Ow.

When people here at Machinery, Inc. call the helpline and are put on hold, they get to listen to this:

I threw up a little in my mouth when I heard that. No wonder the users are pissed by the time their call gets bumped up to me.

TTW: Add a little music to your blog.

A few people have asked me how I use the little Odeo player to include sound clips in my blog posts, like this:

I've hijacked Odeo's spiffy little Flash/Shockwave player to play a clip that I've uploaded onto my web server. Here is the code I used (you'll want to copy/paste this into your favorite text editor to see it all):

<embed src="http://www.odeo.com/flash/audio_player_standard_black.swf" quality="high" width="300" height="50" allowScriptAccess="always" wmode="transparent"  type="application/x-shockwave-flash" flashvars= "valid_sample_rate=true&external_url=http://stevelyon.com/music/yaketysax.mp3&audio_duration=64" pluginspage="http://www.macromedia.com/go/getflashplayer"></embed>

For those who don't need the ubergeek explanation of what that chunk of code does, here is a quick rundown of what I do:

1. Upload the .mp3 file to my web server.
2. Paste the HTML code above into my Blogger post (in "Edit HTML" mode).
3. Change the URL section (http://yoursite.com/tune.mp3) to point to the location of the new tune I uploaded.
4. Change the duration (audio_duration=64) to the length of the new tune in seconds.

That's it. Easy, eh?

Ok, for those who are interested in how this thing works, here is what I've learned about the code from my own experimentation. The Odeo site does not have much info on how to tweak this stuff, so I had to tinker for awhile.

The first part of the code links to the Shockwave player itself on the Odeo site. I use the standard black player, but there are other sizes and colors to match your site. The quality section seems to have zero effect on the playback of any files I've tried with it, set to "high" or "low". So I leave it on "high". Width and height refer to the size of the player window as it displays on your webpage. I've had the best luck with it looking right at the size above - it doesn't seem to scale very well. Allowscriptaccess should be set to "always", but I honestly don't know any other settings for that one. Ditto for wmode. The type section tells the browser what sort of embed is being used. The flashvars section is one that I should probably do some research on, as I have only been able to make the player work with .mp3 files encoded at a bitrate of 128k or higher, and Odeo says sample rates of 11.025, 22.05, and 44.1 are the only ones that will work. The URL section is key, as this tells the player the location of your sound file - in my example here, the file lives in a directory called "music" on my web server, and is called "yaketysax.mp3". (For ease of coding, I always strip out any spaces in the file names." The next section is duration, which refers to the length of the clip, in seconds. My example here runs 1:04. The last section is a link for people to get Flash if they don't have it.

Enjoy.

Music. Meme. Apologies in advance.

The Other Girl tagged me for a meme. Memes make me squeamish, much like a Lindsay Lohan crotch shot. Anyway... the object of this meme is to list 7 songs I'm listening to right now, but since TOG didn't really follow the rules of the meme, I'm not going to either.
So I give you... 7 songs that, to a greater or lesser extent, amuse me.

1. Yakety Sax (a.k.a. the Benny Hill theme)

This damn song always gives me the giggles. The next time you're stuck at work on a dead afternoon in a deathly quiet office, lob the first few notes of Yakety Sax out on speakers that are accidentally turned up too loud. You can't shake people out of a coma faster with a hand grenade.

2. Enter Sandman - Apocalyptica

I was flipping through the channels one day, and happened to stop on the opening credits of a movie on IFC. It took me about 30 seconds to figure out that the music played under the credits was a cover of Metallica's Enter Sandman, with no vocals, played on cellos. Of course I had to watch the movie (Your Friends & Neighbors) to the end to see the music credits and figure out what the hell was up with the music. The movie turned out to be fairly forgettable, but it did feature Catherine Keener, who is downright tasty.

3. Stroke Me - Billy Squire

Does it get any better than Billy Squire? Ok, fine, it does. A lot better. But show me someone who can resist yelling along to the chorus of "stroke!" when they're drunk, and I'll show you someone who is no damn fun to drink with.

4. Mony Mony - Billy Idol

I'd like to continue the Billy theme with another tune that inspires drunken revelry. I never did learn the additional alternate lyrics for this song. Something about getting laid and getting f'd, but I was never sober enough when I heard it to fully understand what was being sung.

5. Psycho Killer - Talking Heads

This song not only amuses me, it also features prominently on my list of favorite songs. Includes one of my all-time favorite lyrics: "You're talking a lot, but you're not saying anything".

6. Fuck You Very Much, The FCC - Eric Idle

Eric Idle is a genius. 'Nuff said.

7. Paul Revere - Beastie Boys

I briefly toyed with the idea of posting my own version of this song, because within a week of buying the "License To Ill" album back in '86, I had the lyrics to this song memorized. I still know them, and can recite them word for word without hearing the song.
Since I don't want to inflict American Idol style pain on my loyal readers, you get the original version.

Artists At Work...

My pictures for Artists At Work were hung on Thursday. Following The Other Girl's suggestion, I went with a theme of parallel lines, and I think it turned out pretty well.
These are the pics I chose:

Random childhood memory

When I was about 9, I used to have this kickass Tonka firetruck. It was huge, and the best part was you could plug the garden hose into a little fire hydrant that came with the truck, then run a fire hose from the hydrant into the side of the truck and then shoot water out the mini fire nozzle in the ladder's bucket.We lived in a nice house on the end of a cul-de-sac at the time, and I remember one summer afternoon I was in the front yard with my firetruck and my neighbor, Sunny. I didn't think anything of it at the time, but looking back I realize Sunny's parents were probably former hippies - their other daughter was named Dawn.
Anyway, Sunny helped me hook the garden hose up to the firetruck, but of course I was a greedy, selfish, typical only child and wouldn't let her run the fire hose on the truck until after I got tired of it. Then once I got tired of it I unhooked the garden hose from the fire hydrant and started chasing her around the yard, spraying her with the hose.

Either I was an asshole, or I had a secret crush on Sunny. Or both. I wonder whatever happened to her.

Hmm. Now that I think about it, I used to treat a lot of my relationships with women the same way.

Creative split.

I just deleted a perfectly tedious four paragraph post. Man, did it suck. The first two paragraphs were a tired cliche about Spring, and the last two were just a rambling mess. Come to think of it, not too much different than most of my posts.

I find that I don't have enough attention span to write and take pictures at the same time. Apologies to my fair readers as the blog takes a back seat to the camera for awhile. I'm sure my attention will shift back soon enough.

Fizziday.

Only a short Fizziday post this time to marvel about the abundance of sunshine flowing into my studio window at almost 5:30 this afternoon. I'm normally not a fan of daylight savings, but this... is... nice.

Artists At Work?

I got an email today from a fellow Machinery, Inc. employee telling me that I was picked to show some of my photography in a little mini-gallery. The setup is called "Artists At Work", and it consists of two small walls on three different floors in the TPS building that they've set up to exhibit art created by the creative folks at Machinery, Inc.

This leaves me with a little quandary... what pictures do I choose? I've told them I will be submitting six 8x10 prints for my section of wall. These are a few I've picked:






Thoughts? Opinions? I'll need to do some cleanup, color balancing, and cropping on these before I get them printed for the display, but I think they might work.

However... I'm open to suggestions. Help me out here, people!

Shootin'

I went out to shoot pictures late last night, and ended up near St. Anthony Falls and the Mill City Museum. Took about 75 pictures, ended up with 2 that I really like.

Click here to see my Flickr album with the rest of the pictures.

Fight Club.

I'm not sure how this popped into my head, but tonight I was reminded of the only time I've ever seriously wanted to punch someone. I've never started a fight, never hit anyone on the playground, never even had to defend myself in a fight. I've always been able to talk myself out of those situations.

By the time I was 15, I had pretty much gotten over the idea of big piles of gifts for Christmas. Not that I don't like gifts, I just prefer to have a nice gift or two and be mellow about it. Better to give, blah blah, blah. Anyway, when I was 15 the only gift I asked for from my dad was a pair of ice skates. I even picked out a pair that was well under $100; a basic, low-end pair of Bauer hockey skates.

Christmas came, and I got no skates. In fact, I got nothing at all. I was pretty hurt. My dad hates receiving gifts of any kind on any occasion. Birthdays, Christmas, Cinco De Mayo, whatever - DO NOT buy him a gift. I never understood this hatred, and to now have him apply this holiday methodology to me was all kinds of Not Good. Hell, I'd even spent some of my hard-earned Burger King job money to buy him a gift anyway - angry tirades against giving him gifts be damned.

The situation came to a head when I walked over to his home the day after Christmas to ask him about it. I don't remember what his exact words were, but I do remember him being quite smug about not buying me a gift and not even the least bit apologetic, as I had hoped. This drove me beyond hurt straight to the angry off ramp.

I remember him standing up at one point during the argument, so I also stood and put my face about a half an inch away from his as I yelled "ALL I WANTED WAS A PAIR OF FUCKING SKATES!"

Funny thing I remember noticing at that moment was that he really is two inches shorter than I am. I was looking down on him. And if he had not backed down, I know that I would have tried to punch him.

He bought me a pair of skates the next day.

The script.

I called my good friend Ryan tonight to chat about Helpdesk, and after some discussion, I've decided to trash what I've come up with so far and start over from scratch.

Luckily, I have no delusions of possessing actual writing skill, otherwise I might get attached to crap that won't work and isn't worthy of my time to shoot.

While I now see that the original idea I had won't work, I may be able to tweak it into something that will work. Here is one of my possible re-work ideas:

Dave works at a company where he provides computer tech support to other employees, and shares a cubicle with a guy named Tom. Dave and Tom are both very good at their jobs, are dedicated employees, and have worked for the company for a long time. One day, Tom hears a rumor that their jobs might be outsourced to India. Dave has to deal with maddening calls from the users, his sarcastic co-worker, a strange and annoying boss, and the thought of losing the job that he loves.

I'm not sure if there is enough character arc to make Dave's story a compelling one, but I'm going to poke at it for awhile and see where it goes.

Helpdesk.

I'm in the middle of writing the first draft of the script for my short film project, which I've tentatively titled "Helpdesk". Helpdesk is the story of Dave, an upbeat and cheerful corporate cog whose job is to answer a computer tech support telephone line. But the helpline callers slowly and mercilessly beat the cheer out of him.

I envision this to be a two to three minute short film, and if I like the way it turns out, I might do a few more.

I've got the film's set ready to go, save for one item. A phone. Does anyone have or know where I can find a phone that looks like something you'd find on a desk in a corporate office? Something with lots of blinky lights and maybe even a little display on it would be nice. Any ideas?

Resolutions (damn you, Belize!)

As for my list of 2007 resolutions:

1. Lose 2 pounds per month: Started at 200.5 on 1/1, 198 on 2/1. Trip to Belize shot that all to hell. I'm at 199 today. I will to get to 194 by 4/1.

2. Get on a budget: I'm on a budget, but Belize wrecked my finances. I'm back on track, but poor.

3. Take a standup or improv comedy class: Belize wrecked this, too. I hope to be able to afford a class in April.

4. Get the show online by March 1st: Show is a no-go until the LA move, but I have what I think is a kickass idea for a series of short films (that will have nothing to do with Belize). Even better, the studio will be a great place to shoot them.

Programming note.

Those of you who use an RSS feed reader to keep up on my drivel may have noticed that the feed for this site was not updating (thanks, TOG) and the feed for 365 was non-existent. Delightful. I *think* I have it fixed now - please leave a comment if you experience any oddities or irregularities (content notwithstanding).

New feature: Fizziday.

Some things put a bit of fizz in my brain. A song, a scene from a movie, a quote from a book, a haiku. Fizzy things on Friday. Fizziday.

Diane Court: Nobody thinks it will work, do they?
Lloyd Dobler: No. You just described every great success story.