Molten Salt Researchers at Oak Ridge

Dick Engel, Syd Ball & James Crowley joined us for dinner to discuss their work on Thorium Molten Salt Reactors at ORNL.



Why are molten salt reactors important? Were there any significant challenges? Why was the program shut down?

Such discussion between 10 dinner participants was captured on many SanDisk Sansa Clip+ MP3 players loaded with RockBox (open source) custom firmware.

The video was captured for use in new iteration of Thorium Remix, a documentary about Thorium Molten Salt Reactors (and particularly LFTR - the Liquid Fluoride Thorium Reactor).

LFTR in 5 Minutes - Creative Commons 2 Hour Documentary on the Thorium Molten Salt Reactor

The 2009 version of Thorium Remix was very popular despite many flaws (including that whole copyright thing). The new Creative Commons Share-Alike 2011 version of THORIUM REMIX is much, much better. Please share. Please remix. If you buy DVDs of THORIUM REMIX 2011, feel free to make copies.



This project is a result of TEDxYYC hosting Kirk Sorensen in Calgary finally breaking a chicken-and-egg problem... I couldn't convince Kirk to come to Calgary without a compelling engagement, and I couldn't arrange any lecture venues for Kirk without a commitment on his part. So thanks to TEDxYYC for making this happen.

While Kirk was in Calgary, he spoke at Mount Royal University and PROTOSPACE. I then attended TEAC3 in Washington DC and captured many more thorium lectures.

So I finally had some hi-def footage of thorium lectures, as opposed to stealing poor video quality footage from Google Tech Talks. (Plus, I picked up a few interviews in Calgary and Washington.)

The result is not just a better video about LFTR, but a Creative Commons video which you are not only free to duplicate and give away... This is a video you can sell.

If you find this technology as compelling as I do, please help propagate by any means necessary!

COSSFest 2010

On April 9th & 10th, Calgary Open Source Software advocates held a 2 day festival to discuss the challenges facing open source software, and promote its adoption.

Downloadable and Creative Commons licensed recyclable copies of the video coverage can be found on Internet Archive. (Anyone without full Flash support in their browser might need to access the lectures that way.) But for YouTube hosted copies, I decided to experiment with YouTube Annotation Hyperlinks. They allow you to link from within one YouTube video to another. This allows me to show a brief summary of every event, and let the viewer click through if they would like to learn more.

Copyrighted Video - Thorium Remix 2009

This video content is copyrighted by Google. Normally I don't post copyrighted footage here, but the intent is remixing copyrighted or not. Easy to reuse MPEG-4 and MPEG-2 (for DVD authoring) can be found at Internet Archive.

3 versions are available at Internet Archive, but click on the following links for quick YouTube review:
10 Minutes: ONLY YOUTUBE VERSION WITH CANADIAN BOOKENDS
16 Minutes: +crust +history +stability +xenon +graphite +weinberg
25 Minutes: +criticality +breeder

To make a DVD or video with regional flavor, use a version with no bookends (even the 10 minute version can be found without bookends on IA) and add your own.

For more information on Thorium and LFTR, check out Energy From Thorium. That will take you to a blog, discussion forum and document repository.

Video - Elizabeth May discusses Oil Sands

Elizabeth May was at Calgary Petroleum Club discussing the future of oil sands development with Deborah Yedlin & Murray Smith. Creative Commons licensed copy available at Internet Archive, including original sounds board audio.

Video - Calgary's Low Carbon Future

On 2009-09-18, over 200 Calgarians gathered at SAIT to help advance Calgary's energy efficiency. In a future where the environmental costs of carbon are factored into economic decisions, how can an energy city like Calgary stay competitive?

Mayor of Calgary Dave Bronconnier points out our city is the largest consumer of renewable energy in Canada, and all city operations will be powered by renewable energy by 2012. Targeting the carbon footprint of City of Calgary's municipal operations will help keep our tax rates competitive as the cost of carbon starts to climb, but it does not guarantee our energy sector will continue to prosper.

Attendees brainstormed solutions in 5 categories:

• "Energy Efficiency and Conservation"
• "Energy Financing"
• "Energy Awareness, Research and Training"
• "Energy Sourcing / Renewable Energy Sources"
• "Energy Legislation"

...which were then voted on. Top-ranked ideas were re-articulated by attendees in a manner to make them implementable and measurable.

Was it successful? Well it seemed good ideas were shared, and other than allowing more time for the teams to brainstorm and articulate I thought the exercises were extremely practical. It will be up to Calgarians, Imagine Calgary and PlanIt Calgary to see quantifiable results come of this.

I created an editorialized video which uses Skid Crease's themeweaving as narrative structure. It has been shortened to 56 minutes and is the easiest way for non-attendees to understand the summit. The video is called "Calgary's Low Carbon Future" and is available at R4NT.com.

I've isolated the meatiest presentation (by Rob Macintosh), documenting the challenge to Calgary's economy and how we can rapidly more to address it...

And the whole thing is available in chronological order as a single YouTube video... ...which I've chapter indexed at my personal blog.

The Rob Macintosh keynote, and chronological coverage (with and without presentation slides) can all be found in downloadable recyclable formats at Internet Archive. Videos are Creative Commons licensed.

Video - Astronomy for Hackers

Calgary Protospace, Calgary's community hackerspace didn't always have a home. Meetings took place in Eau Claire mall, which is where Ben gave a lecture called "Astronomy for Hackers".

Creative Commons licensed downloadable and recyclable copy can be found on Internet Archive.

Video & Stock - Allyson Smith

Allyson Smith, the Calgary-born comedian who's currently a contender for Canadian Comedy Awards 2009 "Best Female Standup", let me start videotaping her (extremely funny) Calgary shows in November 2008. This coverage was combined with David Gluzman's sit-down interview to create a pretty-darn-tight R4NT.com video and article.

Creative Commons licensed raw footage of my walk-and-talk interview with Allyson Smith can be found on Internet Archive.

Video & Stock - Elizabeth May

Leader of Canadian Green Party, Elizabeth May shared her thoughts with me regarding the success of Sweden's Pirate Party. Does Canada need a Pirate Party? I've posted concerns about the effectiveness of single issue candidates running in Canada to R4NT.com.

I also followed Elizabeth around between Calgary Stampede breakfasts, to collect some stock footage of her pancake flipping. Between Marborough Mall and Chinook Centre, a series of tweets were posted by concerned supporters, that Elizabeth was forgetting about animal rights for the sake of a photo op at a rodeo (she was not, in fact, attending the rodeo).

The interaction between Elizabeth and her daughter (Victoria Cate) was quite interesting as they spotted the tweets, and formulated a response. This led to a quick discussion about social media, her daughter's role in helping manage it, and how tools like Twitter and Facebook facilitate communication between candidates and their supporters.

Stock footage of Elizabeth May's visit to Calgary can be found on Internet Archive concerning copyright and volunteering, fund-raising and the economy. All footage is creative commons licensed. Stock footage of Calgary Stampede breakfasts, and her family's management of social networks like Twitter and Facebook is currently uploading to Internet Archive.

Video - Do It Yourself

Short created in 24 hours for Calgary's 2009 FilmRacing competition. The is the same edit submitted to the competition, but rendered in HDV instead of SD (NTSC) resolution. Created by on-site team of Wil Knoll, Rachel Gertz, Gordon McDowell & Sarah Blue. Blaise Kolodychuk & Ben Blue (independently of each other) contributed music based solely on the script (as we had to keep everything possible running in parallel). If you'd like to recycle any of the footage, a downloadable MPEG-4 1280x720 master can be found at Internet Archive.