A Day, A Week, Hemant, A Year

In an attempt to attract youth to the province, the Saskatchewan government in May will launch a new ‘wireless hotspot’ program in four of the province’s cities - Saskatoon, Regina, Moose Jaw, and Prince Albert. As exciting as this sounds I really hope the service is top-rate. Nothing will be more frustrating if one has to constantly battle with dropped connections, or really poor bandwidth in the hotspots.

I’m not sure this is going to retain or attract youth to the province, but it is definitely a step in the right direction. Major props to Lorne Calvert and the NDP government. I’ve included the article from the Star Phoenix for your reading pleasure.

Free wireless Internet to be offered in city
By Janet French of The StarPhoenix

It’s time to add the phrase “wireless hot spot” to your vocabulary — Saskatoon is about to be covered in them.In a move the Saskatchewan government hopes will attract and retain young people in the province, a new free wireless Internet service is set to launch in May in four Saskatchewan cities.

“I think it just opens up possibilities,” says Victoria Morris, one of the facilitators at the province’s first youth summit held three weeks ago. “If you’re at the Broadway Roastery or you’re in a park and you want to check your email or you want to surf the Internet, you have a place to do that.”

Free wireless Internet access was one of the recommendations emerging from the SaskatchewanYouth Summit, Morris said. Although the service is one of many changes youth are looking for, they’ll be excited that government heard their voices and took action, she said.

On Monday at the Broadway Roastery cafe, Premier Lorne Calvert and Andrew Thomson, the minister responsible for information technology, announced the province will provide free wireless Internet access downtown, on university and college campuses and in trendy areas of Saskatoon, Regina, Moose Jaw and Prince Albert.

Once the government spends $1.3 million installing wireless transmitters the size of coffee cans on light standards and telephone poles and a central antenna within each coverage zone, people with laptops and other wireless devices can surf the web and read e-mails around Saskatoon. Socalled “hot spots” where people can connect to the Internet will include River Landing, downtown, the University of Saskatchewan, the Kelsey campus of the Saskatchewan Institute for Applied Science and Technology (SIAST) and on and around Broadway Avenue, north of Eighth Street.

It was about two and a half years ago that I started to dabble in photography. I had always had an interest in it, but just never had the equipment, or took the time to learn about it. It was at this time that I took the plunge and spent some money on equipment and workshops, learning the details of the art from trained professionals. I can’t stress how much I learned from working closely with those in the industry. It let me learn things about my hobby that I would never have learned from books, or the internet.

One of my projects in an Intermediate Portrait Photography class required the students to spend some time with a subject to take shots of them in various poses. One of my friends was in a local Guelph band and it turned out they were looking for someone to take photos for them. It worked out great for both of us. Free photos for them, and great practice for me.

I took in a number of their shows, letting me fire off a lot of shots. I managed to get some decent ones out of the many I took. I found it difficult get really good shots at the shows since lighting was an issue. It wasn’t until the band and I arranged a session at a local studio that I finally got some pretty strong shots. After firing off around 500 photos, there was a number that I was really pleased with. I burned the photos for the band on a DVD and handed them over. It was up to the band to use them as they wished. I figured they would end up on their website and on their upcoming CD. Cool!

I don’t know about anyone else, but every once in a while I Google myself - that is I do Google search on ‘Hemant Naidu’ just to see what pops up. I Googled myself this afternoon and saw the usual - my name at the University of Saskatchewan Alumni page, a few websites I used to run, and a whole bunch of information on other guys named ‘Hemant Naidu’. But today I noticed one extra - Not There benefit CD Against Wal-Mart’. After clicking on the link I saw that the CD was done as a protest against the building of a Wal-Mart in Guelph, Ontario (it’s a long story, and I’m not going to get into it here) - and I was on the credits for the CD, under ‘Artist Photos’.

Since I still do hold the city of Guelph close to my heart, and do support the effort of the CD, I decided to purchase one online for a cool 25 bucks. Plus, I think it will be pretty cool to see my photos, and name on its insert! I’m not sure what photos they used, so the suspense of its arrival is killing me. I personally think this is pretty cool, even though it was only a benefit CD put on by local Guelph artists. But hey, I can’t expect to be on the cover of Rolling Stone Magazine yet!

You can check out the website for this benefit CD here.