In a strange twist of interweb intrigue, i’ve had an influx of new vistors due to my heartfelt letter to George Lucas making its rounds in web space. Sure, you might expect some friends to get a kick out of it, but i’ve certainly never thought of myself as the type of writer who writes things that get passed around the internet. And yes, I understand that I write things on the internet… but this is just plain odd.

The highlight of this entire process is that someone who linked and quoted the post referred to it as a “Semi-funny letter to George Lucas”. And i’m like… semi? I’m funny enough for you to take time out of your life to read, quote, AND post, but not to warrant a title like, oh, I don’t know, “FUNNY letter to George Lucas”?

I’m an ARTIST, people. I’m sensitive.

Lee McDerment and I will be bringing the singer-songwriter thunder this evening at Anderson College for our good friend Angela’s going away party. She’s making the move to Nashville, and we will rock her senseless to let her know we care.

I finished up a little site for Lee yesterday, but Internet Explorer is still being a jerk and not working right, so i’m not going to tell you where it is. Hopefully all will be well in a few days and it will be unleashed in time to have the MP3s from last night’s gig online for your downloading pleasure.

Tonight. 8:30. Carpenter’s Cellar. Downtown Greenville. Opening for Lee McDerment and his tasty band. I’ll have his site up and running next week… still working out all the bugs and trying to whip IE into submission. Devil browser.

…$12 you’ll spend this week. On any given day, i’d most likely admit to Matthew Curry being my favorite artist and biggest current inspiration. That print is ridiculous. And ridiculously tiny. And beautiful.

I need to ask you a favor. That is, I need to ask some of you a favor. But I want to explain the why before I tell you the what. To those precious few wonderful people in internet land who have links to either this blog or to HRTWRK on your personal pages/blogs/etc… thank you. I love your face for sharing the love and deeming me a worthwhile visit.

In my new endeavor to be full-time designer/photographer guy, i’ve been spending inordinate amounts of time networking, getting my name “out there” and building relationships. In fact, i’ve been spending more time doing that than i’ve actually spent designing or photographing lately. It goes with the territory when you’re in start-up mode and I embrace it gladly, knowing that it’s part of the process of this journey. So the favor, the way that the aforementioned group of you with the links can help me in this endeavor and thereby further solidify your place in my heart (NOT that our relationship is built on works… we’re all about unconditional love, right?) is a simple matter of semantics.

Building a business, especially one of the contracted solo artist variety, includes an odd combination of skill, divine intervention, personal determination, hustle, networking, and good old fashioned luck. Part of the process for me right now is cementing a personal/professional brand that is recognizable to the public. The name is important. So, for you linkers, whether you want to link to the blog or to the main page, I humbly ask that you would change whatever variety of link title you have (anything from “Shua” to the few folks who just won’t let go of “artwrk” or “Your Creativty Dollars At Work”) to a simple, heartfelt, all caps:

HRTWRK

For this favor… I pray you will be blessed immensely. Many thank yous.

…Joseph Llanes‘ photography portfolio. Joseph is Lee Gilmore‘s brother-in-law, which makes him like family anyway; but he’s got some great portraits in his portfolio. I look forward to seeing more work.

It’s 5:00am, I just got back from Columbia, and your movie sucks.

Seriously, it was like the mediocre movie that wouldn’t end. Learn to cut something out. It’s this new process called EDITING. What’s that you say? You did cut things out? Dang. Thanks. My bladder would have most likely hemorrhaged if you hadn’t.

Moving on… light saber duels that last 7 minutes? Not interesting anymore. When it was Darth Maul in Episode 1 it was sort of interesting. When Yoda went all Sonic The Hedgehog on us in Episode 2… that was down right awesome. But when we already know the outcome of the duels in Episode 3 it’s not interesting. What’s that you say? What about General Grievous’ fight scene? Right. How did that go again? “Hey, look at me! I’m a big, coughing mechanical praying mantis! I look like a Robotech reject! Grrr! I’ve got four lightsabers! I mean three lightsa… two… oh, nevermind.” Sorry, you lose.

Abysmal acting. When R2-D2 is less stiff of a character than REAL PEOPLE ARE I think you might have issues. And wretched dialogue like “You’re so beautiful” “That’s only because i’m so in love” “No, it’s because i’m so in love with you” really didn’t help your cause either. What is this, intergalactic love tennis? “You…” “No you…” “No YOU…” It was painful to watch them volley those lines back and forth. I started to hope one of them would die. Oops.

And yet there we all were tonight, nerding out together and sharing in the experience. Nine theaters full of wishful thinkers… hoping that the inevitable suckage wouldn’t occur. Millions of dollars, 20 years of cinematic and graphic advancements, and Revenge of the Sith is all that you can muster?

And so closes a chapter of my life that’s probably summed up best by saying to my parent’s generation, “I think I liked your trilogy better than my trilogy.”

Meh,
Joshua

I’ve started to realize that I post a lot more since i’m my own boss now and the regulations around the HRTWRK office are a bit less strict than most office environments. For example, i’m not wearing pants and i’m listening to Jay-Z. I’m sure you know this (the posting more bit, not the no pants/Jay-Z bit) by now since you’re a faithful reader and you come here four times a day. (Hypothetically). However, since you now get a random onslaught of posting throughout the day instead of the former posting schedule dictated by avoiding the 9-5 hours, I feel the need for some formatting and consistency before things get out of hand. It’s selfish, really.

What I mean is that you’ll see more posts with common titles like “File Under: So Hot Right Now” and “You Should Go Visit…” and “Quite Possibly The Best…” and the always popular “Dear [Victim Of My Wrath, Disdain, and/or Love]” series. It’ll be good for everyone involved.

I really do love you guys for sticking around. Quite the odd community of people we have here… for unknown reasons brought together by my rambling. For all you new folks (and I know you’re there) start weighing in on the comments section if you’re so inclined. That’s where all the action is. Most of the time. Unless you don’t comment. Then there’s no action. Vicious cycle.

It’s Wednesday. This means I go to Ken and Meg‘s house for the weekely feast and watching of Lost. I think we’re going low maintenace and ordering pizza tonight, but whatever the case, it’s always one of the highlights of my week. I love my friends and the consistency that Wednesdays have provided lately has been welcomed since everything else in my life has been in such an odd and often chaotic state of flux.

However, in the midst of the consistency, tonight’s a bit different, too. As soon as Lost ends (in some fashion of annoying cliffhanger suspense) I have to scoot to Greenville to meet other friends to drive to Columbia to meet still yet more friends so that we can catch the midnight showing of Revenge of the Sith and get some closure on this whole Star Wars phase of our lives. And in the midst of all that traveling, I also get two meet two potential clients and talk work. You have to love clients who want to meet after midnight showings of epic movies.

Zombies… so hot right now.

I thought a change of decor might be in order. If you’re a PC person and the site’s doing something you think might be out of the ordinary or inappropriate, think about it for a little while and make sure, then you can email me with your laundry list of concerns. If you’re using Internet Explorer I can’t even look you in the face, so please don’t email me. (C’mon, say it with me… GET FIREFOX).

In semi-related news, blues being the tying theme, you should go grab this week’s free download from iTunes Music Store. Kyle Riabko may be stupidly young… and he may may be hip with the OC kiddie set right now… but he’s also a stupidly good guitar player and he’s soon to be on tour with John Mayer, who’s managed to have killer opening acts every time i’ve seen him for about four years. In the mean time, you can get Do You Right for free. Dang catchy tune… slick guitar parts, too.

You also need to get this Nikka Costa song Till I Get To You which wins the awards for Best Use And Phrasing Of The Word “Freaky” In A Song EVER and Best Channeling Of Prince By A Female Vocalist.

You know you want it. I mean, have you seen the newest commercial? If I wasn’t selling mine, the commercial alone would make me want to buy another one. It’s just THAT COOL. From me to you for the bargain price of $300 with the dock and the oh-so-cute white ear buds and such. Heck, if I like you, I might even be tempted to leave a mix on there to rock your face.

You should download the handy PDF Browser Plugin right now.

I read a lot of online content everyday and some of those articles, especially from business and marketing resources, are available as PDFs. Fine and dandy… PDFs are great. I just don’t like reading them in Preview or Acrobat Reader because it requires me to open another application, which means another open window on my desktop, which means more clutter. When I get cluttered, I get nothing done. PDF Browser lets you view, download, and print online PDFs from within Safari. No clutter. No sapped resources opening another app just to read content. No extra windows.

By the way, in the realm of using one program for as many things as possible, I set jpegs set to open in Safari as the default. Most of the time, i’m just viewing a jpeg, not using it for design, so one viewer (Preview, etc.) is just as good as another. Opening it in Safari, which is ALWAYS open and running, is time and resource saving. HRTWRK is all about thrift. If I need to open the image in another app, I can just right-click and open with that app.

Nerdily Yours,
Joshua

I got some swanky free stickers from my new friend Ryan Katrina via his site Neuarmy. The stickers, the free-ness of the stickers, the site, the work ON the site, and Ryan are all very cool.

…Chuck Anderson and see the updated No Pattern.

Seriously… they’re all Turn-The-World-Upsidedown-ers. Just watch it happen. And I certainly make it a high priority to do my best to help them in those endeavors, in whatever small ways I can. You should help your friends become sucessful. It tells them that you love them. Get started loving your friends into success now.

On that note, there’s an interview with my friend and pastor Perry Noble on Terry Storch‘s site in Terry’s “What’s Working For You?” interview series. As with most things Perry, it’s short, sweet, and to the point.

In other famous friend news, musical genius Lee McDerment and his band will be bringing the r&b funk thunder this Friday in Greenville at Carpenter’s Cellar at 8:30. The last show was standing room only, so i’d get there early to catch a seat… and me opening. Lee might have a dot com soon, if a certain lazy designer will get his stuff together and get it coded. I should take my own advice about loving my friends towards success, shouldn’t I?

It’s 5:15am, the birds are starting to get their chirp on, i’m listening to the Tokyo String Quartet’s painfully restrained version of Barber’s Adagio, and I just finished another photo collage and added it to HRTWRK. Surprisingly enough, i’ll have work I completed for someone other than myself to add soon. I think i’ll go to bed now. While i’m sleeping, most of you will most likely be starting your Tuesday. Make it a good one. Enjoy as much of it as you can. Do something worthwhile.

I love you face. Or, if I don’t, it’s most likely because I don’t know you or you’ve given me a perfectly good reason not to. In such cases, I probably love your face anyway. It’s too much drama to hold grudges.

I shouldn’t type on so little sleep.

…deodorant commerical you’ll ever see.

I’ve been passed the music baton by Keegan Jones. And away we go…

Total volume of music files on my computer: 40.15 GB.

The last CD I bought was:
“Saul Williams” by Saul Williams

Song playing right now:
“Tyrone (Extended Version)” by Erykah Badu

Five songs I listen to a lot, or that mean a lot to me:
1) “Smile” by DJ Sasha
2) “I’m Nowhere and You’re Everything” by Chris Thile
3) “Beg” by Jill Phillips
4) “See You Soon” by Coldplay
5) “Black Capricorn Day” by Jamiroquai

Five people to whom I’m passing the baton:
Casey Pelot
Cameron Daigle
Michaela Forbes
Kory Westerhold
Terry Storch

Rainbows, outer glow, and vertical scrolling portfolios… so hot right now. Danny updates YouAreSoLastYear and tells the world he doesn’t do websites anymore.

I spend a lot of time on IM. It saves me email inbox space on work-related questions, it connects me with new friends I might otherwise never get to know, and saves me some cash on my phone bill. Up until recently, i’ve happily toiled away on Mac’s native iChat, unaware that there might be better options.

Mac-users, say hello to Adium. What sets Adium apart initially is its abilty to connect you to all of your IM contacts no matter if they’re using MSN, iChat, AOL, Yahoo, etc. They call that a “multi-protocol Instant Messaging client” just in case you care about such nomenclature.

I don’t happen to talk regularly with anyone who uses MSN, Yahoo, etc. so the multi-protocol thing doesn’t faze me. What won me over was Adium’s handy features like tabbed chat windows and a completely customizable interface. My favorite little feature is the Safari-specific hyperlink button. Click the button and, if Safari is open, Adium will auto-insert the foremost window’s URL for you. But seriously, let’s get back to the TABBED CHAT WINDOWS. One window open… just one. Amazing. Why hasn’t Apple intergrated this into iChat yet? That’s very surprising.

The only gripe about Adium is its poor file transferring capabilities, but iChat never worked consistently for me in that realm either, so it’s really no loss. However, your first mission will be to change the HIDEOUS, UNFORGIVABLE dock icon and then get rid of the default soundset… unless you like to be lulled into conversation by ducks quacking at you, in which case you’ll be good to go. Quack.

If you want a more detailed run down of the features and a list of what you’ll need to get started, Mike Davidson has a great blog post here that will be a big help.