It is with great pleasure that we announce Matt Fox’s promotion to Director of Information Technology & Digital Media here at Latina Media Ventures.

Matt joined Latina in June 2007 as IT Director.  While his primary responsibility was the network, all things IT here at Latina as well as IT troubleshooting, Matt soon began using his considerable talents to assist with Latina.com.  He has since been incredibly instrumental in executing our brand new re-design; beautifully so and in a very short turnaround time.

Boom.

I’ve had the chance to do a lot of really great work during my time at Latina; some of which was expected of me, some of which wasn’t (and was made painfully clear at times), and it feels great to know they’ve noticed the results. It doesn’t really mean much of a change from the work I’m already doing, but I will have a couple of people answering to me now.

There was plenty of time to think about my promotion, and some other stuff, during the train ride home on Tuesday afternoon. There was a fire in a switching tower outside of the Long Island Rail Road’s Jamaica station on Monday morning, causing a ton of train cancellations and schedule modifications all week long. I don’t know how the LIRR managed, but it turns out that they’ve been using the same switching system in the affected tower for 97 years. Considering the lack of upgrades, I guess it’s safe to assume that the majority of the $400+ I pay each month is going overtime pay for the hordes of LIRR staff working on the problem, and not proactive (and long overdue) upgrades. OK, that wasn’t fair – they do have a new system going online in 2 months, but they could at least work on keeping the “blue juice” from the toilets in the trains from getting on to the floors.

Monday was worse; The LIRR simply stated that train service would be suspended, and took a couple of hours to even explain what was going on. Luckily, my co-worker, Cameron had rented a car to finish up some personal items and offered to drive me out to the island. It worked out well – I got home and he was able to go to some of the larger chain stores out here. Sure there are Target and Home Depot locations in the city, but are they as huge as the ones out here AND conveniently located just minutes away from Taco Bell and White Castle? I got a shot of Cameron (above) posing with some buckets at the Home Depot. We have a friend named Luis. He loves the buckets. We don’t know why. We don’t ask.

As I said earlier, the extra long commute time back and forth from the city left me with plenty of time to think. It’s amazing to see just how much can happen over the course of a year.

About 12 months ago, I found out that Latina would be moving to new offices. The timing completely sucked. I was planning on taking a trip to Sweden with some friends, and the day we’d all be leaving the States happened to be the same day as the move. Needless to say, I had to skip the trip and work on getting the new office ready, prepare the network for relocation, etc. 2 months later, we were moved in to the new space and did so without any major issues. Once I had the chance to sit down and get myself settled in to the new space, I realized how unhappy I was. Work was boring the hell out of me, and there was an overwhelming amount of it to do. I had to put my side projects on hold and never seemed to have any time for myself or anyone else. Any spare time I had was used to spruce up my resume.

Around 6 months later, things were improving. I had some new, interesting, projects going on at Latina and I was able to make more time for myself. I was still pretty swamped with work, but I was much happier. Several months went by, and things were great. I went back to the drawing board on ledouche and came up with the hand-etched flasks idea. The creative juices were flowing again and it felt good. I was even taking the time, literally dropping everything, to relax and be around friends and family.

Things really were good, until I had a bad moment at work. I was having one of those days where things were piling up from all sides. Those happen to everyone now and then, and I can usually deal with them, but that day was different. I had a moment of anger and unintentionally directed it towards a good friend. I said what I said, packed my bag and left the office. One of my buddies happened to be working from home that day so I decided a walk down to his place, from 59th street down to 13th, would give me the chance to clear my head and get myself back to normal. That was about 2 months ago, and she still hasn’t talked to me since. I’ve apologized several times, and have expressed how ashamed I am of myself for what I said, but it doesn’t seem to make any difference. Hopefully she’ll speak to me again, someday.

Fast forward to today, and things are great. Sadly, a day doesn’t go by when I don’t think about what a dick I was a couple of months ago, but I try not to dwell. There’s the promotion, I’m busy working on ledouche, and I’m keeping a really good balance between work and my personal life. Actually, the two of them bleed in to each other quite a bit, but it works out well. Overall, my health is good, but I may have to go under the knife soon for some preventative maintenance on the guts. I’ve also been boxing, only with exercise and stress relief in mind, for the past 6 weeks and I think it’s one of the best things I’ve ever decided to do. I work out with my heavy bag for about 30 minutes, and then ride my stationary bike for about an hour, 3-4 times a week. I’m feeling better, sleeping better and there’s a little extra room in those Fred Perry shirts I’ve stubbornly been wearing non-stop all summer.  On top of all of that, there’s a Suburban Legends/The Aquabats/Reel Big Fish show in November! Can it get any better? Of course it can – just add some buckets! BUCKETS!

I worked on some screen printing this weekend. It’s been a while since I’ve done any on my own, and it felt good to get back in to it. While I am having the majority of the shirts I’m working on printed by outside companies, I do want to create several items by hand – screened ties, some short-run shirts and packaging materials will by handled by yours truly.

With new materials on hand, I got off to a (rough) start. I guess that applying emulsion to screens isn’t like riding a bike – meaning I had to spend quite a bit of time teaching myself how to do it again. The results were good enough by my 6th attempt so I created a quick film using some graphics I had laying around and burned the screen. I chose these graphics to see how much detail I’d get with the screen/emulsion/ink combo I was trying. I’m using a dual-cure emulsion from Saati on a 110 mesh screen with Matsui brand ink.

The end result came out better than I expected (click for larger version – sorry for the poor photo). Some detail in the top of the skull was lost, but not as much as I thought. I’m especially happy that the “ledoucheclothingco.*” text came out perfectly.

The ledouche website is coming along nicely. It’s taking more time than I had originally planned, but that’s just what happens when I work on a project without giving myself a hard deadline. I originally planned on using WordPress to power it, but have been doing so much Drupal development at work that it just seemed logical to use it instead. Big thanks to Ned Silverman for getting me to realize that Drupal isn’t the steaming pile of shit that I once thought it was.

Warning: geeky stuff ahead.

/*

Drupal’s taxonomy and views modules, along with it’s high level of customization and available e-commerce options just made it a great fit. Within an hour or so, I had a “product” content type set up that contains all of the information you’d want to make available to customers, including a description, price, photos, available sizes, etc. All “products” are displayed with like items and fall within a hierarchy sort of like this:

• Clothing
  • Tee Shirts
  • Tank Tops
  • Smoking Jackets*
• Accessories
  • Ties
  • Flasks
  • Cufflinks

* no, not really.

The urls also fall within the same naming scheme, which is just really clean and good for SEO. All images (preview photos, thumbnails, etc) are all based off of the same, large, product photo and are scaled and re-sized on the fly to the dimensions I need throughout the site. The modified files are also cached to conserve resources.

*/

Most of the technical work is out of the way, and I’m concentrating on site design right now. I’m keeping it pretty minimal, in order to allow the products to stand out, while not making it so bare that it looks incomplete. Obviously, this takes time away from the products but I’m working hard to maintain a good balance between the two.

Yes! This is for real! Seriously!

After a few months of non-stop work at Latina, things are finally starting to quiet down a bit and I’m catching up on my side-projects. I have a handful of new shirts completed, along with some other surprises. I really love this particular shirt. The idea was to take two separate, opposing concepts and place them together in one graphic; Life/death, love/hate – that sort of thing. Love creates life, instruments of destruction end it.

I came up with the idea while listening to Sugar Ray’s Songs for Cougars. Hell yeah.

I’ll be working on the flasks again too, having learned a lot from the first time around. For one thing, eye protection is a must! There’s no way I’m walking in to work explaining why one of my eyes are swollen shut ever again. “Yeah, so it’s no big deal; Just some electrolyte fluid for etching steel managed to get in to my eye. Nothing crazy, just this whole electro-chemical reaction thing. No, it’s not bleeding anymore.” There will be several attractive items, aside from the flasks, for “the sophisticated gentleman who does not give a fuck.” Maybe something for the ladies, too.

I’m going to handle the screen-printing of some of the single colored shirts, as well as some of the packaging materials, on my own and will have an outside source handle the multi-color prints and items with complex placements. If I’ve learned one thing over the past couple of years, it would be that it’s crazy to go try and handle everything on your own. Take care of what you’re good at, and trust others to help you in areas you would be better off not doing on your own. I can’t even count how many times this has been said to me, but everyone was right and it’s advice that I’m following from now on.

The whole idea behind ledouche has had the chance to evolve well past it’s roots during the span of time between it’s inception and now. It’s no longer completely pointless, simply poking fun at folks who think too highly of their self-manufactured worlds. Ledouche has grown in to an tongue-in-cheek “fuck you” to everyone. We don’t discriminate.

Check out the “coming soon” page and be sure to reload – there are a few shirt mock ups that will appear at random. More to come!

I saw MC Lars for the first time when he opened up for an Aquabats show at B.B. King’s in  the summer of 2007. Lars and his live band put on a great show; I enjoyed the set so much that I took the time to meet the band afterward, and bought a copy of  MC Lars’ 2006 release, The Graduate, from his guitarist for $5.

Driving back to LI with a friend, we decided to give the CD a listen, and were sorely disappointed. While we recognized the songs, they were nowhere near as great without a live band. Now, a few years later, I see just how wrong I was. My introduction to the music wasn’t anything like the recorded versions and my expectations of the album were, at a minimum, what I had experienced at that show.

With all of this in mind, and hearing that The MC Bat Commander sings on a track, I approached his latest album as if I had never heard any of his music in the past and ended up loving every minute of This Gigantic Robot Kills. The production of this album is much better than his earlier releases, and the lyrics are as well thought out and witty as expected. Oh, “Weird Al Yankovic” plays the accordion on it too.

This release is named after an album by Wesley Willis which was never completed. Willis once told Mc Lars, “Lars Horris! I like your songs, I’ll write a song about you. I’ll probably write it on my next rock ‘n’ roll record, which is called ‘This Gigantic Robot Kills’.” TGRK has a bunch of great tracks, but the two that stand out the most for me are the title track and “No Logo” featuring Jesse Dangerously.  The title track of the album is a ska-infused song featuring Suburban Legends and MC Bat Commander, while No Logo is a commentary on bumper sticker activism and uses a sample from Fugazi‘s “Waiting Room”. Hipster girl is another standout song on the album that pokes fun at hipster culture, and it’s pretty much dead on. The disapproving stares from my Williamsburg confirm all he has to say.

In the end, TGRK is an album filled with humor, clever lyrics, a great variety of guest artists, and deserves space on your iPod.

A Michael Vick promo during In Living Color’s Lassie ’90 skit? I salute you, BET, for your comedic timing.

Prep Time: 1 hour, inactive prep time: 2 hours, cook time: 0 minutes
Yield: 24 pieces

• 1 package of Oreo cookies
• 1 8oz brick of Philly cream cheese
• 6oz milk, white or dark chocolate

The majority of the prep time consists of waiting around while the Oreo balls freeze. You can easily scale the recipe without adding too much extra prep time, so go ahead and make a ton. Trust me, you’ll be happy you did.

While these are called Oreo Balls, I guess that any other chocolate wafer cookie with a cream filling could be used. We made two batches, one using original Oreo cookies and a second with Oreo cookies filled with mint cream.

A food processor or spice grinder will come in handy when making Oreo balls. The cookies must be broken down to a fine consistency, and this can take 45 minutes or so if you’re doing it by hand. Get your hands on a food processor or something similar, place the cookies inside and pulse until broken down in to fine pieces.

When the cookies look like this, you’re ready for the next step.

Once the cookies have been broken down, add the entire brick of cream cheese in to the bowl. Leaving the cream cheese on the counter to warm up for about 30 minutes prior to use makes it a lot easier to work with.

Combine the Oreo cookies and cream cheese with your hands until they are thoroughly combined and have a texture similar to cookie dough.

Using a tablespoon, scoop the cookie and cream cheese mixture out of the bowl and roll in to balls with the palms of  your hands. The mixture is very moist and will stick, so it’s best to try and make each ball as quick as possible. The heat from your hands will cause the balls to become soft and loose shape if you take too much time.

Here is a photo of the Oreo balls we made. The ones made using the mint cookies are on the left and the ones made using the original Oreo cookies are on the right. There was much more cream in the middle of the mint cookies, and this caused their texture to be very different from the original ones.

Arrange the Oreo balls on to a cookie sheet lined with parchment paper and place in the freezer for about 2 hours, or until they are cold and have hardened considerably. Begin melting your chocolate about 20 minutes before you are ready to begin dipping your Oreo balls.

Here is another closeup of the Oreo balls. While great when coated in chocolate, they are equally delicious on their own – even if just a bit less appetizing. The sort of look like the asteroids from Armageddon, except filled with chocolaty goodness and not space rocks or Bruce Willis.

The heat of the melted chocolate can cause the Oreo balls to break down if you take too much time dipping them, so be sure to let each be in the chocolate for no more than 5 seconds or so. This sounds like a short amount of time, but is enough to completely coat each Oreo ball.

We decided to dip our Oreo balls in white and milk chocolate, and dress them up in tuxedos for the Oscars. We placed extra chocolate after dipping in to squeeze bottles, and used them to draw bow ties and buttons on each Oreo ball.

So there you go, Oreo balls all dressed up for the Oscars. I think that we are going to try making Oreo balls again in a few weeks, in pastel colors, just in time for Easter. I have a feeling that we’ll also be making some homemade peeps too!

Bonus: Miranda sings Aerosmith!

I owe you one

Jaguar Love’s new release, Hologram Jams, is streaming at Buzzgrinder right now. Go.

I haven’t heard the album in its entirety just yet, but it’s immediately apparent how much their sound has changed in Jay Clark’s absence. While I haven’t formed much of an opinion just yet, “Cherry Soda” is pretty sweet. Unfortunately, “Everything is Awesome” isn’t.

Past Lives, another band formed out of the split of The Blood Brothers, released an album last Tuesday, and tracks are available for listening at their site, www.pastliveslife.com.

I’m really not a fan of playing games on my computer. The first guy I ever answered to in IT always stressed that the computer is a tool, not a toy. While I don’t exactly agree with his thoughts, I’ve always kept my gaming to consoles. He also would say that he only drank water if it was in his coffee or scotch – a truly wise man.

Canabalt is a seriously addictive game. A friend sent me a link to it a few nights ago, and I ended up playing for over two hours. It’s sort of like a 2d version of Mirror’s Edge, minus a bad story line and vomit inducing visuals. The game’s obstacles are generated randomly, so you can’t quite memorize when and where to jump, which keeps the game play, as simple as it is, quite fresh. The music fits in with the fast pace of the game and really doesn’t get old, even after continuous play. Canabalt can be played online and is also available as an iPod app. Check it out!

Canabalt