It should be an ever-evolving series of pictures from my concert shooting experience. I am constantly tinkering with it, so check it out from time to time. You can bet each new concert will lead to at least one new image up in there.
And, yes, sharp-eyed readers: That’s a new picture from the Jake Shimabukuro concert that I have yet to talk about here. . .
* Last week at AugieShoots, I talked about my experiences shooting a Steve Martin and the Steep Canyon Rangers concert. Pictures and technical stuff and more can be found in that five day series.
* Good news! The new O.A.R. album has been announced, and it’ll be out in August. It’s called “King.”
* Found an interesting band last week: Honeyhoney. They have one album out on iTunes and Amazon’s MP3 store now. It’s a duo from California, and they’ll be opening for Christina Perri on her tour this summer. They’re a great match.
* And, of course, Weird Al’s new album, “Alpocalypse,” is due out at the end of the month.
Aetna has a “virtual assistant,” who is there to answer your questions on their website. Basically, it’s a search bar with stock imagery of a smiling person who answers in conversational text.
Or, if you want to pretend it’s more expensive than it is, call it “artificial intelligence.” Being a technologically inclined kind of person, I decided to run it through its paces:
Ann: Hi, I’m Ann, your Aetna Virtual Assistant. I’m here to help you use your Aetna Navigator secure member website. I’m currently new to this job, so if I can improve somewhere please let Aetna know by clicking the ‘feedback’ button below. What can I help you find?
You Asked: Zork
Ann: Oops, I haven’t been trained on that yet. I want to get better, so please let Aetna know how they can improve me by clicking the “feedback” button below.
I’m tempted to leave the feedback that the correct answer is “At your service” or “They say talking to one’s self is a sign of impending mental collapse.”
You Asked: What is the answer to the question of life, the universe, and everything?
Ann: That’s a question that only you can answer for yourself. As far as my own life, I find meaning in helping others.
Deeper than 42, but acceptable, I suppose. and, yes, it looks like the kind of question the programmers have seen before and decided to have fun with. OK, let’s test “Ann” further:
You Asked: Why is the sky blue? Ann: The sky is blue because of the way the earth’s atmosphere scatters light from the sun. The light from the sun looks white. But it is really made up of all the colors of the rainbow. Blue is scattered more than other colors when it hits particles and gases in our atmosphere because it travels as shorter, smaller waves.
Yup, there are either geeks working on this system who are too young for Zork, or I’m the first one to test that system.
You Asked: Do you have a good recipe for chocolate chip cookies?
Ann: Looks like I don’t know that yet. Please let Aetna know about this by clicking the “feedback” button below.
OK, let’s try getting personal, then:
You Asked: Are you married? Ann: I’m lucky to have a terrific virtual family, including a wonderful husband. Well, he’s wonderful most of the time: Even virtual people aren’t perfect! But I’d like to keep us on track. How may I help you navigate your Aetna Navigator secure member website?
Oooh, that pissed her off. Let’s push our luck.
You Asked: How old are you? Ann: I am rather young, or as we say in the virtual world, new. But I like to think I have many years’ worth of knowledge. How may I help you?
Dare I ask her weight?
You Asked: How much do you weigh? Ann: As a virtual assistant, I don’t have an actual body. But I think my creators deserve credit for making me appear pleasant and helpful. Let me help you navigate your Aetna Navigator secure member website.
Hey, I’m THE ONE ASKING THE QUESTIONS HERE! That’s it. I’m out of here!
Christina Perri’s “Lovestrong” album hit virtual and physical stands this week. What better time for Part 2 of this series?
While touring around earlier this year, Perri did a brief show in Paris at a small club of some sort. Someone up close took video of the entire thing. Here, then, is a six song set. Pretty cool:
Remember the early days when Amazon wasn’t profitable, but was going to be any quarter now? This week, Amazon announced that its quarterly profits would be down by a third because they were investing in infrastructure to continue to grow into a larger company — and Wall Street was disappointed at the way the profits “tumbled.” They were still profitable by a large margin. They just weren’t AS PROFITABLE, because they spent money to make more money down the road. They’re bringing in close to $10 billion per quarter — $10,000,000,000 — with profits in the hundreds of millions. (Nope, not a great profit margin, but here’s the classic case of making up slim margins in volume.)
And, of course, Wall Street hates it because Amazon didn’t “meet expectations.” In other words, the numbers that analysts plucked out of thin air and guess at weren’t right. And that’s Amazon’s fault.
Compare this to Apple, where every quarter Apple sets low expectations and then blows them away and gets a big stock boost. Everyone knows Apple is underguessing its numbers to help “meet expectations.” And everyone also knows that the armchair amateur revenue guessers on-line are always better at figuring out sales figures and dollar amounts than the “pro” analysts who are aid to guess these numbers. And they never get them right, or close to it.
I hate Wall Street. On the other hand, their game is so consistent(ly wrong) that it’s a good game to play, so long as you realize it’s a game and not anything based in reality at all.
I admit it — I’m hooked on Christina Perri music. And she doesn’t even have an album yet.
I first wrote about her at the beginning of the year, after I refound her one hit song from last summer. And I knew from following her that she used to post YouTube videos of herself singing her songs. But it took me a few months before I delved into those. Don’t know why that is, but here we are now.
Time to check out some of those videos.
We’ll start with the covers. Pardon the bad still that this video generates, but here’s “Crying” from Roy Orbison:
“Hand In My Pocket” works very well, also. Here she sings it in her pajamas, although I don’t know many people who sleep in decorative scarfs…
Lady Gaga’s “Speechless”:
The Beatles, Queen, Anya, Coldplay, and more are all after the break:
I haven’d had enough time to watch bowling this season, though I still check in at the beginning of each week’s show to see who’s making the television finals. There’s been one name absent all season, though: Walter Ray Williams Jr. It finally bothered me so much that I Googled for an answer and came back with a New York Times article from earlier this year. I think this sums it all up:
He is 51, perhaps near the end of bowling’s most remarkable career. He won his first Professional Bowlers Association Tour player of the year award in 1986 and his seventh in 2010. Five of those awards came after his 1995 induction into the P.B.A. Hall of Fame. No one has won more tour events (47), and only Earl Anthony, with 10, has won more than Williams’s eight major titles. [...]
This season, which began in October, unraveled after a September hernia operation, a change in ball sponsorship and Williams’s persistently arthritic fingers. His string of 17 consecutive seasons with at least one tour title is in danger, although he has exempt status for 2011-12.
He could retire after that season, should things not turn around for him. I haven’t watched a week of bowling in my life on television where the thought of Walter Ray being on the broadcast wasn’t at least a possibility. My own awkward style of bowling was always inspired by the simple controlled accuracy of Williams, though I was never anywhere near as good/
How good is he? YouTube shows us:
I could watch that all day. . . I’ve seen it countless times (including in its original airing) and it never gets old.
The Big Game (NFL claims copyright on “S*p*r B*wl” and I can’t afford to pay that fine) is coming up in less than two weeks. And, if you’re anything like me these days, you don’t give one flying fig. Sadly, everyone around you does. And the day after The Big Game, at work, you’re going to be the outcast if you can’t discuss the pertinent details of the game. Here I’ll provide you with a list of short phrases and key ideas to put across at work to fake it. They’re cliché enough that nobody will know you were fast forwarding through the game to get to the Marvel movie trailers:
“Boy, they really came to play, didn’t they?” (A completely meaningless thing to say. The flip side of the coin is “Too bad they didn’t show up, eh?” Use that one if you get blank stares on the first.)
”The game would have been completely different if it weren’t for that one play.” (This is the best one, because the person you’re talking to will immediately fill in the blank and tell you which play that was.)
”It would have been a completely different game if the ref hadn’t blown that call. Did you see that play?” Follow that up immediately with this crowd-pleaser:
”But the refs are only human, not perfect. You can’t let them beat you. You have to work around that, just like the other team.”
”Special Teams is what it’s all about.”
”You have to hit your man and hit him hard. A missed tackle is a game lost.”
”You could see the quarterback scanning the field, but he still missed his one opening.”
”Stupid coach. Overplayed it.”
”It’s all about clock management.”
”It was still a game for a long time.”
”Who knew they had that play? It completely stunned the defense. Wonderful!”
”They must have loved playing somewhere where it wasn’t 20 degrees out, eh?”
With the help of these generic phrases and an over-enthusiastic colleague, you can fake your way through any football conversation. For added credibility, go to ESPN.com first to see who won. You might be able to tailor your phrases with the appropriate winning or losing team’s name. (Hint: It’s either The Steelers or The Packers.)
Good luck on February 7th. Start practicing today!
So, the iPhone on Verizon is real and happening on February 10th. There was much rejoicing, but is it premature? Isn’t Verizon just as bad as every other wireless company? Aren’t they watching their bottom line just as closely as AT&T?
For the sake of argument and your initial elation, dear reader, let’s assume they aren’t. But let’s, then, keep an eye out for some of the things Verizon could do to screw this up:
* They haven’t announced the pricing on their data plans and voice plans. It could be more expensive.
* They haven’t announced pricing for the hotspot feature. AT&T got a lot of grief for charging an extra $20 a month for tethering. I bet Verizon puts up the same $20 charge, albeit for five connections at a time. It sounds great until you run into the data cap on the tenth of the month.
(This just in: Boy Genius Report is saying that the hotspot functionality is built into the next edition of the iOS software, due out possibly in March. So it’s possible that AT&T may match it in the near future.)
* Will the iPhone 5 be released for Verizon at the same time as AT&T? We don’t know that at all. Maybe the deal is that Verizon’s iPhone is always six months behind AT&T’s. Maybe. Even if it isn’t, do you really want to rush out to buy an iPhone 4 today when the 5 is due out in five months? Or is it? You don’t know that it will be. Boy, that’s a tough decision, isn’t it? The only safe thing to do is to wait for the iPhone 5 announcement before switching to Verizon.
* AT&T’s network is about to undergo a significant shrinkage of its user base. That’s a lot of more open bandwidth for you to use, particularly in the major cities. Meanwhile, we have no guarantees that the Verizon network will handle the new traffic load gracefully. And, if AT&T is right, it’s slower to begin with.
* So far, this is all theory and Might Happens. This next part, though, is already announced: The “New Every Two” program has just been discontinued, though existing customers can use their credit. Also, early upgrades just went from 13 months to 20 months.
And, don’t forget, you can’t have data and a phone call at the same time. Your hotspot is useless when you’re on the phone, which will be particularly annoying to the other four people using your hotspot at that moment. I don’t usually look at my phone to search for something while on the phone, but the one or two times that I have, it was critical and important. I imagine if I were using the phone as a hotspot with any regularity, I’d hate the people calling me for causing that connection to die so I could talk to them.
For some of you, you’ll need a new case. One button is minorly different on the Verizon phone, and won’t fit into certain iPhone cases.
The long-mythical Verizon iPhone has always amused me. People have assume that it’ll be the solution to all their problems. I’ve never had the problems with AT&T that so many others seem to have. Yes, it drops calls sometimes, but always in basically the same exact spots on the drive home that other carriers have dropped calls on me. The 3G is reliable. It works at my house and at my work. That’s all I need. If AT&T happens to not have great coverage in your particular part of the world, then by all means switch. But don’t talk about how awful AT&T’s customer service is, because I’ve got news for you — all wireless providers are awful. I’ve been to the Verizon store more times than I care to count with my wife’s various phones and it’s been a nightmare scenario every time.
That all said, there’s a chance I’ll switch to the Verizon iPhone in June, too. If Verizon’s network is still standing after a few months of the iPhone being on it, and if Verizon gets the iPhone 5 at the same time as AT&T, I’ll likely do it. This way, my wife and I will at last be on the same network and we’ll save minutes that way. (Unless, of course, Verizon decides that Verizon-to-Verizon minutes count against you with the iPhone now…)
I don’t listen to music anymore, and the only real exposure I have to it is what I accidentally hear on store radios or on my car radio while I’m swapping around CDs. (Someday, I’ll outline the process by which I’m forced to listen to podcasts by burning them to CDs.)
So when I heard a song that grabbed my attention in the car a week back, I was pleasantly surprised. I didn’t think to pull out my iPhone and use the Shazam app to identify it at the time. Silly me thought that just maybe the radio station would backtrack and tell me who sang it after it was done. No, they don’t do that anymore. I could have looked up the lyrics on-line, but by the time that thought came to me, I had forgotten the lyrics.
But then I heard the song again on the radio last night and instantly grabbed the cell phone and started up Shazam. (The newest update is amazing — takes half the time to identify a song, if that.)
The song is “Jar of Hearts” by Christina Perri. I imagine it’s getting a lot of airplay these days.
Never heard of her before this. Turns out, there’s a good reason for that. She’s recording her first album now. This is her sole single. When I went to iTunes, I had a choice of downloading that single or an EP made up of five songs performed live. I downloaded the EP instantly.
And I like it. I like it a whole lot. While the single isn’t easily confused with the other songs, it also isn’t completely unlike the other songs. Too many artists have hit singles that work well on their own but sound absolutely nothing like the rest of the album. I suspect that’s the hand of the record company at work there, picking the “hit” song from an album or forcing a hit song onto the album where it doesn’t belong. And, really, don’t we ALL like to villify record companies at any chance?
But she has a great voice — it’s gravelly and forceful and powerful, while still capable of being more tender and soft. She can span the two in the same song. And it’s consistent throughout. Sure, it doesn’t quite hit and hold all the notes as in the radio version of “Jar of Hearts,” but she comes close enough. There’s some tricky vocal parts of that song after all. But I do think the best parts of her songs come in the power parts.
If you can only download one other song besides “Jar of Hearts,” I’d go with “Bang Bang Bang,” which really swings.
In some ways, she reminds me of a little more powerful version of Nellie McKay, though played a little straighter and stronger .
Plus, she’s a piano player, which I’m always partial to.
I’ll put her on my bucket list of musicians I’d like to photograph someday, but that’s a post for AugieShoots.com. ;-)
Now, here’s the punchline: I wrote all this up, then went to the web to get more links, details, etc. It turns out I had heard and loved this song back in JULY! Perri was on “So You Think You Can Dance.” I liked the song back then and even think I remember looking her up on-line, but not finding much. Seven months later, here we are. Crazy world, eh? And it looks like SYTYCD was her big break. I remember that performance, too. Sheesh
I just wish I was blogging SYTYCD regularly this past summer, so I could really laugh at myself for forgetting her. The crazier thing: I didn’t hear the song for six months after it hit the Billboard charts, then I hear it twice in a week? Weird.
I think I need an Applescript for this. I have a problem, and I’m hoping someone knows of a solution for it. Let me know if you do.
Given a document — whether it’s a Word Doc or an HTML page — I want to right-click on a link and be able to cut-and-paste both the text that’s being linked and the surrounding A HREF HTML code that creates that link. This needs to work with DOC files, DOCX files, web sites. It seems crazy that all I can do is right click on the link and copy the URL. I want to copy the link AND the text that’s underlined to form that link.
I imagine the easiest solution to this is some chunk of Applescript code somewhere, but I’ve never dabbled in that particular form of programming. Has anyone ever seen something like what I’m describing? Help! And thanks.
Here’s a quick look at the band I shot last weekend, squawBrook. (Warning: MySpace link.)
Of course, you need a banner:
99% of the pics so far wind up as black and whites. This one was bright enough to stay in color. I love the way this worked out. The wider angle lens (28mm) worked beautifully here:
More of the band. NoiseNinja did an amazing job here:
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