iProd

I've been working on some tools and processes at work to help with status communication and project management between departments. Yesterday, we were toying around with possible names for the system. Since it's focus is on productivity, products and, in some aspects, prodding people about dates and deliverables.... well the name was obvious to me. After a couple of google searches and a few minutes in PhotoShop, I had the logo completed, as you can see here.



Clearly, this is all for fun. As much as i'd like to imagine the name would stick, it'll probably fade away with little or no fanfare. And the logo.... it just ain't gonna happen. :-)

Taking A Bath With Mr Housing Bubble

Well, it’s official, the house in El Dorado Hills has sold. Escrow has closed. The check is in the mail. Thus endeth that chapter. Man, it was brief. It’s overwhelming to imagine that we moved 4 times in 9 months. Wasn’t that fun? Uhhh, not so much. And although we took a modest bath on the sale due to having placed it on the market is pretty much the worst time of the year, and not having had even 6 months of appreciation on it, in the end it’s looking like we’ll lose about the same amount of money we’d have spent if we’d rented a really nice home in the Bay Area. So… lesson learned. Time to start stashing away the next down payment.

A Little Nipper and Tuck

Speaking of 'Nipper' (see prior post), I thought I'd toss this into the 'scrapbook' category as well. For the first few generations of iPods, i'd create [and update] a custom icon for it. The standard one was fine but i wanted something with a little more character. So I searched Google for 'RCA Victrola', found plenty of images to choose from, and with a little 'cut' and 'paste' work in PhotoShop [or in this case a little 'Nipper' and 'Tuck', if you will] and my iPod icon was complete. (I stopped doing this with the 4th generation iPod and as can read about here, I'm iPodless at this time).

Jamming the OGM

Years ago, when the time was plentiful and blood coursed through my veins under a healthy amount of pressure, I made some fun ‘outgoing messages’ for my answering machine. These days my home and work OGM’s are about as banal as watching Fred Rogers and Perry Como in a heated debate over Barry Manilow’s career had peaked with ‘Mandy’ or ‘Copacabana’. But there was a time during which I’d put a little creativity and technology to work, and come up with some fun stuff. Recently, my old roommate referenced one we’d made together, and it gave me cause to search out and retrieve a few.



The creation of these was due to a wonderful little Application called ‘SoundEdit’. The icon of which showed the beloved ‘Nipper’ from the RCA Victrola days, in front of a sound wave pattern. Using a simple adaptor and microphone or audio line in, you could record pretty much anything into the mac and begin to manipulate it in innumerable ways.



The message Matt reminded me of was one in which we recorded a dial tone and a phone hanging up. Then we recorded each of our voices picking up what was meant to sound like separate lines, and some follow up a conversation. A bit of rough post-production work later, it went a little something like this…

‘I Got It’



There were several others, including a 3-stooges montage, a holiday edit of It’s a Wonderful Life, a creepy Twin Peak’s homage with myself speaking backward, and a conflict when HAL 2000 takes over my answering machine. Sadly, most were never retained for posterity, or if they were, they’re on some obscure unlabeled CD backup buried in a box that will not be unearthed for a few more decades, and by then the format will be arcane and unreadable.



One other that did survive, however, was a personal favorite. It was a joke of sorts, akin to the wisecracking method of saying ‘hello’ and pausing on your message just long enough for the listener to think you really answered. But with this one, I used the capabilities of SoundEdit to add hiss, to warp, slow, speed up and ultimately jam the tape for the caller’s confused amusement… I thought I’d get lots of laughs and comments… All I got was dial tones. Go figure.



Warped Tape

Just Buy Another Idol, Indy

Yeah, I’m sure you’re thinking ‘whoa… a blog post about buying a printer. How sad. Sad sad sad. No, what’s ‘sad’ is the fact that since January 2005, we’ve been living without a printer at home. That’s meant that any and every time we’ve needed to print something out, it’s had to happen at work, requiring the mailing of a file and printing/retrieval during a hectic work day. It’s just ‘one more straw’ I’ve removed from the camel’s back. Although we do still ‘own’ our previous printer, it’s not only an older serial-port based printer that required an ethernet bridge in order to work, it’s also totally, completely and undeniably lost. I dug through boxes in EDH and here in Saratoga, more than once, and I can’t tell you how frustrating it’s been to know it’s ‘out there’ but not know where. Our garage looks like the closing scene of ‘Raiders of the Lost Ark’, and I’ve spent enough time trying to claw through spider webs, dodging falling milk crates and spelunking into box upon box to come up empty-handed. I give up. When I find it I’ll sell it. Meanwhile, I’ve bought a replacement.

The Warmth Outside The Blanket

I recently started referring to the state of my daily life as a Calgon commercial. For those of you not old enough to understand the reference, there was a television ad that once showed a chaotic life on screen in 4 squares, in which there was a ringing phone, crying child, a pot boiling over and somebody knocking at the door, all at the same time. Lately, for some time actually, that's been a sort of daily theme for both of us, starting at 6am and running well into the evening hours. But what I am thinking about now is one of the few moments in the day that probably give me the greatest reward and the strongest sense of accomplishment. That's the time before bed, when the house is quite, and I step slowing into the room of my sleeping children. I do so for the sole purpose of checking on the room temperature and to routinely cover them once again with the blankets they've usually writhed-aside or ended up on top of. The sound of their breathing calms me, and the love I have for them gives me more warmth than any number of blankets might provide for them.

Saint Patrick's Day

One of my work related travels to Cork, Ireland, happened to place me there on St. Patrick's Day. Oddly, I was so focused on the trip and tasks at hand that I'd failed to note the date, and found it surprising to arrive at the factory and discover it practically vacant. It's a national holiday there, unlike the US. Once I addressed the more pressing demands of the day, I returned to Morrison's Island, one of the hotels Apple business travelers stayed at, which was in the heart of downtown Cork. The streets were packed, there'd just been a parade [which I'd unfortunately missed] and the pubs were even more packed then usual. I found a solo barstool in a random pub, nursed a Murphy's, and casually people watched. It was a great experience, and I reflect on it every year on this day.

For the record, Saint Patrick's Day is a Catholic feast day which celebrates Saint Patrick (386-493), the patron saint of Ireland. You can read all about Saint Patrick's Day on Wikipedia, as it's always enlightening to know the background of the holiday you're celebrating.

 Cheers!

Crib Notes and Potty Talk

Although it's not quite the fascinating story, i wanted to capture it here for posterity. We finally did it. We moved the kids from their cribs into toddler beds. It's been repeatedly delayed while promises of race-car and teady-bear beds have gone unfulfilled for weeks on end. So Saturday, excuses came to a grinding halt, as did sleep for us. The first night was quite a fiasco. Our little girl actually took to the whole idea immediately and is doing excellent, but our son's opted to take the, uh, less compliant route. So much so that I reassembled his crib on the first night and have it in their room as a fallback option. We've had to resort to it for the last two nights but last night, although it took some patience, they both made it through the night.



And to top it off, to our surprise, this morning our daughter made the appropriate overtures about using the 'potty' and actually did! So begins that transition as well. Her reward was a sticker, of which her brother was quite jealous, but motivation lies within the reward system. We'll but putting up a little chart for them on the fridge. Our new motto: tinkle tinkle, little star.

The Lost Art of Art?

These thoughts were stirred by a momentary reflection over a number of photos I unpacked recently, most of which were from the days I spent with my own darkroom, developing my own film and printing my own images. It was an overwhelming addiction, so much so that awaking for a work day would include a 30 min detour into the darkroom to further perfect a print before heading to work, returning 9 hrs later to do it all again. I would go for weeks with the smell of photo toner on my fingers, the scent of which would instantly take my mind back to the details of the last printing efforts, usually scrawled in pencil notes onto the back of the photo paper itself, lit only by the orange hue of a film safe light. I'd constantly tweak and refine, reprint, examine, revel in recognized improvements and isolate and scheme on those yet to be perfected.



And although that behavior is all to familiar in the many things I undertake using computers today, where does it stop and when does art cease to be artistic? What difference does the introduction of technology have in our understanding of the skills of an artist. And most importantly why does this paragraph sound like something out of a 'Sex and the City' episode?



What I found myself thinking when I unpacked all the photos, at first, was the desire to scan and post them on my website for posterity... followed by the thought that, once captured, I could utilize photoshop to clean and enhance the images, and finally, with some sense of deflation over the hours and hours spent working in a darkroom before this was an option, what do I have today to show that can't be done by most anybody with general level photoshop skills?



I have a number of photos that I'm particularly proud of, many of which I spent hours and hours working in the darkroom to perfect, using a range of manual techniques and tools. Filters, dodging wands, moving the paper about on the tray... all means taken, intentionally, and with precision and timing, to effect an outcome. An outcome you would only know during the final, and irreversible, steps of processing an exposed sheet of paper in a serious of baths as the permanent results of that effor, slowly appeared before your eyes. The process was pure exhilaration. There's nothing like it in today's digital medium, where the relatively instant gratification is second only to the immediate preview of the results of any number of effects or filters and best of all, the ability to revert or back up if it did not work right. By today's standards and technology, what once reflected hours of work and dedicated effort can be reproduced in any number of fashions with minimal time and effort.



Ultimately It's not about recognition and appreciation for the work. It never was. Those photos were labors of love for the art, craft, and often the sublet matter. But when I look at them and consider the prospect of digitizing them, I'm torn between the excitement of the possibilities a new frontier holds, and the lessening it applies to the art of the original effort. When everybody and their brother has access to digital tools, where does the craft and artistic effort enter the picture?

Reflections On Hi-Fi, Old School

The recent announcement of Apple's iPod Hi-Fi have stirred thoughts of the past for me, and what the term Hi-Fi once meant. I have visions and memories of my Grandparents having the huge, 'coffinesque' console stereo systems, being a turntable, radio, and speakers enclosed in about 200 pounds of cherry wood. The top would have a hinged door in the center through which they'd access the controls and playback their 'Lawrence Welk' and 'Tennessee Ernie Ford' records.



My parents had a new home in a new development when I was born so there was a true feeling of those photos you see of tract homes in the 50's, but this was the 60's. The entryway and living room were separated on the left and right by a dividing wall made of concrete bricks, which were white and had a square pattern in the center, providing support while enabling you to see through. Also making excellent if not annually easy place for hiding and finding easter eggs.

My brother, David, finds a hidden egg. His height was the bane of my existence each Easter.

The living room itself had wood paneling on the left wall, and shelves on the right. The shelves were ones that because staples in the house and traveled with us to Pennsylvania and back, some still standing [or hanging depending on symantics] in my mother's house today. These were shelves that had wall mounted vertical railings into which support brackets were inserted for the left and right of a given shelf. The shelf itself was wood veneer and had notches into which the bracket tips would insert for relative but not absolute stability. I can personally attest to having tipped these without intending to do so. The wall would usually have about 3 or 4 vertical columns of shelves that could be staggered in height. On them would rest decorative items such as a posable wooden human figure, the 'penny eater', the African man and woman busts, and of course, my father's stereo.

The shelves, and the 'Hi-Fi' to the far left

The stereo at that time was a focal point and essential component of the home. I know it was a source of pride and pleasure for dad. It had tubes, which says how old it was, and the stereo would always take a minute or two to warm up once it was turn on and the tubes in the back came alive with a subtle orange glow. When shut off, they'd gradually lose the orange glow as they lost the residual power. I can remember as 'recent' as 1972 when we moved out to San Jose, going with my father to a stereo store on San Carlos St in San Jose, one dealing in used and older equipment, which had the same musty smell as his old Peugeot or the leather and canvas bag that was his fathers. This store was the source of said tubes, required for repairing and reviving the aging system. But in LA, in the early 1960's, this was a system deserving of respect. Not only was there a tuner and amp, but there was a microphone on a stand and a reel-to-reel tape deck. Karaoke was not quite the rage yet so I don't expect the microphone was for singing, but for recording onto the tape deck, something I know he did and would give anything to find and transfer the audio from those long lost reels. There was a stack of boxed real-to-real recording, both homemade dictation as well as record company release complete with the same artwork and notes/credits that you'd also find on LPs at the time, then 8-tracks, cassettes, and eventually CDs. Mp3's are sadly missing this minor eloquence.



One more hidden aspect to this setup was the headphone jack wired into the paneled wall. My father had run the wiring under the house and into the wall, into which he installed a headphone jack so he could sit on the couch, across from the stereo, and listen to his music. Now we have cordless headphones, or better still, iPods, to address the discerning listener's requirements. My father would be thrilled by today's technology, as I suspect I would be of that which might exist in 2050, but that's for another entry.