if there is one thing that i’ve learned so far living in georgia its that as of memorial day all the way through to labor day, if i pick the wrong day and time to work in the yard, my shirt is so wrung with sweat that my balls serve as the path of least resistance as it drips off my body. we could put it up for debate, but i’m pretty sure that it is worse than underboob sweat. my description is at least good enough that my wife is leaning towards agreeing.

so tomorrow i go back to work after finding my happy place. its not quite finished, but then again, its always “under construction.” i consider myself fortunate that i’ve had both help as well as inspiration through much of the effort.

i’m hoping it was like a reset button, but we’ll know soon enough. thankfully i have at least another four courses to lay so i have plenty of opportunity to work out frustration with sweaty balls.

so far the process of “raising cain” has been wonderful. provided he gets two 20-30 minute walks every day (or at least one and the equivalent exercise for a second walk), he is one of the most obedient puppies with which i’ve interacted. as a breed, their loyalty to people seems to really help as he never really wants to stray that far. he’s managed to already learn several commands almost perfectly (sit, stay, and here) and we’re working on some others (fetch, release, heel, leave it, and come). i might drop the use of come though as he has been much better with responding to here when i call him. we’ll see.

he does like to play with other dogs and has had varying success with coaxing them into it. since he’s puppy, he completely comes across as bratty, so we’ve been able to watch other dogs either put him in his place, or ignore him and be a stellar example. i do think he over exerted himself yesterday while playing as he’s a bit reluctant to do much activity today. that or he’s just still tired from it.

so i’m going to start trying to blog something about the process to the masses of no one that some to the site now.

our next comes the end of august, and we’ve simply asked for the breeders thoughts on the best companion. we decided on names: Joan if a girl, Able if a boy.

god help us.

You would think that if every page is 5.75″ by 8.75″ (to account for bleed and trim), and the final pdf was also those dimensions that once uploaded to them, that it would default to EXACTLY the document size. Nope. Every single version when uploaded results in the same 8.5″ by 11″ page with my pages sitting directly in the middle. The other wonderful aspect is that it REVERSES the order (seems changing that setting did nothing by the way other than throw more confusion into the mix).

So I decided to give bookemon (in all its web 2.0 branding) a try. Took about an hour and a half to do the uploading (they could use a bulk uploader) and the ordering, but what an amazingly pleasant experience. They were also a quarter of the price.

Give bookeman a chance the next time you are debating putting your own custom book together.

this year though instead of finding a hotel 4 hours before we depart i spent a month researching apartments and houseboats to stay in. i decided that i was ok to stay farther than “walking distance” from centraal station. we’re right around the corner from a bus route that runs at night, and its apparently only an 8 euro cab ride from centraal station as well. i’m still researching the tram lines to see if the one that stops a couple blocks from us runs at night. we can even take a ferry to get back as well but those i have no idea on the hours they run either. so in the evening as long as we can get to centraal station we should have no issue getting back to the comfort of the boat.

oh how i can’t wait to hop on that flight for some rest and relaxation. if you have any suggestions on places we should check out that aren’t well know, let me know.

what’s the purpose?
so far i’ve only had a handful of experiences where i can see a real purpose of “twats” (fyi twits twat). the first is really more of an api thing. simply put, the fact that i can connect twitter with multiple site’s “status updates” makes the overall upkeep of multiple “distribution channels” easier. the second was surrounding the tsa’s “leaked” security directive and its fall out (fastest found via the #tsafail hashtag). this was a case where it took a bit for the traditional news channels to pick up on the absurdity of it all. outside of this, most (though not all) of what i’ve come across via twitter i’ve already found via another online channel. as i’ve slowly increased the people i follow, i find that the “signal to noise” ratio continues to decay, mostly due to twits re-twat’ing other’s twats (you can blame my wife for that string of absurdity) or just overall useless oral diarrhea.

what’s the usefulness?
well somewhere in all that oral diarrhea are nuggets of “info” that are worth looking into. It ranges from links (blog posts, etc) to notifications (such as klm and delta’s messages regarding delays). the problem seems to be founded in a lack of standardization for twat tags. for instance, airlines should probably all use the same hashtag to report on flight delays, such as #flightdelays. i blame this on the lack of a controlled vocabulary defined for twitter. there are too many people, too many messages, WAY too few characters allowed, and only organically defined standards that change with time due to “approaches” coming in and out of popularity/favor.

i’m still struggling with the overall point of twitter. i’ve had a couple conversations with some developers that have brought up possible uses for it that raised my interest, such as setting up applications to monitor your own twats for specific tags. unfortunately, my own creative mind can’t come up with a long enough list of items to automate remotely to justify even sketching on a napkin. that could be my own failure.

as far as i can tell twitter seems to be a giant conversation of status updates and links. i’m really not seeing that it brings people closer. i also fail to see it as the “next big thing” for marketing. please don’t get me started on the term “microblogging.” its a nice way to say, “i can’t write so i post inane comments and links up to 140 characters. if you feel otherwise let me know, but frankly its a marketing term to generate hype.

i came across this link this morning discussing how facebook and twitter are “becoming business tools.”

Dangson believes Facebook is a good setting for businesses to reach consumers, but that there is a greater business opportunity in Twitter, particularly in business-to-business markets, because “everything is public and open.”

Twitter “is a fantastic direct marketing tool,” she says. “People have opted in to follow you and follow your messages.”

maybe i’m completely and totally missing something here, but i would really like to hear how the business to business market has an opportunity within the world of twitter. it really sounds more like someone is throwing some terms around to generate a buzz without any substance to back it up. i could be mistaken, but unless all the people i know are dumb as dirt, none of us can come up with a viable use. now the statement about people following your messages is comical. i’m following just under 100 people and its already “too loud” to pay attention to them all. from what i can tell, most people follow a lot more people than that. so exactly how does one see that important message within all the noise?

twat did you say? yeah exactly.

1. Conceptualize:

   On any given day I’ll get at least one or two sonic ideas. My head is like a giant sampler chopping up the noise around me into a million bite size chunks. Its likely a result of spending years with the damn devices, but I’m just as likely to develop a drum beat from a horrific car crash as I am tapping against the steering wheel as I drive to/from work. Either way, I almost exclusively start rhythmically and build from there. The challenge for me is being in a place to get those ideas down quickly. Doing 80mph on the highway usually isn’t the right time to start scribbling in a notebook. Maybe you can, but I’ve found texting while driving hard enough. I usually wait until the next time I’m stopped and jot down a reminder of what spawned the idea and then as soon as i can sit down and put more detail behind it i will. If I’m in the studio (and by this i mean home studio), I typically try to make sure that I started a hand held recorder. It serves two purposes: first as an audio reminder and secondly as a sample and playback source. If you don’t have a hand held recorder, get one. You’ll thank me.

2. Create and Refine:

   There are times that this step feels like throwing 10 pounds of shit at the wall and seeing what sticks. Its very iterative as I’ll spend a couple hours in the studio working on ideas, and then listen to them for about the same amount of time to decide what on repeat gets annoying. After a couple (dozen) cycles I end up getting close to the equivalent of micromanagement. Once you get to this point: STOP. and…

3. Walk Away:

   Go work on something else for a bit. You need to change your frame of reference for a bit. There have been times that I wish I’d actually done this as i overworked something right back into nothing. Sometimes this is the hardest point in the process for me. I want to call it done so I’ll just keep pushing instead of stepping away.

4. Calling It Done:

   How long after stepping away seems to vary. At times I end up coming back after I have to walk away from something else to avoid destroying it. I usually start by listening to the track a couple times on repeat to see if there is anything that stands out too much, gets to repetitive, or otherwise feels off. If I’m happy with it, great, otherwise I limit myself to one evening and at most three final mix downs from which I pick the best. Normally its just one pass, but there have been times where I’ve played the mixer like an instrument and need more than one take to get what I want. Regardless, after this point, I call it done. I’ll remix it later if I get an idea of a completely different direction, but usually I’ve put a fork in it.

So that’s the process I go through. Anyone else have any good advice or pitfalls to avoid?

so for now, Hello world!