Oh God, not Another Social Media Blog Post!

Originally Posted on rAVepubs.com January 24th, 2012

 

Guru, Sage, most exalted wizard!  Trust me I have been called worse, just ask my first wife <rimshot>.   At the risk of sounding terribly coquettish- I have had these names tagged to me at one point or another usually by some act of willful spitefulness.  To be clear,  I do not cotton to being called such names and if you ever hear me use these terms about me or anyone else run don’t walk, away as fast as you can.  

What I am is a social media enthusiast and I know you should be too.   Yes, I know you think you have heard it all before but this time I want you to listen.  Yes, listen for this blog post is simply an invitation to hear some truly inspirational individuals tell you why. 

AV Nation and rAVe Pubs have a new show, ‘AV Social’.  Social as in a the ole 50’s bobby sock Ice Cream social, or the AV industry version - Social as in single malt scotch sippin. The hosts and panelists are all AV people (and a few celebrities)  who share a passion for the industry and the great things that come of using online social communities to generate new jobs, support your clientele and develop business relationships you may never have had the opportunity or chance to make otherwise.

If you are a fan of AV Nation (and good heavens why would you not be!) the story of its origin may be familiar.  It all  started as a conversation on Google + between some  AV folks making contacts on the newest platform on the block.  Tim Albright  posted the statement -I’ have always wanted to do a show on the AV industry, how about you?’  Do you recall the old 1940’s musicals  where Judy Garland and Mickey Rooney (bear with me Millennials) decided they needed  to put on a show and one says ‘We can use my Dad’s Garage!’.  AV Nation came about just like that; Tim had access to a good recording setuPreviewp and the rest of us had ideas and lots of opinions and so a show was born. 

Why does this matter to you? 

Because it is about community not just, but sometimes, photos of my fabulous sushi lunch. Community includes not just your associates, team members and clients but the collective online AV industry.   These conversations with AV folks from around the street and across the country and the globe build relationships where you and your company can grow.  

If you know anyone who is an installer and spends time on Twitter then you have undoubtedly seen ‘#avtweeps’ at the end of many messages.  AVTweeps is a group that began to chat on twitter regularly about products, support issues, helpful resources as well as lunch, the game and anything else we thought interesting. The group was given its moniker by the irrepressible Johnny Mota, a designer, programmer, social enthusiast and regular contributor to the growing conversations.  What started out as a small group now numbers well over a thousand and includes major manufactures, trade periodicals  and trade organizations- we even have a prominent presence at trade shows like Infocomm and CEDIA .  If you are not joining in the conversation, or at least monitoring the posts or the monthly#avchat, you are missing out on great opportunities. 

The inaugural ‘AV Social’ show features a special guest who, I think, exemplifies just how powerful and constructive social media is for our industry.   

I am not a marketing type.  I do not have a degree in communications or design, nor have I studied advertising- (unless you consider reading ‘From Those Wonderful Folks Who Gave You Pearl Harbor’  or ‘The Clue Train Manifesto’ as  an education in these disciplines).  What I do have is a desire to help others and show the company I work for in the best, but honest, light.  Through my work in building a social plan and framework  from the ground up for a major AV  manufacture I found and helped resolve issues and concerns for clients both famous and reclusive by hearing their ‘cries into the wind’ on social. Most of these cries are an attempt to get the attention of the company an individual presumes to be at the center of an issue.  

This is how I met one Cindy Gallop.  Ms Gallop posted an aggrieved message on the night of the Grammy’s a few years back mentioning how my companies “tower of power” - as she called it- was on the fritz and was preventing her from watching the show.   Because I keep a set of keyword searches open and running on Tweetdeck I picked up on her message within minutes of her posting.  The main concern was to find a way to fix Cindy’s  issue immediately and barring that set the wheels in motion to get her dealer in the loop quickly. 

Only later, after several conversations and following her twitter account did I realize that Ms Gallop is quite famous - even infamous.  She is a world expert in marketing and company branding giving talks on the subject of social media, cultural influence and advertising around the globe and is a TED icon.  Cindy is what we like to affectionately call an influencer, that is a central person whose opinion is respected and attended to by others.  This is not why I jumped to help her when the system she spent a good deal of money caused her consternation but our conversations turned to a relationship that continued long after I departed the manufacturer.  

How important is having a social media presence?  Important enough that Ms. Gallop agreed wholeheartedly to join us on our little start up of a show for the full hour - even when I provided several built in escape hatches for her into the show-  based on a relationship started in a twitter conversation.

Take a listen to the show when it posts Wednesday January 25th  and find out why we are such evangelists about turning customers into clients.

 

 

Oh God, not Another Social Media Blog Post!

Originally Posted on rAVepubs.com January 24th, 2012

 

Guru, Sage, most exalted wizard!  Trust me I have been called worse, just ask my first wife <rimshot>.   At the risk of sounding terribly coquettish- I have had these names tagged to me at one point or another usually by some act of willful spitefulness.  To be clear,  I do not cotton to being called such names and if you ever hear me use these terms about me or anyone else run don’t walk, away as fast as you can.  

What I am is a social media enthusiast and I know you should be too.   Yes, I know you think you have heard it all before but this time I want you to listen.  Yes, listen for this blog post is simply an invitation to hear some truly inspirational individuals tell you why. 

AV Nation and rAVe Pubs have a new show, ‘AV Social’.  Social as in a the ole 50’s bobby sock Ice Cream social, or the AV industry version - Social as in single malt scotch sippin. The hosts and panelists are all AV people (and a few celebrities)  who share a passion for the industry and the great things that come of using online social communities to generate new jobs, support your clientele and develop business relationships you may never have had the opportunity or chance to make otherwise.

If you are a fan of AV Nation (and good heavens why would you not be!) the story of its origin may be familiar.  It all  started as a conversation on Google + between some  AV folks making contacts on the newest platform on the block.  Tim Albright  posted the statement -I’ have always wanted to do a show on the AV industry, how about you?’  Do you recall the old 1940’s musicals  where Judy Garland and Mickey Rooney (bear with me Millennials) decided they needed  to put on a show and one says ‘We can use my Dad’s Garage!’.  AV Nation came about just like that; Tim had access to a good recording setup and the rest of us had ideas and lots of opinions and so a show was born. 

Why does this matter to you? 

Because it is about community not just, but sometimes, photos of my fabulous sushi lunch. Community includes not just your associates, team members and clients but the collective online AV industry.   These conversations with AV folks from around the street and across the country and the globe build relationships where you and your company can grow.  

If you know anyone who is an installer and spends time on Twitter then you have undoubtedly seen ‘#avtweeps’ at the end of many messages.  AVTweeps is a group that began to chat on twitter regularly about products, support issues, helpful resources as well as lunch, the game and anything else we thought interesting. The group was given its moniker by the irrepressible Johnny Mota, a designer, programmer, social enthusiast and regular contributor to the growing conversations.  What started out as a small group now numbers well over a thousand and includes major manufactures, trade periodicals  and trade organizations- we even have a prominent presence at trade shows like Infocomm and CEDIA .  If you are not joining in the conversation, or at least monitoring the posts or the monthly#avchat, you are missing out on great opportunities. 

The inaugural ‘AV Social’ show features a special guest who, I think, exemplifies just how powerful and constructive social media is for our industry.   

I am not a marketing type.  I do not have a degree in communications or design, nor have I studied advertising- (unless you consider reading ‘From Those Wonderful Folks Who Gave You Pearl Harbor’  or ‘The Clue Train Manifesto’ as  an education in these disciplines).  What I do have is a desire to help others and show the company I work for in the best, but honest, light.  Through my work in building a social plan and framework  from the ground up for a major AV  manufacture I found and helped resolve issues and concerns for clients both famous and reclusive by hearing their ‘cries into the wind’ on social. Most of these cries are an attempt to get the attention of the company an individual presumes to be at the center of an issue.  

This is how I met one Cindy Gallop.  Ms Gallop posted an aggrieved message on the night of the Grammy’s a few years back mentioning how my companies “tower of power” - as she called it- was on the fritz and was preventing her from watching the show.   Because I keep a set of keyword searches open and running on Tweetdeck I picked up on her message within minutes of her posting.  The main concern was to find a way to fix Cindy’s  issue immediately and barring that set the wheels in motion to get her dealer in the loop quickly. 

Only later, after several conversations and following her twitter account did I realize that Ms Gallop is quite famous - even infamous.  She is a world expert in marketing and company branding giving talks on the subject of social media, cultural influence and advertising around the globe and is a TED icon.  Cindy is what we like to affectionately call an influencer, that is a central person whose opinion is respected and attended to by others.  This is not why I jumped to help her when the system she spent a good deal of money caused her consternation but our conversations turned to a relationship that continued long after I departed the manufacturer.  

How important is having a social media presence?  Important enough that Ms. Gallop agreed wholeheartedly to join us on our little start up of a show for the full hour - even when I provided several built in escape hatches for her into the show-  based on a relationship started in a twitter conversation.

Take a listen to the show when it posts Wednesday January 25th  and find out why we are such evangelists about turning customers into clients.

 

Dell Computer News Aggregation - Whoopsie

 

A few days ago I re-posted John Huntington's intriguing post about the persistent bad audio grounding issues on the Dell computers - specifically Laptops. 

It would appear that Dell has a blog and news aggregator site which is very interesting.  Unfortunately the site does not seem to have a very good content filter.  As you can see at the bottom of this screen capture my post showed up in its feed.  

Now if Dell contacts me, or better yet the real authority and the original author of the article, John, that would be something. 

Hey Dell, are you listening or simply regurgitating?  

(Do not even get me started on how irked my Dell XPS makes me... the computer has sucked wind from the day I got it).  

You can find the RSS feed here

This is Not a CES post, Not a CES Post

Originally posted on on Ravepubs, January 19th, 2012

 

This is not a post about CES, No, not at all.  But as you brought it up - just a few thoughts

CES is huge, I mean really huge.  You may think that Infocomm or CEDIA is large but neither one of these have left our dear friend Richard Fregosa curled up in tiny trembling ball on the plush carpet of the LG booth. Actually this did not happen, nor do I suspect Mr Fregrosa exhibits any
public displays of trembling- ever.  It is I who would suffer the ‘who put my knees on backwards today’ walk from canvasing the infinity that is CES.  And yes, I would wind up a puddle on the LG carpet, a booth babe nervously poking at me to see if I was still breathing. Just reading RF’s twitter posts and blog missives for CEPro have me holed up in the corner of my office with the first heat rash symptoms of a  trade show specific agoraphobia.  

When a show can be compared to the infinite universe you know for sure that it is just too damn big.  Watching the Twit.tv folks record iPad Today live walking around the ‘iLounge’ section of the show and twice realize that they had left the section only after someone pointed it out to them -just made me happy it was them not me.

You might argue that the show obviously needs to be as large as it is, just look at all the booths they filled and all the attendees. Phil Swann of TV Predictions.com summed up my feelings when he tweeted:

“@SwanniOnHD: Hard to believe the stuff u see on the #CES2012 floor; much should have been left on the cutting room floor”

Then there is the Gizmodo post by Mat Honan . Gizmodo lives and breaths this stuff so it is worth noting when he says:

“Then it's time for a meeting, so I scuttle out through a maze of ocular and aural assaults, past booth after booth of headset-wearing pitchmen doing their best Billy Mays. Deep in the middle of the din, I meet yet another PR person whom I'll never see again in my life, and settle in for a demo of another product I already know I'm not going to write about.”

With too much space to fill we find ourselves swallowed up in detritus and ephemera.

We, as a culture, are fervently fond our ability to spread out, to take up space. Our homes are a testament to this early pioneer spirit of owning our own spread.  It is also a testament to an entire economy which fuels innumerable bloated shows  full of stuff to fill our abodes with.

In my last post “Knit One, Purl Two”  I touched on the opportunities and advantages of going small - how compression can generate new and exciting ideas. Limitations are liberating, forcing new solutions and even revisiting older ones that we should not have abandoned, Like moderate homes with porches.

I own a fairly modest home, a 1901 colonial which, with the finished attic, is about 1900 square feet.  This is, in reality much too much space.  In reality I only use about half the space for actual living, the rest just accommodates stuff - mostly items I do not need and could be put to better use.  The house was purchased as it fit my other priorities of being near mass transit and within walking distance of a local deli/grocery store/ bara porch, this and the small patch of green in the back.  Given my druthers I would have preferred a smaller house on the same lot with less house  more grass and more porch.  So yes size does matter, just not how we have been taught.  

Recently my wife and I performed the annual post X-mas purge of toys, clothes and other miscellaneous items from the house. Each time we do this, (and we do it at least twice a year which is two times too few for me), I am appalled at the sheer volume of items we have accumulated which we have no real need for.  I think part of the issue is that we actually have the space to keep all this flotsam and jetsam. My parents, most likely subconsciously, purchase too many things for the kids because we can fit it. While anecdotal, when we lived in an apartment the items the grandparents brought in were far less and smaller.

I KNOW it will draw guffaws and hackles but  there is much to said for houses that concentrate on function rather than flash.  I am particularly fascinated with the work of Lugi Colani’s Rotor House concept design or perhaps something along the lines of Normal Projects Origami apartment.  The attraction here is beautiful design with emphasis on natural light and economy of space by creating multifunction without appearing industrial.  While the homes are in the vein of Frank Lloyd Wright's prairie homes these homes far more than ranch homes redux, the point is more environmental rather than ornamental.  

There is a larger social effect beyond taking up less space. In a time before ubiquitous air conditioning folks would spend a great deal of time on their porches and stoops - knowing their neighbors and keeping an eye the general welfare of the area. Even today, communities where people use their porches on a regular basis tend to have  lower crime rates.  These communities also generate less trash and are greener in general in particular, if not completely, because there is less space to accumulate random stuff. The trend may be bad for the folks from ‘American Pickers’ and CES exhibitors but not our industry.

In the cloud based future there is less need to have and store a physical medium, for example our playback and storage devices are small and mostly portable.  The trend is for more personal listening (headphones and headphone amps were everywhere at the show, every online magazine commented on just how pervasive the units were).  Even when a more traditional listening experience is desired the new compact speaker systems are comparable with their larger space hogging brethren -(taking into account economy of scales).   

This would, of course, mean a shift in just what and how home media and automation items are created and sold.  Homeowners will be more interested in controls and media delivery that lives and moves from personal device to the home and back again.  Interoperability, quick replacement transition and customization will be the hallmarks of a new mass market controls.

We may feel a bit pressured by this coming small world but the trends of global urbanization and explosion of multifunction products that incorporate a video monitor, storage, Internet connectivity and control in one box show an inevitable path.. This years CES dichotomy of too much floor space and compact offerings are the rune stones. But then again we were not talking about CES, were we?

 

Dell Computer - Serious Audio Grounding Issue

My friend John Huntington of Controlgeek.net  just posted a video of Dell computer's serious, and I mean serious, audio grounding issue.  

 

Yet another Dell Laptop Audio Grounding Problem from John Huntington on Vime

 

See John's post at Controlgeek.net for more info.  And by the way, if you are not reading John's Blog on a regualr basis you are sorely missing out.   Go now and subscribe to him.

 

Ha!  it appears that Dell Computer's news aggregation tool added my post to their site!  

 

Updated: 1/28/12

I just found out that the above post was in preparation for a more expansive article on whether the vinyl graphics (which many live show now use to hide speakers and advertise for the sponsor) have any adverse effect on the sound.

You can see that post here: http://www.controlgeek.net/blog/2012/1/27/do-graphic-vinyl-banners-affect-sound-transmission.html

 

 

 

This is Not a CES post, Not a CES Post

Originally posted on on Ravepubs, January 19th, 2012

 

This is not a post about CES, No, not at all.  But as you brought it up - just a few thoughts

CES is huge, I mean really huge.  You may think that Infocomm or CEDIA is large but neither one of these have left our dear friend Richard Fregosa curled up in tiny trembling ball on the plush carpet of the LG booth. Actually this did not happen, nor do I suspect Mr Fregrosa exhibits any
public displays of trembling- ever.  It is I who would suffer the ‘who put my knees on backwards today’ walk from canvasing the infinity that is CES.  And yes, I would wind up a puddle on the LG carpet, a booth babe nervously poking at me to see if I was still breathing. Just reading RF’s twitter posts and blog missives for CEPro have me holed up in the corner of my office with the first heat rash symptoms of a  trade show specific agoraphobia.  

When a show can be compared to the infinite universe you know for sure that it is just too damn big.  Watching the Twit.tv folks record iPad Today live walking around the ‘iLounge’ section of the show and twice realize that they had left the section only after someone pointed it out to them -just made me happy it was them not me.

You might argue that the show obviously needs to be as large as it is, just look at all the booths they filled and all the attendees. Phil Swann of TV Predictions.com summed up my feelings when he tweeted:

“@SwanniOnHD: Hard to believe the stuff u see on the #CES2012 floor; much should have been left on the cutting room floor”

Then there is the Gizmodo post by Mat Honan . Gizmodo lives and breaths this stuff so it is worth noting when he says:

“Then it's time for a meeting, so I scuttle out through a maze of ocular and aural assaults, past booth after booth of headset-wearing pitchmen doing their best Billy Mays. Deep in the middle of the din, I meet yet another PR person whom I'll never see again in my life, and settle in for a demo of another product I already know I'm not going to write about.”

With too much space to fill we find ourselves swallowed up in detritus and ephemera.

We, as a culture, are fervently fond our ability to spread out, to take up space. Our homes are a testament to this early pioneer spirit of owning our own spread.  It is also a testament to an entire economy which fuels innumerable bloated shows  full of stuff to fill our abodes with.

In my last post “Knit One, Purl Two”  I touched on the opportunities and advantages of going small - how compression can generate new and exciting ideas. Limitations are liberating, forcing new solutions and even revisiting older ones that we should not have abandoned, Like moderate homes with porches.

I own a fairly modest home, a 1901 colonial which, with the finished attic, is about 1900 square feet.  This is, in reality much too much space.  In reality I only use about half the space for actual living, the rest just accommodates stuff - mostly items I do not need and could be put to better use.  The house was purchased as it fit my other priorities of being near mass transit and within walking distance of a local deli/grocery store/ bara porch, this and the small patch of green in the back.  Given my druthers I would have preferred a smaller house on the same lot with less house  more grass and more porch.  So yes size does matter, just not how we have been taught.  

Recently my wife and I performed the annual post X-mas purge of toys, clothes and other miscellaneous items from the house. Each time we do this, (and we do it at least twice a year which is two times too few for me), I am appalled at the sheer volume of items we have accumulated which we have no real need for.  I think part of the issue is that we actually have the space to keep all this flotsam and jetsam. My parents, most likely subconsciously, purchase too many things for the kids because we can fit it. While anecdotal, when we lived in an apartment the items the grandparents brought in were far less and smaller.

I KNOW it will draw guffaws and hackles but  there is much to said for houses that concentrate on function rather than flash.  I am particularly fascinated with the work of Lugi Colani’s Rotor House concept design or perhaps something along the lines of Normal Projects Origami apartment.  The attraction here is beautiful design with emphasis on natural light and economy of space by creating multifunction without appearing industrial.  While the homes are in the vein of Frank Lloyd Wright's prairie homes these homes far more than ranch homes redux, the point is more environmental rather than ornamental.  

There is a larger social effect beyond taking up less space. In a time before ubiquitous air conditioning folks would spend a great deal of time on their porches and stoops - knowing their neighbors and keeping an eye the general welfare of the area. Even today, communities where people use their porches on a regular basis tend to have  lower crime rates.  These communities also generate less trash and are greener in general in particular, if not completely, because there is less space to accumulate random stuff. The trend may be bad for the folks from ‘American Pickers’ and CES exhibitors but not our industry.

In the cloud based future there is less need to have and store a physical medium, for example our playback and storage devices are small and mostly portable.  The trend is for more personal listening (headphones and headphone amps were everywhere at the show, every online magazine commented on just how pervasive the units were).  Even when a more traditional listening experience is desired the new compact speaker systems are comparable with their larger space hogging brethren -(taking into account economy of scales).   

This would, of course, mean a shift in just what and how home media and automation items are created and sold.  Homeowners will be more interested in controls and media delivery that lives and moves from personal device to the home and back again.  Interoperability, quick replacement transition and customization will be the hallmarks of a new mass market controls.

We may feel a bit pressured by this coming small world but the trends of global urbanization and explosion of multifunction products that incorporate a video monitor, storage, Internet connectivity and control in one box show an inevitable path.. This years CES dichotomy of too much floor space and compact offerings are the rune stones. But then again we were not talking about CES, were we?

DIY Show - I'm a LumberJock and That's Okay!

My AV Nation Podcast "The DIY show" is up- Episode 2 'I'm a Lumberjock & that's Okay!" 

 

 

Anthony Zotti, Jonathan Danforth,Michael Francis, andRJ of DIY Light Animation. Episode 2 of the DIY show: Jonathan takes over the helm as host and we discuss Michael’s first Christmas light show, RJ’s great forum, 3D printing, what makes a DIYer and our favorite resources for information and inspiration.

 

 Click the image to access the show

Do you like it? Hate it ? let us know (hey, wanna be on? just contact me and we will make room at the table!"

Dance Yer Pants Off!

It's Friday!  So Dance your Pants off  - Any way you can and in your own Style.  Keep it -Your - Real

 

 

These are my two boys ( who I have since dubbed Rooster, green hat, and Gonzo, Red Hat) working the song  Fire Burning by Sean Kingston this past summer.  

The video Acutally got me Banned in Germany! 

 

Father Time! */shakes fist in air/*

 

 

So this happened.

 

Essentially this is the generic Lipitor
 

• “Livalo (pitavastatin) belongs to a group of medicines called HMG CoA reductase inhibitors, or "statins." Livalo reduces levels of "bad" cholesterol (low-density lipoprotein, or LDL) and triglycerides in the blood, while increasing levels of "good" cholesterol (high-density lipoprotein, or HDL).


• Livalo is used to treat high cholesterol in adults. Lowering your cholesterol may help prevent heart disease and hardening of the arteries, conditions that can lead to heart attack, stroke, and vascular disease.”

And with it  the last remnants of my youth have drifted away like a silk scarf  in the wind.

I had not been to the doctor in a bit, (yeah I know- typical male),  and being told I had high cholesterol was a bit of a surprise.  I am not a terrible eater but alas I do have my foibles and get way too little exercise.

In fact I was more paranoid that I would be facing a more terrible prospect of colon cancer.  I am not generally paranoid about my health but as it had been much too long between checkups I envisioned some serious malfunctions being present inside me.  We have all heard the stories of a person discovering that they have only months to live after a long overdue checkup. Indeed I have been feeling off lately with an upset stomach (and bathroom issues to boot) and restless sleep.  In general  my sleep is a delft imitation a rock- and after my last bout with insomnia I was on a heightened sense of alert.

Somewhere I read (if it is on the Internet then it’s true, no?) that these could be symptoms related to prostrate cancer and so the seed was planted.  Yet I did not move on getting this checked out sooner. Why? More on the whole prostate exam thing in another post, I am still gauging my emotions. 

To be honest, I was too damn busy.  This and part of me knew that a certain amount of unreasonable paranoia had crept into my brain.   Being  a skeptic at heart I wrangle with what feelings of intuition are culturally fed poppy cock and what is simple attentiveness to my own body and surroundings.  Like many I work long hours at a job, wolfing down my lunch at my desk, then a couple of more on personal projects after the kids have settled into bed and the wife is watching her reality shows. Most of this sitting down.

I used to exercise all the time.  Heck when we lived in Manhattan and Park Slope my transportation more often than not consisted of my well worn in-line skates.  If it was above 40 degrees- I was on my skates making time on the streets of NYC.  Then we moved to the suburbs.  The Ramones line come to mind

“Nothing to do and no where to go”

Good grief people - I may have a nice backyard (small as it is) but there really is nothing to do here that does not require a membership or ten minutes in the car (more sitting) minimum to get there.  To be honest I was a bit discouraged by the lack of outdoor social activity but I had a saving grace:

When I worked as the manager of technical support at Crestron Electronics my job required that I be on my feet, prowling the floor for techs in need or anything that would delay the call queue.   This meant hours standing and wearing a path in the carpet as I moved from one cubicle cluster to another.   Then I was given a real desk job writing copy and building social communities and my arteries never looked back.  

My doctor states that there are no side effects for me to to worried about.  Now this makes me worried about my doctor.   Really Doc! - no side effects... wait what?  You do realize that this is a Statin  don’t you?!  No joke  the warnings include:

• 
  

  In rare cases, Livalo can cause a condition that results in the breakdown of skeletal muscle tissue, leading to kidney failure. Call your doctor right away if you have unexplained muscle pain, tenderness, or weakness especially if you also have fever, unusual tiredness, and dark colored urine.

  
  


• Avoid drinking alcohol. It can raise triglyceride levels and may increase your risk of liver damage   (Emphasis mine )

‘Avoid Alcohol’ !   Hell people, despite what Dr. Keith Ablow says I am an AV guy, beer, whiskey and gin are mama’s milk.  

This has me more determined than ever to work toward getting off these meds.  I have three months to accomplish the task and bring by bad level to under 130. (i am at 140 now).  

I have begun to find that I am closer in age to my dad than I have ever been before. How’d that happen?

 

 

Are You Going Dark tomorrow to protest SOPA/ PIPA?

Are You Going Dark tomorrow to protest SOPA/ PIPA?

   image from: http://mashable.com/2012/01/17/stop-sopa-code-go-dark/

A simple piece of code is helping the entire web (from major sites to even the humblest of Tumblrs) go dark in solidarity. The code, called STOP SOPA, replaces any site’s landing page with a black screen. Using your mouse a flashlight uncovers a message explaining the need to kill SOPA and a link to anti-SOPA site AmericanCensorship.org.

 

http://mashable.com/2012/01/17/stop-sopa-code-go-dark/

Knit One, Purl Two

Originally published on rAVe Pubs December 16th, 2011

 

"If you want to destroy this sweater - Just pull this thread as I walk away...”

- Weezer

Go ahead 'n' pull, you might get what you want or a surprise worth waiting for, depending on yourpoint of view. With the music business  still in disarray and profits bleeding out like a moonshine still at the wrong end of a ATF shotgun, the pundits have declared, yet again, Rock’s demise.

A recent article on CNN discussed the rise of (pop) Country Music sales and radio play as other genres are waning, which *of course* was accompanied buy the hackles of "Rock/ Rap is Dead/Dying.”

There is no denying that modern country music has been on the rise for some time. Hell, NYC has had at least two successful country radio stations.  I have nothing against country music -- well, I do have a lot against country pop, more on that below.  I am a fan of the true roots hillbillies like Hank Williams, the current alt rock decedents of Hank -  Lucero and the rockabilly revivalist Reverend Horton Heat. Unless you want to get caught up in a day long discussion of music history and Situationist aesthetics don’t even hint at asking  me about my Jan Dek fetish.

I do not dislike pop music because it is so prevalent but because it is too easy to like. Top 40 songs are genetically engineered to draw you in and crash your mind on to the rocks of  the island of the Sirens. These songs do not ‘stimulate the little grey cells’ - as Hercule Poirot would say- rather they lull them into a catatonic state suppressing the desire for challenging compositions.  Admit it, you have caught yourself humming along with the muzak in elevator.... and if alone, enjoyed it.  Oh yes you have, and  I’ll bet a dollar bill that you tapped your foot, too.   

It is undeniable that mainstream rock and rap sales have been in decline recently, but  I would not go so far as to start dusting off and updating the obituaries.  These genres have been pushed into smaller spaces - off into the anterooms.  I find this to be an opportunity.

Unlike many I am quite comfortable in small space, the constraints actually promote more creativity by forcing new angles of thought on how to get around them (more about this in my next post).  I could emulate William S. Burroughs's Naked Lunch Story telling or Jan Dek’s (I told you I am obsessed) musical interpretations and smash the boundaries à la the 1984 commercial.  Yet, even these follow strict rules and delineation -- just not the ones we have been previously accustomed to.  

Smaller spaces or musical communities can generate more heat - (canned heat?) - confined as they are, once things get cooking.  Underground or regional collectives who have been pushed to the out-lands can grow in what seems a blur and wind up creating  some remarkable sounds and genre bending without the need to seek a more global acceptance.  These tight collectives can also be incestuous and regrettably, (or thankfully depending on how macabre your persuasions are) produce the musical equivalent of the Blue Fugates.  

A well known Alternative/ Punk pioneer often stated that he professionally looked forward to Republican administrations as it stirred up the emotions of the bands and fans (who would often go on to form their own bands).  The message?  Constrictions, or the appearance of, can generate incredible bursts of creativity.  It also generates an exponential explosion of distinct sub-genres.  This would seem counter-intuitive at first unless you have an appreciation for Chris Anderson’s book The Long Tail and the theory of "a thousand true fans." 

The Long Tail upturns a few of the ‘standard models’ of business by showing that a good deal of money can be made in producing not just a few select items, but an entire swath of niche market items, each with their own community of dedicated clientele.

The theory of a thousand true fans postulates - Just how many fans paying (x) amount to you per year would you need to survive and produce your art.  Many independent artists are experimenting with some form of this Kevin Kelly-promoted idea, from Radiohead to Thomas Dolby (have you see his new performances, wow, just wow) to the newUnderground Rap movement.  Think about this for a moment: if you were able to garner a thousand fans who paid you $75 dollars a year, or $75,000, would this be enough?  $75 sound like too much? How about $40 a year, plus concerts/appearance fees. Would this be enough to give you the freedom to create content and access and live comfortably?

While the old school business models may be struggling with a smaller real estate footprint, some are finding opportunity.  Just look at what Louis CK did by providing  a $5 DRM-free product and wound up earning $200k in less than seven days.


My sweater may be undone, but  I still have a stitch in time to create.  Knit one, Purl Two.