Fire-Wired Blog

Today I decided there was no way around it, I had to advertise my distaste for Facebook, on Facebook. I've mentioned in the past my feelings about the king of social networks, but after getting a slew of non-family friend requests I did decided the best way to keep from hurting peoples feelings was to lay it all on the line. Facebook is a HUGE "time suck." Before I laid 300 friends to waste last fall I was just as bad as your average tween, checking my phone every couple hours for what's happening in the socialsphere. I guess it's good for brands, organizations, businesses and what not, but it's not for me. This company wants all your private information and they want to flip it for a buck. I don't want my face showing up in the sidebar ads, I don't care about edgerank, beacon, socially crafted advertising, sketchy t.o.s. and I don't want to give you something without getting something in return -not unless I can interact with you in the rea

If Apple is truly the lion of the computing industry right now, than it seems only fitting that its most recent iteration of OS X is the thorn in its paw. Thanks to less-than-stellar reviews, one going so far as to claim OS X 10.7.3 was " Apple's Vista Moment ," I held out as long as I could to upgrade my MacBook Pro . And if it wasn't for new software requiring the operating albatross, our laptop would be roaming the computer jungle issue free as a graceful snow leopard. Everything I was worried about is true ; Preview windows takes 5+ seconds to buffer files. Finder searches, formally instantaneous, seem to have been refashioned in an homage to Microsoft. Pointless screen animations abound for fullscreens Launchpad and Dashboard continue to be a waste of computing power. Quicktime video playback is choppy. Upon upload, Preferences are rewired for no reason what-so-ever. There's plenty more to list -I could write 500 words on Finder windows alone-

When you start a new job inevitably you get asked what you miss most about your old job.  Easy, writing music for kids. In December of 2009 CRI started producing a show for kids aptly titled "Kids Show." Jon Hoffmann, the shows producer came up with a long list of cool segment ideas, one I threw in the pot was music videos. I teamed up with my coworker A.J. Hodgeman and started working on some song possibilities under the moniker PB & AJ . First we tackled the standard public dominion tunes ( Old MacDonald , ABCs , Hickory Dickory Dock , etc) but that well ran dry rather quick, so we had to come up with our own songs real quick.  Of the 11 songs/videos we produced the children's standards were the most popular but not my favorite. Below, in no certain order, are my favorites. I do wish the child's play could continue but sometimes you trade one hobby for another. Where I used to write kids tunes and produce music videos, now I make absurd short films . May