The Jack Noodle Journal

Oh yes Monday!
How we love thee Monday.
I would be really tired now if it wasn’t for the fact that I have had quite a bit of coffee already this morning.
It’s not the evil kind of hung over, went to bed at 4 tired that I was suffering from last Monday.
Nope. It’s a feel good, just sleepy morning.

You know, I have a pretty nice job. Sure it’s Monday and nobody wants go to work Monday morning, but once I got here I didn’t mind being here.
I’m kicking back listening to the weekend’s acquired albums, checking my email, sipping on free Stumptown coffee and I’m eating free pastries. I’m relaxed, and the work load is light today.
Not bad at all.

Towards the end of last week I was like, “This sucks, that sucks and the other thing sucks”.
That’s really not the case though. Things are going pretty well now days.

The weekend wrapped up nicely.
Last night the gang was over and we play Star Wars Risk for several hours. I don’t know about that game. It’s heart breaking being a part of the rebel alliance when code 66 is called. Yep. We get fairly competitive with that game. It gets heated. I was really trying to keep myself in check and think I succeeded for the most part.

My major project over the course of the weekend was pruning the holly tree out front. For those of you who haven’t seen this beast, it’s in front and it’s a tangled mass of branches that is taller than our house. I cut that puppy up good. I went up pretty high with the branches and now you can actually see the front of our house. It lets in a bit more light now. We filled the back of Martin’s truck up with debris and took it to the yard debris recycle center (is that what you call it?). When all was said and done 200 pounds of branches were cut off of the holly tree. I’m a tad sore from the manual labor that I am unaccustomed to. My arms are also scratched up raw from the holly leaves. It feels like a sunburn this morning. Yeah, I know I should have worn long sleeves. I didn’t want to get hot though.

Good morning.

Yes, the rumors are true. It is finally Friday. Thank the makers. It didn’t really seem like the week was dragging on and on until about 12:23 PM Thursday. Will this week ever end? Yes my friends, soon.

The band that my handsome friend Martin is in, “We’re From Japan!” will be playing tonight. I am going to try and be in attendance. We’ll see how tired I am by the end of the day. You should try to go as well.

We’re From Japan is one of the bands playing in the PDX Pop Now! extravaganza. I guess there is like 5 or 6 of Portland’s finest playing. This is the event’s 3rd year and I haven’t been yet. It’s at the Loveland and We’re From Japan is going to start playing at around 9:15 PM supposedly. Oh yeah did I mention that admission to PDX Pop Now! is FREE. Can’t beat that.

Looks like someone at Commissioner Gordon’s, Oops I mean Commissioner Adam’s (commissioner Gordon is so fun to say) office thinks PDX Pop Now is the place to be and that the Portland Music scene is hopping.

Thanks to the Willamette Week for pointing me in the right direction in finding where the news was that Portland is the coming next greatest music scene town in the World. I knew I had heard or read or saw someone saying that last year (maybe it’s here actually). When I asked anyone if they had heard or read the article they looked at me with blank stares. I was wondering about the Portland scene a few months ago and was going to write a long post about it. Yeah, maybe later.

Alright, I’m turning my internet off right now. I need to have a solid work day today. I was totally distracted yesterday. I need to focus. I have been feeling listless the last few days. Focus man!

We had a pretty mellow Wednesday night. K and I went and checked out the Cracked Pots art show at the McMenamins Edgefield. It was a pretty decent showing. The Cracked Pots is a show every year where artists bring creations that are made from recycled materials and sell them. Most of it is art that you would put in your yard or garden. Some cool stuff. We don’t have room though in our yard for something like a giant, rusted iron, dragon with a flaming torch bursting out of it’s mouth.

K forgot to bring the bank card so we couldn’t eat at the Edgefield like we were planning. I was getting hungry and feeling dizzy. I was glad when we had seen all of the art and were heading out to go get the card and some food.

When ended up at Holman’s. I had the Donna burger and some onion rings. K had a grilled cheese sandwich and a salad. Quite tasty.

When we got home we watched Spider Man 2. I hadn’t seen it before. I thought it was really good! A tad bit better than the first one. Sure the first one is hard to beat with the whole how he became Spider Man business. They seemed to make 2 even more comic booky if that is possible. I’m excited for Spider Man 3 now. That’s funny because when 2 was in the theaters I just let it slip by without much interest on my part.

You know, actually I haven’t been in a movie theater at all yet this Summer I haven’t seen any of the summer blockbusters. I can’t remember the last movie I saw in a theater. Hmmm. Was it V for Vendetta?

I slept a little bit better last night. It looks like it is starting to get cooler around these parts.
I was SO tired at work yesterday.
Like fools we stayed up late into the evening on Sunday. Actually stayed up early into Monday morning.
Stupid.

I’ve decided to go straight edge. I’m getting too old for this shit. No more drinking alcohol or doing other harmful things to myself.

I have been meaning to write about the next topic for many posts now but haven’t been able to squeeze it in.

Last week we watched the movie “Wicker Man” starring Christopher Lee and Edward Woodward. It is an English movie that was made over in Scotland in 1973. I had kept hearing people in interviews talk about it and how great of a movie it was. I think I remember Rob Zombie talking about how it inspired some of the work on his movies. Yeah, we saw it. At first I thought, “I thought this was supposed to be a horror movie!” Then it begins to get weird and then it gets REALLY weird. It is one strange, creepy, eerie, movie. Be warned though if you do see it, there is lots of melodrama and does have a good dose of cheese. I may have been in the right mood when I saw it and you may be like “What the Hell was Noodle talking about? this blows”. K liked it but would definitely say it’s corny.

So, this last weekend Wicker Man was all I talked about. “Have you seen Wicker Man”, “You know in Wicker Man they did this”, “Where’s Wicker Man?”, “Yeah it’s a great movie but I feel weird recommending it”, “Wicker Man”, “Wicker Man”, blah, blah, blah.

One of the things I had been thinking about Wicker Man was that it really would be one of those movies that would be ripe for a remake. Hollywood loves remaking old movies right? They have really made some bad remakes in the past but if they tried to do a Wicker Man remake it could be really cool I thought. They could have it directed by Mark Romanek or David Fincher, make it a lot more stylized. They could add even more sex and eeriness. Make it more creepy and scary. K’s vote was that Ewan McGregor could be the lead actor, the police man character.

I guess overall I thought that there were some great images and ideas from the original that still had some life and could be expanded upon.
Yeah that would be cool. Maybe I should write up the script and make the remake myself?

Yesterday while trying to stay awake at work, I googled “Wicker Man remake”.
Tah dah!
Someone already made it and it’s coming out September 1st, 2006! Ha ha isn’t that crazy? I swear I never heard that they were making a remake.

I watched the trailer for it. Okay, definately stylized up right, Nicolas Cage is the lead actor, okay, not Ewan… Wait a second, why are the maidens in the field wearing clothes?… No, wait that’s different,… I don’t remember that happening,…
oh yeah that part happened.
Hmmm I don’t know. (that was me watching the trailer)

This guy from the blogosphere sure seems upset about the remake.

Someone somewhere thought my idea about a Wicker Man remake was a good idea and thought of it before me.

Hey there! Are you all staying cool?
There has been a heat wave here in Portland for the last few days. I’m not sure how hot it was yesterday, but Friday it got to 104. That’s hot folks!
It was cooler yesterday. It sure was muggy though, wasn’t it?
They’re saying it might get to 100 today (Sunday).

I have been finding it hard to do anything. Lethargic. I was meaning to get on the computer to write a post yesterday but laid on the couch instead. For a while there I was having trouble staying awake. It hasn’t been totally horrible though. Actually, our 2 days a year of burning hot weather in Oregon is manageable. We have been finding ways to stay fairly cool.

In the evening we went over to Lianne and Martin’s, had dinner, and hung out in their air-conditioned house. It is quite shocking walking into an air-conditioned room from the boiling hot. We were going to see a movie at the St. Johns Pub but they only had two large fans going for air-conditioning so that was out. It would have been way to stuffy we thought.

Yeah, so the Webvisions 2006 conference wrapped up nicely on Friday. I had a great time and got little nuggets of knowledge that I can think about, stew on and develop into bigger ideas and directions for myself. I was going to have a giant break down here of all of the notes I took over the two days, but then I got out into the Sun and my brain got cooked. I was really excited and pumped up after the conference. I’ll try to get some of that excitement back for this morning (now into the afternoon) and have a wrap up of the event so I can move on to other topics.

It looks like there are a few notes that people have left on the Webvisions blog. My friend James has already beat me to the punch with his review. He went to a couple of the sessions that I wanted to check out but couldn’t.

I won’t hit on every talk I went to, just the ones that left more of an impression.
I’m getting all this down so I’ll have a spot to come back to in the future to jog my memory.

I think I already talked about the blogging sessions. Those were pretty interesting. The speakers talked about common sense stuff mostly but having those common sense ideas about blogging organized and given back to you in a professional way was enlightening. Matt Haugheyhad some interesting ideas about generating revenue. He also had some good ideas about generating ideas for posts. Interviewing people, mining the forums for topics, setting up Google Alerts to send you emails with links to your topics of interest.

From the blogging talks I felt pretty good about the journal I have been keeping here. It’s also prodded me into thinking about other things I could be fixing or adding to it.

This year they didn’t talk about Flash as much as they did last year. I don’t think I saw a single person talk about Flash this year. The focus this year was all on Web 2.0. There was some talk about CSS and a bit on Ajax. I really need to build my CSS muscles back up and design more in that direction while I wait for the new version of Flash to come out.

There was a lot of talk about social networking and social sites like Flickr and YouTube. Rashmi Sinha gave a talk on designing for social sharing that I found pretty interesting. She had mentioned some websites that I had heard about before but haven’t checked out at all like World of Warcraft, Second Life and del.icio.us, as well as sites that I had never heard of that are supposedly popular like Digg, LinkedIn, and newsvine. The last few links there are using tag based sharing which was something I didn’t know had a term. I don’t have a huge grasp on what exactly is going on but it makes sense to me. I’ll have to look at some of those sites closer to figure out why they are telling me they are cool.

I found myself wondering what the heck I have been looking at when I surf the net. Perhaps I am not a Web 2.0 surfer?

Woops, I flipped the page on my notes and found a few links I missed:
Dodgeball and
Scuttle.

Rashimi’s presentation worked very well at complimenting the presentation given by Kelly Goto. Goto was a very good presenter. Lots of good ideas. The talk I saw that she gave was “About Interface: Designing for Lifestyle“. She talked about one of the general themes of the conference that others touched on which was ethnographic research. Who are these people that you are making your products for? How can we create something that people will fall in love with and make part of their lifestyle? Goto focused mostly on mobile devices.

Once again I was left wondering about myself. I don’t even have a cellphone yet. Am I getting left behind?
There are some pretty amazing phones out there now.

One of the interesting statistics from the presentation was that US children ages 12 – 18 now spend an average of $42,000 a year! So yes, they are a big target market for mobile companies.

I knew that at least the ticket price of the conference was paid for when I went to the session on “Building Better HTML Emails” by Mark Wyner. This was actually the only thing in the conference that related to anything I have done at my current job at the photo studio. I was tapped to help get a HTML email party invite working for the office. Wyner had some very interesting points and tips that I hadn’t thought of while creating the email invite. So there’s this thing called the CAN SPAM Act? Who knew? I am definately going to keep a link to Wyner’s presentation for the next time I am tapped to make a HTML email for the office.

The heart and soul of the conference (at least for me) came when Hillman Curtis gave his talk. I’m wondering if some of the more techy, nerdy, coder types in the audience were annoyed with the presentation. It was definitely different than all of the other sessions of the convention. I loved it. It was more about being a designer, trying to find inspiration and trying to follow your artistic muse. He showed a number of the videos that he has been making for the web. You should check them all out when you get a chance but for sure check this one. He showed it as he was wrapping up his presentation. I bought his new book “Hillman Curtis on Creating Short Films for the Web”. I can’t wait to dig into it. They had a book signing session and I was going to have him sign it but didn’t.

The main event, final keynote speaker was Jared Spool and his presentation was “The Dawning of the Age of Experience”. It was about looking at how one creates successful experience design. He was an excellent speaker. He talked about the reasons that the Netflix and Apples of the world have had extraordinary success over the past few years and are causing the previous giants like Blockbuster and the 70 year old record companies to scramble. The bits about Netflix were interesting. I had never stopped to analyze what Netflix was doing and why it was so cool.

Okay that is all the typing I can handle for one day.

It was a good conference. I’m sure I’ll go again next year.

I think my keyboard is melting in this heat.
I’ve got to go do some dishes now.

Yep. I am posting now from inside the Oregon Convention Center. It’s a pretty nice space. I found a quiet area sitting on a couch, looking outside. I have my computer with me and am using the conference’s free wifi. We are now on a lunch break. I’m not hungry so I’m hanging out here. I may actually stretch out on this couch and take a nap. I’ll probably go out to lunch tomorrow.

My time at Webvisions 2006 has been pretty entertaining so far. I just got out of my third presentation. I think there’s 3 more after the lunch break and then another full day tomorrow.

There has been a few good nuggets so far. Mostly today I have been hearing people talk about blogs. Why blogs are cool. Why you should have a blog. How you can make money blogging. Business blogs. Getting your blog onto search engines. I have a blog so I am pretty interested in hearing other people’s success stories. Hmmm… Yeah, that whole making money thing. I have never really kept this journal going because I thought it was going to make me money. They did say that Google AdSense was a pretty easy and painless way for a few bucks to come in here and there. I don’t know though, I kind of like the Noodle Journal ad free. I’ll have to do more investigating.

There is some good web learning going on kids!
Maybe I shouldn’t have sectioned myself off to this peaceful corner (curve) of the convention center though. Perhaps I should be passing business cards out and schmoozing?
There are a couple of after conference parties at a few bars this weekend. I don’t know if I’ll go to those. I’m not much of a schmoozer. I should really try harder. I recognize a number of these faces today, and I’d be better off if I could think of a word or two to say. Eh, what are ya gonna do. I do have a job now so schmoozing isn’t a life or death activity anymore.

I’m not sure if the clock on my computer is right. I may have to go to my next lecture. I think the clock is a little fast.
I have had to go to the bathroom all day today! Argh. I have had to pee at the end of each talk. I have a bladder the size of a walnut.

The river on Sunday was refreshing. I actually went swimming for real this time. The water was just right. It wasn’t as freezing cold as the water out past Estacada was a few weeks ago. We would swim awhile, get out, sit in the sun, get hot and then jump back in the river.

It was a pretty good spot. The Sandy river right off of I-84 so it definitely wasn’t secluded. There was a group of loud mouth, drunk, muscle bound, meat heads that were kind of annoying. That is what swimming at the river on a hot day during the summer is like though, right? It wasn’t too crowded.

Laying out in the burning sun for 5 or 6 hours with no shade doesn’t really do it for K and I. We are pasty white and like being that way. K practically bursts into flames after 15 minutes of sun exposure. We had serious sun block on and I wore a hat most of the day. Towards the end of the day I was covering my legs and shoulders with towels.
I think next time we go to the river we’ll only go if there is some shade somewhere.

We did pretty well keeping the sun off of us. I only have one small sunburned patch of skin on my back under my right shoulder. I must have missed just that one spot with the sun block.

It’s supposed to be in the 100s this weekend so maybe we’ll have to go to the river again.

I have got a short week of work this week. Woo hoo!

I am taking Thursday and Friday off. I will be going to the Webvisions 2006 web design convention at the Convention Center on Thursday and Friday. It should be pretty fun. I went to Webvisions 2005 last year and had a good time. You get to look at some cool stuff and hear some good talks. Maybe I’ll pick up a little inspiration. That would be cool.

I am very excited to hear Hillman Curtis speak at the convention. I guess I am kind of a fan. I think the work he does is really interesting and I quite enjoyed his book that I have. Inspirational. I would like to be the kind of designer that imagine Curtis to be. Look at all kinds of stuff, read some magazines, listen to music, hang out, stir up some creativity and make stuff that you think is cool. He would probably say that’s not how it is at all but that’s the way I imagine it and wish it was for myself.

It’s probably too late to get tickets to the convention now. Well, probably not huh? I’m sure they sell tickets at the door also.
If you don’t want to go to the convention though, then you should at least go to the animation festival that they are putting on Thursday night. I’m probably going to go to that also. I think I’ll drag K with me to that.

How’s it going? Going fine here.

I managed to get up fairly early this morning. I’ve had a shower, let the dogs out, shaved and had my glass of Emergen-C. I’m feeling pretty good.

I’ve got my swimsuit on. I’m sitting here waiting for K to get up and get her day going. I heard tale last night of all of the gang going to the river today. I wasn’t really into the idea last night at midnight but now I am pretty excited.
Sitting on the couch in my swimsuit waiting. I wonder if any of those guys are really going to the river. “Oh we were too tired. We drank too much last night”.

It’s supposed to get pretty hot today isn’t it?
I sat in the shade all day yesterday and don’t remember it being too hot.
I think today it will get hot.

I’ll be at the river. Maybe.
If people wake up.
I bet the water is freezing.
No, we are not going to the Willamette. The rumor was that we were going to the Sandy.

I ended up not going to the art show on Friday at Disjecta like I was planning. I couldn’t get my energy or interest up enough to go. I totally should have gone. Going to things takes effort doesn’t it? I wish I wasn’t so lazy and went to more events. Oh well. We went to Holman’s instead. Yeah, that was productive.

I think I am going to go out to the sunshine to wait for someone to take me to the river.

Here comes the weekend kids! Wait for it… wait for it.. NOW!
Hardy har har.

Well, I am thinking about going to Disjecta and seeing the art show there this evening. I have been mentioning that I need to get out to the art shows more often so here’s my chance. We’ll have to see how much energy remains after work. I should probably check with my partner in crime and see what her plans are for Friday night.
Maybe we could turn it into a Disjecta, Doug Fir, one two punch.

This morning I listened to a couple of Joni Mitchell albums. I really like Joni Mitchell! Of the two albums I listened to, “Blue” was my favorite. She really has some great lyrics.

This got me thinking.
I had remembered that I had heard a really great interview, live set on Morning Becomes Eclectic a few years back with Joni. I remembered it being very moving.

I checked the KCRW archives and couldn’t seem to find it. Hmmm. Maybe they didn’t keep it?
Then after looking for a while and trying to find the more recent album that Joni Mitchell would have been promoting, I realized that maybe I was thinking of someone else’s interview. Could it have been Joan Baez? Nope. Maybe Carole King? Nope.
Then after spending too much time sitting here trying to remember who the wonderful singer was, it came to me:
Rickie Lee Jones.

I went back to Morning Becomes Eclectic and found the live session I had remembered. Man oh man is it good. Rickie Lee Jones has an amazing voice. It’s a tad strange sounding isn’t it?

That show was from November 6th, 2003. Does time fly or what? Nearly 3 years ago!
It was interesting in a release of a sad sigh way, to hear Rickie talk about 911, Guantanamo Bay, and the Patriot Act. Now 3 years later and ongoing hindsight to benefit us, where are we? What a mess. Another sad sigh.
Maybe in 3 more years when we look back at THIS post, things will have gotten better?
Here’s hoping!

So yes, while still in the mood, I bought Rickie Lee Jones’ album “The Evening of My Best Day” from iTunes.
It’s really good. With lyrics like “voices of protest rise up”, it’s still pertinent to our current situation but a tad more hopeful than what our 3 years of hindsight have brought so far. My favorite song on the album is “Sailor Song”. It’s quite haunting.

Maybe it’s still good to be hopeful?

Another gray morning here. I guess they are saying that it is supposed to get sunny by the afternoon. That’s good for K because she is having people over for a luncheon today. None for me thanks. I’ll be at work.

The lovely Thom Yorke was on the radio show Fresh Air yesterday. I just listened to it on the web this morning. It is an alright interview. He talked about Radiohead and his new album “The Eraser”. I’m going to have to buy a real copy of that before the week is over. It was interesting to me hearing him talk about some of the processes involved with how they construct their music.

I’m listening to “Kid A” right now. All the Radiohead clips during the interview got me.

Hmmm. Yes experimental art is where it’s at I’m thinking once again. Hearing Yorke talk about playing with different sounds and experimenting with different recording tricks made my mouth water. That sounds like fun.
They get to perform their experimenting and actually get paid for it.

I think for the rest of the day I am going to experiment with my work here at the office. Experimental cubicle work.
Experimental file naming. Experimental apparel catalog photo manipulation.
Experimental internet radio listening.
Oh yes and experimental bus riding on the way home.