John Morrison - Product Strategy and Brand Identity
Tonight I got the chance to have all access for photos for the Lollapalooza Weekend Kick-Off Party at the Apple Store North Michigan Avenue. You can find my final pick photos from the event on my Flickr account.
I figured by posting this; I will be the hero of every Mac Genius, Creative, and IT worker in the US.
Short term plan is simply to have a table list. The long term is to have a searchable database. Any and all submissions are welcome.
Keeping in my ‘seeking out inspiration’ kick, I just registered for the ‘Seed’ conference with Jason Fried, Jim Coudal, and Carlos Segura on October 29th.
I’m looking forward to it; I hope to learn a lot. I’m also really enjoying networking as of late. I’ve been astounded by the people I’ve been meeting lately, and it started with An Event Apart.
Coming out here to Chicago has been a huge opportunity for me. There is always something new and inspiring going on that fascinates me. So many opportunities to learn.
Last week I was lucky enough to attend a screening of Wes Anderson’s Hotel Chevalier at the Apple Store. The screening was hosted by producer Roman Coppola. Afterward, Roman stuck around for Q&A. The crowd was excellent, and his rapport with them was phenomenal.
While filmmaking is not my field of choice, listening to Roman was very inspiring. He spoke about starting a project, from research to making compromises to achieve a vision. I’m really looking forward to ‘The Darjeeling Limited.’
It’s weird, but I spent years in New York, the “cultural center of the world,” and somehow, I missed opportunities like this. I think I’m just more in tune with the world around me today.
It’s exciting.
…unless I update it.
Fair enough, I guess I’ll work on that. I’ll try to make this brief. I’ve been busy for the past few months, but things seem to be settling down for the moment, which is good. Work is good, back to school season is just ending so hopefully things might ease up, that’s about all I can say. I’m hoping for new products soon, but I have no clue in truth. I plan to pick up a MacBook Pro whenever they put out a new version. My 12″ Powerbook’s AppleCare has just expired. While it’s still running and treating me well, it’s time to move to something with a little more power, something that can run Aperture or actually interface with a video iPod. (12″ had USB 1.1)
So I’m back playing Halo 2 again, that game will not die for me I still enjoy it every bit as much as I did when I bought it. Oh, that reminds me, I officially, after what… 4 months, have decided that my X-Box 360 was a completely worthwhile purchase. 3 reasons:
Other stuff….
So I’ve been keeping busy, not working on any major design projects at the moment, mostly studying new programs and trying to (re?)teach myself how to draw. That said, I have been working at getting MediaRebellion.com back up and running. I’m not sure what we’re going to use it for, but I moved all the content over to WordPress, and as of yesterday two days ago I installed the Beta of phpBB 3 on the site which seems to be running REALLY smoothly, it’s leaps and bounds better than any other free message board system I’ve used.
I’m also now hosting/administrating the official message board for The Epoxies. In case you haven’t checked them out, they are a new wave/punk band from Portland, Oregon that totally rocks, I highly recommend checking them out.
Canon put out a new version of the Rebel… I want it.
So recently I’ve been listening to a lot of Streetlight Manifesto and the earlier projects of their singer Tomas Kalnoky.
Tomas was the original singer/writer for the cult favorite ska act, Catch 22, best known for their 1998 record ‘Keasbey Nights‘, which many will argue to be the band’s best (or only good) album. Well back before Catch 22, Tomas was in a punk band named Gimp.
After Gimp disbanded, Tomas reworked one of their songs, ‘Supernothing,’ from a slow acoustic track to the faster, more upbeat version that appears on Keasbey Nights. The original, perhaps because it is so different, has become a favorite among fans. Sadly the only copies of this album floating around the internet are of poor quality. Probably due to having been taken directly from tape copies that, it seems, were not high fidelity to start with.
Tonight I had a bit of free time and decided to throw Supernothing into Soundtrack Pro to teach myself the software and to see if I could do anything about the quality. I was surprised by the results. I managed to correct the volume problems and remove almost all the tape hiss with just a few clicks. I’m impressed with Soundtrack and how easy it was to do without noticeably distorting the audio. If someone like myself, who is virtually tone-deaf, could manage to do something with it in a matter of minutes, that says a lot.
The immediate difference is subtle but evident at loud volumes, through a car stereo or headphones. The removal of the hiss, and the boosted volume makes it vastly more listen-able than before in my opinion.
I’m debating doing more of this type of thing with some other projects, including ‘Rules of the Game’ Catch 22’s pre-Keasbey demo that is also only on tape, but I’d like some feedback on how people think this sounds first.
Anyway, I’ll let you be the judge of my work.
You can check out the original here:
And my cleaned-up version:
http://www.subism.com/audio/gimp/supernothing.mp3