Competitions, Strategy, Portability & more…

This is just a small update. As you may know I am a graphic designer / communication designer as well as (now) a music producer. While the design side of things is purely commercial I noticed the data portability group got into a little hot water with their logo being too similar to that of Red Hat’s logo (apparently). When I saw they were holding a competition for a new logo i quickly whipped up an entry and I’ve just been informed it’s in the top 15!

You can see the top 15 here: http://dataportability.techcrunch.com/ (Mine is the first logo). It appears my logo is one of the more favoured logos which is excellent. If you are in a voting mood feel free to vote for my entry

Now on the other side of the coin – Music Production – I take it very seriously but at this stage I’m yet to have any official releases. I prefer to just remix what I like and pick up new techniques along the way. I made an entry into the Foals remix competition and now my remix is live. You can listen (stream & download) here:

http://www.last.fm/music/Foals/_/Electric+Bloom+(Blaze+Tripp+Remix)

The winner is based on the number of plays (scrobbles) to the last.fm system. If you arent registered to last.fm you really should. I personally think it is one of the best social networks around as it brings you closer to the people who like the same music you do. It works better than anything else I have seen anyway.

I dont normally enter competition so I find it funny that I’m in this spot now to try and promote these community based competitions. In any case it will be interesting to see the outcomes.

If you feel like sharing the love your votes will be appreciated very much

2007 Here We Come

Happy new year for 2007. May 2006 be gone! This new years would have to go down as one of the craziest for me. Didn’t get to bed until 9am. Seriously.

May you all have a happy and prosperous year ahead. It should be a good year

New Mix

Just playing around with testing to record a mix with my new DJ gear. This was done into the mic input of my laptop so im not sure if the sound quality is amazing. Its quite a compressed mp3 too which I didnt realise.

Keep in mind the mixing sorta sucks too. I did the whole thing in my headphones.

Enjoy:

Blaze Mix 9th October 2006 (Right click, Save Target/Link As)

NOTE: I HAVE RECORDED MANY MORE MIXES SINCE THIS POST THAT ARE MUCH BETTER QUALITY & WITH FULL TRACKLISTS ETC. HEAD OVER TO MY LAST.FM JOURNAL FOR ALLTHE LATEST MIXES WITH MP3 LINKS

Tracks Include songs by Quesh, Les Rythmes Digitales, Chromeo, MSTRKRFT & more….

Update: I recorded this mix with my mic input on my laptop and well I have now worked out that the mic really isnt the best option for recording an audio except for… you guessed it… your voice. Honestly though, I thought laptop makers would made an easy way to get a line-in input going. Ah well you can still enjoy the mix, just next time I’ll have to drag my desktop pc into the dj room

Also posted on Last.FM

It’s Been A While & Why The Road Is Looking Clearer

So it’s been a while since I’ve posted an entry. This is due to a few reasons…

• I sort of got annoyed with having to blog and post.
• I got annoyed with the whole “tech” scene and the “tech blogging” scene.
• I got REAL busy.
• … then (as if on cue) my laptop hard drive died and I lost 80gb worth of work, emails, files, financial files, music production files, music & more.
  (ps: do not try to tell me how to prevent this in the future, believe it or not – it doesn’t help)

Things are back on track now though and I have also been doign work with an Advertising Agency and it’s really interesting stuff. There’s something fulfilling about harnessing creativity and getting paid for it.

The calm after the storm

So now things are starting to calm down a bit more I have to finish off a bunch of client work and then I will be venturing into the slightly unknown: creating my own sites, ideas & monetising them. Ideally I would like an easy to maintain supplemental income on the side whoile being able to focus on client work 9-5. I have a whole bunch of new ideas for websites and I will be launching them on this blog soon. So stay tuned. Eventually I want to work towards a project that I will create when I am more relaxed

I’m “semi” glad to see Web 2.0 losting its buzz

Web2.0 served it’s purpose to excite the buzz surrounding the web but now it’s petered off. I’m glad about this because people need to focus on real things, not fuzz & fluff hot air ideas that will get you nowhere (case in point: too many to mention).

But truly this point needs a whole post to elaborate completely on the whole situation.

So why would you want to come back here?
Writing in my style is the idea. I just want to make it short, punchy & do stuff a little more creative around here. Plus in the past I focused on absolute shit boring things. Let’s keep it succinct & interesting. You don’t really have to come back but in the future I hope to be writing stuff that will make you come back!

And also in the news!

• I got my first iPod – 30gb video (very nice)
• I’ve been working on a quad g5 (which has just been superceeded, but even still, it rocks)
• I got a pocket watch!(next on the list: smoking jacket & pipe)
• I got a lava lamp (life almost seems complete now)
• I got a new digi cam (flickr here I come)
• I’m getting CDJ’s. (i think i’ll post mixes up on here? who knows!)
• I got some Dreamhost hosting (cheap, huge, fast, reliable – hell what more could you want. want to sign up? use the promo code blaze50 when signing up and it’ll get you $50 off – sweet!)
• I got my first wireless mouse ($15! – late bloomer)
• I still have the same hot girlfriend! (no she hasn’t left me yet! bonus! :p)

Anyway enough of the personal stuff…

Have a good day & thanks for all the fish.

Finally trying out Last.fm Radio

Note: Disregard the following links and just try and use the links on my profile. WordPress can't seem to sort out the linking issue to last.fm.
Well I seem to have been upgraded to a last.fm subscriber (my profile) for now which is great. I get access to a few more feature which are good. Features that have always been free though are listening to radio. I fancy myself as a bit of a DJ or "good music chooser" might be the better choice for now, so why don't you sign up and then click some of the following links to fire up a 128kbits mp3 stream from last.fm of some good tracks.

• Blaze's Personal Radio plays a lot of the music I do, so check that one for some good tracks. It's quite a good match they have there of the stuff I get into, well done lastfm.
• Here's a radio station I made up combining a bunch of my favourite artists at the moment. Quite a disco house style, some french touch and a bit of electro in there too. This seems to play a lot of semi older tracks (80s and 90s style) but it's fantastic.
• I have a bunch of neighbours that like similar music to them, so why not listen to some of Blaze's Neighbours? They surely have some interesting stuff.

I normally wouldn't make a post about something like this but last.fm suprised me with the kind of tracks they were playing. Admittedly I dont listen to very much commercial music but they seem to be getting a lot of it down well.

If you're not on lastfm yet, sign up now and start saving your music history, you never know what you will find in the future. It is truly an exciting place to be.

Attention & Sex

I am signed up to a Scott Berkun’s newsletter which is rarely too exilherating. It focuses mainly on project management and other not so exciting things. His latest essay however is something I think we can all understand and relate back to our lives (I know I have).

This article explains about how we divide our attention and what we focus it on. It makes you stop and think how you really should be spending your minutes of the day.

“Whenever someone is lost in waves of e-mail and information, they’re often oblivious to the deepest tragedy of their time. It’s not the stress of dealing with so many requests and obligations (as real and challenging as that stress might be). It’s that somewhere in the wash of interactions and split attentions is the missed possibility they’re looking for: Meaning. Depth of experience. Connection. To quote Pirsig, “The truth knocks on the door and we say, “Go away. I’m looking for the truthâ€?. In the race to clean out inboxes and scratch items off the to-do list, we miss chances to find the thing we’ve created the inbox and to-do list for. Like an American tourist in Europe racing from site to site with barely a moment to take a picture or talk to someone not on their tour bus, we’re trapped in a quantity mentality, despite our quality based desires.”

Read Attention and Sex

New Song: Da Funk

Here is up a song I have recently made available for download in mp3 format. This is in an electro housey style of track that has an element of progression. The synths are raw and tinny but that is the idea of the track. My favourite part would have to be the bells in the middle part, iIjust like the way it’s done. Please note it isnt properly mastered as I’m not very good at mastering but it should sound ok through a big system or headphones.

Please let me know what you think. Constructive criticism is welcome.

Artist: Blaze
Title: Da Funk
Genre: Electro / House / Club
Tempo: ~120bpm

• Download Mirrors Down

MP3: 192kbit/s, 11mb

Welcome to “Blaze”

Hi my name is Blaze. It has always been and always will be Blaze.

I am an entrepreneur. I am also a creative person. This means I make business, I make music, I design & I make a mean spagetti. I really dont know what I post here but I am guessing it’s got to be interesting. I mean no-one reads something if it’s not that interesting right?

So I think when I have a good business idea I may post it up. When I make a new song, hell I might even post that up. Am I getting there yet? I’ll try not to make too many plans at this stage but until then, have fun!