Enjoying the vision
At work yesterday we launched the very first Chinese-language poker client. eCardroom.cn or 牌艺馆 (pronouced ”pái yì guân”) in Chinese, is the first poker site to offer both the website and the games in Chinese.
It is SO cool to be working with smart, motivated people who understand how the world works.
If I could expand my social circle, find a band, visit t-dot once a month and find somewhere that serves a good north american-style breakfast, life here in Stockholm would be great. Oh, and a motorcycle would be nice, too. :)
Earth, as seen by Google, is very, very cool
I just installed
GoogleEarth and have been playing with it. I am rather impressed by the interface, the bells AND the whistles. But most of all I LOVE the content: satellite scans of the entire Earth for my browsing pleasure - and I can go from space to street level in an instant.
I was able to zoom in on places I love, places I've been, places I've wanted to go, and even where I am right now (in my apartment on Blekholmstorget). This is an image of downtown Stockholm which shows my current Home & Work locations:
Being able to zoom in from the whole-earth view all the way down to a clear view of my apartment's roof was an interesting lesson in context. It's like the largest macro view of a Where's Waldo game that you've ever seen.
It is unlike any map that I've ever experienced (not just seen), and it DEFINITELY puts perspective on things.
The Googleites, of course, have smartly integrated local search and you can easily see restaurants (in North American cities, though not European yet) and other commercial business locations using simple toggle boxes.
While some of the folks on the Crackhouse list berate Google for not supporting Macs at launch, they are "working on it" and I'm confident they'll deliver.
I wonder who will be the first to sponsor GoogleEarth in a way that their locations are always visible from the space perspective (like a giant beacon) to try and get people to zoom-in. Maybe a Vegas casino or a desperate Ford dealership?
Regardless of the business model for this, once again, Google has blown me away. I strongly agree with Brad Hill that Earth is Google's best product so far.
Also, check out Google Earth Siteseeing - Top Ten Sites.
Hanging with the boys in London
I've booked tickets to London for next weekend to hang, chillax and enjoy some bevies with Marty &
Liam. It'll be good to be with some friends for a few days...
I'm flying BA this time, but I expect most of my future European journies will be through discount airline
RyanAir. Flights with them are insanely inexpensive, especially from my Canadian-minded perspective.
A few examples:
- Stockholm to Riga, Latvia: 74SEK each way ($12 CDN)
- Stockholm to London, England: 149SEK each way ($25 CDN)
- Stockholm to Milan, Italy: 349SEK each way ($55 CDN)
- Stockholm to Barcelona, Spain: 399SEK each way ($63 CDN)
- Stockholm to Paris, France: 40SEK each way ($6 CDN)
Crazy, eh? Of course, these flights are neither from or to major airports and will require buses on all ends of transit. But that's okay with me. I think I'll start planning my end-of-summer tour.
:)
Would you rather be dead or undead? Discuss.
Maybe trying to meet people in Stockholm has made me more comfortable with the living dead, or maybe Zombies are just in fashion this year, but this whole mysteriously-reanimated living thing trend has recently become just a little cliche...
Sure, Shaun of the Dead was quirky-funny (though a pale comparison to the timeless classic Dead Alive), and 2002 was legendary for both 28 Days Later and Resident Evil (hey, it's my blog. I liked it. AND I'm a Milla Jovovich fan.), but I was SO disappointed with the remake of Dawn of the Dead last year that I practically gave up on the genre.
Though the liturgy has occassional pleasant surprises like Die you Zombie Bastards!!! and supportive fans devoted enough to create great sites like Zombie Pinups, the only really great and fresh Zombie content I've seen in a long time is Robert DenBleyker excellent series of Joe Zombie flash movies.
Filmmakers keep retelling the same old stories about people dying and reanimating, then coming out to kill other people who then reanimate, etc. And the concentric circles expand frenetically, accelerating, threatening to get out of control... until we're all saved at the last minute by some enterprising... yeah. you know the tale as well as I.
If you want scary, think about what's going to happen when the armies of Zombie PCs are finally unleashed. Holy Internet brownout, Batman!
My friends Mitch and Samantha both recently appeared in Zombie movies (Land of the Dead and Graveyard Alive respectively), and they said their experiences were fun and exciting. I'll reserve my own opinion until I see them.
What genuinely captured my interest today, however, was an announcement from the scientific community that sounded like it might have been a product placement for the new George Romero movie (yes, the same one Mitch is in).
According to the almost-unbelievable news, researchers are now creating ZOMBIE HOUNDS in laboratories. Yes, really.
This is a clip from today's GMSV (Good Morning Silicon Valley) newsletter:
In a series of nightmarish experiments straight out of a horror flick, scientists at a leading university have killed dozens of dogs — then brought them back to life. The hapless pooches, who have their blood drained for up to three hours, are being reanimated in a bid to develop the use of suspended animation to help humans who are injured in combat or crime.
Developed by scientists at the university's Safar Center for Resuscitation Research, this reanimation technique requires the animals to be put down and their veins emptied of blood. Scientists then refill them with a chilled saline solution that preserves their tissues and organs. For three hours, the animals are left in this state, clinically dead, but well-preserved. Then their blood is returned to their veins and the scientists resurrect them with a dose of pure oxygen and shock to the heart.
Its creators insist it is humane and say it could revolutionize the way the medical world handles trauma patients. "This is an attempt to buy a little time for people who would otherwise just die," Dr. Patrick Kochanek, director of research center, told the New York Post. "We are suggesting that the alternative to this is death."
So is Dr. Kochanek suggesting that the alternative to permanent death is temporary death? I've always thought of death as a binary absolute (pending Zombiesque reanimation), and now it appears that there is a grey area.
When this particular kind of medical science finally reaches the point where it can be applied to "trauma patients ... who would otherwise just die," will the reanimated patients be classified as zombies? Will hospital cafeterias start serving fresh brains? Or will they be dried-out brains (made for astronaut zombies) where they just add water?
I've successfully avoided sweetbreads and pan-fried calves' brains for my adult life, but I wonder: do brains taste best cold or hot? Or maybe they are best served with some fava beans and a nice ciante? Does anyone actually know?
Perhaps, at the crux of it all, is the question to ask yourself when pondering the end of life as you know it: Would you rather be dead or undead? And why?
Congratulations Esthero!
Congratulations to
esthero on the release of her new album
Wikked Lil' Grrrls today. It's been an incredible 374 weeks since her last full-length offering. 7 years, 2 months. A long wait to be sure, but well worth it!
I pre-ordered the album from Amazon.ca a few months ago and won't get to hear the final version until I'm back in T-dot mid-July, but I'm very, very, very excited and happy for her. Proud, too, if that counts. It took a LOT to get here.
I've been listening to tracks from the album for a looooong time. I think she recorded about 40 songs for her
follow-up album over the years and everything I heard was fantastic, but she was (and always will be) a meticulous perfectionist, especially where it concerns her art. It's uplifting and inspiring to know that some people always insist on getting it right.
The tour kicks off on July 2 in Seattle and runs at least through the month (that's what's been confirmed so far).
Jay (her bro and my bud) is going on the road with her as a tech, but will also be playing some guitar. I'm sure ALL the shows are going to be brilliant, especially considering the calibre of the incredible band she's touring with. All the players have mad chops and I look forward to hearing how they set the US of A on fire with their rolling thunder.
All the tour dates have been announced, but details are changing. Check her sites for the official 411. Unfortuntely, I won't be able to catch any of the North American dates, but I'll be there for all the European shows (and I'll help sell-out the Stockholm gig).
If you're an esthero fan (or open to becoming one), check out
NearlyCivilized.com for the good stuff and
esthero.net for the official label version. Make sure to
buy the album (and her back-catalogue), and call your local radio and TV stations with requests to get the singles into rotation.
Here's to the coming global conquest!
Credit: The pic above was designed by Winnipeg Rob
Contemplation
It's 3:30AM and the sun just came up over Stockholm. I'm tired, and I wish I was sleeping.
The curtain on my hotel window should be ashamed of itself for letting in all this sunlight.
I wonder how I'll feel when there are only 5 1/2 hours of daylight in the wintertime.
Speaking in Montreal and Chillaxing with The Flink
I'm in Montreal for
GIGSE, the Global Interactive Gaming Summit & Exposition. I've been invited to speak about
Developing a Marketing Strategy and have what I feel is a fairly decent presentation ready. There were originally going to be three speakers filling an hour and the other two have since cancelled so it's now just a moderator and myself.
I'm going to present a case study of the work I did for
Check n Raise Poker.com, but I'll approach it from a methodology perspective which stresses the importance of extensively testing creative, measuring results and constantly monitoring ROI. Rather than just standing on the podium, waving my arms and saying "Look at me! Look at me!" I will attempt to actually communicate some valuable information to a group of companies that are infamously bad at producing good creative or making intelligent media buys. Flip through Card Player magazine sometime and check out how
bad most of the ads are...
it's astonishing, especially considering the rate card!
After the case study, I will segue into how building and maintaining competitive, robust and scalable proprietary technology can be a monumental - and risky - distraction for small- and mid-size companies that want to build successful online gaming properties. That, of course, will cleverly lead into information about the services my
new employer has available for these companies and I'll keep the sales pitch for that very short and concise (only 2 slides from my 36-slide PowerPoint).
Here's hoping it goes well...
In the meantime, I'm here hanging out with
TheFlink in her palatial St. Henri living room. We're both casually blogging away in the uncomfortably thick, humid and sticky Montreal ick and listening to her favourite indie-pop. She's
SO different from me in an incredibly number of ways and it's always fascinating talking to her about life, politics, philosophy, art and gender.
She has an interesting, though completely ridiculous
perspective on my visit. And no, I didn't cry when she took the fan away. :)
BTW, here's a pic of her & I:
Also, from earlier today at the Palais des Congres Convention Centre, here's a pic of an incredibly cool house of cards:
This evening, we're going to grab some drinks and hopefully make our way towards The Main for some smoked meat sandwiches. :)
A surprise gig @ NXNE for The RLB
Once again, fortune smiled on the Russell Leon Band.At about 5:32PM yesterday,
Jay called from the annual (and infamous) EMI rooftop patio to say that Yvonne Matsell needed a band to play a
NXNE festival showcase at the
Silver Dollar at 10PM that night. Evidently
Whiteboy Slim (AKA Maurice Richard Libby) was stopped at the border and had just called. Yvonne wanted a replacement
ASAP.
Could we (a band with about 7-9 members depending on the day) get mobilized to play a gig in less than 4.5 hours? No problem.
I confirmed Russell right away, and Larry was also good to go. Keith was available, but Ansgar wasn't. And I don't know what Dan's story was. Brian was on the road to Montreal and couldn't make it (though he briefly contemplated turning around at Kingston and coming back to T-dot for the show).
The four of us got to the club around 9:15 and hit the stage right after 10. We proceeded to
rock out to a crowd of disappointed Whiteboy Slim fans who were quickly converted to RLB fans. As well, a few friends came out after some last-minute promotion and that was cool to see.
We played the usual set of blended Rock, Funk, Ska, Reggae, Folk, Celtic, Latin, Klezmer and Pop songs and they all went over really well.
The Silver Dollar was one of the few rooms in the city I had never played, and I liked the vibe, acoustics and energy in the room. The soundman did an excellent job and the monitors were great, particularly in respect to Keith's sax levels and Russell's vocals. Of course, there was also LOTS of bass. :)
This is me with my favourite stage shirt (courtesy of my sister Su) and my Warwick thumb bass. I think I'm trying to pull-off a Pete Townshend-style move during the down-tempo part of Scenester here, but I can't remember for sure.
The first time the RLB played a festival gig was at CMW on February 28, 2003, and that was also a surprise gig. I had scored the band some festival passes and we all
coincidentally happened to converge at the same club (Holy Joe's) at the same time for the same gig (I can't remember the band's name anymore).
The band that we all showed up to see had cancelled or just not shown up (perhaps due to border crossing problems), and the singer of the band that was supposed to go on afterwards was a friend of Russell's. The stage manager was pressuring that band to go on early so there wasn't an hour of dead air during the festival, but the singer had invited lots of media and biz peeps and he insisted they wouldn't start early and risk the opportunity cost. As the argument started getting heated, we offered to save the day by just filling-in for the no-show band.
Thanks to a combination of charm, good fortune and the graceful way a gifted pint can grease the wheels with even a hard-hearted stage manager, we got to play that night for a packed house.
It was SOOOOO much fun. I had been playing with the RLB for only 3 months or so at that point and it was my second or third performance with them. It was definitely my personal best of that set, and the first time since playing with FRUST that I got to feel the rush of playing a GREAT high-energy set for an enthused audience.
That surprise gig at CMW was special for other reasons, too:- FRUST had applied to play a CMW showcase twice (1994 & 1995) and we didn't get in.
- As a student at Ryerson's Journalism School (1995 & 1996), I covered the festival for the EyeOpener student newspaper.
- In 1997, a year after FRUST broke up, Tim Drodge and I were running the boutique Internet production company Humungous Productions and Canadian Music Week was one of our first clients. I spent a lot of time working with Neil Dixon on their web strategy and learned much about business practices of personality-driven companies from him.
- I was the CMW webmaster for almost four years (1997-2000).
- I spoke at two of their events (1998 & 1999) about the future of digital music and guerrilla web marketing for musicians.
- I launched KickInTheHead.com at CMW in 1998 and had a booth at the trade show in 1999 & 2000 (there are some great pics somewhere of Noah & I hanging out at the booth)
- In 1998, Jay's Tomorrow The World was THE buzz band of the festival and I got to experience his ride from an extreme close-up perspective.
- In 2001, I brokered the deal that brought Sympatico.ca to CMW as title sponsor
I attended the festival, conference and trade show in a wide variety of capacities for almost ten years, but never as a musician. So when I finally got to do that, even just thanks to a random series of coincidental events, it was exhilarating. I didn't actually realize the significance of it at the time, but hindsight points out how cool it really was.
The RLB played the festival in 2003 (Holy Joe's), 2004 (The Black Bull) and 2005 (The Cameron House). Each of the gigs were great, but this year's was definitely the best.
I'm really going to miss playing with the band. In a big, big way.
I'm also sure I'll write more about my RLB experience in about a month's time, as the lead up to our next gig (and likely my last with the band) is coming up.
And on that note...
The Next Gig from the Russell Leon Band
Saturday, July 16 at 11PM @ The Reverb (SE corner of Queen & Bathurst in Toronto) – Likely my last show with the Russell Leon Band. Most of you have never seen us play, and we really do actually rock. We’re a 7-piece (sometimes 9) blended Rock / Funk / Ska / Reggae / Folk / Celtic / Latin / Klezmer and Pop-influenced band that sounds sort of like a cross between The Police and Spirit of the West on a hot summer night. Many music industry insiders are regularly astonished to learn that we aren’t selling millions of records and playing stadiums.
It’ll be your last chance to see lovely me rock out with these amazing musicians, and it might be THE concert of your summer. So mark it in your calendars and tell all of your friends.
The next chapter: Moving to Stockholm
My life's next chapter starts in a few weeks.
On June 18, I will be relocating from Toronto to Stockholm, Sweden, to start a new job - directing the development of a global poker network. My new employer has developed what I believe to be the world’s best online poker software and licenses their technology to other companies seeking to enter the online gaming industry. Players on each of the licensees’ sites interact on a common network (like P2P), allowing for a critical mass of concurrent users at any time - which is the most formidable barrier to entry for new companies.
I chose this particular gig over the others I was looking at because I believe that the ASP (Application Service Provider) model is the only reasonable long-term approach that will be successful for both developers and operators in this market. After having had an incredible opportunity to kick the tires at a number of premiere and mid-level online gaming websites - and having a year's perspective on what is involved in actually building, maintaining and improving proprietary poker software - I recognized that the only way to play this game was to go big or go home.
If I'm going to work in the online gaming industry, then it is going to be for a juggernaut, a company that's smart enough, resourceful enough, and tough enough to do it right.
I think I chose well, and I look forward to finding out if I'm right about that.
Deciding to move to Europe was predicated on other things, too. While my life in Toronto is incredible, sophisticated, beautiful and warm, my feet have been itchy for far too long and I definitely need a fresh sense of perspective. Change is good, and I need some of it.
I will be selling my house and my car (anybody want a ’96 Mazda MX3 Precidia?), reducing the volume of my earthly possessions, and getting ready to live a life less ordinary for a little while.
I’m excited about living in Sweden (though the winters sound daunting) and enjoying my new family there, and also about hanging out with Marty in London, going to Amsterdam/ Berlin/ Prague/ Paris/ Jerusalem/ Tallin for weekends, and about getting exposed to some different cultural life. And let us not forget the herring... :)
Of course, I'll miss my friend in T-dot, my family, my band, my house, my motorcycle, my bass amp, knowing where all the great restaurants are, knowing how to get around traffic in rush hour, having friends to chillax with 24/7, poker games at Farf's house, getting silly and discussing marketing strategy foolishness with Noah, Dim Sum in Chinatown, Martial Arts classes with Master Kim & Joe, hanging out with G-Love, watching my friends' kids grow up, swimming in my parents' pool, mom's cooking, Kensington Market, post-gig field trips, drinking cheap pints at squirrelys, the wasabi mayo at Shanghai Cowgirl, the patio at La Hacienda, smoked meat at Wolfie's, standing on stage amid the blessings of my musical compatriots and being downright humbled by the awesomeness of solos from Ansgar, Keith, Dan & Brian, my CD collection, my blue floors, having a car, sushi at Fune, pasta at Banfi, Canadian micro-brewed beers, having a crew, having best friends with incredibly deep connections and histories, and much more...
I start work in Stockholm on Monday, June 20, but will be back in Toronto for a few weeks in July to wrap-up my affairs. There's a Russell Leon Band gig on July 16 (details to be posted momentarily) and a BBQ at my parents' house the following weekend (e-mail me for details).
This should be a very interesting year.
Hitting the wall with Blogger.com
Wow, that was FAST. I've been using
Blogger.com for all of three days and I've already realized that there's no way its technology will extend far enough to suit my needs. It's a fantastic low-level community publishing tool, but I don't want to write my own patches or build functionality which is basic in other applications.
I want easy categorization for posts, multiple XML feed formats (blogger only offers Atom) and trackback integration. Is that so much to ask for? :) I'd gladly pay a nominal rate to blogger for making a more-advanced tool commercially available, but I definitely see the mass appeal of having something exactly like this...
Now I need to decide whether to go with
Moveable Type or
WordPress (both of which I've implemented for bloggers in the past) or if I should do some research into what else is available. I like those two applications because they are on the cutting-edge of sophisticated blogging tools and have enough users to sustain long-term development. I would hate to invest a lot of time and energy into a platform that is either no longer maintained or that *I* have to maintain myself.
Of course, going with a CFMX-based tool like Ray Camden's
BlogCFC or one from Sean Corfield's
list would be great because I
could easily maintain and/or extend it myself, but I'm not in the mood to join an open source development project at the moment. During the last year, I seem to have developed a mild allergy to proprietary software maintained by small groups of developers. Regardless of the price at the time, such things
always end up being way too expensive...
And I have enough
neglected projects to consider at the moment. So I'll pick something mainstream where other people stay up at night worrying about how to fix bugs, and just make sure to apply their patches whenever they come out. C'est cool? C'est very cool.
Also... I've had another thought. I might use Blogger.com for a community-based blog for
KiTH, as they
seem to have good multiple-user options (though there's no workflow processes that I can see). I could set-up a few of the Type-A musicians who use it every day, and let them blog about Canadian Music to their hearts' content. Or maybe a wiki? Something to ponder, for sure...
Update: Thanks to John for pointing me to
BlogCFM, an actual open-source, CFML-based blog application. Who woulda thunk it? I'm actually embarrassed to say that I didn't even know there
was an open-source CFMX community. It turns out they even have
CFOpen.org as a repository for their projects.
Shwarma and the 9-1-1 Disconnect
I had shwarma for lunch today with an old friend and colleague, who I worked with at Sympatico-Lycos Inc. (SLI) during the dot-com (
back in the day). She’s a fantastic person with a great deal of inner strength, warmth and charm, and our lunches – about one every other year – are small blessings.
She was a great friend to have during that very challenging time, when I was a young Director in one of Bell’s Byzantine divisions and she was a pleasantly-jaded product manager. I remember the sympathy she showed when I tried to affect change in a fractured landscape riddled with landmines, red tape and unpleasant surprises. We never talked about it at the time, but later reflections and conversations illustrated her complete understanding.
I won’t get deep into the debacles, quagmires and political power struggles that were the day-to-day at SLI, but note that its foundation was an ill-conceived joint-venture where the utopian vision of a technical masterpiece was forced into implementation by executive management without sufficient technical due diligence or business planning. If someone had actually spent a few days kicking tires, it would have been another JV Monster dead-in-the-water before it had time to rise from the mire like a vengeful Swamp Thing dedicated to tormenting the little people. Sigh…
She received a buy-out package during the massive layoffs that followed the February, 2001 bubble burst and spent a few years dallying at new media companies. But she wanted more than that – to do something meaningful and fulfilling with her professional life. And what she found was an opportunity to become a dispatcher for 9-1-1.
She’s been telling me about this high-pressure, high-satisfaction job for years now and I am always fascinated by stories of the astonishing calls she takes. She’s helped people (who she refers to as “catchers”) deliver babies when ambulances couldn’t arrive in time, and she’s stayed on the phone with suicidal people who have cut themselves and suddenly developed the desire to stay alive.
By keeping her composure under intense pressure, she’s been able to get vital details from people who are out-of-their-mind and on the brink of death – saving their lives in the process. Conversely, there are times when people call 9-1-1 in a panic from their cell phone, say “send an ambulance quick” and then hang up – and end up
FUBAR’d because 9-1-1 has no idea where they are.
And that’s what leads us to the point of this entry – how unnecessarily difficult it is to get location information from people who call 9-1-1 when processes should be in place to make communicating this data instant and transparent to the caller.
This isn’t about the very well-documented failure of VOIP systems to integrate with the 9-1-1 system (see last May’s
An Update on Consumer VOIP warning article for more on that), but about how we’re all being exposed to an outrageous risk by systems which haven’t properly been integrated. And, frankly, it’s ridiculous.
In Canada, wireless carriers can locate an active handset (phone) either through sophisticated triangulation from nearby cell towers or an automatic location system that uses Global Positioning System (GPS) chips. This “Enhanced 9-1-1 Wireless Location Service” is something that ALL of us pay for every month on our cell phone bills (Telus charges me $0.50 a month for this) and that none of us gets any possible insurance or value from. This is because 9-1-1 call centers have no technology that allows them to read this data.
That’s right…
We pay a monthly fee to our wireless service providers so they can transmit data to 9-1-1 which 9-1-1 can’t receive.Sigh… Sometimes I long for a paradigm shift where intelligent planning actually occurs in a reality that places value on systems interoperability and scalability. Dare to dream…
In Canada, the
Canadian Wireless Telecommunications Association has their act together. As an industry body, they have been developing policy, standards and technology for a wireless
Enhanced 9-1-1 Service for almost seven years. There’s some really good information on their site (including a history of meeting minutes), and I appreciate how all the telcos and governments appear to have been playing together nicely in order to theoretically save our lives in case of an emergency.
Now we just need to push a few buttons to connect the loose wires over the final bureaucratic disconnect. I think I’ll write an article about this for
NOW, and tie-together the VOIP and Wireless 9-1-1 issues. I know lots of people who don’t have home phones anymore, and these points need to be hammered home in the minds of consumers and policy makers.
Ok… enough rant. This was supposed to be a summary about lunch chat, and not the rough draft of an article. I’ll just finish-off with some tips to remember when calling 9-1-1 from a wireless (or VOIP) phone:
- Give the operator your phone number including the area code, so they can call you back if you’re disconnected.
- Tell the operator your location or the location of the emergency.
- Indicate what the emergency is.
- Stay on the line with the operator; you are not being billed for the airtime.
- Do not hang up until the operator advises you to do so. After hanging up, leave your wireless phone turned on in case the operator must call you back.
Just a final thought on this... If I'm paying $0.50 a month for E911 from Telus, and every other mobile phone subscriber in Canada is also doing this (I'll take conservative guesses that 25% of us have mobile phones and that there are 7.5M handsets in circulation), then where is that $45M/year going? Some big black hole somewhere? Or are we just padding the telco's bottom lines due to a CRTC mandate that these fees be collected, even though there are no systems in place to receive the data? Sigh...
I'm thinking that this really does need to be looked into & written up.
Additional reading:
Psst: Traditional 911 Doesn't Always Work, Either
Cellphone companies pick up the call for help
Calling for help
Telus on E911
Fido on E911
Just in case of emergencies
A call to arms for Esthero's Pink Pirate Army
My great friend j's little sister (who I've known since she was "this tall") is the chanteuse esthero, and her new album is being released in about four weeks. I participate in the SwallowMe e-mail discussion list about her art and career, and posted this today:The moment we've all been waiting for is fast approaching. Miss e's
Wikked Lil' Grrrls comes out on June 28 and, at long, long last, we'll have more tunes to seduce the lovelies to.
Anyway, this isn't about my "technique" so much as it is about my desire to ensure a consistent flow of art and inspiration over time from our very own
Li'l Dukes Up for the betterment of the world. Therefore, I put forth a call to arms for the Pink Pirate army to get the word out about the release.
Of course, the label is going to be doing a huge marketing push and there's going to be a video for all of us to request, but that isn't enough for us to reach a critical mass of awareness about the blessing that is esthero. We need everyone to know about the new album and get their pre-sales orders in.
Rather than a long-simmering pot of goodness that boils slowly with great anticipation and much pooling saliva (
Heaven Sent), let's help make this meal (
Wikked Lil' Grrrls) an explosion of climactic magnitude.
All the orders that go in early (to amazon.com and other online retailers) count as first-day sales. If we can get enough people to pre-order and buy it in stores on June 28, then our SwallowMe collective and our concentric networks will be the catalyst that reacts with esthero's lethal groove and causes the explosion (or "ignites the revolution" if you prefer that metaphor). If we can get this album "on the chart" on opening day, then a LOT of people will stand up and take notice. And that success will build on itself until she becomes powerful like Galadriel when Frodo offered up the ring of his own free will:
"And now at last it comes. You will give me the Ring freely! In place of the Dark Lord you will set up a Queen. And I shall not be dark, but beautiful and terrible as the Morning and the Night! Fair as the Sea and the Sun and the Snow upon the Mountain! Dreadful as the Storm and the Lightning! Stronger than the foundations of the earth. All shall love me and despair!"
Sorry for the tangent. It just seemed appropriate, except for the despair part. :)
Anyway...
If you're going to buy copies for your friends, family, mailmen, teachers, girlfriends, or anyone else, then do it NOW.
It's NOT too early to do your Christmas shopping.
Also, if you have a website or blog, mention the album and release date, and about how some songs from the album are available for our listening pleasure on
http://www.esthero.net now. In fact, add it to the signature in your e-mails, announce it to your co-workers and classmates, tattoo it on your forehead and scrawl it on buses, windows and elevators with big, thick black markers.
Hmmm... Maybe I shouldn't have so much coffee in the mornings? Or maybe I'm just excited.
That's it for my rant for today.
Cheers.
Jeffrey
PS - I just added a link to the album from all the templates on
http://www.kickinthehead.com
