For the last several days, I’ve been trying to update my blog to use a layout I created. Each time I sat down to work on changing WordPress’ default template (named Kubrick), my brain would seemingly click off and refuse to concentrate. It was as if looking at CSS and PHP was the same as those crazy anime scenes that gave all those kids seisures. Half the time I would just stare blankly at the screen waiting for something to happen. I kept searching for tutorials with the hope that maybe there was some super easy way to do what I wanted and that, somehow, I’d skipped over it the last time I did the same exact search.

Fast forward a few days, several glasses of iced tea, and a lot of research later and here’s my newly updated blog. Of course once I figured out the bigger picture, like using my own header image or using a custom background for the page element only, the little details started to kick my ass…like, how to make that whole header image a link and why that custom page background didn’t seem to be repeating correctly. I found work arounds to most of the problems I encountered.

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Sometimes there are artists and musicians that have a certain intensity and the ability to amaze us with that intensity, even if it’s not necessarily something new and unique. Eva Cassidy was one of those people. She was an amazing singer and musician who passed away before she really had a chance to make it big; she died of melanoma at the age of 33. Fortunately, there were a small number of live shows that were recorded and some studio sessions, that have been released since her passing. In my opinion the best release is the album Songbird.

The album is a series of covers, which can usually be a pretty hit or miss affair, but not in this case. Each song is a showcase of her singing and guitar playing. The album just about covers the litany of musical styles one can think of from standards to modern pop. The songs never sound trite or forced and her voice is soul crushing at times — I mean that in a good way. Check out this audio clip at LastFM of the song “Autumn Leaves.”

Her rendition of “Over the Rainbow” is the best version of the song I’ve ever heard performed; it’s simultaneously haunting and upbeat, that dissonance sets it apart. I’m still blown away that anyone can naturally sound that good without ProTools or vocoders. If you still have doubts, watch this live clip of her perfoming the song:

So if you like bluesy female vocals, with a slight jazz edge to them, check out Eva Cassidy. I don’t think you’ll be disappointed.

Freelance has been good to me and I enjoy it, but things have slowed down to the point that new dust is settling on the old dust. On Friday I had one in person interview and two phone interviews all for full time employment. One of the phone interviews and the face to face were for graphic design positions and the other phone conversation was for a production job. We’ll see how things go. I’m still keeping my eye out for any solid and serious image retouching positions.

The Canon Powershot SD850 has all the features you need in a compact digital camera and it takes great pictures.

I bought this camera to replace a Nikon Coolpix which, unfortunately, was stolen over the holidays. I’m always hesitant to purchase items based on online reviews, but this Canon seemed to have such glowing reviews on every site that I figured I couldn’t go wrong. So far, that’s been true.
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I just spent the last two hours wasting my time trying to install Movable Type. I wanted to give it a try, to see if I preferred it over Word Press and, more generally, just to check it out. I made three different attempts to upload and install the software (20mb unzipped); each try failed for the same reason. The whole process is bloated, the set up and installation is not user friendly for both geeks and non-geeks alike, and the small sampling of online support files Movable Type has available are outdated and flawed, to say the least.

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Since I started my freelance business, I’ve been inundated with a vast array of business offers, credit cards, and various business to business services, all of which arrive weekly per the U.S. Postal Service. I’ve had offers to have “Nick Raimondi Designs” embroidered on sweaters and golf bags for all my employees and for myself, of course. I’ve even had design firms offer to help me with all my graphic design needs, which I’m sure would instill tons of confidence in my clients. I get a kick out of this kind of junk mail, because I’m the furthest thing from their demographic and, usually, the types of products these companies are pushing aren’t products I’m even close to needing.

Today I received a catalog from a company called Uline Shipping Supplies. As usual, I chuckled when I saw the large array of boxes listed on the front and at the strange collection of products inside, as I flipped through it. Later when I picked it back up and started actually looking at the kind of products they actually sell…holy friggin’ crap, this place is amazing. I’m being totally honest.

Anything you could possibly need that’s either shipping, warehouse, storage, food/beverage, office supply, or retail merchandising related, they have.

You need baggies? They got ‘em.

What’s that, you need a variety of rubber gloves to suit different purposes…oh yeah, they’ve got those.

Say, weren’t you just asking about expandable packing foam?? You were? They’ve got it.

Excuse me? Do I know where you can get Chinese food containers? Why, yes I do!

Do I know a place that sells a box cutting knife with a glow in the dark fish skeleton on it?? Actually, I do…seriously.

Like I’ve said before, it doesn’t take much to amaze or amuse me these days, but this place is awesome. I’m pissed that I don’t do more shipping, retailing, and merchandising. This place makes me want to find excuses to buy metallic silver sharpies and scales that not only weigh but also count parts. The fricking scale counts parts, ladies and gents.

I need to figure out how to buy a warehouse.

Being a freelancer can be an amazingly rewarding experience, while being an incredibly stress inducing and mind numbing experience. In addition to juggling clients, being your own IT support and customer service desk, and taking care of those little secondary things like completing projects and finding clients, you have to deal with billing…namely invoices.

I’ve used all sorts of time management and accounting software and from a design standpoint, all of their automated invoices suck. Yep, every single one. The layout of the invoices in those programs are rarely end user friendly: the ability to modify the invoice to match your company’s image and brand, especially fonts, is very limited and, generally speaking, the invoices aren’t nice to look at at all — which sometimes makes the difference between that invoice getting paid in a timely manner or whether it gets forgotten and ignored for weeks. The only real plus in using the invoices provided with software is that the programs do all the nasty calculations for you. Numbers can be evil for those on the arty side of things.

I wanted to find a way to make an invoice that I could customize with graphics, that would allow my choice of fonts, that would do any calculations for me, that could be easily adapted to both billing and quoting, and, most importantly, was as automated as possible.

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This kind of old news, now that it’s almost April, but the first two Metallica albums, Kill ‘em All and Ride the Lightning, are going to be re-released* on vinyl by Mobile Fidelity on April 15th. These releases are meant to celebrate the 25th anniversary of Kill ‘em All…which is just crazy to think about!

These are new half-speed masters from the original analog tapes. What’s even cooler is that the albums will be released in two flavors: a regular 33 1/3 or “the deluxe” version on 180 gram vinyl, mastered at 45 speed. I’m probably going to try and get the 45s, if not both versions.

Additionally, MoFi is releasing Master of Puppets and …And Justice for All (with some bass hopefully!) sometime in June 2008, with the same treatment.

* There was a box set of all the vinyl Metallica albums released a few years ago that featured all the albums from Kill ‘em All through their self-titled “black album,” but apparently these new MoFi releases are newly remastered.

Recently I needed to make a map of driving directions from my house to multiple destinations. I knew that an option on the popular online map sites probably existed, but I’d never looked. I checked MapQuest, but it didn’t seem to have anything close to what I was looking for. Beyond that, it seems that lately MapQuest has been a little on the lacking side when it comes to giving accurate directions. I ended up checking Google Maps and found that they had exactly what I neeeded…and a lot more.

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Good morning,

This is my first post, a test of how this system works and what I can try to do to change things.