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Tuesday, December 11, 2007

news from Wilco HQ

In February Wilco is doing a five night stint at the Riviera Theater in Chicago. From the email:

Over these 5 nights the band will endeavor to perform every song in their now extensive ouvre (or is that canon)? This includes all the studio recordings and their contributions to the Mermaid Avenue records. Plus, who knows what else? To further clarify, the plan is NOT to do the material sequentially or chronologically. Rather, they’re just going to attempt to cover it all over the 5 shows.

Wow. I can’t wait for the recordings.

Monday, December 3, 2007

Your Discbox has been despatched.

Hello,

Just to let you know?

Your ?In Rainbows? discbox has now left w.a.s.t.e. in the UK

You can expect delivery of your discbox in the following estimated times.

UK 1-8 days

Europe 1-14 days

Rest of World 5-18 days

Wherever possible (especially to customers in the USA), we?ve sent these by road and sea.

December is a busy time of year for postal services globally, so please be patient.

We thank you for your custom and hope you enjoy your discbox when you receive it.

Best wishes.

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Friday, November 30, 2007

You’re all set? Good.

My perspective on some work I’m doing this quarter.

/* begin whirlwind discussion */

OK, Tommy, what we want to do is document the information about our projects. We’ll need a general description of the project and contact info.

Do you want the contact information separated out?

Yes. You’ll need to know so-and-so was our main client but there were others; so-and-so did the writing; so-and-so from such-and-such did something, but I’m sure you figure out what by digging in the binder; we worked with so-and-so as an architect; you’ll need to get the name of the thingy-ma-bob manufacturers and the video people in Europe—they handled everything; the people here were me as producer, so-and-so as creative director, so-and-so as editor, so-and-so as research and development, oh, and so-and-so was also coordinator; we also worked with consultants from such-and-such, they were so-and-so and so-and… I don’t remember the last name, but I’m sure you can find it; another name to keep in mind is so-and-so.

Next we want to document the process. First we need to articulate the design problem; what was asked of us. We had to take the thingy-ma-bobs and jam them into a space. We first found out that our scans of the images were too low-res. Put that in a “lessons learned” section. We strung together some images and cut together an edit in Final Cut with text from so-and-so. In Final Cut so-and-so created a matte that so-and-so then extracted separate areas to make separate files. Such-and-such then figured out the correct distances of the thingy-ma-bobs and the distortion levels that would have to be added. We then sent them files in some format I can’t remember. Ask so-and-so about that.

Oh, yeah, and the diagrams of the environment produced by such-and-such are really important.

And so-and-so flew there for four days to set it all up.

So, should I use those spreadsheets to organize this information?

No, that was something I put together really quickly at 2 a.m. without thinking. You will need to come up with something else. We want to archive these projects the right way. Next week we’ll show what you com up with to so-and-so (the owner of the company).

I have to run to get on a call. You’re all set?

: |

Good.

/* end whirlwind discussion */

I’m not sure where to go from here. I didn’t have a chance to think about any of this stuff in any detail before I was abandoned. How are these archives or files or whatever I’m supposed to compile going to be used? That seems to me to be the key point in what I need to know to construct something useful. What happens to all the documentation that exists in multiple folders under a main project folder? Do I reference that information or incorporate it directly? Can I assume that it will remain forever? Should I capture it now before it disappears? Is it even useful for this part of what I am creating? I don’t even know if what I’m working will end up being used as an electronic interactive document or printed and used as a physical paper reference.

It may be hard to believe, but this is some of the best direction I’ve been given the whole time.

Tuesday, October 30, 2007

to do things or blog about them?

At what point does constantly writing about daily activities become the most prevalent daily activity?

Thinking about all the annotating, linking, and tagging that must accompany an update about my happenings makes the who process seem overwhelming. There are too many other new things to be doing instead of rehashing the just completed things. Writing about things I’ve read takes time away from reading more, linking to music I’ve found takes time away from finding newer music, and, most importantly, blabbing about it all takes time away from resting from it.

Phew.

Thursday, October 25, 2007

Shelly Scream

My sister put up this picture as her main MySpace photo recently. It’s almost a year old.

Teacup Shelly

The part that is new is that I was immediately reminded of something else when I saw it in that context.

Monday, October 15, 2007

Drew Carey videos for Reason.tv

Drew Carey has started a project with the Reason Foundation to produce videos and other content for a new website, Reason.tv, that aims to introduce the ideas of “Free Minds and Free Markets” to a wider audience.

The first video, available on YouTube, is called “Gridlock” and offers some solutions to the unbearable traffic congestion in Los Angeles.

Sunday, September 30, 2007

More than two months.

It has been more than two months since I’ve posted something. I guess I’ve had an uneventful summer. I was working two jobs and started an internship.

Classes begin Monday. I’ll have two, along with two jobs (one different), and an internship.

I have no readers so this doesn’t even matter.

Monday, July 23, 2007

Capital by Default

The Graduate School of Education and Information Studies has given us server space to host a MediaWiki version of the Informatics Wiki that has been on PBwiki. Wow, that sentence sounds funny with all the wikis.

I’d like to get upset at MediaWiki naming conventions a bit. This forced capitalization of article titles and usernames drives me crazy. I really hate seeing my username as Tkeswick instead of tkeswick. It’s just ugly. I typed it all lowercase on purpose, because I wanted it that way. Whoever came up with the idea that people would like their usernames to be automatically capitalized didn’t think it through.

I first noticed this sort of thing when using Google Docs & Spreadsheets a while back. Still, I notice that on the documents I have shared with other users, the first letter of their email address account name is capitalized which just looks bad and inconsistent to me, especially when people use the convention like me of first initial, last name. The last name does not get capitalized. Why capitalize the first initial if the last name will not be capitalized as well. It ought to just remain in the same format that the user types it in without introducing all this mixed-case ugliness.

Tuesday, July 3, 2007

I want a Helio Ocean

Everyone else wants (or already got) an iPhone, but I’ve been drooling over the Helio Ocean for a while now. The hardest part is facing the switch between providers (Verizon to Helio) and facing a new 2-year contract. I’ve come up with a plus and minus list.

Positives:

  • Unlimited data plan, including web
  • 50 more minutes per month than I have now
  • Nice looking dual slider device

Negatives:

  • No more IN calling with my family on Verizon
  • The “what if I don’t like it” factor
  • About $22 more per month by my estimate

I’ve always wanted an always-on internet device without having to pay the through-the-roof charges for EDGE or EV-DO or whatever. It just seems like a really scary purchase and commitment. Help me.

LG cell phones are in great demand due to their durable batteries. LG always leads its competitors in debuting outstandingly good camera phones and plenty of latest ringtones. LG electronics have made their name in cell phones and computers. And they provide a lifetime warrantee with several of their products.

Thursday, June 28, 2007

Wired, July 2007


Wired, July 2007 originally uploaded by mrwilloby.

It’s too bad that I’m the only one that received this issue of the magazine. It’s pretty glorious. Although, I still think that the personalized June 2004 issue of Reason magazine was better. No one knew that was coming. Reason just used our address information to get satellite photos of subscribers’ houses. I had to submit this photo to Wired in order for them to use it.



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