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The Musings of Levi Breederland

Is This the Future of Grocery Shopping?

  • Technology
  • Socioeconomics

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NrmMk1Myrxc

No, it's not.

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Bottle of kombucha

A Crash Course on Kombucha

  • Food

I love kombucha. 

Several years ago, I became interested in it, but rarely bought it, as it's in that category of pricey, cool products that are too expensive for this Dutch guy to buy. I mentioned, off-handedly, to my wife once that I wanted to try and make some myself, but never really did anything until Christmas of 2015. That year, we decided to challenge ourselves into trying to find heartfelt gifts for each other with a $10 price limit. I bought her some earthy cosmetics and loose-leaf tea, and she bought me the supplies to start making my own kombucha.

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Can We Not Copyright Hymns?

  • Religion
  • Music

A friend tweeted this:

Can we not copyright hymns? pic.twitter.com/zeIH0vY9T9

— Katy 'Repentant Sinner' Jean (@katynotie) January 17, 2020

While I agree with her sentiment, just saying that I agree with a one-sentence & gif rant doesn’t share my full thoughts, so here they are.

From a secular perspective, it is at least polite for the writers of a piece of music to receive compensation for the use of the song, assuming they want it. Even if it’s just to encourage more music to be composed, the writers should be fairly rewarded for their work in some way. After all, we wouldn’t want a talented songwriter to not have the time to sit at their piano because they are busy doing other things to put bread on the table.

There's nothing wrong with an artist saying, “You have to pay me to use my song at your event”, though usually they don’t say it directly and use the help of a licensing body like Christian Copyright Licensing International (CCLI). Most parishes and venues that I’ve been to have some form of blanket license that they pay an annual fee for, allowing them to use the songs they want without having to get explicit permission for each one.

This is a decent solution, balancing the work to get permission with what is probably a lesser amount of funding going to the artists than if they were to license tracks individually. Obviously, it doesn’t prevent a “bad actor” like an overcontrolling record label from taking a larger cut than they should and paying the artist in literal peanuts, but that’s another complicated problem for a different article.

Assuming that a person performing a musical work is doing so within the permissions given by the licensing body, both the necessity of politeness and a Christian’s moral obligations could be deemed fulfilled. But there is another angle.

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Ways People Ruin Their Websites

  • Web Design & Development

People break websites so easily. A very large portion of websites, especially for small businesses and organizations, are managed by people who don't have much experience with the technology or industry standards. Thanks to modern systems like Squarespace, it’s very easy to produce something that’s good enough for most people’s standards, but that also creates the possibility of breaking things.

If you can't hire a professional to build or maintain your website in a way that keeps it top-notch and better than your competition, here are some of the things to watch out for while working on your web presence.

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Church Website Dos and Don’ts

  • Religion
  • Web Design & Development

I’ve built a lot of websites for Christian churches of varying denominations, and I’ve noticed several trends when it comes to things that are commonly forgotten by the staff people maintaining the site.

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Don't Spread Yourself Too Thin

  • Social Media

People seem to think that the best way to get noticed on social media is to be active everywhere. It's not.

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Don't Buy a “Smart” TV

  • Technology
  • Television

Here’s why you shouldn’t buy a smart TV even if you don't care at all about the privacy worries.

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Is “Brass and Bass” Music a Thing?

  • Recommendations
  • Music

I was recently talking with my friend and fellow web-dev, Ryan about music. He’s got a thing for drum and bass music, and I have a thing for brass-band jazz and its variants. He had come across a song that seemed to fit both of our interests.

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Yesterday Was My Birthday and I Didn't Tell Anyone

  • Personal
  • Social Media

We live in an age of striving for positive feedback from our peers, but also making it so easy for our peers to give positive feedback that the effect is diluted. One can show that they "Like" a Facebook post or "Favourite" a Tweet in just one tap. Instagram makes it even easier, and lets you double-tap an image to give it your love, so you don't have to take the time to find and tap the heart button.

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The Best Way to Pay For a Cell Phone (in Canada)

  • Technology
  • Mobile Phones

It is a well-known fact that cell phone service providers in Canada are some of the priciest in the world. When it comes down to the lesser of different evils, who should one pick?

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Value for Value

  • No Agenda
  • Socioeconomics

The value-for-value business model, as described by Adam Curry and John C. Dvorak on their podcast, No Agenda, seems to be the only truly viable business model for digital media.

The stumbling block that many people seem to have when it comes to content in digital form is that it is very difficult to force people to pay a set price for something that can be perfectly replicated ad infinitum.

If someone is a craftsman and makes eight doohickeys in a normal work day, and two doohickeys are stolen, it's easy to see how someone stole two hours of their time (not to mention supplies, wear on his tools, and a portion of the time developing the concept of the product). But what if the doohickey is a digital file?

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Most Holy Rosary of the Blessed Virgin Mary

Why Can’t We Pray to Mary and the Saints?

  • Personal
  • Religion

This was a question that I started asking early on in my research of Catholicism. I understood the basic reasons why Catholics venerate the Saints and Mary, and why they believed they could be asked for prayer. (The actual process of veneration of the Saints, which involves scientifically verifying that a miracle has occurred because of the intercession of a possible Saint, was a key point here.) Being rather skeptical by nature, I decided to research the topic from the other perspective: why can’t we pray to the Saints?

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My Future Alarm Clock

  • Food
  • Personal
  • Tools

For me, and a lot of people that I've talked to, the most difficult part of waking up in the morning is getting out of bed. Being able to just reach over and snooze — or completely turn off — the alarm and fall back asleep is just too easy.

A very common solution to the issue is place one's alarm clock on the far side of the room, so they have to get out of bed to turn it off. This works rather well, as long as you have the self-control to not just climb back in bed. This is what I currently do, but I have a better plan (and it doesn't involve buying a clock that runs/flies/hides or something silly like that).

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Encrypted Messenger Showdown

  • Technology
  • iOS
  • Tools
  • Mobile Phones

Nota bene: While I wrote this over a year ago and some things have changed, the end result — and the three “winners” — remains the same. I still use all three on a regular basis.

For the longest time, my parents, siblings, wife, and I had a group conversation in iMessage, which helped bridge the hundreds of kilometers between us. It was great. We could arrange times for video calls, share 20 pictures of a random event, brag about how one’s weather was better than the other’s, and other similarly family-like things that are normal to talk about. It was great because it was a simple process to set up, a platform we were already using, and was decently secure for those of us who care about that sort of thing.

But then my sister went and got a Samsung phone.

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Some of my daughter's diapers

Why I Love Cloth Diapers

  • Miscellany

Now that our daughter is nearly completely potty-trained, I've finally written down a list of why I love cloth diapers, from the dad's perspective.

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Recommended Podcasts

  • Podcasts
  • Recommendations

I love podcasts. Here's some that I'd love to recommend.

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The four best used albums

My Favourite Used Music

  • Recommendations
  • Music

It’s weird to think of the idea of “used” music these days. In this age of infinitely replicable digital media files, why would someone move an .mp3 to your device when it can just be copied?

Ninety percent of the music that I own on vinyl was acquired second-hand. There’s a multitude of good artists from years past that not only are still worthy of a listen, but were popular enough that their physical music releases are still easy to find. The fact that many used vinyl records can be bought for as little as one or two dollars at a thrift store means the barrier to entry, and trying a new artist, is very low. Sure, many of the more popular albums will get snatched up by someone reselling them for $10, but it doesn’t hurt to check the vinyl rack at the thrift store on a regular basis and see what they have.

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Why Is Piracy Always Fined so Much?

  • Technology
  • Socioeconomics

Andy Maxwell:

This week an Irish man was handed a four-year sentence for running a pirate linking site. The Court accepted that he led no lavish lifestyle. In contrast, a man who stole almost £9m from a bank and bought homes worth £1.4m, three Bentleys, three Aston Martins, a Porsche 911 and a Rolls Royce, was also jailed. He received just 3.5 years. Fair?

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A Logical Journey to Catholicism

  • Personal
  • Religion

Photo above: the tabernacle at St Joseph's Basilica, the local cathedral in our archdiocese. Copyright Brian Holdsworth and used with permission, kinda.

Three years ago, I knew almost nothing about Catholicism. I basically thought of the Catholic Church as just another denomination, and one that really liked traditional, old-fashioned practices. Sometimes, I'd hear things ranging from “Not all Catholics are Christian”, to things like “Catholics are call going to Hell because they worship Mary and the Pope”. I didn't really know what to think, but considering that the more trustworthy sources I had tended to stick with a pretty non-damning set of opinions, that's what I settled with, though I wasn't so concerned about the matter.

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Sunrise in Edmonton

Reasons Why I Live in the Edmonton Area

  • Personal
  • Edmonton

To contest my sister, who wants me to move back to Metro Vancouver, I've compiled this list of reasons why I'd rather live in the Edmonton area. (Not how I got here, but why I don't want to leave).

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headshotHello, I'm Levi Breederland.

Read more about me or go find me elsewhere.

  • Is This the Future of Grocery Shopping?
  • Fuel Economy per Hour of Driving
  • The Roads Are Too Safe
  • Advertising
  • Why Is Piracy Always Fined so Much?

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