8BitMe

My Buddy Addison Kowalski made this awesome tutorial for how to create your very own 8-bit-style profile picture!  I made the one above by watching it and I think it looks pretty awesome!

The tutorial is embedded below.  All that's needed is:

• Photoshop
• The following are optional
• a computer
• a mouse
• a keyboard
• a monitor
• power
• eyes
• arms
• a torso
• hands (left and right)
• fingers (all 10 preferred.  5 on each hand if at all possible)
• hand-eye coordination
• ears
• a working knowledge of the english language

I'd love to see what you all come up with!

My Favorite Christmas Song (This Year)

This song has pretty much shaped up this Christmas season. Sure, my favorite Christmas song of all time and the song that is in my top-20 songs of any kind of all time is Mariah Carey's "All I Want For Christmas Is You," but this song has infected my Christmas season. I think my semi-annual 'funk' is upon us and this song makes it all better.



Enjoy!

Day 5

Here is Song #5 called "Falling."

"This song is a great idea I would love to build upon later and really flesh out into something more special than this. It's got a fun poppy feel to it that I have never really explored before. It's lightyears better than my iPad experiment yesterday! Haha"

Day 4

Here's my song for my 4th day: "Sometimes Looking Back is Easier Than Looking Forward"
"
"So the Gorillaz's new record is being recorded completely on an iPad and a bunch of bands are doing viral videos playing songs using their iPhones, etc so this song was completely recorded using my iPad. Well, that and GarageBand. I started with SoundDrop -- a sound-generator app based off bounding balls off of these lines you draw with your finger. It's a completely live "instrument" if you will in the sense that it's not pre-programmable. That's the confusing off-but-in-time clicking you hear. Then I used JamPad for the synth lead, drums, and guitar. I did live switching on the drums so they have some strange 'choices' for beats but I figured WTH. Then I used QuickVoice to record vocals which i couldn't record straight into GB so I recorded and then synced back to the song after laying it into GB. A fun experiment but I'll try something more tangible tomorrow."

Day 3

Here's my song for Day 3 -- "Me and Ubiquitous"

"I grew up doing theatre. It kept me out of trouble and taught me what it was to be professional and work hard at a young age. I loved it and I thought that was my life. While I still work in entertainment today, I had to leave the theatre so I could support myself. Growing up in the theatre, I met so many amazing people. One man was Jerad -- an ex-Jungle Cruise skipper from the 1990s that collected nickels and whose favorite word was 'ubiquitous.' He was only a few years older than me and I would love to hear old Jungle Cruise stories. He passed away suddenly Monday and I found out about it today. This is what came of that."

Day 2

Here's my second song. "Quick Bullet"

"I have been in the same band for 9 years. We are not active but far from broken up -- we just all have day-jobs now and maybe get together once or twice a year to bang out the songs. We haven't written a new song in over 5 years (aside from 30 second songs here and there for Prop 8, etc). About 5 years ago, I heard Ryan playing the first riff you hear in the song and it stuck with me. I play it constantly but couldn't ever hear the song. Then this song-a-day exercise came up and I knew this had to be pulled out of the hat. I came up with the first two lines of lyrics on a bike ride today, came home, and recorded this in an hour. While it totally SOUNDS like I took only an hour to do this, I was so much more excited to get this song DOWN as opposed to perfect -- to the point that I whispered the vocals, basically and only did one pass at it. I'll DEFINATELY be coming back to this song in the near future. I hope you're all into it. It might be something completely different from anything else on here. Sounds like NOFX or Propagandhi."

Day 1

Here's my song for Day 1. I'll call it "Autumn".

"This idea was started at 11pm on day 1 on the piano.  I thought all day about how I wanted this song to sound and the most interesting part is how that all went out the door when I sat down to do it!  The 1/4" I was using was dying so it created this clicking sound on the bass track that sounds like an off-time metronome -- I'll take that as art! As song writing isn't my strong point, It's going to be a challenge starting an idea and moving on the next day.  Ready for day 2!"

7 Songs in 7 Days

My good friend Addison Kowalski was jumping on a train and I was going with him.  We are going to write a song a day for a week.  These will be posted up on friendswritesongs.tumblr.com but as that site has been having some issues this past week, I thought I would post them up here for my blog readers -- although I haven't posted in months so who knows who's gonna hear them?

Along with each track I finished, I will post the blurb I sent to Mr. Andrew Capra -- mastermind of the FriendsWriteSongs blog.  I hope you all enjoy them -- they're pretty awful.

Pen Cups: A Theory

I had to write a post about this rather than just rant about it on twitter. Why don't all pens have the color they are on the bottom tip?

We all put them in these cups on our desks -- and we always need a pen. But we don't always need a red pen.

Sure, some might say, "Why not just take the red pens out? Do you ever use it for anything anyway?"

And to that I say, "Yes, I do."



I use pink post-it notes (it was a variety pack) and I can't ever write on them in red pen but I have a red pen on my desk -- mostly because I don't mind nor do I care enough to find another pen. Then I have to go for the next pen I have in the cup which is a sharpie (it's not a very full cup). Even the sharpie is red! Yes, I also have a black sharpie but why don't these pens have the colors on the bottom?

Am I the only one who puts my pens in facing down? I do it because, in my mind anyway, it keeps the ink near the tip of the utensil. Nothing bugs me more than having to shake my pen to get it to work -- nothing other than pens not having their color on the bottoms.

There are some brands that get this right. I'm lookin' at you, Staples Brand pens.  But I am ALSO lookin' at you, Staples, because your pens blow.  Seriously.

Anyway, I'm about as over this blog as I am writing it -- but at least I didn't have to grab a fuckin' pen!

My Oscar® opinion and some other things

I am glad Avatar didn't fare well -- although should it have won best cinematography? Does it even count?! I think not. I agree with Hurt Locker winning everything it won although I wanted Inglorious Basterds to win best picture and original screenplay. I was kinda shocked to see The Hurt Locker take that one. Also learned that adapted screenplay also counts if the original work was a short film (District-9) which I thought was kinda interesting!

I'm glad Sanrda Bullock won because she was the best thing about that crappy movie but I was kinda routing for Gabourey Sidibe. That would have been pretty awesome for her as an unknown young lady.

So that wraps up my Oscar® things. I also started a twitter page on which I will write twitter thought that are only 140 characters long. It's been done before and will be done again but I couldn't find anyone who did it well or at all after setting up the page. (I'm looking at you @140characters and @only140...)

Anyway, that's what's up. I also went to Disneyland this weekend and it was pretty much the best visit I have had in years. We got our own Tower of Terror elevator, saw new stuff at the Blue Sky Cellar, saw Captain EO which was just about the coolest thing I have ever seen, ate a good meal at the Plaza Inn, got our own Pirates of the Caribbean boat, and had an AMAZING time on The Haunted Mansion. SO good!

You're jealous and this wasn't written well.

fin.

PS: I ordered business cards. This is what it looks like.