Tom Ray

Feels like everything is just all over the place. I’ve been preparing for project I’m doing for weeks. Collecting data from market research, examples, swipe files, the whole bit.

Laid out exactly what we wanted to show could be accomplished. But when it comes time to do it I feel like everything I know, everything I’ve learned is lost. I’m doing what needs to be done and moving forward. It’s just my head I think.

I’ve been preparing, maybe over preparing, and to feel this way seems silly.

Need to write down what happens and what was done to learn from later. Is that just creating more chaos? I hope not.

What I hope is this feeling will breed familiarity. Like looking at a blank screen for first time to write a book. Self doubt & fear of failure are surely what everyone starts with the first time. A callus that needs to be built so you can power through this as time goes on I suspect.

Need to stop blaming disorganization.

You would think it would bring satisfaction, triumph, feeling of achievement. It doesn’t for me. It normally leaves me feeling disbelief.

It’s sudden when it happens. You question, is that really it? Like those V8 commercials where someone thunks your head and you stop confused trying to figure out what just happened.

Spend so much time nurturing and dissecting it to try and make it perfect. Then you set up to do the same thing again one night. You run through it and… there’s nothing left to do.

Last night we finished one that we had been working on for a month. And instead of a cheer, it’s more like, I guess that’s done? You look around to see if anyone has one last thing. No one does.

While that part always seems the let down, the reaction you were expecting comes later. When you look back on the song. When people download and tell you they like it. You listen again and then really feel that you created something.

I started out with blogger many years ago. It was actually how I learned html and CSS. Chipping away at the designs in the pre-built templates.

I still have a few of my sites there. Just don’t want to migrate them. Plus it can handle heavy traffic and no server cost.

The design templates, while very customizable, have not been updated in some time. I know how to build on top of one the way I want, I just wanted to start one fresh.

After a lot of searching and trying different things I have a starting template to share.

Chainsaw is a bare bones Google Blogspot template. It is meant to be a starting point for designing your own blogger theme. It takes a chainsaw to the blogger default template! Get it? (Sigh… I know.)

It comes with only a basic HTML page layout and the blogger code for the post editor and that’s all.

From there you can either build out the html & blogger gadget code around this or just add gadgets from the layout section in blogger. Also write your own CSS in the template editor. None of the starting CSS is there to get in your way.

You can get it from my github repo tmray/Chainsaw

“Image - David Rovics 2013” by Christian Hufgard - Own work. Licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons.

Did an interview with singer/songwriter David Rovics on my podcast this weekend.

He had been on the show twice before and a man that likes to keep active. He always seems to be starting and/or getting ready to launch something every time we talk. Either tour, album or some new artistic project. One thing I know is I learn a new thing from him whenever we talk.

This time, one of the things was just a simple solution to record audio on my phone. When he said it I just felt so dumb for not having realized it myself. I couldn’t get over how much sense it made.

To start, let me explain something. I have been looking for a good free app to record audio on my phone. I need it to automatically backup somewhere so I don’t have to remember where it is later. I was using the SoundCloud app but I filled my free account to capacity.

I’ve tried a couple of other apps but none of them quite did what I want.

Talking with David I asked him about all the singles that he seems to release. Said he records the video on his phone for YouTube channel then uses mp4 file to upload audio to bandcamp. I couldn’t believe how simple.

I was just thinking of video on my phone as video. Single minded. Had not occurred to use it for audio on top of that.

Videos are backed up to my Google drive, Dropbox, YouTube & Amazon cloud. And they are recorded as mp4 which can be used in most audio editing software as a sound file.

I’ve said it before, it just takes one simple idea to open up a whole new world to someone that could use it.

These are all things that have become creepy in my lifetime.

Ice cream trucks were an awesome thing to hear coming growing up. Now if you see one today we all think something’s fishy. Trolling around the neighborhood. What changed in popular culture? Was there a story involved or is it just the concept.

In the case of RVs, for me, it was a story that did it. After Breaking Bad I can’t help but think something illegal is inside that traveling motor home.

Back in high school, friends and I all wanted a van. It could lug tons of band gear. You could get drunk in back and not be seen. One friend eventually got one. Tricked it out with speaker stacks in the back. Party on wheels. It was fantastic.

Then I saw this one the other day and all I could think was, I assumed they were going to kidnap someone.

Do times change the view from stories and examples. Or do things from the past turn into ghost stories and boogymen naturally? Why do some become vintage and nostalgic?