maybe undead.. but definitely not dead.
happy summer solstice yesterday, and here’s to good things ahead!
more to come,
– da leopard
oh and BY THE WAY… this is my favorite song right now. somehow their music says so much without any words at all.. VENTURES, man. VENTURES.
this came to me this morning on the bus en route to work.. a creative call to arms. this year, every year – this moment, every moment:
in times of chaos, creativity reigns.
it’s the rawness and purity in the primal outreach of your soul. it is this that will heal you – the release.
expression without pretense.
is it art for art’s sake?
rather – art for your sake – which is inextricably linked to all our sakes.
feed your spirit with openness and expression – and the outer and inner worlds will respond in kind.
if it’s one thing we should take with us through 2012 – it’s to listen to the silence between the walls of our heart, the space inside our veins –
what is calling to you when you take the time to listen?
POTENTIAL – of the infinite variety.. the kind that allows you to do anything you want, at any moment.
everything else is noise.
this year – break all the rules, theirs and yours alike.
take the leap – because wings you never knew you had will keep you floating.
there is just no other way.
– da leopard
HELLO OUT THERE!
apologies for the radio silence – there have been so many changes/crazy happenings on the SNT homefront.. some very (very) sad, some very exciting – we are getting through. thanks to everyone for being part of the SNT family in 2011!
hopefully we’ll have a more formal year-end wrap up for you (IT’S ALMOST 2012!!!!111!11!1) BUT in the meantime – here’s hoping everyone had a wonderful holiday.
i wanted to take this opportunity to post about something i didn’t get the chance to when it happened – waaaay back in 2009 eric and i had an AWESOME historical adventure on a 1930s-era vintage train that ran in the NYC subway for the holiday season!
IT. WAS. MAGICAL!
if you don’t believe me, watch the video below and see/read more after the jump! there was a friggin’ VINTAGE JAZZ BAND PLAYING IN THE MIDDLE OF THE PACKED CAR AND EVERYONE WAS DANCINGGG!
you can see gothamist’s rolling coverage here (which is where i originally found out about the train), as well as the invite to this year’s dance party (organized by the levys’ unique new york) which has already sadly passed. DON’T MISS IT NEXT YEAR! the experience of being on that train in 2009 was something we won’t soon forget. music was by the fantastic vintage jazz band BABY SODA! i got absolutely obsessed with them after that train ride.. here’s some more quick videos of the awesomeness!
if only I could
Trying to make money doing .. well anything is getting harder and harder. The last thing I wanted to worry about is industry standard bullshit, but unfortunately I had to give in. As a video editor it practically doesn’t matter what level of skill I have, if I’m not running on Final Cut I’m doomed to be rejected over some software segregation that has embedded itself in the minds of people who know absolutely nothing about editing. In any case, I finally broke and got a Mac. Here’s what happened.
(p.s if anyone has any simpler solutions to these problems please feel free to share them)
1. How in the motherfuck do I burn a cd?!
As Mac pushes to kill compact disk, I think they’ve made it intentionally harder to even deal with one if you still have a cd drive. Back with my PC if I wanted to burn some music, I put in a blank disk, go to my trusty Windows Media Player, go to our drop my tracks and click burn. The End. It took me 20 minutes to find out that in iTunes you first have to make a playlist (which is probably one of the most unnecessary things I’ve heard of in my life) then magically the option to burn appears under File>Burn Playlist to Disk. That’s because it would be to difficult to have that option when I go to the album…. alright.. fine. So say I want to make a data disk, in Windows I pop in the disk, open it, drag my files and click burn… end of story. Not here. Now from the desktop I have to go to File>New Burn Folder, add my files then Burn. In both cases I have completely unnecessary folders left over that I have to remember to delete or else I’m left with extra garbage taking up space.
I’ve yet to find out how to get a data disk or even an audio cd to run on a PC let alone how to change the Artist name in bulk in iTunes.
as if there wasn’t enough to be furious about…
the big dogs are threatened by us. the fact that EVERYONE IS MEDIA. EVERYONE CAN CREATE. EVERYONE CAN SHARE, to MILLIONS & MILLIONS OF PEOPLE via the internet. business models are changing. old methods are becoming obsolete. WE CAN DO IT WITHOUT THEM. as a result – and does this come as any surprise? – THEY WANT TO CONTROL US.
TODAY CONGRESS HOLDS HEARINGS ON THE FIRST AMERICAN INTERNET CENSORSHIP SYSTEM.
(yes, you heard that right)
THIS BILL CAN PASS. IF IT DOES INTERNET & FREE SPEECH WILL NEVER BE THE SAME.
SPREAD. THE. WORD.
SPREAD THIS WEBSITE: AMERICANCENSORSHIP.ORG
(THE HOME BASE – TONS OF INFO, ARTICLES, SEND AN EMAIL TO CONGRESS, GET HTML CODE TO CENSOR YOUR SITE FOR THE DAY TO SPREAD AWARENESS)
THIS VIDEO:
IMAGES LIKE THIS (found on Fight for the Future’s FB):
EDUCATE YOURSELF WITH THIS INFOGRAPHIC
ps: special thanks to TUMBLR for being the first place i heard about this – thank you for purposely faux-censoring your users and keeping the protect the net link in your header to WAKE THEM UP. (wordpress, what’s your excuse?)
– da leopard / SNT MGMT
unbelievably, it’s been 11 YEARS since i became a HUGH JACKMAN fan.
on that fateful day my brother brought home the x-men: mutant academy video game for playstation 1 and we watched the trailer for the original x-men (which was somehow included in the game?!), i was hooked. if you told me then that 11 years later – after movies like the fountain and the prestige became my favorites and i snapped up every bit of wolverine action i could (down to the hilarious cameo in first class!) – that i’d be sitting 4th row, dead center with my wonderful mom watching hugh jackman singing, dancing, and telling stories LIVE on broadway right in front of me, i don’t think i would’ve believed you.
however, sometimes life is all about unbelievable things – right?
last night i did just that – saw hugh jackman, back on broadway in NYC at the broadhurst theater! it was literally a PRICELESS experience – one that will always be held as one of my most cherished memories. it’s running for 10 weeks only through january 1st, and so if there is ANY WAY at all you can snag yourself a ticket – please, please do so.
hugh is a consummate performer – a performer in every sense of the word, but also someone who can comfortably speak to a packed house, cracking jokes and sharing stories, as if he was hanging around with a few friends. i’d seen him on the oscars and heard of his boy from oz accolades but it’s nothing like sitting here and seeing hugh work his magic right in front of you. his smile lights up the room and his genuine joy is contagious. he’s a star of the kind we don’t see too often nowadays – an oh-so-welcome jaunt back to the days of movie musicals and performers who were truly triple threats: talented actors, dancers, singers, with magnetic energy and inimitable charm. hugh is right up there with the classic performers he pays tribute to at one point in the show – absolutely legendary.
Almost anytime I run into a computer problem I look it up, find 80 people with the same problem and not a goddamn straight answer. I usually end up playing around with a couple of settings and finally after days minutes – because I’m awesome – I figure it out.
So here’s what I just ran into:
Windows' way of saying 'suck it'
Here’s whats going on. When you’re running an antivirus it has a whole database of programs to block. These are supposed to just be viruses, trojans, spyware, etc. But it also blocks keygens and other patches used by hackers to pirate software. Now I know no one reading this would ever do such a thing and I would never ever either. But here’s a scenario you are likely to run into – as I just did – where you might be running a program you are testing out for a friend and hit a wall.
Let’s assume best friend Julio says “Hi Sakeem (that’s you), I just created this game called ‘Happy Sunshine Program.’ I’m going to license it, so anyone using it will need a serial number. I want to protect it so Sakeem, my very good friend, I also made a keygen and a patch just like an immoral internet pirate would. I want you to install it without me giving you an official serial number and when it asks to activate online I want you to use this patch. Then, and only then, I can find a way to further block its use.”
You say, “Julio, my very good friend, anything for you, but this seems wrong. It’s all too similar to actions taken by many to avoid paying for software – clearly this is like a gateway drug, but for hacking.” Julio takes a deep breath and sighs. He looks over to his wife Xui Li. Xui Li is confident, wearing nothing but a red sequin wingsuit holding an early 90s Wu-Tang Clan children’s walkie-talkie. She passes one to you and you swiftly crawl over to the bedroom and listen. As you are over 10 feet away reception is nearly lost but this was her intention. She hits the little blue button on her device, creating a beeping sound on yours. It’s morse code, and as one named Sakeem, you are fluent. Xui Li signals the following message, which you easily transcribe.
“Sakeem I understand your concern and though the following information may tempt you or even fall into the hands of a hacker – maybe one who has previously installed CS5 and is now trying to re-install it but it is not working. Maybe it’s the first time they are installing a certain burning rom suite but their patch wont open, even if they run as administrator which seriously works most of the time, not that I would know. Now I need you to do this, but when you do … when you run the keygen and/or patch, you won’t be able to.
When you see the message ‘Windows cannot access the specified device path…” all you have to fucking do is disable all of your antivirus software. You should only be running one anyway but Microsoft probably made you install Security Essentials too – get rid of that shit for good. Then run our Happy Sunshine Program, then run the keygen and the patch as admin – everything will be fine. Then Julio can test out how to block access to the program even further. P.S. I want you.”
tools > advanced settings > temporarily disable AVG protection or something similar, depending on what you're running
You reply, “No shit, that’s it! And all I had to do was read this whole fucking story?!”
The End
-E
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