Yeah yeah. So I promised a review "shortly". In the meantime however, I moved, and have also been dealing with some deadline-related pressures, so I haven't had a chance yet, to write a full-blown review of the 17" Macbook Pro. I can say this however... In the short time I've had it, and with the minimal amount of work it's been subjected to - mostly social networking, the odd photoshop crop and a couple of animated web banners - it's a dream!
More to come, I swear.
I ordered a new 17" Macbook Pro i7 last Friday, and because it's a custom build (Upgrades? You bet!) it's shipping from Shanghai.
Of course I'm tracking the entire journey online... Exit papers were just signed in China and it should be here within the next week, however the remote arrived today! It shipped separately, from a warehouse in the slightly less exotic locale of Concord, ON.
Anyway, I've ordered the new i7 model, with extra RAM, extra processor speed and a bigger hard drive and I couldn't be more excited if you told me I was getting a pony for my birthday.
Expect a full review shortly!
While the interwebs are all atwitter lately over the release of the new iPad, I've been drooling over the prospect of a new MacBook Pro, and waiting, ever so patiently, for the launch of Adobe's new Creative Suite5. Bearing this in mind, I'd like to take a moment now to give the lowly 13" MacBook a well-deserved plug...
Never let anyone tell you this little machine isn't good enough for 'serious computing'. Over the past year, I've run my entire business on it, hooked up to a 17" screen.
I maxed out the RAM a while back, to give it some extra oomph, and since then, it's had no problem running the entire Creative Suite (and MS Office). Even with numerous applications open simultaneously it still manages to chug out 100mg+ photoshop files, with nary a complaint.
Not bad for a computer that I bought on a whim, so I could have the luxury of checking my email from bed.
I was asked to flesh out my last blog post for a special Alex Chilton tribute, for the show "The Ledge", on Real Punk Radio.
The show airs on Fridays at 9pm Central (10pm Toronto time) and is hosted by Scott Hudson, AKA Paulisded, one cool guy from Sioux Falls, South Dakota.
If the time slot doesn't work for you, you can listen to the show anytime here, but you'll miss the opportunity to chat with Scott (and me!) during the show.
So do what you have to do, but be sure to listen. Scott's pulled together some beautiful material and created a very touching tribute to the great Alex Chilton.
Alex Chilton once told me to fuck off, in the middle of a gig, in front of an entire audience.
When he felt like it tho, he could be the nicest guy and would sign almost anything you put under his nose after a show. I saw him play another local show, with a friend who worked in a used record store. He'd brought along a stack of official and not-so-official releases and when he presented these to him, Alex shoved the official stuff aside and signed each and every one of the bootlegs.
He was cool like that.It's Oscar weekend and while I won't be watching the actual show (too long and meh, kinda boring), I have been tuning in to see a lot of the old-time great movies TCM always screens in the run-up to the ceremony.
Let me just say for the record that the young Anthony Perkins was yummyhot, and I have a sudden urge to grow my hair out, like Ava Gardner in On The Beach.
That's all for now!
I remember Old Spice as "that funny smelling stuff" that all my friend's dads used... until it was replaced by Hai Karate...cuz face it, what man didn't want to have to fight off the women with their Crazy Martial Arts Skillz?
Anyway the point is, irrespective (or perhaps BECAUSE) of the fact that the word "old" is in the name, my perception of Old Spice was always that it was for smelly old codgers who were trying to hide something.
Apparently I wasn't their target market or something, though, being a girl and all of, maybe six, when I formed this opinion, because [insert awkward seque into meaningful observation about marketing, here] I've since come to understand that Old Spice is a premium brand.
They do great advertising, across all media and this one in particular really got my attention. Just great... and yes, a true man should smell like jet fighters and punching.
By now the story of how Kevin Smith was yanked off a South West Airlines flight because he was "too fat" has gone mainstream, but like all good stories these days, this one had it's beginnings in the Twitterverse.
Now, I don't follow South West Airlines, OR Kevin Smith, but I happen to follow a couple of people who do, and I can tell you that the story didn't end when South West apologised, in 8 different tweets, a blog post, and a couple of personal phone calls. Nor did it end when Kevin Smith gave interviews and uploaded expletive rants about his experience.
You see, Kevin Smith has upwards of 1 million Twitter followers, who gleefully latched onto the story and ran with it for hours, in an effort to...well, what, exactly?
As Sonny Gill blogged this morning: "We EXPECT, DEMAND, WANT big and small from companies online – but when it comes to us, the consumer, we apparently get a free pass when it comes to RESPECT, UNDERSTANDING and RESPONSIBILITY online."
I'm not saying that Kevin Smith deserved to be humiliated at the hands of an airline, but South West did apologise, many times and in many different ways, for singling him out. I take bigger issue with the social power game that played out by Smith and his 1 million + fans, who continued to badger SWA, long after it was appropriate or even necessary, simply because they could.
Musical pieces are created with Apple's Logic Studio and sometimes Bidule (made by Canadian-based commercial software company Plogue Arts and Technology) and the sculptures are scavanged from a variety of sources and musical instruments (eg: an old piano, guitars, drums, an old shoe polisher brush, a towel rack...). Thorn also incorporates LED lights into his sculptures that flash on and off in time with various beats.
Parts of Felix's Machines frequently break, or come undone and this is all part of the natural process. (Sometimes double-sided tape can be a robot's best friend) Thorn, who was born in 1985 and lives in southeast London, UK, continually builds new robots, adds to and revises his existing machines, and is apparently in the process of developing a method of incorporating wind instrument sounds into his mechanical orchestra.
Why go to all this trouble when you could easily play your compositions on a computer and be done with it? Thorn explains that what drives him, is the desire to see music played live, without human intervention, in a way that matches what humans can do, and he does achieve that with his machines. Each note is physically hammered out or plucked and the experience of listening to and seeing the music, feels remarkably warm, human and emotional.
Click the first image for video ...
Rather than pull excerpts and quote out of context, I thought I'd share this blog post in full.
It's submitted by 360 Digital Influence Team - Ogilvy PR's global digital practice, and it's a great primer on the various methods used by companies to integrate social media into their organizations.
I just have one word of advice for 360 Digital Influence Team, if I may... "spellcheck", my friends. Spellcheck.