August 2004 Archives

I finally found the poster for a rehearsal studio that I had seen months ago. Damn that David Miller, he has the city cleaning the poles of posters pretty regularly now, so there was nothing on Bloor St. Finally I found one on the way to the dog park with Kola -- on a post I pass every day of the week. I'm sure there's some sort of lesson to be learned here.

Anyway, it sounds pretty good, the owner was a decent sounding guy. I gather it's mostly a studio for touring reggae bands which should be interesting for us, the three piece white guy pop band. And I bet it'll smell nice and uh, weedy!

Oh, I wish I had something original to say about how badly OS X sucks, what a betrayal it is to folks like me who learned to love working with computers that didn't ask us to memorize weird acronyms and .ini files and permissions and who knows what else.

But I don't. Although to read the press you'd think I was the only one on the planet who didn't think it was the Second Coming.

I can't be the only designer for whom the Unix based Aqua interface is not so much glossy as glassy eyed. Like a doped out supermodel trying to maintain an air of elegance, OS X struggles with fonts, permissions, inconsistent behaviour and who knows what else, all the while maintaining that if she's on the cover of all those magazines she must be doing something right. Right?

I've tried to like it, I really have. It's been well over a year now, but you know, I just don't. It has its good stuff, but mostly I'm reduced to surfing through forums trying to figure out what's going on, where my .plist files are, where to download drivers and how to "repair permissions" (whatever the hell that is).

Somehow, Steve Jobs did to Mac users what Bill Gates never could: he converted us all to PC users, in practice if not in name. (Well, except for the ones clinging to the OS 9 life-raft like I am on my home computer.) Switching to Windows doesn't seem to be an option, because it's really no better. But then, that's the point isn't it? Now it doesn't seem much worse either.

But no worries, because Tiger is going to have iChatAV capabilities and an optimized kernal. Neat. I wonder if it will be optimized enough to recognize a file without a suffix? You know, the way System 6 used to.

Sigh. Aren't you supposed to feel better after a rant?

The place where our band rehearses is down behind the Sick Kids hospital, and the guy who told me about it cautioned me that the owner John was kinda, you know, crazy. In fact, I initially went there to rehearse for a jam night back in the days when I was at Extendmedia, and I think the Extend crew got turfed after about two nights when he flipped out about... something.

But it's a great place that he takes a lot of pride in, and the Porktrashers are all grown-ups and not beer-soaked louts who are about to trash the place, which he seemed to appreciate. We managed to stickhandle our way around John's weird "episodes" for about 3 years, but I think we've finally come to the end of the line. I realized I was actually getting butterflies before rehearsals because I was worried which John would be there waiting for us. Who needs the stress? It's hard enough just remembering the chords to our songs.

So now we're looking for a downtown rehearsal studio for occasional evening rehearsals. Money isn't such a big deal -- within reason of course -- so much as a decent location, the basic kit like drums and amps, and of course an owner who doesn't go off his meds. Any musicians reading this?

Actually, is anyone reading this? Not that it really matters. I'm fairly happy pushing around my virtual shopping cart full of old pop cans and plastic bags, muttering away to myself. Just thought I'd check.

We've been talking with a client about creating a little mini-site for them, and one of the things they want is for it to "go viral." I guess this is the Holy Grail of web promos, like Subservient Chicken, or the cursor eating guy.

Anyway, I'm wondering about this whole viral thing and whether it really serves any purpose except for generating traffic which a web manager can point to and say "See? What profile!" The problem with most of them, from a marketing point of view, is that you really don't remember anything about the brand or product associated with it. Obviously, there are exceptions like BMW Films, but that's because the whole thing was built around the product, and most aren't. I wonder whether Subservient Chicken sold more chicken burgers for Burger King? I liked it as an idea, but it didn't make me hungry. For, uh, anything.

Carol and the boys are still up north, so I've had the house to myself for the last couple of days. It's quiet. Too quiet, as they say. It's so odd to pick up my keys and not have the jingle followed by a flurry of activity from dog and boys wondering where we're all going.

On the other hand, it's pretty nice to eat breakfast again. I can't remember the last time I sat down with some toast and coffee before work. What next? Time to read a paper?

I'm kinda reluctant to bring this whole thing up, but I thought I might as well try and keep track of the recording process with my garage band The Porktrashers. (Yeah, good name, I know. The drummer and I used to play at his place behind the pig slaughterhouse down on Niagara St., and if you've ever smelled what wafts out of there on a hot summer day you'd understand the name.)

I say reluctant because it's mostly a fun thing and while all friends and family are very supportive -- indeed, enthusiastic -- I feel that most home-made music falls into the same category as home-made wine: you realize just how good the professionals are when you sample the results of an amateur. I'm nervous about standing up to be counted as another guy foisting his musical plonk on his friends as Christmas or birthday "gifts."

That said, here's one home musician guy who is a kind of model for all musical tinkerers. I think he has exactly the right attitude about it, he seems to take it pretty lightly, but I really like a lot of his stuff. (PS Thanks to Jos for that one.)

Anyway, I did some graphics work for a friend who has a recording studio in exchange for studio time and so we're putting together a five song ep. (Caveat: I just did an overall corporate look for him and a nav template for the website, I did NOT build the actual site. It's an ugly mess, in my ungracious opinion, but he wanted to design and imput the content and all that himself to limit the number of barter days, which is fair enough, as he may think our music is an ugly mess too.)

I'll write more about it going forward, and would love to get feedback at some point on a) setting up a home studio on my Mac and b) the songs. As I say, we're not professionals; in fact, we're barely amateurs. I think "spirited hobbyists" ought to do it for now.At some point I'll figure out the whole setting up of links on this thing and I'll post some as long my patron (Jos) is okay with bandwidth issues.

Stay tuned... Get it? Ha! I kill me.

One thing I've noticed that many clients -- or potential clients -- are doing now in their Request for Proposal process is coming back to you and intimating that you will probably get the business, and then using this as a lever to get very specific details out of you (ie the kind of stuff you'd normally start working on when you were being paid).

I can appreciate that they want to understand their risks and costs, but I can't help feeling that the real reason for this is so that a) they can get you to do a lot of that work for free should they hire you or b) if they want to hire someone cheaper, they can go back to them with the info and say "Do it like this." Kind of like going to Vistek or somewhere and getting a knowlegable salesperson to walk you through the details of a camera, then buying it for $20 cheaper from the slimey know-nothings at Future Shop.

We just had this very thing happen with a large Canadian retailer. They told us they loved what we'd done, including spec creative, and then walked us down a very long path -- including asking if we could lower our price (we did) and for con calls with tech team etc -- only to give the business to someone else at the last minute. Our Account Guy is looking at the 25 emails from their PM all sent last week and wondering what went wrong.

Con call indeed...

Just got back from a nice ten days off and it only took until about 10am for all the relaxation to go away. How is that possible? Luckily, I still have a bit of tan left, so I at least I look relaxed and restored. I hope the twitching is less noticeable as well.