apple
New Keyboard
I am fully prepared to take shit for this.
Despite the fact that i used an apple IIe (my 1st computer) from 1982 til probably 1990… i really can’t call it my 1st apple PURCHASE because my parents bought it. Saturday afternoon, after deciding against going to love fest, i ended up making my 1st apple store purchase in the form of Skinny Fucking Keyboard. (it says that on the box)
Skinny Fuckin Keyboard is something i’ve been wanting for a while… and as vocally anti-mac as i’ve been for all these years, you’d better believe the shitstorm has begun. Do you know what it’s like to have shit rain down on you every few minutes? It’s crazy son!
My whole reasoning for this move was to reduce the INSANE NOISE that i create when i type on my other keyboard. Because a) there’s no reason to alert my coworkers to how long my emails are… and b) this one crazy lady here actually asked to be seated farther away from me because of my loud typing… The down side of this plan is twofold; 1) she’s going to start noticing how loud i slap my mouse buttons (i swear my fingers are spring-loaded) and 2) i have to figure out a way around this missing print-screen button issue. (i use that a LOT every day for work, yo!) Shouldn’t be hard though… there’s many freeware solutions with customizable hot keys.
and of course 3) the shit hitting my umbrella right now. Long overdue revenge from my mac-adoring friends. No guys this is not going to be “gateway purchase”… leading eventually to me converting to the dark (albiet, white) side…
Fire away bitches. =)
I’m a LOUD computer user
all this clickitty clack clickitty clack… annoying even to myself…
i totally need one of those new mac keyboards.
fuck i did not just say that.
Finally Stepping Up…
The cheap old laptops i’ve been using since i first started this whole music business are finally not cutting it anymore… Live 7 is too hefty to write tracks without spending half my time freezing and unfreezing everything and now Live 5 won’t even start anymore… i’ve uninstall/reinstalled several times and deleted all my cache and temp files… but it still locks up when loading “scrollU00.tif” every time.
That and i constantly have to beat on it to get the monitor to stop fritzing out… And i just know one day that ribbon cable is just gonna break… and with my luck it’ll probably happen in the middle of a set.
So after doing a bunch of research last night, I’ve decided to buy this puppy today:
www.circuitcity.com/ssm/HP-P…Detail.do
‘cuz fuckit… that’s why. The only complicate part is going to be getting rid of Vista and putting XP pro on it… but i have friends out there… contrary to popular belief.
If anybody thinks this computer purchase is a BAD idea or has something better for less, speak now or forever hold your “piece.” =Þ
PowerPoint
We had a special guest here last week (on the night of modeselektor)… a presentation design specialist who just published a book on the subject… Since he likes us so much (and since we get business every time he mentions us in his blog), we held his book signing party here. Among the guests were people from microsoft and cisco… and i must say the hors doeuvres were excellent. =)
www.presentationzen.com/presen…wi.html
I can really get into this guy’s methodology and i wish more companies would embrace the less-is-more philosophy… You usually end up with the “make my logo bigger” crowd and the end result is like poop in your zen garden. har har.
One of the reasons i feel that this place is such a good fit for me is because i have strong visual story-telling skills… that’s one of the main points we try to push here… we’re not in the business of making talking points pretty… we’re in the business of engaging audiences… design, not decoration.
I attended a lecture by this guy: www.edwardtufte.com before starting work here and even though he’s an authority on quantitative information graphics, his views on powerpoint are incredibly angry and negative… even going so far as to blame powerpoint for the Columbia disaster. His belief is that powerpoint is making people stupider… that people tend to stick to the font size/resolution limitations and linear nature of powerpoint and they forget how to really communicate… that the presentation itself ends up replacing the content somehow. I am not quite sure how he can make such arching statements when he knows damn well that powerpoint can be treated like a container for whatever the hell you want to stick in there. I have never felt compelled to use ppt templates but he seems to think the world is doing it as a shortcut to thinking.
In the case of school kids being told to make powerpoint presentations for homework assignments i can see how this can be true. Instead of doing real work, they are sort of having fun decorating their assignment with cheesy clip art and somehow the medium becomes the focus instead of the content… Tufte argues “Your method of delivery should always be invisible… ” and most powerpoint presentations end up being more of an advertisement for powerpoint than anything else.
And in the case of the Colmubia incident i can see his qualms too… The Columbia Accident Investigation Board says “At many points during it’s investigation, the Board was surprised to receive similar presentation slides from NASA officials in place of technical reports. The Board views the endemic use of powerpoint briefing slides instead of technical papers as an illustration of the problematic methods of technical communication at NASA — Other professional organizations have also noted the increased use of this presentation software as a substitute for technical reports and other meaningful documentation. Powerpoint (and simliar products by other vendors), as a method to provide talking points and present limited data to assembled groups, has it’s place in the engineering community; however, these presentation should never be allowed to replacec, or even supplement, formal documentation.”
Agreed. But to go off of this and say that ppt is making the presenters, consumer, and everyone witness to it dumber by forcing them into a 1st grade level of communication is a stretch. Tufte, you’re great at what you do… but something tells me that your advisory role on the Columbia Accident Investigation Board made you take the tragedy personally and you are looking for someone to blame…
Just like anything else… HOW you use it is where the art lies. Ableton alone doesn’t write good music. Owning a ferrari doesn’t make you a race car driver. Using powerpoint does not make you a good presenter.
Help Me Understand iTunes
Most of you know me as the guy that hates on iCulture… Well at work they’re trying to convince me to use iTunes because everybody shares their playlists here through iTunes. I fiddle-fucked around with it this morning and i have some questions now:
1) a. does every mp3 you play from your hard drive get copied into the iTunes music folder as an m4a?
b. doesn’t this pretty much DOUBLE the amount of space your music library takes up on your hard drive?
c. is there a way to turn that stupid feature OFF?
2) a. If i listen to music from someone else’s shared playlist, is it coming to me from their hard drive or is it coming to me from the iTunes store?
b. If you create a shared playlist and you have rare music that isn’t available at the iTunes store, do other people even get to hear it?
c. If you create a shared playlist and you have rare music that isn’t available at the iTunes store, do other people even see it on your shared playist?
3) Aside from podcasting, does iTunes offer any intrinsic value to anyone other than apple and the copyrights they are protecting?
The Moment You’ve All Been Waiting For
Oh thank heaven
I have been watering at the mouth in anticipation of this video!
I don’t know why… it just feels SO good to watch.
On a side note, someone showed me one of these sexy blendable devices at the Drop Heavy show last night and scrolled to a music folder with a nice thumbnail photo of my music gear and a few of my sets stored on it… Thanks buddy! 2 points for you!
“Wait a sec..” he said… “this thing is hard to use.”
2 more points. =)
Bad Apples
Ok seriously… this has gone far enough. I tried getting off my soapbox a while back but what I saw tuesday night is worthy of a little discussion…
If I ever needed proof of the cult-nature of apple enthusiasts i got it on tuesday night at my friend’s bbq… I somehow found myself in the middle of full-blown dork-war; 4 apple employees in a HEATED argument with a group of PC users. I listened on the sidelines but I tried to stay out of it… and somehow I got sucked in.
“Hey SWAMI has an opinion! Tell em! Tell em how it was you on pc and 2 other people on iMacs at that one party and how yours was the only computer that was working”
I stayed silent
“No but those two guys on the macs were running WINDOWS on it! Weren’t they Swami?”
I stayed silent
I also stayed silent as a few people approached SHOUTING when discussing the fucking iPhone. The iPhone is like the holy grail of the iZombie… and for gods sake they can never shut up about it. They went back and forth in this argument and it seemed like nothing pissed off the iPeeps more than trying to tell them “Dude it’s just a phone.”
“Is is NOT just a phone!!!! It’s a VIDEO PHONE!! WIDE FUCKING SCREEN MAN!!!!”
The argument reached it’s climax for sure when one of them said (and I will never forget this one)
“The iPhone is a necessary part of human evolution.”
@#?@?$^#?$^?%?^&@#$??#$????
This is about when I finally spoke up… “Man… i really miss the days when my CAR was an extension of my penis.”
woops… now they’ve spotted me and they are closing in… i happened to be texting my girl about the whole scene and they started pointing at my razor phone… “Dude who uses THOSE??? Who the fuck would use THAT????”
about 20 mintues later the battle royale drew to a close and after a while one of the iFriends came over to smoke a cigarette with me… Finally… time to get personal.
“So what’s been up man? You got any plans for the 4th?”
“Naw… not much… just get a few drinks going…. watch some fireworks by the river…”
“Cool … Cool … ”
“Dude… Swami…. you NEED an iPhone… oh my god… YOU? YOU absolutely NEED an iPhone.”
This feels like Primerica all over again. =\
Gina Fant-Saez Can Kiss My Ass
About.com featured this article:
Engineer Gina Fant-Saez Defines Her Ultimate Portable Studio
Engineer Gina Fant-Saez defines her ultimate portable studio in part 1 and part 2 of this article. It’s a fact packed read from a knowledgable source, with specific gear selections and suggestions. Some have carped about the price of the total package, but GFS counters with this: “. . . what did you spend on your last professional recording? And how many flaws did you let slide because the studio time was adding up?”
Look how right away they say “a fact-packed read from a knowedgable source”… like anyone’s ever heard of this bitch. If you check out the “fact-packed read” itself:
http://digitalmedia.oreilly.com/2005/06/29/portable1.html
… you will discover that this article is completely full of shit… sure everyone knows that you can fit a budget recording studio into a backpack these days but this “fact-packed” shit is nothing but an advertorial for Apple, Digidesign and M-Audio….
Here again is a perfect example of how Apple is becoming the antichrist. This woman is actually recommending portable ipod speakers instead of real studio monitors??? or what about the fact that she spends several paragraphs telling you not to wait… just hurry up and buy a mac. Her reasoning is absolute bullshit. She is a paid spokesperson. And not to mention… take a look at that pair of hardware racks on wheels in the photograph… you really expect me to believe that a woman THAT involved in studio recording would tell me to go buy the bottom-of-the-line midi controller from M-Audio???
Sorry give me a fucking break
Yes this is an advertorial… the definition of which is an advertisement that is made to appear as an article.
She also pitches her website in this article… suggesting that a “virtual session” is made possible exclusively by her website and it’s “unique functionality”… guess what? I can do it over gmail for free.
Gina… thanks for the disinformation and straight-up lies… kiss my ass… seriously…
you too Steve Jobs…
~S
Barbie and iPod
So Barbie is in trouble see…. I read in the paper that Mattel toys is having a big problem with the little lady. She was the absolute leader in her class as far as dolls are concerned but for the past several years sales have been dropping and dropping and nothing they have done has seemed to have any impact. Barbie is suffering because of it because the good nitwit that she represents is no longer in style. People want a sassy brat with naughty clothes. Slutty became cool. Bitchy became fashionable. Shows like The Weakest Link and Judge Judy ushered in an age of people who think that “one-upping” someone equates to “cool”… And barbie, at a fundamental level, cannot conform to these guidelines. Make barbie slutty and full of attitude and she is no longer barbie. So what is the company to do? Barbie used to be the leader in her class but these days, in attempting to compete, barbie can be found 2 for 5 dollars… you can’t turn back from that very easily.
So ever since I read that and I shared it with people at my job, we’ve been brainstorming on what it would take to save barbie. Allegedy Brats dolls are raking in all the sales these days and we believe this all relates to the “all about me” generation that we’re dealing with today… the sheer amount of luxury accessible to children these days has completely flattened their sense of appreciation over things… and the fact that this is the age of entitlement… where people truly believe they deserve enormous cash settlements for technicalities… we are of righteous people…
we spoil our children now because big companies know that’s our soft spot… that we’ll be able to buy for our children since our baby boomer parents couldn’t do it for us… and they sell us all the same shit we used to want… scooby doo… transformers… whatever… we buy it for our children because WE used to want it… we play right into their game and kids are spoiled now beyond belief. We buy them cell phones so ‘they can be safe’ and we buy them video game systems and ipods and jeezus fucking christ when does it end? They’re already as plugged in as me and it took me 29 years to get this crazy. They have every status symbol and accessory they ask us for….
which is exactly where apple comes in. See i think an iPod is just as cool as the next guy. I’ll admit that an iPod is sleek and sexy and probably the best mp3 player on the market… and I’ll admit that I’d rather work in apple’s marketing department over autozone’s any day of the week… but the “lifestyle brand” approach that they are using is fucked up.
Lifestyle branding is when you make your brand such that people want to display it on their bodies… where the brand becomes a reflection of your personality… like wearing a playboy bunny… a nike swoosh… an abercrombie shirt…. One unique method apple used to first promote the iPod was to deploy kids to college campuses wearing and talking about their iPods to generate a buzz… seperating it from the common mp3 player and making it a status symbol instead of a convenience. This elegant strategy, sadly, worked extremely well… and now every kid, adult, and company is buying into their crap.
So tonight when I saw somebody proudly brandish a tattoo of the apple logo on their skin i just couldn’t believe it. “Why” my friend asked “would you get the apple logo tattooed on you?” and he replied “yo I’ve been making music on an apple since nineteen ninety SIX, man”…
At what point did you fall so in love with the company that you felt like volunteering real-estate on your own flesh for them to advertise? Some people charge thousands of dollars to do such a thing but you did it for free. Which just amazes me… at this point you beleive in and love the product so much you have become a voluntary spokesperson for them.
A college student conducted a survey once and discovered that when people were asked “who won the game last night?” they would say “WE won!” if the home team won… but if the home team lost they would say “THEY lost!” People simply love to feel like they are part of something that is working… and the group-mentality surrounding Apple will soon become like the group mentality surrounding the Raiders. It is already a “we are apple users and therefore better than you” attitude… it’s actually kinda creepy how many times a group of apple users have ganged up on me to try and convince me to convert… like missionaries…
At burning man I saw a party being hosted by a lone iPod plugged in under a bar and someone said “I think it’s so cool that this whole set is being played on an iPod!”
You know they wouldn’t have said the same thing if it was a laptop or a common mp3 player… but the fact that it was an i-P-o-d made all the difference. The camel back I bought for this years burn has a little pocket made just for an ipod… with a silhouette of an ipod next to it…. the jacket my friend got has shuttle controls on the wrist and links up only to ipods that can plug in inside the pocket.
As fun as all this sounds, it means apple is becoming mainstream fast… and now the whole reason you liked apple in the first place changes. They are on their way to becoming everything you hated microsoft for. They are inching their way into every market and before you know it they will be the default.
Anyway my solution to barbie is this… pervasive marketing … do what apple did but in reverse… put money into something like movies… help produce movies that kids will see where the main charcter exhibits barbie-type values… shape the public around your product… make being a brat UNCOOL again….
it’s cool if you don’t agree with me here… nobody else seems to. Everybody says “what? whyyyyy??? apple is such a great company! Being into graphics I’d think you’d LIKE apple!” … yeah it’s ok… I’m used to it now…
![](http://www.seventhswami.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/03/twit.png")
WP Cumulus Flash tag cloud by Roy Tanck and Luke Morton requires Flash Player 9 or better.
