Tom Ray

My band played a show recently. It wasn’t a normal show, it was part of a city wide event called #MakeMusicMadison. An event where, for one day, musicians pop up to play in various public places.

We were asked to play on a porch at someone’s house right off the lake at 8pm. One of the last shows of the day. Seemed like a fun thing to do, no pressure.

As the day arrived and we started setting up on the porch, it started to feel intimidating? Why was this? I looked around and there were maybe thirty or forty people hanging around. Just talking, having a good time.

So why was I suddenly so nervous? I’ve made a fool of myself in front of a much larger audience, with no problem.

Was it because this intimate setting was so close that it was like I was talking to them directly as I performed? I guess if I think about it, it would have been far more devastating to see people walk away from us in this situation.

Walking into it we had the attitude that if we were off that night it wasn’t a huge deal. It was just for fun. But once we got there it seemed far more exposed.

When we finished, that also proved how a setting like this is different. Everyone was very personal. Came right up to us and told us how they liked it. At a larger show I can walk right through the crowd and no one says a thing.

I feel it was good to face a fear like that for such a pay off. Even though going into it we had no idea it would be such a terrifying thing.

A storyboard of mine used in Sound On Sound Magazine

Got an email from Grant Baciocco telling me that a storyboard I made was used in the August 2014 issue of Sound On Sound Magazine.

It’s from a cartoon I had animated for Grant’s podcast series “The Radio Adventures of Dr. Floyd”.

The article isn’t about me. It’s about the use of storyboards for sound and design, they had found my storyboard on Flickr and used it for the article. Still pretty cool.

“you start by acquiring a storyboard of key events (even crude drawings will be useful) and any stills or visual inspiration, such as clips of other movies the animators are using as their own reference. You can probably also get hold of early animatics of the movie (animations that are not properly rendered, or completed visually, but are sequenced chronologically as per the storyboard).”

Pierian the other hand

I will have to go with a good idea

to get in touch with you

And your wife and kids are

going well for the next

week or so to

make sure that you can

get it back

to the the studio

in Oakland CA

and it was just wondering

what your thoughts and ideas

on the other hand

if it doesn’t matter

what the heck

out of town this week

to discuss my background

is in a couple days ago

About 8 years ago this picture was taken.

Back story first: I worked at an ad agency. I shared an office with a guy who’s wife worked at a school. She was involved with a production of “The Wizard of Oz” they were putting on and he made a suit for the tin man.

One day we were going to lunch and that tin man suit was in his car. I saw it, and of course, needed to put it on and dance the robot.

All makes total sense right?

We took a picture, I uploaded it to my Flickr stream. End of story.

Until, eight years later.

I get an email the other day from someone, thanking me for sharing my photo and putting it under creative commons license. There’s also a link attached telling me that they had just used it in an article.

Now, this isn’t out of the ordinary since most of the things I post, like music, pictures and art, I put under the same creative commons license.

It basically tells people they can use what I post, but need to give me credit for doing so. I’ve been able to network and see my stuff used all around the world in interning ways because of this.

Now back to this email…

I was a bit confused why, what seemed to be a news site, would want to use this this photo of all things.

Turns out it was a publication like “The Onion”, more of a satirical news site. The article tells a story of a day when robots rule the work place and a human decides to work among them undetected.

So that’s how that all happened. And truthfully it’s not the strangest thing I’ve been attributed on.

Trying to break free of a cms

So I was thinking about building Jekyll sites since hosting is soo easy with github pages. But how would an author use it?

Then I discovered prose.io

So I’m testing out this post to see if it may bridge the gap for non-developers, who just want a website without having to maintain a CMS. So that’s what this post is. A test.

I already use the MrHyde mobile app to do this on android. I just needed one for the browser.

It even looks like it has a front-matter option in the menu to use. Although it’s called a meta-data editor which was not obvious at first. But it works!

Cool find.