I was working on an edit in Premiere (5.5), and I had created a little audio track in Garageband to use for the video. I converted it to a WAV just to be on the safe side, imported it and tested it. No problems. Then I dragged it to the timeline and it sounded like it was playing back through Macaulay Culkin’s Talkboy from Home Alone 2 (if you didn’t get that reference, it sounded like slowed down playback). I couldn’t figure it out and after much Googling and getting nowhere, I discovered that all of my audio sounded like that in the timeline. I closed Garageband, and it played back fine. There must have been some audio issue with drivers or who knows what – I don’t care, because now it’s working. I’m posting this just to help others in the future.
How To Make Your App Hated
Remember all those Facebook games people played incessantly? Mafia Wars? Farmville? Countless other Zynga games? The first thing that comes to mind (unless you’re 50+ and you just loooooove playing those games and telling all your friends about it), is how g-damn annoying it is to see your Facebook news feed littered with crap about these games and how someone needs 5 cows or some crap.
The 3-Month Subscription
I was watching an episode of the Totally Rad Show today, and saw another sponsor message for Netflix. I have Netflix already, so the only way that Netflix would apply to me is if I were to gift it. However, there was nothing in the sponsorship message about gift subscriptions, and I honestly thought until this moment that you had to buy a year subscription.
For Valentine’s Day, one of the gifts I got Casey was a 3-month subscription to Birchbox. It was the perfect length: long enough to make it a good gift and make a true trial run, but not so long that Continue reading
Deprecating and the Line In the Sand
We now live in a world (well, I do anyway) where the majority of the APIs that we work with are ever-changing, because that’s the nature of the web. This is a good thing. We get new API methods and features, tweaked and fixed old methods and… deprecated methods? (sad applause). Continue reading
Negroni
Colette Negroni Pattern (for a contemporary men's shirt)
As previously stated, my goal with sewing is to eventually make a men’s shirt. I need to work on my skills, obviously (I still suck at seams but I think that’s mostly due to my laziness with pressing). However, the other problem I ran into was that several patterns for men are very… outdated (i.e. horrendous looking) and I don’t have the skills to modify the pattern heavily to get it more contemporary. Enter the Negroni pattern from Colette. Continue reading
Giggle
Someone today, referring to something I had said, quoted “I heard a giggle…” and it dawned on me that “giggle” might be one of the least masculine words out there. Men chuckle, women giggle. Next time someone says you giggled, picture this:
Now picture James Earl Jones giggling. You can't do it.
Dressing Nicely, On the Cheap
I’ve scoured many men’s style-related blogs, and the one that sticks out the most is Dappered.com. Don’t get me wrong – I love blogs like Esquire, Uncrate, The Effortless Gent, etc. but not all of us have the money to get a $1,400 pair of shoes.
Dappered fills that role showing you some nice, traditional looking options that you can pick up at Amazon, Target, Gap, etc. If you’re not hell-bent on designer labels, and you want to dress a bit sharper but don’t want to break the bank, Dappered can be a great guide. Plus, they frequently post about online and in-store sales that can really make some of the middle-tier options incredibly accessible and affordable.
Sewing, Like a Man
A few years ago I decided that I wanted to learn how to sew. It seemed like a really good skill to have for a variety of things. It basically started when I was watching White Collar and saw Matt Bomer wearing all these vests with notched lapels. To this day I still want one and have yet to find them – a buddy gave me his that needs to be tailored, but that’s the only one I’ve seen. My cousin offered to teach me how to sew on some industrial-grade equipment, but I neglected to take him up on the offer like a fool.
I suppose part of my apprehension was that it seemed… feminine. I’ve learned since then it’s really not. If you take a look at the tailors on Savile Row, you’ll see they’re almost entirely men. About a month ago Continue reading
Square Toed Shoes
I was having a conversation with a friend trying to figure out what to get her boyfriend for a suit & tie event. Shoes came up, and I said “no square toed shoes.” For clarification, they’re just bad taste and generally frowned upon by designers. Esquire helps clarify the issue with their quick blurb and handy image.
Bespoke Suit
This is not me.
Ever since a couple of years ago during the Mad Men craze, I got pretty interested in men’s clothing. And by that I don’t mean Kid Robot t-shirts, but instead well fitting dress clothing. My job, by nature, doesn’t require me to dress up, which I like. But there are times when I need/want to feel pretty. I admit it.
So, I looked into the suit thing. It quickly became apparent that suits were made for models, or off-the-rack suits anyway. Reading through sites like The Art of Manliness will tell you that, as will the numerous other sites you’ll find in your research. Hell, you can just try one on and find that (assuming you’re not a model, though if you were you probably have free suits anyway you lucky son of a bitch). So what’s a guy to do? Continue reading