Jan 9th 2009

Ok, So it's been awhile since my last blog. I'll try and recap what my site has been up to over the holidays.

Our site was closed from the 18th until the 27th. However, once we opened on the 28th we began to gear up for a large New Years eve party. It is Saskactchewan's largest chem free party and we had over 600 people attend. It was a pretty cool event, and I had a chance to talk to many different members of my community.

Set up lasted four days because the event lasted from 8 pm until 6 am the next morning! We had 7 projectors and screens to set up, 4 xbox 360's to set up and network, 4 regular xboxes, plus 10 other gaming systems set up through out the building.

The building was divided into various rooms (arcade, concession, main stage, side stage, art room, etc) and I was able to help many people set up their tech items and ensure they were working prior to the night.

Overall it was an incredible experience, we even streamed the Canada vs US World Jr game!

It's taken us a few days to get our building back together, as we pretty much pack everything up and take it down the road to the party site.

Now, it's back to our regular scheduled programming!

I'll be back later to put up some pictures and maybe some video!

Stay tuned!

Tuesday, December 15th, 2009

Today I contacted a community group that runs a soup kitchen as well as affordable housing. I am hoping to stop by once a week to provide access to technology (office, job search)

I also created a poster for the work skills program that occurs here at my site each week.
I helped a client who came in wanting to vote for my sites aviva project. I also made sure he was aware of what we offered as well!

It's currently -22, snowing and there's another rally going on outside my window, hopefully I will throw some pictures of that up as well.

Music Playlist at MixPod.com

Thursday, December 10th, 2009

Today, is a balmy -32 which is pretty sweet. I've been working on a newsletter than hopefully will create awareness of the services we can provide here.

Tuesday, December 08th 2009

Weather: With the wind chill it's -35. Awesome.

On tuesdays there is a supper club. About 30-40 youth come down to the centre, get a hotmeal and watch a video shown via our projector and discuss life issues. During this time, I usually take pictures, work on tutorials, flyers, posters, video for promo purposes, edit etc.


We had a few people come in to the capsite, mostly with just questions ,and to check e-mail, it was a pretty slow day.

Saturday, December 5th, 2009

Tonight, I'm going to try and track down my clients for a photoshop tutorial. I'm going to hopefully add video of my cap site to the blog. I pointed a client to some helpful resources for a college research paper.

scholar.google.ca this has academic journals and resources.

books.google.com google stores books online, some books are snippet views, while others are fully accessible.

to be continued this evening

Ok, it is Karaoke night at the youth centre but people are still stopping by and using our computers

Here's the video that I made with some help from several clients!

Music Playlist at MixPod.com

Friday, December 4th, 2009

Tonight during our evening hours (10 p.m. to 1 am) I am hoping to meet with a few clients to give them a hand with photoshop. They were a no show last weekend, but hopefully they show up tonight.
I also spend time each day working in our fundraising store as well. Usually a few people stop by each day.

1:00-4:00 I worked on the final cut of the video. I also attempted to upload it to youtube as well as vimeo, but due to the volatile nature of our internet connection it refused to cooperate. I guess I will just upload from home

I also read up on my photoshop tutorial in case the guys show up this evening. Hopefully they will. I also discovered I have a number of older computers in the basement that I might take a part and teach some basic computer hardware tutorials in the coming weeks.

Hopefully I'll embed the video here later tonight.

So, the centre where I work is also involved in a contest through the Aviva Community Fund. They are giving away money to community based projects. Joe's Place has entered to win 50k to help install a kitchen. Each week they serve food to a couple of hundred youth overall. A kitchen would help expand the current programs, as well make life easier for volunteers and staff.

Tonight I'm running our cap computers as a voting station (other uses are allowed of course) as the contest is vote based. In the first round Joe's Place placed in 2nd out of hundreds of groups earning a spot in the semi finals. Now, in the semi's the top 25(out of 62) make it to the final judging stage.

It's been interesting to see the community get involved, especially in the first round.

My guys for photoshop were no shows again.

Tomorrow I am hoping to get in touch with the Seniors group to see if I can help out in any way there.



...to be continued...

Music Playlist at MixPod.com

Thursday, December 3rd, 2009

So, I'm going to put a slide show in my daily blog! These first few will give a quick tour of our building.

My cap site is located within a youth centre, so there is always a lot going on, and always something to do.

On an average weekend we will see 150-200 kids come through!

So I have a great opportunity to help my community, and I'm looking forward to sharing pictures of that with you!