In the past few months I’ve kept myself quite busy. As you may know I’ve run a blog in Whistler called WhistlerWatch.com that focused on various community oriented events and issues in Whistler. I ran this website for about 8 months and by the time I finished running it, I was very upset with the way that it turned out. I wasn’t posting valuable information, the postings looked sloppy and generally it was a mess. I’m the one to blame for this. I had grand illusions of the potential of the site and where it was going to go.

I lost a lot of interest in the site after I created a company called Whistler Club Crawls and Entertainment that runs nightlife tours in the Whistler Village. It’s been very difficult to start a company from scratch and have it running smoothly. I’m not there yet, but I’m still working very hard to get it up and running the way that I’m happy. I’ll get back to the Club Crawl soon.

WhistlerWatch.com, however, just was no longer a priority at all. I actually found a way to make an income in Whistler, WhistlerWatch seemed to be a waste of time. Today, however, I decided to officially revamp WhistlerWatch.com. The reason is, because I love blogging. I by no means am looking to make a profit from my websites, but originally, I did. I have decided to go back to writing for the site because I like it. I’ll try and maintain a higher level in integrity on the site. I was so close to shutting it down. I began a professional blog on WhistlerClubCrawl.com for marketing purposes. I couldn’t deny that even though I was not posting on WhistlerWatch.com it was still receiving hundreds of visitors a month from search engines. That’s something that led me to the decision to keep it up. How can I have the hits from one of my sites tranfer to another. Well, that’s a challenge that I’m up for.

This leads me back to WhistlerClubCrawl.com.

So. I started a club crawl. Like I said, it’s a nightlife tour that runs in Whistler. Patrons pay $50 for a ticket in Whistler. This ticket covers them with 5 drinks, dinner and free entry to several nightclubs in Whistler. We ran 12 crawls between July 1st, 2009 and September 12th. Our smallest crawl was around 50 people and our largest was over 100. It’s been a great time and I really enjoy running the crawls though it’s very hard. I’ve had a problem getting locations for me to retail tickets, but I’m still trying very hard to do so. I’m looking forward to the future of the crawls. It should be a great time and I hope to make my full time living off the crawls. If you’re every in Whistler, please come on one of the crawls. Ask me for a deal and I’ll be sure to set you up with something.

I’ve started a blog on the club crawl website and I’m looking to drive traffic to the site in order to sell more tickets. I’m hoping that internet marketing will pay off. I’ve done it for quite some time and I do really love it.

I thought I’d just share a little bit with you about what it is that I do.

• Green Day - 21st Century Breakdown
• Alexisonfire - Young Cardinals Single
• Blind Melon - For My Friends
• Britney Spears - Circus
• Burial and Four Tet - Wolf Cub and Moth Vinyl
• Camron - Crime Pays
• Chase and Status - Self Titled / More Than Alot
• CKY - Carver City
• Daft Punk - Alive (Deluxe edition)
• Dan Deacon - Bromst
• Death From Above - You’re A Woman, I’m A Machine
• DJ Hydroice - Lost Dream Folder
• Dobacaracol - Self Titled
• Easy Star All-Stars - Dub Side Of The Moon / Easy Star’s Lonely Hearts Club Band / Radioread
• Eminem - Relapse / Relapse Screwed And Chopped
• Jimi Hendrix - Smash Hits (Remastered)
• K-Os - Exit / Joyful Rebellion / Atlantis Hymns for Disco / Yes!
• Kings Of Leon - Only By The Night
• Lil’ Wayne - The Weezy Effect 2 / My Face Can’t Be Felt
• Metric - Fantasie
• NOFX - The War On Errorism / Coaster
• Portishead - Portishead / Dummy / Third
• Rare Funk Music 80s Compilation
• Rise Against - Appeal To Reason
• Stevie Wonder -The Very Best Of
• T.I. - Paper Trail
• Tenacious D - The Pick Of Destiny
• Lady Gaga - The Fame
• The Fray - Self Titled
• The Killers - Day and Age
• The Presets - Apocalypso / Beams / Blow Up / Re-sets / Talk Like That EP / This Boy’s In Love
• The Prodigy - Invaders Must Die
• The Rhythm Messiahs - American Power Projection
• Thievery Corporation - Sounds From Thievery Hi Fi / The Mirror Conspiracy / Sounds From the Verve Hi Fi / The Richest Man In Babylon / The Outernational Sound / The Cosmic Game
• Top 40 Singles UK, May 5th 2009 - Compilation
• Trip Hop Sessions Vol. III - Compilation
• Ben Harper - White Lies For Dark Times
• Ziggy Marley - Family Time

Yep. I’m in the process of downloading all of Alexisonfire’s and Tricky’s entire discography. I’m also grabbing the 25 best drum and bass albums of 2008. Slow downloads!

Can you recommend anything?

I’ve always downloaded music. I’d say I’m a veteran. Allow me to brag…

The first time that I ever downloaded music was way back in 1995. I made my first website which was a Nine Inch Nails fan website. It was a pretty cool website, I was part of webring (which don’t really exist anymore) and I hosted my site originally with Angelfire, then Geocities. There was one really good website that operated for a long time called nineinchnails.net where you could download all of Nine Inch Nails music in different formats. .midi, .au, .rm, and the brand new* high quality version called .mp3! This was several years before Napster. The site operated like that for a long time and one day it had been shut down by the Recording Industry Association of America (The RIAA) and that was the first time I realized that what I was doing was illegal. The site went up and down a few times, but in the end, the site was not allowed to give away the NIN music.

Newgroups got huge.

Napster came out. Napster was shut down. Napster came back, but sucky.

Kazaa, Morpheus and Limewire came out.

ITunes came out and you can download music LEGALLY for the first time.

BitTorrents came out.

There’s another dozen or so ways to download music both legally and illegally.

I have about 100 GB of music on my computer. Each album is approximately 2/10th of a GB, so I have somewhere in the vicinity of 500 albums of music in MP3 format on my machine. Many I have legally downloaded and paid for. But for those who want to download music and not pay for it this is what you do:

1. Download the new version of Limewire. You can download it here. It’s free! Get the Latest version. It’s far better than previous versions. GET THE LATEST VERSION!!!
2. Install Limewire.
3. Use Limewire to download individual songs.
4. Go to mininova.org and get your latest music via BitTorrent. Use Limewire as your torrent application. I vouche for it being the best program out there.

That’s it. If you didn’t know how to do that, you do now. I know lots of people who understand the concept but forget how easy it is to grab your own music.

This method is illegal.  Itunes is another great way to download your music. If you want to know anything about downloading, leave a comment and I’ll get back to you.

Enjoy.

*Technically not brand new. History of the MP3.

I’ve done it. I’ve spent an entire season in Whistler and it’s been totally awesome! I’ve had a totally great time. I’ve skied every single day that I could. I got off to a slow start, skipping a few of the early days skiing in the season, but I got right into it when I started working as a ski instructor.

At first I was hoping to work as a snowboard instructor because I’m qualified to do both, but they are very short in ski instructors, so that’s what I did. I actually didn’t get a single day on the mountain as a snowboard instructor. I was frustrated by this at first, but as time went on I found a brand new appreciation for skiing.

The season at Whistler was off to a really slow start. Not much snow at all. They didn’t open half the mountain until the very end of January. Speaking of the very end of January, that’s when I dislocated my kneecap and was no longer able to teach. I dislocated my kneecap by teaching some of my students how to do some ski tricks. I had done this single trick about 10 times that day, but this one time I messed myself up pretty bad. I felt a pop and pain and fell to the ground screaming. I was completely off skis for 28 days straight and missed a total of 35 on the mountain.

I’m still recovering to this day from my injury, you can see the video of my 100th day on the mountain here.  I’m doing much better and I haven’t skied in a few days now (which I’m sad about). The mountain is still open but I’m back here in Toronto visiting for a few weeks.

Whistler is quite the bubble of a place. Nobody takes it seriously. By that, what I mean is, most people go to Whistler for a season.  Then they leave. Not many people decide to move out there for years and years like I have. So I make friends, and then they leave. It’s tough, but it’s just the way it is. I’ve met some people that will definitely be my friends for life and I’m stoked about that.

The mountain doesn’t pay well enough. I’ve been running WhistlerWatch.com for a while, and I’ve considered monetizing it, but I’m not happy with the direction that it’s gone and the identity that it has held. I don’t want to run a news website or be a secondary journalist. I want to do something new and fun and creative with my site, so I’ve been trying to figure out what it is that I’ll be doing with it in recent weeks. Since the mountain doesn’t pay well, everyone is broke. Really broke, and in these times of economic turmoil, it’s time to get off your ass if you want to be rich.

I’m starting up club crawl. That’s all I’ll say about it for now.

Anyway, if you want to keep up with what’s going on in my life. Just subscribe. I’ve been low key, but I’ll have more to say.