Vancouver 2010 Olympics Coverage Daily - torino

How The Village People United The World in Torino 2006

Sun, 26 Feb 2006 11:59:58 -0800

I find it very interesting how the Village People were able to unite the people of the world. I have been watching snippets of the closing ceremonies in Torino but my jaw dropped when the dancers in the stadium started to "break out the moves" when the YMCA song started.

The camera work on the CBC was scanning the crowds and, to my astonishment, people were doing the YMCA moves! Flags from all over the world were being tossed around YMCA excitement. Canada, Italy, USA, Russia, and others were waving their flags to the YMCA. The friggin' YMCA song!

I exclaimed: "See! There is world peace in front of our eyes and everyone is missing it!"

How is this possible? A dance tune has broken down years of suspicion and history in a few seconds? I am forced to conclude, the human race should play the YMCA song all around the world and everyone will be able to put aside their differences and boogie down.

The amazing things we can discover from the Olympics.

Olympic Notebook for Feb. 17th - Day Seven Heaven

Fri, 17 Feb 2006 19:15:27 -0800

Day Seven and I am in Heaven, How about you?

A few quick notes after busy day of attending the RainCity / Bryght-sponsored Symposium at Vancouver's Take 5 coffeeshop.

The event linked up the Torino street-maniacs Krug, Scales and (the not sooo maniacal) Bman at the BC lodge in Turin, Italy. Participants on the Western hemisphere included Gold Medalist Ross Rebagliati, plus photo-machine Roland Tanglao, boy-wonder Will Pate, very public Michael Tippet, photo queen Spiral Goddess, my buddy Bread and many more.

Torino Piemonte Media Center

Thu, 16 Feb 2006 10:48:02 -0800

The Torino Piemonte Media Center is where all the non-accredited journalists go. Non-accredited in this case, means they are not part of the official paid coverage. Media organizations pay rights to cover the sports and for access to all the venues, and are located in the International Broadcast Center or the Main Broadcast Center. So, unaccredited does not mean (as I first thought), non-traditional media like citizen journalists that myself, Kris, and Robert are representing, but rather all those that have not paid rights. Even the major media organizations, such as CBC, New York Times, BBC, etc., only have a limited number of accredited media, and all their extra journalists use the Media Center as their base camp. They cover all those elements of the Games that are not the sporting events. For example, press conferences covering the bands that are playing at the Medal Center are held at the non-accredited center.

Mobile tech is easy in Italy

Thu, 16 Feb 2006 09:02:18 -0800

On our first day, we headed straight for the nearest cellphone store, which ended up being a Vodafone provider. First of all, we were astounded at the amount of cell phones available. Canada doesn't have as much of a selection, and most are barely differing older phones with few new features.

In any case, Kris and Robert had been given advanced devices by ComVu to do direct pocketcasting with. I had my Nokia 6630, which I bought the last time I was in Europe. We all had to pull out our passports in order to get Vodafone SIM cards, which was a surprise.

Not speaking Italian, it was a bit difficult to figure out the different plans. In the end, we got a 60 hour data plan for only 30EU. Contrast this with my $50CDN unlimited data plan which is only available to grandfathered accounts before Fido was bought by Rogers. And let's compare speeds. In Canada, it's a GPRS connection that is at most 40kbps, while the UMTS here in Italy can be up to 320kbps. That's about as fast as some of the broadband lite plans that people have for their desktops!

Olympics Outsider Podcast #1 - The First Few Days

Tue, 14 Feb 2006 20:14:34 -0800

Olympic Outsider podcast features audio discourse and chatter the Turin 2006 Winter Olympics sports with emphasis on Team Canada athletes.

Host Dave Thorvald is joined by Mark Sommer to discuss recent noteworthy performances and remarks about the TV and other media coverage.

Topics include: Women's moguls and half-pipe, Chinese figure skaters, Latvian fans, Long-track speed skating and then all about the Men's hockey tournament including bold predictions.

Time:51:11

Olympic Outsider Episode 1

First visit to British Columbia Canada Place

Tue, 14 Feb 2006 03:42:14 -0800

Well, the first view of British Columbia Canada Place house was pretty amazing. We got inside and met the friendly Canadian representatives. Dan Shimotakahara is one of the House Hosts, except he got commandeered into tech support. Hopefully we can help a bit with that as we get all our gear out and in place.

Dan showed us into the big board room upstairs, and already we've got all the computers out and are starting to get things set up. He also mentioned that we want to call the house by its full name. In Canada, we may all know that "BC" stands for "British Columbia", but outside of the country, people won't know the abbreviation.