“Green philosophy in Cloud Cult's DNA” plus 2 more |
- Green philosophy in Cloud Cult's DNA
- Keeping the philosophy of virtualisation alive
- Google’s New Philosophy: We’re A Portal
| Green philosophy in Cloud Cult's DNA Posted: 10 Sep 2010 12:20 AM PDT Cloud Cult is as much a philosophy as it is a band. The veteran eight-piece chamber-pop group calls the Midwestern wilds of Minnesota and Wisconsin home, and while fans love the band for its emotive shows and expansive records, Cloud Cult gets an equal amount of love for its environmental efforts. Cloud Cult, which plays two area shows this weekend, has been releasing its records on its own imprint, Earthology Records, for years. But the label is only a small part of singer-songwriter Craig Minowa's ever-expanding vision. "Connie and I started the concept of Earthology in the late '90s, and the records have been a branch of that," Minowa said earlier this week from the couple's Wisconsin organic-farm home. "But we had ultimate goals of getting our 501(c)(3) status through our own organization, the Earthology Institute, which is the broader, government-recognized organization we use for grant funding — to do stuff like greening schools and reducing toxic pesticide use." Minowa thinks big, and that comes through in his sprawling pop compositions. His songs toe the line between Brian Wilson's mind-bending catalog and Arcade Fire's soaring and uplifting aesthetics. He sings about nature and space, about other planes and the meaning of life. Yes, Minowa is something of a hippie. But he's a brilliant hippie. The last three Cloud Cult records have been critical successes and fan favorites, and this month's arrival of "Light Chasers" — its seventh record in 10 years — features the band's most elaborate work to date. With the arrival of Craig and Connie's year-old son, Nova, it's not surprising to see so many songs here about birth and new life — and very early mornings. "It was a lot of sleepless nights with the new baby where you're pacing around hour after hour and relishing the beginning of the winter and peeking through the curtains and seeing the stars out there," Minowa said. "Much of the lyrics on this album were written during the first two months of Nova's life, because he was up a lot at night and so was I." The family recently moved from Minnesota to Wisconsin, where they live in Vernon County, an area known for its concentration of organic farmers. Their new farmland isn't established yet, but Minowa has planted his seeds elsewhere. His cause of popularizing post-consumer recycled CD packaging has become a mass-level reality with the help of Minneapolis-based CD manufacturing company Copycats Media. ("When people ask me about it, I tell them to call Copycats and ask for the Cloud Cult model," he said. "It's not something they advertise.") And he and the band also cut a mutually beneficial deal with Esurance, the online auto insurer — a deal that turned some fans off, even though the band, in typical form, participated for the right reasons. "They said, 'We'd like to do this commercial, but we'd like it to be educational,' " Minowa said. "And we've always been particular in who we'd lend our music to on the advertising level. We've turned down some tasty offers, but they're good people and they had an honest angle. They wanted viewers to come out of it with a link and they could click on it and learn about greening their driving. "On top of that, they helped us with our greening costs. We plant hundreds of trees each year and tour with biodiesel, and we donate money to build turbines in the South Dakota/North Dakota area with Native Energy. And yet there were so many people who ripped into us for that. I guess we expected that, but still." Minowa has turned down offers from NASCAR (of all organizations) and BMW, which briefly considered the Cloud Cult song "Chemicals Collide" for a national ad campaign. But now he's living a dream in composing music for the National Geographic Channel series "Expedition Grizzly" — and in taking his young son on the road for the first time. "This is our first big run with Nova," Minowa said. "We've done some one-off shows throughout the summer and the spring, but this is a big one. He loves people and traveling, and he seems better when he's out there experiencing the world. He's a wide-open being." Like father, like son. Ricardo Baca: 303-954-1394 or rbaca@denverpost.com; twitter.com/rvrb cloud cultChamber pop. Bluebird Theater. Saturday, 9 p.m. $15.75-$18. ticketmaster.com. eTown at the Boulder Theater with Shawn Mullins. Sunday, 6 p.m. $18.75. bouldertheater.com This entry passed through the Full-Text RSS service — if this is your content and you're reading it on someone else's site, please read our FAQ page at fivefilters.org/content-only/faq.php |
| Keeping the philosophy of virtualisation alive Posted: 09 Sep 2010 02:39 PM PDT When managing a virtualised IT environment, organisations often dive in and buy new hardware to accommodate new demands. But shouldn't we keep the philosophy of virtualisation alive by keeping hardware costs to a minimum? When organisations migrate their systems from physical to virtual, it significantly decreases the requirement for hardware. But, rather than just virtualising and assuming the job is done, virtualisation should be a continuous process that needs careful monitoring. It is important to consider making better use of existing resources when managing a virtualised IT environment. If capacity planning is managed properly, new demands can be matched against the available capacity and catered for within the existing platform. By monitoring performance of the existing IT system from the outset, organisations can avoid a knee-jerk reaction of buying new hardware when unexpected management requirements put IT departments under time pressure to find a host for the new requirement. IT leaders should ask themselves the following questions when designing and supporting virtual IT infrastructure:
The responsibility of capacity planning often falls through the cracks and can become neglected. It is possible to achieve considerable savings on unnecessary hardware by setting a clear policy on capacity planning from the outset and ensuring better communication. By thinking long term and planning your strategy for new demand before it arrives, you will maximise your existing systems or quickly justify new spend. It is crucial to ask how you will solve current problems and make sure you will be able to keep your IT infrastructure optimal in five years' time. Robin Webster is infrastructure consultant at Centiq This entry passed through the Full-Text RSS service — if this is your content and you're reading it on someone else's site, please read our FAQ page at fivefilters.org/content-only/faq.php |
| Google’s New Philosophy: We’re A Portal Posted: 09 Sep 2010 10:57 AM PDT After years of refusing the "portal" label, it seems that Google has finally had a change of mind. Google's new attitude is evident on its Our Philosophy – Ten things we know to be true page. As Eric Goldman points out, that page has changed:
Indeed, as Google has built out its own content properties, search results more frequently point users elsewhere on Google rather than to other websites. News-related searches might lead to the Google News home page, or even to a hosted article on Google News. Local searches often lead, as Mike Blumenthal points out, to a Google Place Page, not to the business' website. Image searches might lead to photos hosted on Google's Picasa. Product searches might lead to Google's product search service, etc., etc. "Website" to "homepage" — it's a tiny change in word choice, but it says a lot about where Google is and where it's going. Postscript: Google has sent us a statement disagreeing with the suggestion that the word change implies Google is a portal, and saying that the wording will be changed back as it was. A Google spokesperson says:
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