UNDERDOG of PERFECTION

Anyone who’s had a serious go at freelancing can tell you that one of the biggest challenges is staying focused. Without Bill Lumbergh standing at the entrance of your cubicle, mug in hand, prodding you all day long, it’s easy to let yourself spend the whole day gutting a fish on your desk instead of doing any real work.

No wait, that’s what happens when you work in an actual office.

The challenge for a freelancer is more about keeping those creative energies focused on paying clients’ projects, and not veering off into spending half the day tinkering with your own projects… like… making a sign reminding yourself to stay focused on client work.

Fortunately for you, fellow freelancer, I’ve already done that, so you can move on to more important things.

(Click the image above — or, if you must, here — to download a print-ready PDF version.)

This fascinating video montage (apparently a promotional tool for Stargate Studios) shows just how much of what you see in outdoor scenes in movies and TV shows is really done with green screen. Surprising, amazing, and kind of disappointing. I’ll never believe anything I see on-screen again. (Not that I ever should have anyway.)

I think it would have been better with “Strawberry Fields Forever” as the soundtrack though, but I suppose they couldn’t get the rights. Maybe they should have used the “simulated live performances” from BlueBeat.com instead. (Source: LA Times)

Via kottke.org, via that’s how it happened.

Super Bowl commercials tend to scream at you, both literally and metaphorically. So a quiet, subtle commercial like the one Google aired is easy to miss. (The Focus on the Family commercial, for all the fervor preceding it, was also easy to miss.)

Luckily I didn’t miss the Google commercial. It was simple, and simply brilliant. Maybe it’s because I have a life-changing event in my own past that is at least partially traceable to a Google search, but I think the message here is powerful and moving: in the Internet age, profound events in your life can stem from things you find online. And what better way to find things online than Google?

My favorite moments are “What are truffles?” followed by “Who is Truffaut?” and when the user changes “Long distance relationship advice” to “Jobs in Paris.” It’s silly, I know, but I start to tear up at that one.

My brief foray with Bandcamp is over, and a brand new room34/music site has officially launched!

This new version, I am proud to say, runs on cms34, a Content Management System I developed based on the CakePHP framework. I’ve been running numerous client sites on it for the past couple of years, along with my own Room 34 Creative Services site, but this is the first time I’ve really pushed its capabilities on a site of my own. The site has a few tricks up its sleeve (although most are in the admin interface right now), and more is on the way, including automatic transcoding of MP3s into Ogg Vorbis format for playback in the Firefox and Chrome web browsers.

Yadda yadda yadda. It’s not about the web geekitude (well, maybe for me it is)… it’s about the music. I’ve posted streaming and downloadable MP3s, cover art, background information, and CD purchase links for about a half dozen of my most recent projects, and over the coming weeks I’ll be filling in the rest of my “back catalog” going back to at least 2001, and perhaps even to my debut “album” from 1992, if I can round up the old cassette currently decaying in a box in the basement somewhere.

What’s an orchestrion, you ask? Wikipedia (of course) has the answer:

An orchestrion is a generic name for a machine that plays music and is designed to sound like an orchestra or band.

Legendary jazz guitarist Pat Metheny recently recorded an orchestrion-based album, and he’s taking it on the road. A friend and I are going to see the show when it comes through town in May. I can’t wait!