Accomplishing much -- On and Off the Couch
Gym
Last night I went to the gym for the first time since I messed up my back at the beginning of January. I managed to get in a full hour workout and felt really good afterward. Now I just need to reestablish good workout patterns, and not mess up my back again.
Music
Other than that it's mostly been music, thought I've actually fallen way behind in the last two days. I recorded a rough vocal for the punk track and sent it to necrophore who will hopefully have time to throw some guitar on it before he leaves for Disney. I decided I wanted to do an acid house song next. I tried downloading an old copy or Rebirth-338 but it runs in OS 9 Classic mode and couldn't get access to the sound card on my PowerBook. I found out Reason has a Rebirth plugin, but only for the full version of Reason, so I went ahead and bought an upgrade to Reason 3. Only problem is you can't download it, so now I have to wait until the CDs ship to my house... from Sweden.
In the meantime I think I'm going dust off a demo I recorded last March. I wrote lyrics for it, but realized I was going to have to re-record to match the lyric structure and set it aside. No time like the present!
The ORG
Since I couldn't record last night, I spent some time playing with this social networking site sponsored by zefrank.com called The ORG. It's an interesting concept, but a little schizophrenic in it's current incarnation. The basic idea is to create a site to make it easier for creative people to collaborate on spontaneous projects. You have a personal section where you can link to photos on flickr, videos on you tube, and music on archive.org that you either created or think is cool. Then people can start projects -- maybe the project is "Things that Are Big" -- and you attach your photos or videos or music to that project.
The problem is that the overall organization *sucks*. When you first login to the site, you are greeted with a Google map showing all the folks that are geographically close to you. I suppose this cool on the one hand because it promotes meeting in person for projects, but on the other hand, this is supposed to be an internet collaboration site -- it seems like geography is the last thing you'd care about.
The projects can be sorted by "newest" or "most popular." This means that the only way a project will stay on your radar is if people see it right after you post it and immediately start contributing lots of stuff to it. Otherwise it will quickly sink to the bottom -- maybe even before someone who would have really liked it gets a chance to see it.
There is no way to sort projects by category (video, music, photography), subject matter (action shots, short films about cigarettes, cats) or keyword. So finding a project you'd actually be interested in is pretty random.
There are also no breadcrumb trails, which to me is the kiss of death. The site runneth over with amazing and distracting art, but if you wander too far afield, it's difficult to find your way back to the project that started you down the path. An example: There is a toy on the site where you can rate two pictures against each other for "awesomeness". Each photo has a link to the artist underneath. If you click the link to the artist, you cannot go back and vote on the photo. And if you vote on the photo, there is no way to get back to the link to the artist. Breadcrumbs.
Anyway, tonight will be light on the creative stuff as I'm going to a dinner party. I'm hoping to film some footage for this video project (the whole reason I got on the ORG in the first place), but it all depends on whether or not I can catch these contractors while they're still up on the roof working. Gonna try it again now.
Last night I went to the gym for the first time since I messed up my back at the beginning of January. I managed to get in a full hour workout and felt really good afterward. Now I just need to reestablish good workout patterns, and not mess up my back again.
Music
Other than that it's mostly been music, thought I've actually fallen way behind in the last two days. I recorded a rough vocal for the punk track and sent it to necrophore who will hopefully have time to throw some guitar on it before he leaves for Disney. I decided I wanted to do an acid house song next. I tried downloading an old copy or Rebirth-338 but it runs in OS 9 Classic mode and couldn't get access to the sound card on my PowerBook. I found out Reason has a Rebirth plugin, but only for the full version of Reason, so I went ahead and bought an upgrade to Reason 3. Only problem is you can't download it, so now I have to wait until the CDs ship to my house... from Sweden.
In the meantime I think I'm going dust off a demo I recorded last March. I wrote lyrics for it, but realized I was going to have to re-record to match the lyric structure and set it aside. No time like the present!
The ORG
Since I couldn't record last night, I spent some time playing with this social networking site sponsored by zefrank.com called The ORG. It's an interesting concept, but a little schizophrenic in it's current incarnation. The basic idea is to create a site to make it easier for creative people to collaborate on spontaneous projects. You have a personal section where you can link to photos on flickr, videos on you tube, and music on archive.org that you either created or think is cool. Then people can start projects -- maybe the project is "Things that Are Big" -- and you attach your photos or videos or music to that project.
The problem is that the overall organization *sucks*. When you first login to the site, you are greeted with a Google map showing all the folks that are geographically close to you. I suppose this cool on the one hand because it promotes meeting in person for projects, but on the other hand, this is supposed to be an internet collaboration site -- it seems like geography is the last thing you'd care about.
The projects can be sorted by "newest" or "most popular." This means that the only way a project will stay on your radar is if people see it right after you post it and immediately start contributing lots of stuff to it. Otherwise it will quickly sink to the bottom -- maybe even before someone who would have really liked it gets a chance to see it.
There is no way to sort projects by category (video, music, photography), subject matter (action shots, short films about cigarettes, cats) or keyword. So finding a project you'd actually be interested in is pretty random.
There are also no breadcrumb trails, which to me is the kiss of death. The site runneth over with amazing and distracting art, but if you wander too far afield, it's difficult to find your way back to the project that started you down the path. An example: There is a toy on the site where you can rate two pictures against each other for "awesomeness". Each photo has a link to the artist underneath. If you click the link to the artist, you cannot go back and vote on the photo. And if you vote on the photo, there is no way to get back to the link to the artist. Breadcrumbs.
Anyway, tonight will be light on the creative stuff as I'm going to a dinner party. I'm hoping to film some footage for this video project (the whole reason I got on the ORG in the first place), but it all depends on whether or not I can catch these contractors while they're still up on the roof working. Gonna try it again now.