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• Download zip (7mb)

For the individual downloads via Flickr, right click and “save image as”.

Photography by Phil Sharp for Loud And Quiet Magazine (Issue 25 vol. 3)
©2011 Phil Sharp - www.philsharp-photo.com

New wallpaper for download. This time of Theophilus London, comes in various sizes from 1920×1080 (HD) to 1280×800 for Macbooks. Plus versions for iPhone & iPad.

• Download zip (6MB)
• Individual downloads on Flickr

Wednesday night (Oct. 28) in NYC, Cudi hosted a listening party for his forthcoming album MOTM II as various industry insiders and media showed up to hear the follow up to Cudi’s freshman album. MTV’s Rap Fix attended the listening session but they also previously heard the album while interviewing Cudi:

Cudi stopped by the MTV News office on Tuesday to talk about his much-anticipated album, Man on the Moon II: The Legend of Mr. Rager. And before we even sat down to get started, he was really excited to play us his new album and each of the MTV News staff that listened was blown away to say the least.

Time Out NYC has a nice (but short) song by song recap along with a writeup of the event:

The Legend of Mr. Rager is darker than Man on the Moon. Not in an emo, hand-to-brow way; it’s less cinematic and generally bleaker, while also being far more danceable. It also firmly establishes Cudi as a singer-songwriter—not just a rapper with a knack for hooks.

PrefixMag.com:

There was a cloak of literal darkness about the bar hosting the secret listening party for Cudi’s upcoming sophomore album, Man on the Moon II: The Legend of Mr. Rager. The venue looked like another world, dimly lit, cloudy, and blanketed by a network of green laser lights. The man himself entered the building with sunglasses on, sporting a Freddy Krueger glove. Cudi sang and danced like a man possessed as the album blasted out of the venue’s speakers. He is clearly proud of what he has done.

The night was kicked off by Cudi as he told the crowd, “I want everybody to focus and listen to the jams. This is one of those albums that you just gotta listen too” At that point the music started and we were introduced to the Legend of Mr. Rager. The album starts off with one of the best songs on the record called “Scott Mescudi vs The World” featuring Cee-lo on a powerful hook and production by Emile (who contributed 9 songs to MOTM II).

Man on the Moon II is an amazing listen from start to finish as you immerse yourself in a new but familiar Cudi sound as he explores a darker side to his story. Each song has its own distinct sound that you’ll find yourself wanting to replay it over and over to fully understand his story and appreciate the subtle additions.

I won’t go into much detail on everything else since I feel like I would need a few listens to give an accurate overview of each song individually. It’s definitely worth reading the Time Out NY feature if your looking for a song by song breakdown.

Finishing off the album is the Dot Da Genius produced “Trapped in My Mind”, another stand out track from the album. Cudi ends the song and album in a semi-spoken tone as he explains – “I’m trapped in my mind baby, I don’t think I’ll ever get out”.

After the album was done playing, Cudi took to the mic to discuss a few topics. He thanked his fans for pre-ordering the album as both the deluxe (#1) and regular (#3) editions sit in the iTunes Top 10. Here’s a few select quotes:

“I never thought I could play an instrument, I down played that shit. If you think you can’t do something, don’t down play that shit. Now I pick up a guitar and I have a natural nack for it and I’m learning”

“The story is real, I come from this town. We really trying to make music for ya’ll on an everyday basis so ya’ll can get through your situation. I made this album for people to get through any problem they have. When I was growing up, I didn’t have songs like this. This is my motivation.”

Wrapping up the night Cudi added:

“I kind of used my self as a muse, to help people get through their problems. Thats kinda why the album is so dark, why the album is so honest. I’m happy ya’ll f*ck with it, I really am”

Timeout NY says “We can’t wait to hear the album again”, I’ll second that as Man on the Moon II is another stepping stone for Cudi and his music.

Man on the Moon II: The Legend of Mr. Rager is in stores Nov. 9
Pre-order your copy today from iTunes, Amazon and more!

The City of Port Coquitlam received a Best Practices – Civic Engagement Award at the Union of BC Municipalities’ annual Community Excellence Awards ceremony, held in Whistler at 7 am Thursday (Sept. 29). The awards showcase BC municipalities and regional districts that lead the pack, take risks to innovate, establish new partnerships, question established ways of doing business and pioneer new customer service practices.
You can part of the press release below.

Online community engagement efforts earn award for city of port coquitlam

Port Coquitlam, BC – September 30, 2010… Citizens who have clicked the City of Port Coquitlam website, “liked” the City’s Facebook page or followed its tweets have been making use of an online outreach program that earned the City a prestigious award today.

The City developed its online outreach program to find new ways to reach the community, to create a two-way dialogue with its citizens, and to reach residents who didn’t previously engage with their local government.

The program leverages technology to reach citizens in their own time and space, in a way that reflects the best practices of that particular media. The result has been a documented rise in citizen participation and interest in civic affairs.

While I was in NYC a few weeks ago Jack of ImaginationDetionation.com hit me up asking to do a quick interview. We sat down for a bit and talked abouta few topics. We talked about how DatNewCudi came about and where it is now, about my work, projects I’m working on now and plans for the future and more. Sidenote: the longer we talked the louder the kids got at the park so excuse the crap audio towards the end.

Spent a week in NYC at the end of August, here’s a handful of pictures I took during the trip. Slideshow above and individual shots below.

Above photo is of my current set up at home. 3 months into having my iPad and I’ve got to say I love it. Even did this post on my iPad while being as lazy as possible laying in bed.

This is something I’ve been meaning to do for some time. Toying with various ideas I made a few terrible ones but this is one I’m excited to see in its final form. I’m having these printed on a thick 100lb paper with a slight gloss finish to really make the colors pop.

Originally my idea was to do a type piece with the entire phrase: “Ignorance is bliss, ignorance is love, and i need that shit. This is the Soundtrack 2 My life“. But I found that to overwhelming for a small space like 11″ x 17″ especially if I wanted to make the font as bold as I ended up choosing.

Anyways this is the final piece, I’m having about 20 printed and if you’d like one (for free) I’ll let you know how when there ready.

Right now I’m working on a few things for Dot & HeadBangaMuzik, this being one of them. They recently got a much needed makeover for their logo thanks to some nice work by Glen Infante so with that I set out to make some promotional images. Above is the final version for the first piece which I originally designed for HD use on TV’s (1920×10180) but it will also be available as a wallpaper pack down the road.

Luckily ForeverSave inadvertently made this progress timeline as I worked on it from start to finish which you can see below if your really curious to see what my thought process is on something like this.

Time Machine is a great tool for every Mac user to have installed and running but it doesn’t even come close to matching what ForeverSave has to offer for designers and professionals in various multimedia fields.

I only recently discovered ForeverSave but thanks to a free 30 Day trial that didn’t limit its features in anyway it was very obvious how useful this would be for me. Here’s the quick pitch for the application from their website:

Data loss, caused by application crashes and unintentional overwriting will become history.  ForeverSave automatically creates versions of your documents. In case you lose one, just restore it and continue your work.

If what your thinking right now is along the lines of “wow how have I never discovered this before” then welcome to my life 31 days ago.

The Dreaded Crash

“Photoshop has unexpectedly crashed”*. Ring a bell for anyone? It’s essentially one of the worst things that can happen when you realize “shit I haven’t saved this in awhile”. Losing your work isn’t fun. It costs you time, money and well time. Your left with an out of date idea that you need to update so it replicates what you originally had which is frustrating. Plain and simple: it sucks.

*I know you’ve seen this recently on your own Mac so check out the
Photoshop Crash Reports blog for some comedic relief.

What ForeverSave Does For You:

ForeverSave makes automatic backups based on certain specifications you set per application. I’ve set my Photoshop to auto save whenever I switch applications and to save every 15 minutes while working on an any open files. On top of that it will prompt you to save those common “Untitled-1″ documents you’ve forgotten to initially save.

You can apply this to anything that needs back ups form word documents to InDesign files and Final Cut projects, it will save you heaps of time next time your application crashes or you unexpectedly lose power.

I Wish I Hadn’t Done That

Of course you can think of it in an entirely different light. Have you ever worked on something and wished you could go back but your history just wont let you go any further?  Not to worry, just pull up a previous version if you need to refer to an item from an old design or just want to start fresh from a certain point.

Download It Already!

I’ve already been talking to much, if you weren’t convinced after the 2nd paragraph then I don’t know what else I can say (besides your crazy!). The full cost to buy ForeverSave is only $14.95 so go download the 30 day trial and see how it works for you. Forever Save’s website also has a full run down of what the applicaiton has to offer; a good place to start is the “Top 10 Features”.