11-01-10 – Binary Date :D / Boyinaband is Better!

Wow, what a binary-esque date!

This week, I got up to some work-related hi-jinks!

- Released the new boyinaband site!
- …Which involved making all the content
- …and recording a video about me!
- Judged the Hip Hop Composition Competition.
- Recorded some guitar for YAWA with the Axe Fx.
- Came up with some ideas for the first YAWA music video
- Spent 3 days with Rachie and watched “Daybreakers”
- Played 4 player Mario on the Wii for the first time

Release Day!

Yay! After weeks of toiling I’ve finally released the new and improved [Boyinaband.com] site design!

I couldn’t quite get it looking nice in Internet Explorer 7 and below, but I figure anyone still on there and not using Google Chrome or firefox yet should probably switch anyway. So their nerdy friends don’t make fun of them, you understand – I’m only looking out for their credibility.

But yeah, I’m really happy with how much better it looks than the old site. What do you think?

The content

So it’s all up there, some new stories about the history of the site and what I hope to accomplish (I entitled that page “The Dream” since I have a Martin Luther King complex, apparently.)

There are also a bunch of services up there so now hopefully I should be getting in more work to subsidise the site!

The Video

I spent all of Thursday putting together a fun little video for the “About Me” page, since it’s one of the most visited pages on the site and I wanted it to be more interesting!

Check it out:

I’m intending to do videos for all the different sections eventually. It’s fun coming up with interesting ways to display the content!

Hip Hop Composition Competition

Well that was unexpected! Quite a few people have entered and, fortunately, there are some freakin’ sweet tracks amongst the entries. Some weird ones and some more conventional ones. Some hilarious ones and some awesome ones.

I’ll be announcing the winner and runners up tonight, so I’m not going to say anything else yet, but my homeslices Scratch, Shortty-E and Grandmaster K listened through to the entries with me. It’s cool to see how different people interpret the same piece of music!

Axe = <3

My god. The difference! Since I got my Axe Fx I’ve not had much of a chance to play with it, but I made an effect and we got recording – two of YAWA’s songs (Ascension and (not final title) Crunkulon V) now sound like they’ve been not so much played into the computer but more hammered in with the weapon of a Viking god. It’s powerful.

It’s also got some amazingly pretty sounds with it. I’ll be making a bunch of videos for it this week so if you’re interested you’ll be able to see what it sounds like… as well as the surprise I got when I unboxed it!

YAWA Video?!

Zak has been adamant that we need a music video as of late, so we got to the planning – we’re thinking of doing it for Epidemic, but I’m still not sure if Ascension would be a better choice… Though chances are you haven’t heard that one yet so you won’t be able to comment!

I want to make it unconventional – I hate videos that are just the band playing with snazzy camera angles, or spliced-together live footage; there’s no imagination in that whatsoever and it doesn’t hold your attention at all – it may as well be a recorded live performance.

I’m not going to share too many ideas, but I want it to be nice and effects-ridden, with lots of green-screeny goodness.

Vampires are everywhere these days…

I spend this weekend at my close personal friend Rachie’s, during which time we went out to see the film Daybreakers. I really enjoyed it, despite the horrendous amounts of jumpy bits (I am the kind of person that jumped during “The Incredibles” – I seem to jump at sudden things, not necessarily even scary ones), the post-apocalyptic kind of storyline was awesome.

Rachie also introduced me to the Royle Family, which I’ve always thought looked terrible, but watching the first episode I did find myself laughing every now and again – so either I have terrible taste in comedy (Which, considering I can pretty much recite Seasons 1-7 of Friends, is quite possible) or it’s a good show.

How to lose 3 friends in 30 minutes

The 4 player mario game on the Wii is absolutely brilliant. The fun factor is off the chart with all of you desparately scampering to get on the tiny ledges, especially when an “accidental” push off the edge results in it turning into basically a fighting game where the term “Co-op” is used extremely loosely. Seriously fun. That’s an oxymoron, cool – I only just noticed that! Anyway, yeah – if you have a Wii and 3 friends, get it.

Next Week on Dave’s Blog

Well now the site is released it’s time to get started on the content! This week I’ll…

- Make 7 videos on the Axe Fx
- Release the winner of the Hip Hop Composition Competition
- Hopefully see Avatar! (It looks awesome…)
- Have a big group friend hang-out
- Go to Tamworth to hang out with uni friends!
- Get more YAWA stuff recorded
- Storyboard the YAWA video!

Take it easy, geezers! Until next week!