Why do most people give up after one try? I blame Wile E. Coyote!

Most people of my generation grew up with Saturday morning cartoons on TV.  One of my favourites was always watching Wile E. Coyote endlessly chasing the Road Runner.

I don't know about you, but I was always rooting for the coyote, and straw polls among my peers seemed to show a similar sentiment.  We all craved for the day that Wile E would triumph and be rewarded with a road runner roast.  (Rumour has it that there was ONE secret episode in which he actually won, but furious Googling and Youtubing has yet to reveal this treasure.)

But even as a young impressionable kid, I was always vexed by two questions.

1. How did Wile E afford all that gear and equipment from Acme Inc. ??  He must have either had a large stash of money somewhere, or else a great line of credit with the company.

1b. And if he DID indeed have access to lots of cash, why didn't he just BUY himself a Kentucky Fried Roadrunner family dinner instead of trying to hunt one himself?  Perhaps he was just in it for the thrill of the chase?

2. Why did Wile E always give up after the first try?  I mean, he would invest a LOT of money and time in setting up the most elaborate traps, but as soon as one tiny thing made it all go wrong, he would give up and move onto the next idea, instead of retrying or improving his first idea.

I think it is this second factor that has become imbued in a lot of people in my generation.  I keep meeting peer entrepreneurs who tell me sorry tales of woe where they tried something the once, noticed that it didn't work, then dropped it like a hot potato to move on to the next thing.

Usually when I probe further and ask them if they tried to pivot their idea in some way or revisit it with some changes, I am met with an incredulous stare.  They almost always never considered trying again.

I blame Wile E.

In a lot of ways, Wile E. Coyote is much like a lot of funded startups these days:

• A LOT of disposable cash, with a high burn rate
• 'Fail fast' manifesto - pick and, dust off and try something new after every failure
• Quick iteration from concept to execution, with bare minimum planning beforehand, or else planning as they go along
• Single track focus on ONE end result, but with many paths to get there

Arguably some good traits in there, but there is always room for improvement.  I always wondered what would have happened if Wile E had grown intellectually and emotionally and perhaps explored the possibilities of:

• Using guile to befriend and win the trust of the Roadrunner before capturing him
• Had 'guaranteed performance' contracts drawn up with Acme Inc. that would have insured him against failure and allowed him to replace failed equipment at no extra cost
• Used his money and influence to organise other coyotes in the area to work together to capture roadrunners

Perhaps the generation of entrepreneurs that grew up with those messages may be going things slightly differently nowadays?  

Well, at least MY Saturday mornings may have been a LOT more enjoyable had he done so.

I'm on a bus!

Today, I caught a public bus for the first time since I was in school - well over 30 years ago!  But I had to drop my car off for a service early this morning, and decided to walk into the city and catch a bus back home.  Purely on a whim.

I decided to look at the differences then and now, with the whole experience.

When I was younger, I don't think I EVER looked at a bus timetable.  I would just turn up at a bus stop, and unless it was a Sunday (the buses in my town don't run on Sundays), I would just wait until one turned up and hop on it.  I guess my concept of time was pretty elastic and I would not consider a 40 minute wait to be 'terrible' as compared to a 5 minute wait.  I would simply wait.

Nowadays, I realise that my concept of 'time' is sliced into distinct categories.  I looked at the bus timetable this morning and realised I would have a 20 minute wait for the next one.  That seem like an interminably long time to me, and I found myself making plans in my head about how I would optimise that wait time.  I could walk down the road and pop into a shop to get a drink...  then perhaps sit on a bench in the park across the road and write a little in my Field Notes book until it was departure time...  The plans were coming thick and fast.

I decided that No - I would simply sit and wait.  And do nothing.  I would steel myself against getting my iPhone out and whiling away the time.  I would just sit with no distractions.  (Actually, I ended up unintentionally eavesdropping on the loud conversation the lady sitting next to me was having on HER iPhone!).

While waiting and glancing at the information panels around the bus stop, I saw a notice advertising the bus services new app.  You could track where all the buses were, and see in real time where the bus you were waiting for was with it.  How cool.  So much information at your fingertips these days.  I was tempted to make a dive for my phone and download the app, but I successfully restrained myself.

Finally, my bus arrived.  I got on an enquired about the fare.  It was $3.  Exactly 10 times the fare I paid on my last bus trip 30 years ago as a kid, which was 30 cents.  I smiled inwardly at these salient coincidental facts.

Once seated, I noticed that the buses these days were far more comfortable that those of yore, and actually had working air conditioning that transformed the whole vehicle into an icebox.  Very nice in our usual warm weather.

I couldn't contain myself any longer, and reached for my phone.  This was where I was pleasantly surprised again to note that the buses now have free WiFi access on board.  Nice.  Just what the current 'always connected' generation would expect, and need.

I glanced around the bus as we travelled, and noticed that virtually all the passengers were older people, and that NONE of the other passengers seemed to be taking advantage of free WiFi or using their phones.  They were actually kicking back and looking out the windows. 

I decided to put away my phone and do the same.

Eventually, I reached my stop near home, and hopped off.  I walked the final few hundred metres to my house enjoying the mid morning warmth of the sun, and listening to Greek workmen in a building lot swearing at each other in 3 languages, and reflected at how great life was, in my very brief step back in time to a no technologically obsessed world.

Logo designs - are crowdsourced sites better than boutique designers?

Last month I began designing my latest project - a web application that is targeted at the guitar world - specifically at teachers who post guitar lessons via video.

Normally when I design a site, I will either create the graphics myself, or go to one of the many pre-made graphic resource sites around the web such as graphicriver.net or creativemarket.com.  But THIS time, I decided that I wanted something custom made, so I would try out fiverr.com to see how that panned out.

Expectation were not high - after all, the site says that each job will cost only $5.  I soon discovered that this was not strictly true, as the initial price of each job is $5, but there are all sorts of additions (some non optional, such as high res copies of the logo etc.) that add on the to the costs.

In the end, the job was going to cost me $10, so I entered my brief, including a description of the site, and sent the job off to one contractor on that site who specialised in logo design.

A few days later, I got a reply from him with a suggested logo.  It was a nice logo BUT... All he had done was to google my site name, grab the first image result on there and flip it right to left.

I was amazed at his audacity, and emailed him back immediately to inform him that I thought this was a rather lazy effort, even for $10.  He emailed back his apologies, and told me he would rework the logo.  True to his word, he got back to me a few days later with another logo.  This time I did a quick Google Image Search but it didn't come up with a match online, so it appears that he DID design this one from scratch.

End of the day, I think it still looks a little amateurish so I probably won't use it and will probably approach another site to help me design one.

By now, most professional graphic designers reading this will be having an apoplectic fit.  "This is EXACTLY what is wrong with using crowd sourced design sites!", you will shout.  Along with "Well, you get what you pay for - pay peanuts, get monkeys!".  And you would be right.

Sort of.

As a 'boutique' software designer myself, I can relate.  I hate those sites that promise coders who can code up an entire web site for $100, when my normal quote for a similar job is $2000.  I have had clients reject my quote so they can go down that path.

When I started my business back in the mid 1990's, I needed a logo for my company, so I approached several local design firms to come up with an idea.  My experience was actually quite wonderful.  All of them took time to talk to me and get an idea of what my business was about, and all of them prepared some beautiful presentations and concepts for me to look over.

One designer in particular, was very effervescent in his enthusiasm, and went to the trouble of printing out mock business cards with my name on it and some glorified title that I cannot remember now, but he was trying hard to 'paint the whole picture' for me.  We didn't go with his firm, but instead chose another one that was more conservative.  I remember this guy as being the only one to call me back after I sent him a "Thanks, but no thanks" letter.  He got quite agitated that I didn't go with his design, but I explained that I thought it was great, but a little over the top.  It didn't seem to sooth his feathers.

I just put it down to him being a little too personally attached to the results of his work, and just left it at that.  Heck, I am the same with MY work most of the time.

But a couple of months later, I was driving down the industrial district of our town, and I noticed that a new dry cleaning business had opened up with a brightly painted warehouse.  The huge sign out the front screamed their company name and motto, and... the EXACT same logo that was designed 'just for me' by the abovementioned designer.

I just laughed it off and carried on.  After all, it makes perfect sense to recycle your hard work and not waste your creative energy each time you pitch to a new client.  I just wondered if he told these new clients that this logo was design 'specifically for them based on the dynamic nature of their business', like he told me.  Actually, I wonder if even *I* was the first one he designed that logo for?  I could have been just one of a long line of business he had brought that one out for.

Fast forward to a few months after that, and I saw the same designer one the front page of our local newspaper, and not in a good way.  You see, around the same time we were getting our logo design done with him, he was designing a new logo for our local electricity company.  They had spent millions on their rebranding and associated collateral, and then.... they discovered that their logo was the exact same rip off of a European Union association.  Not even slightly altered, but a direct copy.

I reflected on this.  Sure, recycling your design work is perfectly acceptable, but plagiarising work from other is definitely overstepping the mark.  

So nowadays, when professional designers call out the cheap design sweat shops online, I have to stop and wonder about the fact that the two seem to have more similarities among them, than major differences.

After all, does the amateur designer hunched over a laptop in a small flat in Karachi care LESS about her work than the experienced guy working in a 10th floor award winning design firm in London?

I would think that the drive to create something new and wonderful is the same in everyone, across the board.  However, the ethics involved in the process of creation seems to be rather more flexible than I would have thought, regardless of the respective hourly rate.

Recording guitar with 4 microphones on my Macbook Pro

In my last blog post, I posted about revisiting the acoustic guitar again, and I posted a song there called "The Fisherman".  Normally when I record guitar, I use two inputs - the inbuilt guitar pickup/preamp, as well as a microphone somewhere near the soundhole.

For THIS particular recording though, I wanted to try something different.  I wanted to try up to 4 different recording inputs!  The problem though, was that I only had an audio interface with 2 input channels.  I am using an Apogee Duet, which as its name suggests, is a two input, two output device.

How then would I get 4 inputs?  Well, I recently purchased a Steinberg UR22 (once again, a 2 input, 2 output audio interface) for my son.  The Apogee Duet has a Firewire interface, whereas the Steinberg has a USB interface.  I thought that I might use BOTH on my ageing 2009 17" MacBook Pro.

Plugging in the Steinberg was a piece of cake.  I had to download the latest OS X driver from the Steinberg site, and the device was recognised immediately on my system.  Great.

The main problem came up when I fired up Logic X.  I discovered that Logic will only recognise ONE input device, and ONE input device only.  I could only choose between the Duet, or the UR22 as my input, giving me only 2 input channels in total at any one time.

The solution - was actually pretty easy, and took less time than plugging in and setting up the UR22 in the first place!

The secret is - Aggregated Audio Devices.  OS X has a nifty feature which allows you to combine two or more hardware (or software) devices into a single virtual device.

Under your 'Applications' folder on your Mac, there is a folder called 'Utilities'.  In there, is an app called 'Audio MIDI Setup'.  Fire it up, and you will see a screen with all your hardware (and software) audio devices.

Click the little '+' button on the lower left corner, and you will be able to set up a new aggregated device.  I ticked the Duet and the UR22 so I could use both devices together.  I set up the Duet as the master clock device for the MIDI clock, and I nominated that I wanted to use Input 1 and 2 on the Apogee, as well as Input 1 and 2 on the Steinberg (see image below).

I called my Aggregate Device the 'Dueberg', which was my amalgamation of the words 'Duet' and 'Steinberg' :)

Note that I had KRK Rokit 5 monitors already plugged into my Duet, and nothing plugged into the output ports of the UR22, so I ticked ONLY the 2 output channels on the Duet in my aggregate device.  This effectively gave me a 4 input, 2 output device.

Sure enough, when I went back to Logic X, I could choose the 'Dueberg' as my input device, and was able to set up 4 tracks with Inputs 1, 2, 3 and 4 across the two audio interfaces recording simultaneously.

For those that are curious, I set up the inputs as follows:

• Apogee Duet Input 1 - Direct from Guitar pickup/preamp
• Apogee Duet Input 2 - Rode NT-1A
• Steinberg UR22 Input 1 - AKG C5
• Steinberg UR22 Input 2 - AKG D40

The NT-1A was placed about 12 inches from the soundhole.  The C5 was placed near the lower bout and pointed at a 45 degree angle at the bridge of the guitar, about 10 inches away.  The D40 was placed directly over the 12th fret, pointing straight at it from around 6 inches away.

I am not sure if the sound was any better than my older recordings, but I felt I had more scope to play with the frequencies and tone shaping this way, including panning each mic left and right to create more 'space' in the end recording.

In the end, this was an easy and cheap way to get 4 inputs working in short order.  I was actually considering getting a Focusrite audio interface with 4 or 8 inputs on it, but this proved to be a far cheaper solution.

Hope it proves useful to others out there.