Gareth – Page 130 – The Designer Monologues

February 18, 2011

Friday Music

I haven’t done one of these in a while. It’s long past time.

I posted (via Twitter) a killer video featuring an evil magical schoolgirl doing an amazing pole-dance to a brilliant dubstep remix of the Harry Potter theme. Sure enough, an MP3 is available. So here it is: Terabyte Frenzy – “Harry Potter and the Half-Dub Remix.”

Another track based on another brilliant video (which I’m sure most of you have seen, and if not: here ya go) of two cellists doing a ripping cover of Michael Jackson’s “Smooth Criminal”. I’d love to see more work from these guys. Stjepan Hauser and Luka Sulic – “Smooth Criminal (for two cellos).”

Radiohead is releasing a new album tomorrow! King of Limbs will go live tomorrow, but you can pre-order right now. The first single has been leaked — Radiohead -“Lotus Flower.”

Gary Moore, late of Thin Lizzy, died a couple of weeks back. One of my friends in the UK posted a video from a solo record in the 80s that I had completely forgotten about, and hadn’t heard in years: Gary Moore – “Shapes of Things To Come.”

A complete gear-shift for the next couple of songs. First, a “smooth 70s” track that I’ve always loved — a lot of this genre was overproduced, soulless crap, but some of it was wonderful, and formed a sonic backdrop to my childhood, so is always associated with good memories. This song is fairly obviously built on an absolutely brilliant lyric (“Oz never did give nothing to the Tin Man that he didn’t already have.”), filled out by some Oh Wowwwww psychedelia. Love it. America – “Tin Man.”

Second track which some might find out of place for me: I’m *really* not a fan of Katy Perry. Her first single (“I Kissed a Girl”) was infectious, but it soon became more than obvious that she’s ex-Christian-music product, dabbling in titillation from a purely marketing-driven effort. That said — I *love* this song. I heard it the first few times without realizing who it was, and soon found myself in one of those uncomfortable situations where you like a song by someone you really don’t like. Screw it. Don’t Judge. This is a great pop song — catchy, uplifting and well-crafted. Katy Perry – “Firework.”

Jason Blair pointed me in the direction of this song earlier today — it’s the theme of the Canadian TV series ReGenesis, done by a “band” called “Behavior” — which is really just the name used by composer Michael McCann, who has done scores for videogames like Splinter Cell, Deus Ex, Tom Clancy’s Endwar, etc. This is pretty much right up my alley — a great bit of cinematic trip-hop, sweeping instrumentation, killer beats and smoky vocals. Behavior – “Anywhere But Here (feat. Andrea Revel).”

An amazing ode to the city I love, which captures the way a lot of us feel about how the city has changed. “Like a death in the heart, Jesus where do I start? But you’re still the one pool where I’d happily drown.” LCD Soundsystem – “New York, I Love You, but You’re Bringing Me Down.”

Enjoy, kids. I won’t wait as long to post another one.

February 14, 2011February 14, 2011

Valentine’s Day

I’m one of those people, decried as an example of everything that’s wrong about the cynical world, that considers Valentine’s Day a complete load of bullshit.

Oh, I think it has its place — as a socialization exercise for school-age children — but as an adult holiday? An officially-sanctioned single day where you must demonstrate your affection for your loved one with appropriate gifts of a prescribed minimum-acceptable value? I put it right up there with the Christmas commercials that tell us that if I don’t buy her a car wrapped in a big red bow (or a diamond, or perhaps a diamond-studded car), I’m somehow failing in my duties as husband.

The wife knows this — which of course led to the best Valentine EVER, when I completely went against type and, despite what she knew about my opinion of the holiday, showed up with two dozen roses and a silver “Wonder Woman” ring.

Generally though? I don’t partake, and neither does the wife. We know that we love each other, and display it often, without sanction or official token from Hallmark.

But on this Valentine’s Day, after a particularly stressful weekend (followers on Twitter will be aware that I was admitted to the hospital overnight on Friday with chest pains — I’m OK, it was just a stress-releated anxiety attack, and my blood pressure, cholesterol, etc. are just fine), I wanted to make public declaration of just how lucky I am to have this woman in love with me:

I mean, seriously. Look at her. Now look at the picture of me, over there on the right (or the left, if you’re looking at this on Facebook. Or… well, nowhere, I guess, if you’re looking on Livejournal. Or RSS. Hmm. Never mind — this phrase got away from me a bit).

She’s with me. I know, I can’t believe it either. I’m either very, very lucky — or she’s seriously disturbed… which is still kinda cool, in a gothic-romance, madwoman in the crumbling estate kinda way.

So there you go. Valentine’s Day shmoopiness, completely against type. I love my wife.

Now get offa my lawn, ya dern kids! (*shakes cane*)

February 11, 2011

Money, Meet Mouth — an update

Yeah, I’ve pretty much sucked at the regular-blogging thing. The usual excuses: Busy, busy, busy. Not only with Adamant stuff, but also Real Life stuff (like prepping to move out of the place we’ve lived for the past 8 years — the wife and I decided that if we’re not leaving town, we should at least take advantage of those things we like about the town, and live closer to campus and downtown).

I’ve had a lot of requests from folks though, asking about how my “app-pricing” model is going. I’ve responded privately, of course, but rather than re-type the same thing over and over again, I figured I should just make a public post to explain. (“No. There is too much to ‘splain. I will sum up.”)

Short, sum-up version: I’m sticking with this. It’s no longer an experiment. It’s my business model.

Slightly longer, with some math (but not exact dollar figures, despite gamer demands for “openness”, as I prefer to keep income a personal matter) version: I started the “app-pricing” model on January 3rd. As of this coming Monday, I’ve been running on that model for 6 weeks. In the past, I have run sales where I’ve dropped prices to a dollar, and those sales generally have lasted a week to ten days at most. My concern for the new model was whether this was sustainable, or whether it was a temporary sale-driven behavior.

I think that 6 weeks, far longer than I have ever run any sale, is a fairly good initial indicator of sustainability. It’s long enough to view trends, to see if an initial spike was followed by a drop-off, etc.

The result: Sales for these 6 weeks have been more than double the sales of the same period last year.

More than double. 218%, actually. In what has traditionally been our worst sales period.

Even more interestingly, it’s been constant. An initial jump when we first announced (expected that) — but then it really didn’t drop. At all. It’s been sort of a plateau of constant sales a that level — slight upticks when new product has been released, but only slight.

So it looks like I’ve hit something here. Which is a really, really good thing — because I’ve also been dealing with the flip side of that equation over in the print-and-traditional-distribution side of things, where we were hit with a fairly large chunk of unexpected returns from the book trade (I’m looking in your direction, Borders), and that resulted in a massive hit on our income there (since we’d already been paid for those sales, and now needed to have our current earnings adjusted by our print partners as a result). Fucking OUCH.

Generally speaking, digital continues to surprise us, and the future looks bright, while at the same time, traditional print-and-distribution shambles along like a zombie, occasionally smashing us in the face. Or something. My metaphor generator is acting up — I should probably get it looked at.