight, until I had a panic attack/mental brake down due to the fact that the interview I thought (and my computer said) I recorded  did not so I vented to my mother about my stresses and decided to take a quick nap since I hadn’t slept since Saturday night the only problem with that was I failed to tell my partners.  Truth be told I barely even remember how I got back to my room I was in such a dizzy.

I’m  writing this on my blog because I feel very guilty for freaking out and leaving my partners without my research since I didn’t email them what I found (so it made it seem like I did absolutely nothing).  Yes I should have spoken up in my CMC 350 class on Thursday and said I couldn’t do the project by Tuesday but I thought about what my partners would prefer, and I knew they would rather have to present Tuesday at 9:30am than Friday at 8am, so I figured I could suck it up…apparently I was very wrong.  I am upset with myself because I was very interested in this project and I feel as though if I hadn’t been so overwhelmed with other projects/papers I would have really learned (and retained) a lot more about the different designers/companies that want to make a difference in the way we live our lives than I did.  I think that it is very important that the fashion industry start using environmentally friendly clothing or start donating to different environmental charities because that will cause others to follow in their footsteps. I just feel absolutely horrible for leaving  Sarah and  Ana high and dry, sorry guys!

The big question that many people are asking is what exactly is FourSquare?  According to the website “foursquare is a cross between a friend-finder, a social city-guide and a game that rewards you for doing interesting things”.   FourSquare allows its registered users to update their location and to connect with friends.  Users can either ‘check-in’ online or by downloading an application onto their phone. When you ‘checks-in’ to a location (as a registered user) your friends know where they can find you, and you can also earn points or badges for the various locations. There are all different types of badges; some are specific to a city, venue, event or date.  If a person creates a new location they will earn a certain amount of points, and if a person ‘checks-in’ to a location the most then they become the mayor of that location.  Although you don’t become the actual mayor, there are some perks.  Recently there have been some restaurants, coffee shops or bars that have offered “Mayor Specials” which could range anywhere from a free coffee to a special discount at that venue.  When venues started giving out free merchandise or special discounts to the mayors the creators noticed that there was an increase in “check-in cheaters”.  Meaning that people were ‘checking-in’ when they weren’t even anywhere near the venue they said they were.  Jennifer Van Grove stated in her article FourSquare Cracks Down on Cheaters that the creators announced, “checkins outside the immediate vicinity of the venue in question will no longer net points, badges or mayorships” (Van Grove, 1).  FourSquare will use the GPS locator on your phone (and if your phone does not have that they will use other methods) to confirm that you are actually at the said location.  Its not that you won’t be able to check-in, you just won’t be able to receive any points or badges for that location.

One of the most publicized FourSquare check-ins was made by fifteen-year-old Parker Liautaud, who was the first person to legitimately check in at the North Pole.  According to the Mashable article, 15-Year-Old Foursquare User First to Check in at the North Pole by Jennifer Van Grove, Parker spent his entire spring break this year attempting to ski to the Last Degree of the North Pole and become the first person to check in at that location.  Unfortunately he was not able to ski the entire way due to intense wind/weather conditions so he had to be taken by a helicopter to the site.  CNN even interviewed the high school student (in a segment called FourSquare’s Artic Adventure ) to see what motivated him and why this was such an important task for him to complete.  Parker said he “came up with the idea of doing this expedition to the North Pole and through this engaged my peers in a social media campaign, which is really the best way of getting young people involved these days and hopefully that would help them learn about the issues in the Arctic and a little bit about the Antarctic as well and provide them with tools to make their voices heard”.  Parker used social networking sites, such as Facebook, Twitter, Daily Mile, and YouTube, to “report his progress before, during and after” his trip. When the FourSquare creators heard that people wanted to check-in at the North Pole they decided to create a badge for it.

But what exactly is location based sharing? Location based services (LBS) allow you to make your geographical location known through the mobile web.  CNN has a Tech Segment every Saturday morning and on April 18, 2010 it was about The Next Big Social Thing? , specifically dealing with location based services.  According to Mario Armstrong, CNN’s resident tech guru, with location based sharing “you can simply take your cell phone and you can use applications like FourSquare or Gowalla or 600 Block by Mind Grub and you use your phone to check-in at different locations”. What is this designed to do? “It streams where you are, sends out information as to the locations that you are currently at. It allows you to find places that maybe you haven’t visited before…[and] from a business perspective this could be a huge advantage to small business owners who don’t have the large marketing dollars”. An example of how location based services are helping small businesses is SnackSquare.  Snacksquare, according to Jane Van Grove’s Snacksquare Connects Forsquare Merchants to Customers, is a “location-based advertising provider that facilitates local businesses automatically delivering SMS text messages to potential customers who check in on their mobile phones near the venue (Van Garner, 2).  Location based services are not all fun and games, there are risks because after all this is real time and according to Mario “it is important to look at who you define as your friend because you are broadcasting where you are and if I tell people ‘I’m not at home’ that gives them the opportunity to rob my home or stalk me. Do not broadcast this information out unless you really know who you’re friends are”.

I will admit that I created a FourSquare account, however I have been unable to figure out how it works even though I’m pretty sure I’ve read every piece of literature and watched every single video on the subject. The sad thing is (well I guess it’s a good thing, in a way) but I don’t have a single friend on FourSquare because I cannot figure out how to add someone even though it allows you to go through Twitter and Facebook, but I do not want all of the people I’m friends with to know my every move.  In any case it still is exciting to see how many points you get when you check-in to a new location.

Delicious is a social bookmarking website that enables its users to “tag, save, manage and share web pages from a centralized source”.  Once a person has created an account he or she is able to bookmark any site on the internet and retrieve it at anytime from anywere.  Lets say a person owns both a desktop computer and a laptop and they have bookmarked a website on one but not the other and while using the other computer they realize they don’t have the bookmark, what do they do? Well if they have an account on Delicious all they have to do is upload that bookmark to their Delicious account and they will be able to access that bookmark from any computer that has internet access. Just earlier today my friend was complaining about how she has so many different accounts that she cannot keep track of them well Delicious could…I should probably tell her about this tomorrow.  But anyway Delicious is also a great way of letting friends know about new/interesting websites.  You can also find the most interesting and useful bookmarks on the subjects that you are interested in by browsing all of the bookmarks the different users put up.  An account member can also use the Subscription and Network features which allow you to keep track of the Delicious tags you find most interesting.  Delicious uses tags instead of folders to organize the bookmarks.  Tags are just words that you can use to describe each bookmark, which makes it much easier because you can “make up tags when you need them and you can use as many as you like”.  One of the best things about Delicious is that you have the option of making each individual bookmark either private or public – there isn’t just one choice.

Although this website is new to me, Delicious is by no means a ‘young’ website in fact it was developed in 2003 by Joshua Schachter and bought by Yahoo in 2005 (meaning that you must have a Yahoo account in order to sign up).  I am still learning the ropes of the website but I think that this is a great idea especially now that people are searching and using so many different websites.  I encourage everyone to check out Delicious.com and see what they think of it…and if you already have it then props to you.

I really find this entire organization very interesting and I feel as though it is really making a difference in these people’s lives.  If I were able to make a donation (if I weren’t a college student at the end of the semester) I would probably donate money to Katumpe Ole Ntete.  Katumpe is a 28 year old who lives with his wife and two school going children in Narok, Kenya.  He has been farming for the past six years of his life and he plans to use this loan to by more land and have a larger farm so that he can provide for his family.  He is requesting a loan for $1,050 and plans on repaying it over the course of 11 months.  I couldn’t tell you why I would want to donate at least $25 but I do and i guess that’s a good thing.

Kiva has been getting a lot of criticism recently because there have been instances where the banks have raised their interest rates in order to profit from the loan.  This topic was discussed in the New York Times article Banking Making Big Profits From Tiny Loans by Neil MacFARQUHAR on April 13, 2010.  In the article MacFARQUHAR states that ”the recent conclusion of some researchers is that not every poor person is an entrepreneur waiting to be discovered, but that the loans do help cushion some of the worst blows of poverty” (MacFARQUHAR). Meaning that even if people do not initially want to be given a loan to start their business when the do receive one they not only profit from it but they help their economy as well.  There are many issues with micro-financing because not only do you know if the money actually gets to where its going but you are also not guaranteed that you will even be paid back for your donation.  To some this might not matters but to others it does and when they do not receive their money they are less likely to donate again.  There are many pros and cons to micro-financing but you have to admit it is a great way to get people involved in helping out others.

The different artists preform on the many different stages/tents that have been set up and the music never stops.  Basically it is the most amazing event ever and I’m really jealous one of my friends got to go this weekend. But back to the reason for this blog.  When I saw Damian Davila Rojas’ article Coachella 2010 Using Bing Twitter Maps I wanted to tweet about it, but because I love Coachella so much I decided to blog about it. Bing and Coachella teamed up and this past weekend  ”millions of fans[to follow] the festival online through an initiative with Bing Twitter Maps” (Damian Davila Rojas, 1).

Here are some pictures of the artwork found at Coachella as well as some of the musical acts, enjoy: