What Brad Did Next

History...can you see it coming? (video)

2009-08-15T13:38:00.001-07:00

So, after messing around for several weeks on this concept videofor Nostradamical.com here's the cut of the 2 minute version. It's based on the concept, 'Were our predictions of past events different to the reality?'

The vimeo version is here:

History...can you see it coming? from Brad Young on Vimeo.

Or check out the YouTube version here.

The video was fun to make, and put together in Adode After Effects. We put some controversial ideas in there but at the same time, based on reality (hey, for a while Adolf Hitler was Germany's 'saviour').

Hope you like it - please post comments and rating at Vimeo and YouTube.

Beach sunrise, Malaysia

2009-06-05T08:05:00.001-07:00

Beach sunrise, originally uploaded by Brad Young.

Sunrise on Pangkor Laut, Malaysia

Curiosity

2009-05-26T14:36:00.001-07:00

Curiosity, originally uploaded by Brad Young.

Taken in Rome, St Peter's Square (well the Vatican).

How Canon are changing everything with digital video

2009-05-15T07:07:00.000-07:00

The Canon 5D Mark II is changing film making. Period.
Anyone seen the demo film produced by the Canon 5D Mark II? It's amazing. Yes I tell you, it truly amazing.

Canon and Nikon have both launched new DSLR models over the last year that now incorporate HD video recording through the SLR lens (Nikon have the D90). This is significant because in a nutshell film makers can now get movie quality results for the fraction of the cost of a professional movie camera (thousands and thousands). Even the recently launched 'RED One' digital movie camera costs around $25,000.

Check out the video here (this is all shot on a Canon SLR with consumer lenses):

It's all about depth of field
Although there are several qualitative differences that distinguish the 'film look' from video, the most significant is depth of field (full overview here). Film camera lenses tend to be very wide in aperture and work well in low light. Low light lenses that are used 'wide open' are characterised by a very narrow depth of field, which not only gives film a different look to video but of course is used as a creative tool in the film making process.

Canon & Nikon have succeeded in bringing video recording to DSLRs that of course make use of high quality SLR lenses are interchangeable, and in doing so have opened up an entirely new avenue of possibilities to amateur film makers (a some not so amateur).

Review of the Canon 5D Mark II SLR: Photography Blog.

Interested in Indie Film Making?
Great overview and resources here at Indie-Film-Making.com. Want to get the most out of your crappy digital home camera? Some tech tips here.

Goodnight Rome

2009-05-11T15:28:00.001-07:00

Goodnight Rome, originally uploaded by Brad Young.

Shot in Rome, of course. It took me several attempts to get the right traffic trails. This was a bus passing by. I got some other shots with the Colosseum more up front but I liked this one.

Lauren's bridesmaids

2009-05-11T06:51:00.001-07:00

Lauren's bridesmaids, originally uploaded by Brad Young.

Photo of Lauren's bridesmaids outside their pink camper van at Lauren & Richard's wedding

Don't you just love slow motion waves?

2009-05-11T05:40:00.000-07:00

I've been looking forward to getting out on the surf this summer (the cold outer reaches of West Wales) and just ran into this HD surfer video from the BBC. Absolutely lovely slow motion filming in HD which makes this surf scene look fantastic (watch in HD).

The promo was for BBC2's South Pacific program. There's a fresh review at The Guardian here.

Everyone's tweeting but no one's listening

2009-05-08T08:45:00.000-07:00

Having been a fan and user of Twitter for several months now both personally and through another statup project for Nostradamical.com I have to say that once you get over say 50 selected people to follow it just turns into a mess of random noise.

Why? Well the problem with Twitter is that everone wants to say something but no one wants to listen. It's like being in a party of A, B and C list celebrities that all have something to sell but as soon as you start talking back there eyes just glaze over and roll back into their heads.

The bottom line with Twitter, as great an enabler as it is, is that one tends to get sucked up by the glory of getting loads of followers. It's all followers, followers, followers, but very little two way conversation. It's a shouting match not a conversation.

The 'hope' of Twitter is that soon (maybe already) someone will create an app to extract real meaning from the noise. But it's not here yet (over on the Nostradamical Blog we posted about 8 social search tools which is worth checking out).

For new tweeters here's some good advice. Over at Skelephant.com here's some interesting thoughts on being more 'socially conscious' when you tweet. So in the meantime...tweet clean, tweet well.

Caye Caulker, Belize

2009-05-07T06:08:00.001-07:00

Caye Caulker, originally uploaded by Brad Young.

Taken off the back of Caye Caulker, Belize. I love that place.

Getting started with Lifetracking

2009-05-07T01:12:00.000-07:00

It's you...in numbers
Wired Magazine's April 2009 story on the rise of 'lifetracking' as the next big thing really took my interest. Lifetracking is about recorded data about your life in order to understand more about yourself in numbers. At the sharp end it's the cold hard objective look at yourself and what you add up to.

I've been checking out some life tracking sites out there with mixed results. The concept is great, the choice good but the appeal is still quite niche.

Measuring 'anything'
First of all there's Daytum. Daytum is a 'home for collecting and communicating your daily data. Begin tracking anything you can count and display the results immediately... or simply explore what other members are recording'.

The design is clean and very functional, as is the site itself. It 'does what it says on the tin', but it lacks the social dimension. As a visitor there isn't much scope to explore other people's activities, which is part of the appeal. Although the interface is clean and I love the moveable 'sticky note' style, it is not that intuitive to understand the different measurement options available.

Then I looked at Zealog, which really brings out the social element with sharing of statistic and adding small 'Twitter style' comments to each item you post. I liked Zealog and found it easy to use. The graphing options were fun and they offer Twitter integration. Good work guys.

Mycrocosm is similar to Zealog and offers a social Twitter style element to logging. However it feels more like an experiment than a full blown app.

Niche life tracking apps
Intesting in knowing the full list of what's out there, from Finance apps (Mint) to to Gym trackers (Gyminee) to sex life monitors (Bedpost), to time tracking (RescueTime)? Check out this post over at Flowingdata.com on 23 personal tools to learn more about yourself.

One of personal favourites was Lifemetric, which is based more around pyschologial metrics like creativity, concentration, mood, etc. This was interesting as it has the social comparitive element. They also offer some nice little widgets to add you current moods, stress, etc, onto your blog or site. Quite interesting.

Check out this blog QuantifiedSelf - some interesting posts and the theory behind lifetracking.

Welcome to the real world
'Auto-logging' functionality is a big bonus. Apps like Last.fm and RescueTime log data automatically as you use the app for some other function like listening to music. I guess any smart app these days should be doing that anyway.

Similarly there are some apps like Nike+, CarChip and Fitbit that use real world widgets that log data as you go about your life, sending it back online later. But you need to remember to bring the widget with you of course! Difficult to see how this could be innovated with other areas of life though (a cup that learns about what you drink?).

Auto-logging of life data is surely the future though.

So, what makes a good lifetracking app?
I think there is real scope here, and a good app has to offer:

The social element - share, view, network, meet like minded people
An element of voyeurism that makes looking at others' stats intriguing
A layer of analysis over the raw stats. So I drink 25 cups of water a day? What does that make me?
Not too techie. Make the statistical side fun and accessible.
Offer multiple and easy ways to log data. This is the boring side of lifetracking. Going online to tell an app I just had another can of coke is not really compelling and any barrier to logging data is a big turn off.
Common units of measure. It's great that I can creat my own unit of measure on some apps (e.g. cups of water) but then I can't compare myself to others, which for me is more interesting. It's not ALL about me.
Auto-logging of life data
Adding a location-aware dimension will make it really interesting
Easy to use, of course
Offer multiple ways to display data - widgets, RSS, etc.
iPhone integration, naturally

Hhhmm, I have the domain Planetometer. I wonder what I'll do with it?

Are you a consulting bitch?

2009-05-06T06:36:00.000-07:00

"A management consultant is a man who knows 101 ways to make love but doesn’t know any women."

Are you a consulting bitch? Do you spend your days producing 'deliverables' and creating 'value'?

I really laughed at the 2 posts over at The Examiner on how the big 4 consulting firms are working analysts and consultants into the ground on the promise of promotion and a 'great career'...ah that age old corporate promise.

Their piece on 'deliverables' is great and will echo with anyone that's ever spent countless hours producing meaningless deliverables for clients.

The Examiner talks about how Big 4 employees represent the last form of slavery. Hilarious. If you are interested, join the Facebook group 'I'm a Consulting Bitch' or 'Big 4 Accounting Chicks are Hot, Don't Abuse Them'.

Some more consulting jokes here.

Keep on delivering.

Yammer vs. Twitter (they've got different problems)

2009-05-05T06:50:00.000-07:00

I've been using Yammer now for a few weeks as part of my company's collaboration toolset (large global IT consulting company) . Being a an avid fan of Twitter, here's what I found:

What is Yammer?
Yammer is like Twitter for private networks in companies (Twitter for the Enterprise). User are resticted to a company-specific network based on their e-mail address. From a startup point of view ReadWriteWeb has a fairly scathing write up here. They won the top TechCrunch50 Award in 2008.

I notice Yammer have been nominated for CNET's 2009 Webware Award.

Stuff I like:

The guy that updates Yammer for every little thing (e.g. 'In a conference call'). This would be moderately interesting if you were Oprah Winfrey but otherwise no-one cares.
The fact that Yammer restricts you to your company by your e-mail address is a simple but powerful idea. It is instant security (I hope) and when you login you just get your company's view of Yammer, as if it was your own intranet app. It feels like a natural extension of your company's intranet. This part of the model is interesting and could be reused across many apps.
Easy and fun to setup groups and invite people in. The groups are fun and users can add work related groups of groups of their own. They can also restrict groups by invitation for an extra layer of privacy (e.g. client specific groups).
It's a good way to build a network of people based on what they appear to be working on (the Twitter concept really) and their updates.

Stuff I don't like:

Weirdly as there is no restriction on word limit like Twitter's 140 characters, Yammer is more 'grown up' in that you can write more e-mail-like updates. However this removes the poetic quality of Twitter updates which is part of the appeal of following and updating strangers
When you invite users to a group that have not signed up yet to Yammer, the service still e-mails them when you send an update to that group. So users get spammed with updates they didn't want because they haven't even signed up to Yammer yet. I found this out the hard way.
You receive regular 'Yammer Network updates' showing recent activity. A nice idea to glance at what is going on and check out any relevant updates.
I would like to see the Groups feature expanded. E.g. how about if a superuser models the organisation's own org structure in groups so users can't rapidly fill Yammer with every small group they can think of?

Considerations:

The most interesting thing about the Yammer concept vs. Twitter is that in a company there is a tendency to follow more senior people because they are more senior and you want to get up their ass (I guess). So there is a naturally imposed culture of hierarchy on Yammer that is the equivalent of the Britneys and Obamas on Twitter.

Secondly the fact that I am participating in a company network with my real name kind of imposes a layer of seriousness. This makes it not as random and fun as Twitter. So there needs to be more 'real' value in Yammer to help me with my job somehow.

I think sharing ideas and information in minute chunks if native to the Twitteratti but for everyone else in a company this is a new concept and takes a type-change in work style to understand why they would bother.

Lastly I see Yammer as a great tool for senior managers and executives wanting to connect with the minions, by publishing their updates and answering the question, 'what do those senior guys do all day?'. But again, 'old school' management will want to maintain that layer of privacy and mystery.

Lastly there's the age-old 'network dilemna' - the Yammer network is only of real value when the majority of people in the enterprise are using it. And for this to happen in a large company it needs endorsement from central IT management. I presume the folks at Yammer are working hard at the board room level to move into their customers' extended IT portfolio...good luck.

50 Great Lessons on Graphic Design Theory

2009-05-02T12:34:00.000-07:00

Just came across this great link on 50 great and free lessons on graphic design theory. It's over at PsdTuts+ which is a great designer's resource.

If you are like me, and not a trained designer, you will always be looking for new tips on colour, typography and layouts. There's some great stuff, particularly around typography.

I also recommend this post on the use of white space in design, which I am really loving these day. Check it out over at Desizn Tech.

10 Useful resources for iPhone developers

2009-04-29T01:30:00.000-07:00

So I've starting looking into iPhone development, coming from a background in Ruby on Rails, Flash and a little PHP.

Have a look at the best apps and undersand why they are popular: A Look At Some Of The Best iPhone Apps Of 2008. Check out what is hot and rising at Appism.
Understand what is being rejected by the app store and why: Rejected! 10 iPhone Apps That Didn't Make Apple's App Store . See this story on AppStore rejects that got their apps into Android.
Think outside the box. Understand how the iPhone is working with other devices: iPhone apps that foretell the future.
Think about devices combos: iPhone + computer , iPhone + home automation, iPhone + video, iPhone + on-demand media, iPhone + gaming
Understand iPhone app usage behaviour. Nice post here at Mobile Orchard on usage behaviour.
Read the latest stories, most popular posts and other useful nuggets over at Digg.
Understand some of the iPhone's weaknesses (see comments).
Understand what other developers are adding to their wishlist of features - it will help to understand where people are heading with new functionality. See iPhoneWishbook.
Pricing: Check out this interesting post on iPhone app pricing. Basically the jump from FREE to $0.99 obviously reduces popularity, but the jump from $0.99 updwards doesn't have such a reducing effect. An interesting study in retail pricing?
Get started at the iPhone Dev Centre. Check out the getting started guides, including some useful videos.

Any other useful 'get started' links? Please let me know. Good luck!

I'm getting started in iPhone development

2009-04-28T02:11:00.000-07:00

Having been a fledgling Rails developer for 3 years now I'm taking the plunge into the iPhone app world. Clearly everyone's at it. With the announcement that Hulu will launch their own iphone app shortly how long before the BBC launch their own iPlayer app?

The app store has hit 1 billion downloads. Everyone's loving it. Time to jump on the bandwagon too. Woohoo!

So I'm heading to the Apple Developer's Wiki to get started. And I'm studying what apps didn't make it to the app store and were rejected.

Painting the sky for charity

2009-04-27T08:20:00.000-07:00

Took part in a charity day in a community centre near Canary Wharf (East London) on Friday. Had a great time. We used a design downloaded from iStockPhoto to plan out a mural design on one of the walls and like good little IT consultants we planned a proportional grid to transpose the design. You can take the consultant out of the office...but er...you can't take the office out of the consultant (?)...

Full photo set here.

The ultimate Twitter tool?

2009-04-27T04:59:00.000-07:00

I'm really interested in how businesses are trying new ways to extract value from Twitter. Salesforce.com recently announced the 'Service Cloud' which extracts meaningful customer data from the cloud of social network updates out there.

I also found some useful info at this post from Social Media Today with some useful tools to get more meaning from Twitter. In particular Twist has some value. If you see Twitter as being tweets are being the raw material for information gathering, I still think there is some work to be done to get to some deeper analysis of how people are communicating and the age old question of 'what's on their mind?'.

Take typically what are the most popular terms at Twist today as I write this:

sunday (23 hours ago)
flu (19 hours ago)
week (5 hours ago)
swine (19 hours ago)
swine flu (19 hours ago)
bulls (15 hours ago)
monday (3 hours ago)
had a (1 day ago)
kimkardashian (11 hours ago)
race (23 hours ago)

Look at this list. I can probably establish that Swine Flu is popular, but hey that's a popular story in the mainstream news anyway. Big deal. The rest...So 'Sunday' and 'Monday' are popular. That's because today is Monday so no doubt people are Tweeting about 'oh no it's Monday', or the like. How much insight am I really getting from this?

If I were a business wanting to get value from Twitter, the top questions I would ask are:

- Who is Tweeting about us?
- What is it in relation to?
- Who is this person and what was the context of their interaction with our company?
- What is the nature of the comment (e.g. positive, negative, question, suggestion)?
- How can we respond to this person?

Anyone got a Twitter tool that helps to support this yet?

Storm on the horizon, Caye Caulker

2009-04-26T14:45:00.001-07:00

Storm on the horizon, Caye Caulker, originally uploaded by Brad Young.

Taken on Caye Caulker, Belize. A lucky moment with the perfect cloud base rolling in on an otherwise sunny lovely day.

Reach for the sky

2009-04-23T11:13:00.001-07:00

Reach for the sky, originally uploaded by Brad Young.

Lovely sunrise on the Greek island of Folegandros.

Working on a follow up film for Nostradamical

2009-04-23T07:40:00.001-07:00

I'm currently designing a follow up promo movie for Nostradamical.com. The first video was based around 100 years of technology predictions with the idea that if you could have predicted what was going to happen next in the tech world you would of course use Nostradamical.com!

The next movie is more ambitious and based around political events of the last century, with some fun stuff in there around Bill Clinton, The Space Race, etc. I'll post all the links to the included picks when done. Meanwhile check out the existing video here:

Baking

2009-04-23T06:56:00.001-07:00

Baking, originally uploaded by Brad Young.

Shot in Rome - St Peter's Square. When things get too hot, take a load off, no matter where you are...

Anatomy of a film theme

2009-04-23T05:21:00.000-07:00

Introduction:

What makes a great and memorable film theme? Thinking about some of the great themes of the last 40 years like Star Wars, Mission Impossible, The Great Escape, Dirty Harry and Jaws I started putting down some cohesive ideas of the anatomy of a great film theme from the perspective of a modern musician.

Firstly, I’ll outline the key ‘examples’ I’ll be working with, and why I love these film themes so much. Then I’ll be discussing the key elements that make these themes memorable, lasting and great pieces of music in themselves.

What can we learn from ‘themeology’?

Generally speaking most musicians and producers want to creative solid, memorable and lasting music. Whether creating a niche skate-rock crossover track or a blockbuster piece of plastic pop, we’re trying to create something that reaches out to the listener, grabs you and stays with you.

With this in mind film themes can teach us a lot. Thinking back over the last 40 years, what are the pieces of music that most stay with you? Great films and their themes time and time again capture key moments of populare culture and history.

For example, the James Bond theme was one of the first usages of a recurring theme across a franchise of films that started in the 60s. Later in the 70s, the rise of hard hitting action movies like Dirty Harry, Shaft and Bullitt brought with them some great themes that reflected the solid central characters at the heart of their stories and simultaneously captured the sound and look of the decade.

From a musical point of view, a film theme can be a great piece of pop music, with a catchy tune that means instant chart success. The way lead lines are introduced and expanded through a theme tune can teach us much about writing lead lines and harmonies into our own compositions.

Key Themes:

So, for the purposes of this post let’s select some great themes to base out our discussion on. Personally these are themes that I grew up knowing and loving. This is a list I have compiled that admittedly is driven by personal taste for these films and the composers behind them.

1960s:

The James Bond Theme, John Barry & Monty Norman
The Ipcress File, John Barry
Mission Impossible Theme, Lalo Schiffrin
Good The Bad And The Ugly, Sergio Leone
Lawrence of Arabia, Maurice Jarre

1970s:

The Dirty Harry Theme, Lalo Schiffrin
The Theme from Shaft, Isaac Hayes
Enter the Dragon, Lalo Schiffrin
Star Wars, John Williams
Superman, John Williams
Rocky Balboa, Various
Jaws, John Williams
The Pink Panther, Henry Mancini

1980s onwards:

Bladerunner, Vengalis
Indiana Jones Theme, John Williams
Chariots of Fire, Vengalis
Batman Begins Theme, Hans Zimmer & James Newton Howard
Beverly Hills Cop Theme, Harold Faltermeyer

How have themes changed over time?

After reviewing the list above, an obvious question is, ‘How have film themes evolved over time?’, or even, ‘how have the movies themes of today evolved from those 40 years ago?’. This is indeed an interesting subject and one worthy of an entirely separate discussion as for me it is closely linked to the evolution of film itself. This is something I intend to cover in a later post.

However let’s just say that as film over the last 40 years has evolved to become increasingly complex, subtle and refined as an art, so too have the soundtracks that accompany them. The heros of today are complex characters with subtle characters that often do not fall easily into the traditional categories of ‘good’ and ‘bad’. So too are their accompanying musical themes, which are often subtle and understated. Look for example at Gladiator and Batman Begins - recent films with strong but complex central characters that display a range of character traits throughout the movie. Their soundtracks in turn reflect this rich tapestry of emotion and character.

Anatomy of a great theme

1. Simplicity & Melody

Above all, and probably the most obvious element is to have a simple, impactful and melodic musical theme that is essentially ‘catchy’ and easily reproducible across a variety of instruments and sounds.

The acid test of any good ‘tune’ is essentially ‘can you play it on the piano?’. This is one reason why good song writers write on the piano, because good songs and pieces of music can be boiled down to strong chord progressions and lead lines. Think of the Mission Impossible Theme for example. The first few notes are almost instantly recognisable and are easy to play on virtually any instrument (”bum, bum…bum, bum…bum, bum…bum, bum!”).

This of course is nothing new, but a good theme can be simplified and introduced and blended into a number of different musical contexts withÂ instant recognition. A good example of this is the James Bond Theme that is subtly woven into the soundtrack throughout all the Bond movies. Some times the theme is full blown and ‘in your face’ as Bond saves the day yet again, and more interestingly it appears as a subtleÂ ’calling card’ for Bond’s character, often woven into the main soundtrack.

2. Harmony & Enhancement

The second common trait across these themes is that they all naturally compliment and enhance the story or character of the movie they were composed for. This may sound obvious but remember the composer’s main task is to add a dimension to the movie that ehances the story whilst hopefully capturing and defining an extra layer of meaning. Generally speaking themes are built around characters and not so much the films they are in. The soundtrack can introduce feelings and moods that are not directly conveyed in the visuals and at the same time can enhance other aspects of the story to become larger than life.

For example the boldness of John Williams’ Star Wars theme brings an epic feeling of drama and heroism through the sheer volume and scale of the orchestration. However think now of the Imperial March from The Empire Strikes Back and this brings on an immediate feeling of foreboding and threat that signifies the malevolent Empire. My point here is that a good theme really echoes the character it was designed for - good, bad, heroic or tragic (think Jaws - the character is not even human). Interestingly as movie characters become richer and more complex so do their themes - and this I think explains why many movie themes are more understated and subtle these days.

3. Credibility & Realism

This is something a little more abstract. I think many good themes ’sound’ like they are a credible part of the character’s world. I am speaking in terms of the sound and instrumentation of the track itself. Think of the opening of Shaft as Richard Roundtree walks the streets of 70s Harlem and the slick Theme jangles in the background. The music feels almost like it could be playing from a stereo on the street or coming from a live band in a local bar. Some of this is due to the ‘in sound’ at the time and some of it is very intentional - it feels credible and real.

Take another example. The Great Escape Theme almost has the feel of an official piece of music being played by a military band (with a cheeky British twist of course). This blends seamlessly with the substance of the film itself and again feels credible and real for the wartime setting.

4. Boldness & Scale

Related to the earlier point of contextual relevance, a good theme has a feel of epic boldness that is usually a reflection of the movie itself. This does not mean to say though that the sound itself is epic and bold. Musically the sound could be quite understated. Think of the Pink Panther Theme - its swagger and style is quite different to large orchestration of Star Wars but both make bold musical statements about their characters.

However in the main soundtracks tend to upscale the impact of the movie. They bring a further enhancement to the story and visual treatment. Try watching Gladiator without the soundtrack and the experience is quite limp. But look at how the Lawrence of Arabia theme is introduced as the main character enters the desert and the epic sweeping desert landscape is enhanced by the bold theme. At this point both sound and vision come together perfectly to define a historic moment in cinema.

A more recent favourite of mine is the Batman Begins soundtrack and in particular the recurring string theme which is deliciously dark and moody. The music is more mood than up front lead theme but it accompanies Bruce Wayne’s transformation to Batman throughout the film and grows increasingly grand as his ‘power’ strengthens towards the end. This is truly great stuff.

5. Flexibility & Adaptability

Lastly, and building on the elements above a good theme is flexible and adaptable so that the key element of melody can be reused, reinvented and reinterpreted many times over - both within the movie saga or franchise, or outside it in other contexts. Think how the main Star Wars theme appears originally in the glorious opening bars of the soundtrack and then later over a minor chord progression to signify low points or sad moments in the story line. The lead line is the same but in a different mood - subtle yet powerful.

Think of how many times the Mission Impossible Theme has been reinvented - each time building on the original track and remaining true to its routes. Again, this is a powerful composition that has so much flexibility in it. Think how powerful this concept would be in the hands of a song writer or pop producer?

Conclusion

In this post I have tried to open up some of the common elements of good film themes from the perspective of both musician and the producer. Whilst I am a big lover of ‘themeology’ (see John Barry’s Soundtrack Collection) as a listener and movie fan, it also fascinates me in terms of composition and the way it can influence my own musical ramblings.

We have seen how the key elements of a good theme range from the memorable catchiness of pop music to having the flexibility and adaptability to be applied in many different musical contexts. However in general a good theme is both true to its film character and brings a rich dimension to the movie itself. These elements of emotion and boldness run directly into the world of modern music - whether it is epic rock or funky pop.

Take a look at Film Score Monthly which is a good site for more details. I also love http://www.filmschoolrejects.com/. Hopefully this will provide some guidance and spark some ideas the next time you sit down to write a song or piece of music. Good luck!

Isn't technology great?

2009-04-23T01:10:00.000-07:00

Hi folks, after getting frustrated with having various social networking accounts and media creations spread across the web I've setup a new blog at http://www.whatbraddidnext.com/ to pull together some of the photography, video, web development and idea mongering I've been doing over the last few years.

I've used my Friendfeed to pull together feeds from my YouTube page, my Delicious page, my Flickr page, my Facebook profile, my LinkedIn profile, my Digg profile and of course my latest project at Nostradamical.com and the Nostradamical Blog.

I've also added in my Twitter feed at http://www.twitter.com/WhatBradDidNext.

Lastly used the wonderful Yahoo Pipes to tie together some feeds and filter to avoid an endless Twitter - Friendfeed loop. Love it.

So, here it is, a real time status based blog. Hope you enjoy it.

PS. I am also planning to tie in my Blip.fm profile for real time playlist updates. Don't you just love RSS?

Oliver in the first 24 hrs

2009-04-22T10:54:00.001-07:00

Oliver in the first 24 hrs, originally uploaded by Brad Young.

Oliver in the first 24hrs. Bless!