thisismywww.com
Daniel's corner of the web
Aprils Fool’s
Apr 1st
This blog post is NOT an April Fool’s joke, because it’s not a joke PLUS it’s being posted after midday. This post IS however about an April Fool’s joke I pulled this morning on a work colleague.
Analysing it later, I realised even thought it was put together relatively quickly (in the space of about 15 minutes), how well it was executed. There were a couple of ideas being thrown around between a few people, but all came to the conclusion that he would see straight through them. My idea was what was ultimately used.
The ‘Fool’ is a huge George Michael fan. He flew over to England to see his ‘final’ concert, and recently saw his Sydney concert. Why not tell him he had passed away… thinking more, in the past George has been in the new over drug use, so make that the reason (ie. seems viable). So we were deciding who could walk up and tell him. I know I couldn’t, and neither anyone else here could have done it with a straight face. A throwaway line by someone said ‘unless you could make it a newspaper article’. Instantly I thought of mocking up a news website and replacing the headline with ‘George Michael Dead at 46′ (after quickly looking up Wikipedia to check his age).
I quickly jumped on to news.com.au, took a screen shot from my favourite imaging application, The GIMP, and got to work. I found a picture of George which could be used as an obituary photo, pasted it over the current ‘breaking’ news photo, added the text over the image as the site would look, matched fonts, wrote up quick lead in to the article updated the newest news scroll to include the news and matched all the colour. I was initially going to get someone to send it to him as though someone had taken a screen shot.
Thinking that someone sending a screen show might have been just a little too obvious, I decided to create a quick website. I used the image as a background and made the page title the same as the actual site. I opened it up on his computer (as he was away from his desk at the time) and then overtyped the URL to be http://www.news.com.au (subsequently it’s a site which he visits frequently). Locked his computer and then hoped he got back before Midday… which he did.
As he unlocked his computer, he had Internet Explorer opened like the picture above and his jaw dropped “Oh NOOOOOOO, Oh NOOOOOO” everyone sitting around him were in on the joke and were trying to hide their laughter “I can’t believe it, George Michael is dead”… he reads the lead in I wrote out to everyone in absolute disbelief and saying he was just talking to someone about him. He then proceeds to call this person, she doesn’t believe him “No but it’s on the front page of news.com.au as breaking news, its real”. He finished that conversation and then started walking around the office, telling everyone as he went.
He eventually got around to another colleague who has access to news.com.au. She opened the site and couldn’t see it. The office manager who was in on the joke after he heard about it (after checking with us), quickly covered and said ‘Oh that must be the old one’… subsequently a few seconds later he was told it was an April Fools… who also told him who set it up. Initially I didn’t want to take responsibility for it, but seeing the reaction I wanted to take ALL responsibility for it. When he got back to his desk, all he wanted to know was how I did it.
The ‘Fool’ asked the manager to call up the person he had called to tell her it was an April Fools. As it turns out, she had called an additional 3-5 people and sent upwards of 10 text messages telling people of the ‘news’. It’s truly amazing how fast ‘news’ can travel!
Now, what did I learn from this?
- Choose a subject that is close to the Fools heart
- Make it believable (granted I could have made mine even more believable, however in the short time it worked)
- Don’t make it too unbelievable
- Don’t laugh too loud when you see their reaction
Day 2..3..4 well you get the idea
Mar 15th
Well…. Yes.
I will say that last month did not go as planned. The first few days I had great hopes of recording an album during the month of February but they just dwindled as the week(s)/month went on.
In 1997 I tried doing the RPM Challenge with a few friends (online). I few songs had been written before hand, but we started working on one in particular (which had been written during the month).. that was about as far as we got, recording just that song. Mind you we finished recording the song about a year later. The song deserved the time we put in to it. And I think that’s where I went askew with this year. The first song written / chosen to record is a really good one and you want it to sound GREAT.
Initially I had planned on recording all instruments myself (drums included). However on the first or second night I started to have problems with my Ashton Drum Pads. The plan was to connect them to my computer and using them to ‘trigger’ better sounds in the computer. I don’t know if it was the sensitivity (ie having to bash the ‘crap’ out of the kit to get the right sound), or something else that mean’t the drums just weren’t working for me was a major set back. The irony, what I had tried to record actually sounded pretty good whilst playing live.
After that night I thought I would enlist the help of a drummer who’s helped me out before, and if I could get him a bassist who had also helped me before, but my drummer didn’t appear to be online for the early part of the month, so I just gave up on that idea.
The final thought was an acoustic album. Then came one day of enthuiasm and recording then my motivation died.
So I’ve decided to turn RPM (Recording Project Month) Challenge in to RPY (Recording Project Year) Challenge. Less pressure leading to a higher quality album.
As I record songs I’ll put them up here. So keep and eye / ear out.
Day 1 – WIP – Back Then
Feb 2nd
Writing exercises weren’t as fruitful as I had hoped (only got 1 opportunity on the way home). I’ve got a couple of lines and ideas for songs though from the few words I wrote. Will definately have to work on that.
When I got home I wanted to record something, so I picked up a lyric which I wrote earlier and gave it a rewrite, it’s no longer called ‘If Only’, it’s now ‘Back Then’.
The track is very much a WIP, the drums aren’t right and the organs / lead guitar / bass needs work. I’m almost 1/2 tempted to ask a few friends on a forum I’m on give me a hand cause I think this song could really shine.
Apologies for the mix… Back Then
Get the Flash Player to see the wordTube Media Player.
Lyrics and Music Copyright Daniel Porter 2010
Let me know what you think.
The night before RPM starts
Jan 31st
Well, it’s 31st of January, from midnight RPM Challenge entrants can start to record their album. I had planned on have some material written before now. Aside from the couple of lyrics I wrote recently (published in this blog), I don’t really have anything.
I’m not too sure if I’ll bring a few songs out of the closet from my old lyric books to get my started. I think I might just do a couple of writing exercises tomorrow -morning, lunch and ride home to see if I can come up with something to record tomorrow night.
Althought I do want the first track on the album to be an instrumental… so that might make it a bit easier 
Tonight I set up my ‘studio’ area, got my microphones out, guitars arranged, connected up my sound card and my drum pads and tested everything to make sure it works.
There is a slight hum in my monitors (speakers) but aside from that everything else is ready to Rock’n'Roll!
RPM Challenge
Jan 18th
OK, in my previous post I had a throw away line in regards to my music “write and record an album in February”. Well the only way to get things done (like recording a CD), is to just do it (should I give Nike a trademark to that statement?)
What I was referring to is the The RPM Challenge. The challenge is really simple:
Record an album in 28 days, just because you can.
This page goes in to more depth, such all no previously released material can be used and all recording must be done in February. They do encourage you to write all your songs during February. That part I won’t be following 100% (as it’s only encouragement), cause I know with that time won’t permit. I have a few lyrics which I already have which are either WIP or very close to Finished.
So I’ve signed up – this is me.
So from February 1 expect frequent updates here (and probably on my twitter). I’ll post my WIP recordings and Final versions of songs on here and just the final versions of my songs on RPM’s Site.
There we go! It’s in writing