Category Archives: Diversions

Holiday Season Gift Giving | Hacking Amazon to Save Big Bucks

November 18, 2019Diversions, Food & Health, News, Vancouver, VanRamblings, Web & TechRaymond Tomlin

Amazon Prime delivery boxes

With the holiday season coming up, gift giving is on the minds of a great many people, gifts for family, friends and colleagues, and gifts for oneself.

Given the uncertain nature of the economy and the scarce dollars available to most folks, a bargain is always appreciated — and make no mistake, with Black Friday coming up on November 29th and Christmas sales at the ready across our land to entice you to spend, there’ll be plenty of bargains to rein in whatever disposable income you’ve set aside for gift acquisition.

Retail online sales, if projections are correct, will top $40 billion Canadian this holiday season, with total world sales expected to exceed $3.5 trillion for 2019 — most of which monies will be spent acquiring products made available on the Amazon website (or app, as the case may be). Latest figures published by Statistics Canada indicate that 3 out of 5 Canadians do most of their non-food shopping on the Amazon.ca website — cuz it’s less expensive than the retail stores as well as reliable, and if you’ve acquired an Amazon Prime membership, goods delivery is free within 12 – 36 hours.

If you’re not in the market for anything in particular — say you’re just looking for gift ideas or killing time during your lunch break — you can get to the Amazon Warehouse Deals landing page by heading to Amazon.ca and search for “Amazon Warehouse” or “Warehouse Deals.” From there you can browse the categorized listings just as you would at any online retailer.

Most people who shop on Amazon, though, know exactly what they’re looking for. If you already have something specific in mind but want to see if there’s a discounted Amazon Warehouse option available, this is where your sleuthing, money-saving skills come into play, saving you up to 50%.

The bottom line: why pay full retail when there’s a perfectly fine — and much cheaper — alternative?

In much the same way that VanRamblings does most of our clothes and shoe shopping at consignment stores (Turnabout is our current favourite, where we save up to 80% on new sweaters and jackets), the Amazon Warehouse has perfectly fine ‘used’ goods at 50% off or better savings.

For instance, we recently acquired a Dash 1.2 L Compact Electric Air Fryer (which we’ll write about later in the month) for $42, when the retail price on Amazon.ca and at Walmart was a much steeper $101.67, plus tax. The Dash Air Fryer arrived in the original box, in pristine condition, in 48 hours.

All we did when arriving on the Amazon web page for the Dash Air Fryer was scour the page, keeping our eyes peeled for words like “New & Used,” “Buy Used,” “New & Used Offers” or just plain “Used” — and with the click of a couple of buttons, our ‘new’ Dash 1.2 Litre Compact Air Fryer was on its way, at a cost saving of pretty darn close to 60 per cent.

Why’s Amazon Warehouse stuff so cheap? Just like other major retailers such as Walmart or Costco, Amazon takes in a lot of customer returns, which it can no longer sell as new-in-box, regardless of why the buyer sent the item back or whether it’s even been opened.

That’s why everything Amazon Warehouse sells is listed as used, even if the product itself has never been touched. Regardless of its condition, used stuff is just worth less — sometimes a lot less. And that, most often, is very good for you.

Amazon has five different grades it assigns to items it resells. Here they are with brief explanations of what Amazon means by them.

Renewed: This is the highest grade an Amazon Warehouse item can receive and is on par with what other companies might call “refurbished.” Renewed items have been closely inspected and tested and determined to look and function like new and come with a 90-day replacement or refund guarantee.

Used, Like New: No noticeable blemishes or marks on the item itself, although the packaging may be damaged, incomplete or missing all together. All accessories are included, and any damage to the package will be described in the listing.

Used, Very Good: Item has been lightly used, with minor visible indications of wear and tear, but otherwise in good working order. Packaging might be damaged, incomplete or the item repackaged. Any missing accessories will be detailed on the listing.

Used, Good: Item shows moderate signs of use, packaging may be damaged or the item repackaged and could be missing accessories, instructions or assembly tools.

Used, Acceptable: Very well worn, but still fully functional. Major cosmetic defects, packaging issues and/or missing parts, accessories, instructions or tools.

How to choose the right grade? If there are multiple listings with different grades available for the product you want to buy, think about what you’re going to use it for. If it were something purely functional and you couldn’t care less about its cosmetic condition, like hair clippers or a cordless drill, our suggestion: go with the cheapest option, period.

Honestly, a low enough price on just about anything can woo most folks into dealing with some scratches or scuffs. Not to mention, Amazon tends to err on the side of caution, marking items as Good or Acceptable that the average person would consider Very Good or Like New. One of the benefits of purchases made through Amazon Warehouse is that

Amazon’s standard 30-day replacement or refund return policy applies, which comes in handy if you wind up with a lemon. Amazon does caution that because these products are considered used they don’t come with the manufacturer’s original warranty — but you can, in fact, register the product online with the manufacturer for the full two year, or better, warranty.

And remember: Amazon Prime members still get free shipping. Subscribing to Amazon Prime won’t get you a bigger discount on Amazon Warehouse Deals, but you’ll get free shipping just as you would for any other Prime-eligible item, which is why it remains a good deal, at $90 Canadian a year to sign up for Amazon Prime (which also gives you access to Amazon Prime TV, for most folks a pretty good deal when you get right down to it, and applicable to all Amazon Warehouse purchases, as well).

As above, most stuff you buy through Amazon Warehouse ships and arrives within the same one- to two-day window you get with new items, although some orders do take longer to fulfill. If that’s the case, the extra handling time is usually indicated on the listing, so you know what to expect.

Of course, Amazon will be participating in this year’s big Black Friday and Cyber Monday sales too, with some deals starting as early as Nov. 22nd, with all current Amazon.ca Black Friday deals available here.

Arts Friday | Netflix and the Death of the Theatrical Experience

May 10, 2019A & E, Arts Friday, Cinema, Diversions, Media, Netflix, Pop Culture, Television, Video & DVD, Web & TechRaymond Tomlin

With movie theatre attendance at a two-decade low and profits dwindling, with revenues hovering slightly above $10 billion, Hollywood is on the verge of experiencing the kind of disruption that hit the music, publishing, and related cultural industries a decade ago and more.
Hollywood once ruled the world with must-see movies that would entice people to head to the nearest cinema every weekend. But movie crowds have been declining as more people opt to “Netflix”, and chill at home.
Like other industries, entertainment is feeling the shock of technology and scrambling to adapt to sharply shifting economics. Studios are increasingly banking on big-budget franchise films to bring in bucks. But is that enough?
Wall Street Journal reporter Ben Fritz considered those issues in his book, The Big Picture: The Fight for the Future of Movies.

“Netflix is having a massive impact on Hollywood,” Fritz writes. “They’re disrupting all the traditional economics of television and movies. It’s inescapable how much Netflix has become the TV diet for so many people. Now it’s happening to movies.”

“The movie industry is going through what the record industry has gone through. Subscription streaming is changing the movie business. The music business has had to adapt to people streaming, and that’s going to happen in the movie business. A lot of traditionalists are saying, ‘No, a movie is made to be seen in a theatre.’ That may be what Hollywood wants, but that is not what a lot of consumers want.”

As we wrote in a column published in 2018, in recent years Hollywood has been gun shy about producing romantic comedies.

Netflix, though, has proven just how durable the romcom formula is.
When Lara Condon and Noah Centineo’s To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before débuted last August, it set Netflix streaming records, with over 45 million viewers tuning in. Needless to say, a sequel will be released later this year, as is the case with Joey King’s breakout hit, The Kissing Booth.
Meanwhile, Rose McIver’s The Christmas Prince also spawned a much-anticipated sequel on Netflix this past holiday season.
In 2019, Netflix is set to spend around $18 billion on original programming, most of which is slated for movie production and documentaries, consisting of a 121 movie and documentary slate. Warner Bros.will release 23 films this year, while Disney (Hollywood’s most profitable studio) will début a mere 10. All the Hollywood studios combined in 2019 won’t spend $18 billion on production, and will release only a mere fraction of Netflix’s titles.
Looking into the financial crystal ball, investment firm Goldman Sachs predicts that Netflix could have an annual spending budget of $22.5 billion in 2022, a staggering number that would see Netflix far outstrip the total spending by all of the Hollywood movie studios combined.
With Netflix boasting 139 million subscribers, and growing by millions every month, according to tech mogul Barry Diller, a former senior member of the executive team at Paramount and 20th Century Fox and current Chairman of the Expedia group, “Hollywood is now irrelevant.”

Having disrupted the model for TV broadcasters by making schedules extraneous and grabbing millions of viewers at the same time, Netflix is now making a run at Hollywood. “I think it’s going to be fascinating to watch,” says US journalist Gina Keating, author of Netflixed: The Epic Battle for America’s Eyeballs.
Netflix’s deep pockets have lured Hollywood stars such as Will Smith (Bright), Joel Edgerton, Sandra Bullock (Bird Box), Ben Affleck (Triple Frontier), Kevin Costner and Woody Harrelson (The Highwaymen), Anne Hathaway, Robert DeNiro, Al Pacino and Harvey Keitel, the latter three of whom will star in Martin Scorcese’s $150 million epic, The Irishman, arriving day and date on Netflix and a handful of theatres across the continent this upcoming autumn season, just in time for the Oscars.
And talking about the Oscars, Netflix’s Roma won a slew of Oscars this past Ocotber, winning Best Director, Cinematographer and Foreign Language Film for Alfonso Cuarón, while Period, End of Sentence won Best Documentary. Both films have been available on Netflix since December.
Although Netflix has been around for over two decades, the company’s rise to the top of Hollywood happened in a remarkably short period of time.
House of Cards, Neflix’s first foray into original content, débuted only six years ago. By expending monies to produce more shows and movies, it has managed to grow so rapidly that even its own executives are surprised.

“We’ve outperformed the business in a way we didn’t predict,” David Wells, Netflix’s (now former) chief financial officer, told The Hollywood Reporter in late February, after the company announced that its subscriber base had increased by over seven million in the first two months of 2019, its largest increase ever.

While Hollywood could take control of its fate, it’s very difficult for mature businesses — ones that have operated in similar ways for decades and where the top players have entrenched interests — to embrace change.
One can imagine the future looking something like this: You come home (in a driverless car) and say aloud to Alexa, Siri, Google Home or some A.I. assistant that doesn’t exist yet, “I want to watch a comedy with two female actors as the leads.” Alexa responds, “O.K., but you have to be at dinner at 8pm. Should I make the movie one hour long?” “Sure, that sounds good.” Then you’ll sit down to watch on a screen that resembles digital wallpaper.
At the Consumer Electronics Show this year Samsung débuted a flexible display that rolls up like paper.
There are other, more dystopian theories which predict that film and video games will merge, and we will become actors in a movie, reading lines or being told to “look out!” as an exploding car comes hurtling in our direction, not too dissimilar from Mildred Montag’s evening rituals in Fahrenheit 451.
When we finally get there, you can be sure of two things.
The bad news is that many of the people on the set of a standard Hollywood production won’t have a job anymore. The good news?
You’ll never be bored again.

Music & Film | Bedroom Pop, Tribeca and Skate Kitchen

April 25, 2019A & E, Cinema, Diversions, Music, Netflix, Pop CultureRaymond Tomlin

Bedroom pop. Who’da thunk that such a thing even exists?
Bedroom pop is a sub-genre of Lo-fi (“low fidelity”), defined in 2019 as a DIY musical genre or aesthetic in which artists record at home on their own equipment, rather than in traditional recording spaces, the music characterized by contemplative lyrics, bedroom pop a contemporary indie re-invention of the once popular emo or dream pop musical genres.
There are a great many bedroom pop artists, but the most celebrated is Claire Cottrill (born August 18, 1998), known professionally as Clairo, an American recording artist from Carlisle, Massachusetts who wrote Pretty Girl, a lo-fi-produced song that attracted over 30 million views on YouTube.

At 16 years of age, Clairo wrote and produced Pretty Girl employing studio equipment in her bedroom (the equipment sometimes referred to as a digital audio workstation), as well as Pro Tools production software, while also recording and editing the video before uploading it to YouTube.
Home studios have been popular for decades, but have become ever more refined as computer technology has become increasingly sophisticated, enabling ever higher quality music production. One of VanRamblings favourite artists, Imogen Heap (who we interviewed and wrote about in 1997, at the outset of her career) records all of her music in her kitchen, where she’s set up a home studio that revolves around the use of Pro Tools.

As it happens, VanRamblings discovered bedroom pop during our recent bout of illness, when all we could manage to do most days was plunk ourselves down in front of Netflix — where we were very pleased to see that Crystal Moselle’s acclaimed Sundance and Tribeca award-winning film, Skate Kitchen, simply appeared out of the blue (and unheralded, but not by us) one very fine day, as one of the varied viewing options.

Vibrant, alive, poetic, superby shot and and richly informed, Ms. Moselle’s follow-up to her award-winning, one of a kind documentary, The Wolfpack, her fiction début emerges as the most accomplished film about skater culture since Catherine Hardwicke’s 2005 American biographical drama, The Lords of Dogtown (which is also available on Netflix).
The story goes that Moselle spotted two of the girls on the subway, introduced herself as a filmmaker, and asked if there were more girls like them. Indeed there were, all forming a feminist, sex-positive, shred-happy collective called the Skate Kitchen. Some time later, Moselle’s film arrived in Park City, with all the kids playing a version of themselves.
And who do you think the featured music artist on the soundtrack might be? Yep, you got it — none other than Clairo, who wrote and produced Heaven for the Skate Kitchen soundtrack.

So, while VanRamblings reveled in our discovery of Skate Kitchen on Netflix, we were also introduced to Clairo, and the contemporary musical genre known as “bedroom pop.” And now, you are familiar with Skate Kitchen (a must, must watch!), the work of Crystal Moselle, the musical genre of bedroom pop, and its most acclaimed progenitor, Clairo.
You know what’s exciting about life? That you get to discover something new, something that just yesterday you knew nothing about, every day.

The Music of One’s Life | Rhianna, and the ReMixes

December 16, 2018A & E, Diversions, fixin to die rag, Jude and Megan, Music, Pop Culture, Radio, VanRamblingsRaymond Tomlin

My musical tastes run the gamut: progressive and old-timey country, folk, Americana, lounge, progressive dance, klezmer, world beat, Celtic folk, Japanese pop, trip-hop, orchestral, urban pop, hip hop soul, rhythm and blues, acoustic, dirty bass south, avant-garde, europop, gospel, house music, dream pop, trance, ambient and downtempo, acid jazz, rock ballads, post-Britpop — and with all that, I’m only scratching the surface of the types, styles and genres of music I love which constitute the soundtrack of my life, the various genres of music which you’ll come to hear through this screen in the days, weeks, months and years to come.
Where I am a listener and an appreciator of music, with some background in piano and guitar — long forgotten, alas — my son Jude, a recording engineer and D.J. creates his own complex, layered, multi-dimensional music, electronica for wont of a better word. Jude records under the name Dj Nameless, as has been the case for well more than a decade now.

I love well-produced, textured music, and remixes, of which you’ll be hearing a great deal more in the time to come. Today, a remix by New York-based D.J. Branchez of Rihanna’s 2012 chart topper, Stay. When this song pops up on my iTunes playlist, through my bluetooth headphones, when I’m heading downtown to a movie, the bus crowded, rain pelting down on the bus, the wetness of the day permeating not just the clothing but the very souls of the people around me, the Branchez bootleg remix of Stay simply raises my mood — see if it does the same thing for you.