I’ve been having internet problems for like two weeks, so my Top Canadian Albums of 2016 chart is a little bit late but finally up here.
The list is based on contributor voting, listens and how much it moved us. Popularity of artist is not something that was put into account. Good music moves you and it doesn’t matter who makes it.
I watched the movie Hidden Figures over the weekend with a group of girl friends (and a few guys who tagged along).
The movie is based on the true story of 3 smart African American women who were integral to NASA’s mission to get John Glenn into orbit. I loved the movie. There were some tear jerking moments and others where I wanted to yell “you go girl!” at the screen.
Katherine G Johnson, the movies’s main character made math seem like the most badass thing. The real Katherine G Johnson still lives today at 98 and calculated the trajectories, launch windows, and emergency back-up return paths for many flights including the early NASA missions of John Glenn and Alan Shepard, the 1969 Apollo 11 flight to the Moon, and even early plans for the Mission to Mars. She wasn’t awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom until 2015, when she was 97, by Barack Obama.
Anyways, Hidden Figures is a movie everyone should watch and has more life lessons than the other space movie in theatres.
This year, with the help of a eBook Reader and a Library Card, I’ve surpassed my goal to read 52 books (that’s one a week) in 2016.
I read everything cover to cover. Some of them weren’t so great but I always finish a book. In doing so, my mind was opened and I learned a lot about the lives of different people (I have a huge fascination with North Korea now), different ways of viewing the world, laughed and cried.
I love reading and I’ll continue to do so in 2017 (with probably the same goal because it is a realistic gauge of books). Follow my reading adventure on Goodreads @tianafeng
Here is a list of all the books I read starting from the most recent.
Let me know what books I should check out in 2017. I’m up for anything!
For Christmas, one of the things Nash got me was an Akai MPK Mini, my first MIDI keyboard. I still don’t know much about music production but now I have no excuse not to try it!
I started to teach myself Ableton with the help of Lynda.com (free Premium subscription with a Toronto Library Card). Maybe one day I will have a complete song to share with all of you!
I’m presenting a show January 20th with Exclaim! as part of their 25th anniversary and Silver Dollar’s Class of 2017 series. Find out more on the Facebook event page!
My friend Jimena recently Kickstarted the first in a series of books for girls. Queens Girls are stories of real women turned into fairy tales in hopes of inspiring girls to follow their dreams. They want to break the stereotypical roles girls are usually put into in stories: the caretaker or the love interest.
With each book purchase, they’ll also donate it to a child struggling to dream. I love this idea!
The first one will be of Bessie Coleman, the first African American woman in the world to get a pilot’s license.
The illustrations are beautiful and I can’t wait to see what else they will release.
Check out their Kickstarter for more info!
Moon! Nash has Sun. I am super excited to have not too much planned besides playing the new Pokemon games that take place in a place that looks like Hawaii.
This month’s Vinyl Me Please record is “Lemon of Pink” from The Books on a yellow record with pink splattered. Inside the sleeve is also a 16-page book featuring new artwork and extensive liner notes by Nick Zammuto.
I’m not that familiar with this record but Vinyl Me Please hasn’t failed me yet!
I’ve always wanted to have a clickable Canadian map on Ride the Tempo so I finally found a plugin that let me do it. Check it out on the front page. I still have 9000+ posts to go through and tag the provinces but it is live and working!
At the moment, I don’t have many artist from Northern Canada. I would love to change that. If you know any cool Canadian acts from Northwest Territories, Yukon or Nunavut I would love to know!
This month’s Vinyl Me Please record is Beck’s best record Odelay in a bourbon-coloured marble. It also has the 12 x 12 poster that was in the original pressing. There’s also an original print from Scott Allen Hill from Original Champions from Design.
Tiana Feng 