Steve Jobs in Heaven

SHSU Walkaround Portfolio

As we were walking around the Sam Houston State campus for Homecoming this past weekend, we started noticing things that I had designed for the school. Most of them were Sammy Bearkat art, but others were logos, as well. So I started snapping photos of the things that I saw. This is my legacy, and I'm proud of it.

An Artist a Day: 9

Today's artist is Willie Nelson.

'Nuff said.

Quite Possibly the Best Steve Jobs Story Ever

From Plucky Tree (via Daring Fireball):

Steve was heading towards a car parked next to the curb with its door open, waiting for him. The car was idling. A family was standing near the Apple sign outside the building, a common site for people to take photos on their pilgrimages to Apple. 

The father turned to Steve as he passed close by and asked, "Excuse me, sir, would you mind taking our photo?"

Steve paused for a moment as an iPhone was extended to him, realizing that they didn't seem to know who he was. With a hint of enthusiasm, he said "Sure!" as he took the iPhone into his hands.
Steve took a great deal of care composing the photo, backing up a few steps several times, tapping the iPhone screen to lock focus, then said "Smile!" as he snapped the photo, grinning a little bit himself to encourage the family to follow suit.

He handed back the iPhone and they said "Thank you, sir" as Steve stepped into his car, closed the door, and was driven away. The family looked at the photo that Steve had taken and all agreed that it looked great. Then the iPhone was pocketed and they were on their way.

I Made a Man Cry

The new issue of Texas Highways magazine arrived yesterday, and I was surprised to open the cover and see  - on page one - a shot of the Bastrop State Park Wildfire that I shot back at the beginning of September.

But what surprised me even more was the first sentence of the editor's column that accompanied the image:

"It's extremely rare that photographs bring tears to my eyes.  But as I scrolled through James Pharaon's images from the fire-devastated Bastrop State Park, my immediate and unscripted response caused the images to go out of focus."

That's right.  I made a man cry using only my camera.  And not by hitting him with it, either.

I joke, but this is a very proud day in my life.  It's the first time I've ever had any of my photographs used in a magazine.  I haven't gotten any phone calls from Laurence Parent yet asking to be my understudy, but  I'll try to keep the line open, just in case.

Because It's What I Want

Kids and liberals today.  Sheesh.



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An Artist a Day: 8

Today's artist is Metallica.

Metallica is one of those bands that runs hot and cold with me.  I like some of their music, but some of it I find just noisy and uninspired.  But the stuff of theirs that is good is really, really good.  In my opinion, that's the music that I own.  The black album.  S&M.  Most of Garage, Inc.  Unlike the Metallica uber-fan, I'm not a fan of their early work.  It seems immature and half-baked to me.  Their later stuff just sounds more mature and stronger to me.  Less raw, sure, but stronger.

My experience with Metallica began in middle school.  The stoners and the kids I couldn't stand to be around were the Metallica fans, so naturally I wanted nothing to do with the band.  Then, in 1991 Metallica, also known as "the black album"came out.  The first time I heard it, I was playing sand volleyball (as I did a lot in the summer before my senior year) and it was simply awesome.  But I didn't buy the album.  It was Metallica, after all.  I liked it, though.  "Enter Sandman" was on that album.  And "One."  The album was legendary.

And that was it until 1999.  That's when I heard the Metallica version of "Turn the Page" on the radio one day.  I was really into a heavier rock sound at the time and so I bought Metallica's Garage, Inc. CD.  It was a collection of cover songs, which made the purchase less risky for me.  But I soon became addicted to Metallica's growly sound on other songs, such as "No Leaf Clover" and "Fuel" from the same album.  "Whiskey in the Jar" became a staple in my music rotation almost nonstop for a long time.  Then the theme to Mission: Impossible 2 came out and I was even further hooked.  I ended up buying the black album and Load.

And then came S&M.  Metallica put out a double album of a live show with the San Francisco symphony that was both beautiful and haunting; both moody and hard-rocking.  It was (and still is) simply great to listen to.

And then that was it again.  The band lineup changed and Metallica just seemed to fall apart and fade from the radar. In the mean time, my musical tastes changed, as well, from rock to more alternative.  By the time Metallica resurfaced in 2003 I was a father and had more important things on my mind.  That, and the sound of Metallica's new album just didn't grab me.  The same is true of their subsequent work, as well.

So my Metallica catalog consists primarily of music from a four year period in the band's history, with the exception of Metallica.  It's the Metallica sound that I like.  It may have been their most "commercial" period, which will send any "real" Metallica fan screaming in the other direction, but I'm not claiming to be a Metallica fanboy.  So there.

Playlist: 75 songs; 6.9 hours

Goodbye Blurry Images

From Adobe MAX:

A sneak peek of a new Photoshop plugin that can dramatically unblur a blurry image.  And this after I've spent so much time weeding those blurry shots out of my photo library, too.



Wow.  Just...wow.

click here if you're seeing this on Facebook: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xxjiQoTp864&feature=player_embedded#!

An Artist a Day: 6

Today's artists are R.E.M., Spin Doctors, Big Head Todd and the Monsters, Gin Blossoms and Peter Gabriel.

Today's playlist marks the first playlist that doesn't feature a single artist or band, but instead is a group of artists with a common bond.  In the case of today, that bond is music I was listening to during my senior year in high school (minus some artists that have their own playlists).  The list was originally intended to be an REM list and was born out of the recent breakup of REM.  But it turns out that I don't really have all that much REM music, so I built today's playlist out of the REM album Life's Rich Pageant, which I had on pretty much constant repeat in my car for awhile in the fall of 1992.

1992 was a fun time for me.  It was the beginning of my senior year of high school and a pretty amazing time for me personally.  I had just made it as a varsity spirit leader, I was really expanding as a cartoonist and as an artist and I was working really hard on the school newspaper as both a cartoonist and as a writer.

The Spin Doctors were also a big part of that year's soundtrack.  The Superman-themed title song, "Pocket Full of Kryptonite," got me started listening and I found that I liked the bluesy, funky jams on their debut album, especially "What Time is It?," "Refrigerator Car," and the 12-plus minute jam "Shinbone Alley/Hard to Exist."  For awhile I actually hated the song "Two Princes" because it was on such heavy rotation on the radio stations we had playing at my senior-year place of employment, Foot Locker.

Peter Gabriel is represented on the list because of the album So.  It was already several years old in 1992, but that's when I discovered it.  And I loved the sound, especially "Red Rain" and "We Do What We're Told."  I seem to recall listening to Peter Gabriel a lot on Sundays and in the rain.  I don't know why.

Big Head Todd and the Monsters and Gin Blossoms are both from the spring of 1993.  Big Head Todd's "Broken Hearted Savior" was getting some airplay on the radio, and after a rough breakup with a girl I was dating it just spoke to me for some reason.  I liked Big Head Todd's heavy sound, and even today it sounds timeless.  Maybe it was my lack of disposable income or my changing musical tastes during college, but Sister Sweetly is the only Big Head Todd album I own.

The Gin Blossom's New Miserable Experience is an album that I started listening to some time around spring break of my senior year and carried me into my first semester in college.  I remember driving around Huntsville listening to "Hey Jealousy" and "Allison Road."  I loved that there was what seemed to be every kind of music on that album, from rock to pop to blues to country.  It was perfect for the time in my life when I was struggling to figure out who and what I wanted to be.  It was an album that couldn't really be defined, so it kept me from defining myself by the type of music I was listening to.  And for unknown reasons - and just like Big Head Todd and the Monsters - it's the only album by this band that I own.  And again, I'm not sure why.

Playlist: 85 songs, 5.9 hours

An Artist a Day: 5

Today's artist is another of my all-time favorite groups, Queen.  They may be silly (and down-right corny) at times, but they make up for it in great arrangements, serious rockers and some killer guitars by Brian May (as well as some of the greatest songs of all time).

I remember hearing some Queen songs when I was little in the late '70s and early '80s.  In fact, I remember the kid across the street, Harold, telling me that "We Will Rock You" was R-rated (which made it even more cool).  It isn't, of course, but to a 5-year old who was accustomed to listening more to his parents' Barry Manilow than any real rock, it may as well have been.

My resurgent interest in Queen came in my sophomore year of high school when a girl I dated briefly, Ann Modgling, expressed an interest in them.  A couple of weeks later, Ann was history, but my love of Queen's sound stuck around.

The Queen song "One Vision," which was featured in one of my favorite movies, Iron Eagle is a solid rocker that I kept in my tape player for most of my early driving career.  The hard-driving drums and fast beat were perfect for cranking up and tuning out the Houston traffic.

And then I heard "Killer Queen" and "I Can't Live with You" just as I was headed into the summer of 1991.  That summer brought a trip to church camp in Colorado, a job at Gap Kids in the Galleria and my first out-of-town driving experience to a Boy Scout camping trip in Galveston.  And Queen was a huge part of the sound track for all of those.

And then, for Christmas 1991 I got my first CD player and with it two Queen CDs: News of the World and A Night at the Opera.  I remember long nights sitting at my art table in my room working on one project or another to the slightly confusing sounds of the tongue-in-cheek Queen.  Part of their attraction for me was that I never could tell if they were serious or not.  And I guess that's what kept me hooked.

Playlist: 66 songs, 4.7 hours

Flailing

From Fox News:

Netflix said Monday it has killed its plans to turn its DVD service into a separate business named "Qwikster." 

Netflix CEO Reed Hastings revealed the news via a blog post, reversing a decision the firm announced via a blog post three weeks ago.

While Netflix had to use some strained logic to explain its decision to split the businesses last month, this one was straightforward -- it was not going to force customers to use two different services to rent DVDs and stream video, because customers hated that idea.

There are two prudent courses of action here:


1. CEO Reed Hastings needs to be fired.  Immediately.  He looks like a buffoon and he's effectively lost all credibility.  His actions have seriously wounded - if not killed - Netflix and caused quite a bit of doubt about the company's long-term viability.


2.  Sell!  Sell!  Sell!!!

Steve Jobs in a Nutshell

From Jason Snell at MacWorld:

Steve Jobs didn’t invent those products singlehandedly in his garage, legends be damned. There are hundreds of brilliant people at Apple who deserve the credit for making the company’s incredibly popular products. But Steve Jobs was the guy who created the environment those products were built in. He’s the one who prodded the people at Apple to make their prototypes better. He made Apple what it is. What the company does from here on out, it does because of him.

Exactly.