i am khayyam: February 2009

Friday, February 27, 2009

Now your followers are friends. Now what?

A follow up to Jesse Newhart's post on "How To Turn Your Followers Into Friends"

Links from the video that I recommned you view:
Twitter Goes Mainstream | ABC News - Tweet Like a Bird: Your Guide
How To Turn Your Followers Into Friends | JesseNewhart.com

*Music provided by Hot Buttered Soul which can be found below ;)

Tuesday, February 24, 2009

Hot Buttered Soul #14

It's that time again for another ride along the soul train. Yes, this is Hot Buttered Soul and @iamkhayyam.

I go back into the vaults to something I refer to as "Seems Like Old Times". These were my first "mix tapes" if you will. They involved deep emotions and lyrical carpet rides. I got lost in a moment and went back to a time when things were simple and when love had a height.

So, joining me today to help me reminisce are the following smooth singing slingers of rhyme and reason:

The titles are in the flow somewhere and if you listen along then you can play along - the name of the game is Name That Tune! ;)

Till You're Satisfied

I get lifted whenever I feel
all this love I'm giving up.
It reminds me of my boo,
she's the beautiful low rider.

I got the blues about how
outstanding this girl is.

I just couldn't do it. You know,
what a man is supposed to do.
Stop the rain, write of true love
in the stone & make time stand still.

Bottom line through all the
lessons is to enjoy yourself.
The King of sorrow is dead!

And now there's nowhere left to go,
cause you can't hide from yourself.

@iamkhayyam and that was a blast from the past edition of Hot, Buttered Soul.

Some past excursions for your listening pleasure...

Monday, February 23, 2009

Social Retards Dream Big

There were more than 34,000 people from 200 countries that submitted their efforts and wishes to take up a position in the Great Barrier Reef for $150,000 for 6 months.

What I'm speaking of here is the Tourism Queensland's Best Job in the World promotion. Get this, it's a 6 month gig that will land the winner some posh accommodation at the deluxe Hamilton Island Villa.

Job description: Clean the pool, feed the fish, collect the mail and explore the island and report back.

The campaign took off with the viral push from twitter (who are we kidding here, you know it did) and trickled down from there to the point where the site could not handle the traffic and rendered it useless. The overwhelming traffic resulted in more that 2.5 million people going to the site initially. I can't imagine how many they've had now. Probably one of the most successful tourism campaigns of in the history of humankind (did I go too far?). The process for application is to submit a 60 second interview/video that will be shortlisted to 50 by the end of this week. There is also a wildcard based on voting that ends on March 24th.

This weekend alone, over 3000 entries poured in as the cut off date of Feb. 22nd approached.

Admittedly, we are two social retards that are confined to the indoors in the tundra-like and barreness of the cold recesses in northern Canada (Saskatoon, SK). We were sick of the cold and decided in one day (the last day) to shoot and edit. The time difference was 15 hours, which gave us a deadline of 7am and I had less than a few hours to put this together.

I had never used iMovie before but remember playing with it once and making two pictures fade into one another. So I loaded up the videos, imported them, and they didn't show up. I started freaking out. I ran everykind of conversion software there was and re-importing them. #FAIL. Since, Voodoo was already asleep and these were the witching hours, I had to make an executive decision ;) Was one of our other videos approximately 60 seconds? Just upload it in the raw and hope for the best? I could do it...

I ran some 3ivx or Divx codecs, I have no idea what they really do other than sometimes you need and sometimes you don't to watch video. That didn't work. I tried using the camcorder software and it seized up my computer. I just walked away and prayed to something that it would work. I came back and it worked!! The video imported - 4:32am. It was fun looking up tutorials on how to make movies in iMovie just didn't have the time for it. By the way, I commend Apple for providing very comprehensive and useful tutorials in their support section for iMovie ;)

And with 5 minutes remaining on the countdown, I uploaded and submitted the application. I did the same with Voodoo's video as well. We used the same video application since we promote one another and doubled our chances... so we thought. The video file had uploaded and an error came back because the profile pic was in tiff format. So quickly one, twoed a jpg off and hit submit. Problem is is his was delivered past the 11:59pm cutoff. On the island reef job site, it states there are NO EXCEPTIONS with NO DISCUSSION. So I guess that means you up the creek with no paddle.

So, hopefully it made it in before the 11:59pm Australian cut-off and the RIAA doesn't suspend my video because I used copyright materials. They sent me an email and told me that there would be an email in my mailbox this week! Until we get our voting link on the official site, what we can do is present to the jovial application to make for an entertaining motley crue of two that will represent and bring Island life to you.

Please vote us up ★★★★★ on YouTube. Thanks to you!

Here are some outtakes and bloopers during our process to make the video.

Take #1

Take #2

Take #3

Take #4

Take #5

Take #6

Video submissions can be viewed at http://www.islandreefjob.com

Sunday, February 22, 2009

Love me some of that Helvetica

I continually find more and more wonderful typographic treatments in my perusals of the interwebs. Especially since the installment of #typeThurs (formerly known as #typographyThursday) my link pool has grown two-fold.

Graham Smith aka @imjustcreative has another website which is a dedication to all things Helvetica, lovehelvetica.com . And since doing so I think everyone is Helvetica crazy. From special Moleskine editions to coffee mugs. Helvetica is making a comeback! That is if Helvetica had ever gone away which it hasn't, just a little more popular than usual in some realms.

Below is the next level of typographic mashups. For me type had this permanence to it. It's been letter pressed, silk screened or printed and now it comes alive with the accompaniment of a wonderfully timed soundtrack. Here for your viewing pleasure is a dance of one of the classiest cats out there, Mr. Miedenger ;)

Flickermood 2.0 from Sebastian Lange on Vimeo.

Thursday, February 19, 2009

The Hero Factory

I was surfin' along minding my own business, opening up email, sending tweets, when all of a sudden the sounds of an old arcade game that I've played a million times starts playing into the silent surroundings. What is that tune?! And then I realize it's not an old arcade MIDI sound, rather, it's actually a song. I Need A Hero. How fitting ;)

And so I *had* to go in and create what I would want to become as a superhero. There were a lot of options and I'm sure to go back and make some more! Here's what I quickly came up with:

General Flying Condor wouldn't be my first pick, actually my first pick sans wings allowed me to be Afro Man which I should have kept. Oh well, it's bookmarked and I'm sure I'll revisit it once in a while.

I'd suggest a visit yourself. Have a go at it & see what you create ;)

The Hero Factory

Tuesday, February 17, 2009

Hot Buttered Soul #13

Hi! I am Khayyam and this is my set from my radio show Hot Buttered Soul on CFCR 90.5FM. Every other Tuesday from one o'clock until two o'clock (round these parts) I get to close the door on what's out there and put on headphones and listen to what's in here *points to chest and taps a few times softly*

I was asked to define what soul was just before the show. And on my way to the station it stuck in my head. What is soul?! It's a such a wide selection of bass guitar riffs, to melodious voices and rhythm... definitely rhythm. What does that translate in my being? Hmmm... well, the only way I can describe it is it's music for the soul that allows you to feel the music rather that hearing it or listening to it. Feeling it. Yup, that's what it is to me. That music that makes you feel like your heads bobbin' cause your neck knows it's phat.

I was challenged this week as well as inspired for this set. You see, I now belong to this thing called the #hashtagmafia. What is it you ask? Simply put, This Thing Of Ours which is translated from an old Italian nomenclature. I'll leave it be for you to ask the next question ;)

Without further adieu, let me introduce some mellifluous "friends of mine" and if you're part of the #hashtagmafia, then they would be "friends of ours". You've probably heard some of these musicians in your favorite gangster or bad ass movies you've seen. Well, just some of them which are pretty recognizable... but you get the idea. A fusion of soul with a gangster limp:

The titles are in the flow somewhere and if you listen along then you can play along - the name of the game is Name That Tune! ;)

Shake That #Hash

When milk turns out to be
sour, sure enough you're
gonna see the payback.

You know how we do it,
invite all the friends for
a dreadlock holiday & bbq.

So what's with Avi's declaration
to go get people got, bang bang?!

Fool rolling about with his
Peter Gunn hanging out the
back of his tight, white hot pants?!
Crazy Fool.

You need to find him? His
is the radio spot, cross the
tracks past the ghost town on
the right. You can't miss it.

So why did you do it, you
got your money so why'd you have
to go and put the rub out on him?

No one will ever see that fool
again, way down in the hole.