This is probably the worst Pokemon costume I’ve worn for a lot of reasons. Probably isn’t the best thing to put on the internet since I know whenever I apply for jobs people seem to Google me and usually they find my stuff amusing, which is good since it’s usually online marketing roles that I apply for and some of my silly things on the internet have helped me get work here and there. Anyways, there was this dress up night at POW! Fridays again, the theme was anything you wanted. This girl wanted to go to it as Misty and talked me into going as Ash from Pokemon to go with it (because I still have my costume from the Thug Life Ash picture that went viral last year). I didn’t really want to outfit repeat so we swapped. Then when she tried on the Ash costume she didn’t like it because it was three layers and the jacket itself was super warm and it was a warm night. She decided to ditch the costume and we went and got another one instead. Probably a wise idea. Anyways here’s a terrible picture of me that I edited to make look as bad as possible.

I am posting the above photo to Instagram and the below “just girly things” pictures of me as Misty to Facebook. I’ll see which gets more attention.

Why do some bands get places and others do not?

I started writing this about a year ago. I haven’t proofread it / will probably change it / add to it later. Publishing it now for benefit of some people I am discussing it with currently.

Your Name

The name of your band is kind of important and you really shouldn’t mess with it once it is established. So when choosing a name here are some things to consider:

GOOD NAMES for your band

Is it easy to remember? – If it’s too weird or hard to remember or hard to spell, it might be hard to find your band online.
Is it something people would proudly wear on a t-shirt? If your name is really silly, some people might not want to wear it on a shirt. In some genres a silly name might be an advantage, I guess it needs to be appropriate to your target audience.
Is it easy to shorten / abbreviate? I recall reading that Trent Reznor from Nine Inch Nails liked the name because “NIN” still read well on paper.

BAD NAMES for your band

Is it a song name from another band in your genre? – I know of a local band who had several thousand fans on their Facebook who changed their name once they started getting well known because they were now embarrassed that their name was lyrics from another band. It could be embarrassing if you ever have to play with that band, I mean it’s kinda cute but it is also saying “we will never be as big as you and we love you so much” which is a bit lame. You should be aiming to be big, not to be smaller than another existing band. It could also make you sound like a cheesy tribute band. A lot of them have lyrics from other bands or puns on their other song names as names.

Is the name already taken? – This is probably the most important thing ever when choosing a band name. If someone else in another country has the same band name as you… DO NOT USE THAT NAME. It is pretty simple. Do not just assume “Oh we are way better than them, we will just take it anyway and no one will ever know”. Blink-182 was originally just called Blink and later found out that another band in Ireland was threatening legal action for using the same name, so they added numbers to the end. Back then it would have been much harder to find out about other bands with the same name as you but NOW you can do it easily… just search the internet. You are only making life hard for yourself if you do choose a name that is already taken. The names for all your online sites will probably be taken already. You are probably not going to be taken seriously if you can’t even get the Facebook name you want. Just say you wanted to name your band Metallica. This name has already been taken. You don’t really want to have your URL as “MetallicaAU” or “MetallicaRock” or “MetallicaBand”. It is making your URL too long and it will look lame when written down.

Do Not Change Your Name UNLESS You Really Have To

Ok sometimes it becomes hard not to change your name. But if you are starting to get a following and you change your name, anyone who had known of your band but hadn’t really been following you too closely will forget about you. If your name had been appearing on gig flyers at stores and all over the internet and suddenly you change your name to something totally different, people who read your name will assume you are someone else starting again from the bottom. I have seen a few bands do this after having established 1,000+ likes on Facebook, they both managed to get decent numbers back up afterwards but their original profiles (having been around much longer) still have more likes.

Merch

One of my pet peeves is when bands start designing logos and tshirts before they have even recorded any songs or in some cases, before they have even performed live. Making merch is a bit of a commitment. On numerous occasions I have seen local bands start selling t-shirts before they have even done a show yet. In other instances they have done one or two shows and then do merch, if they are a good band, then it is less risky, but still you are really just selling things to your friends, not your fans. I own shirts from most of the local bands in my town from 2004 to maybe 2007ish. I think only 2 of those bands is still around and only 1 of them I still occasionally wear and when I do, it’s for some kind of weird nostalgic / ironic reason due to them getting big recently and hardly anyone has that original tshirt design from back then. All the other shirts and hoodies I don’t wear because whenever I did, people would ask me why I’m wearing that and say that band broke up and stuff. It’s like you’re not allowed to wear a shirt for a local band anymore if they’ve broken up. If you sell your friends clothes that they will feel silly for wearing 1 month from now, you’ve kind of burned them. They probably won’t want to wear a shirt of a crappy band that only existed for two months and you’ll probably end up with a box of unsold shirts that no one will want to buy and now you’ve also burnt yourself.

I think the production of t-shirts may have improved in recent years but it seemed that in the old days, most bands had 1-2 colour screen prints and they looked kind of cheap. Professional band tshirts usually have lots of colours /shades and just look better. Don’t use a font that came preinstalled on your operating system. Especially don’t use Comic Sans or Chiller. If possible pay someone to design you something that actually looks cool. There are a lot of talented people out there, you could probably license an image pretty cheap off Deviant Art or some other online artist website, or maybe you know a good tattoo artist or actual artist who can do something. Unless someone close to you actually studied design, you really should just get a professional, it’s worth the money and you won’t have to worry about offending your friend if their design sucks. If your merch looks awesome people will be more inclined to buy it. I have passed on buying some of my friends merch in the past because I didn’t think it looked good and didn’t really want to wear it.

Hoodies are pretty awesome but I wouldn’t suggest selling those unless you’ve had a lot of success with t-shirts beforehand. The cost price to get a hoodie made used to be about $35-$45 AUD. Which meant they had to be sold for a bit more than that. It’s still cheaper than what someone would pay at a concert or band merch store in Australia, I remember them being $65-$99 at these places a few years back. I know I once paid $75 for a Nine Inch Nails 2007 tour hoodie that only had a 1 colour print on the front and back and was the exact same brand as what you would buy at K-Mart for $15. But I used to love Nine Inch Nails and had been obsessed with them for a few years by that point so was willing to pay a stupid amount of money for a hoodie at a concert. Most of your friends probably don’t love your band THAT much to spend big money on a hoodie of yours. A local band I know from maybe 2006-7 actually sold hoodies and only performed about 1 show ever. After a while it was only the band members who wore the hoodie. They were nice guys and all, but I guess their enthusiasm was bit overwhelming and more time should have been focused on writing good music and practicing instead of making designs and researching merch companies.

Before you start selling merch you should probably ask yourself these questions:

Do we have friends or fans?
Have we performed shows where people you haven’t met before are singing along to your original songs?
Do we get a lot of feedback on our Facebook and Twitter pages from people we don’t know very well / have never met
Have we released an EP or Album yet?
Do we gig regularly?

If your answer to any of those things is no, then it’s probably not the right time. If you are starting to do shows interstate then that’s actually a good time to start selling things. This is only if you are actually wanted interstate and that people will buy it. If you land a support slot on decent tour then you should definitely have something to sell or to give away, otherwise people from that show will forget you. If you’re any good (which you probably are if you are supporting a high profile band) then people will naturally add you to Facebook, but if you have something to give them then and there, it really seals the deal. Bands from interstate always look good with their state’s initials next to their name, a band from another state (our country) usually gives a bit of credibility to the event and to the band itself. “Ooooh these guys must be good if this venue I like got them to come all this way” or “This venue must be good if they can afford bands from interstate” and I guess in most cases this is true. Most interstate bands I have seen at Melbourne venues have been quite decent except there was a very young looking band that I saw open at metal concert whose music was very boring. I think they opened for Children of Bodom a few years ago or some other bigger metal band. We assumed they must have been related to someone important or something. You’d expect a metal band who opened for them to be catchy and at least be similar to the headline band. Metal has a lot of sub genres. Get someone of the same sub genre or else they could be pretty hit or miss.

Your first CD.

If you are doing lots of gigs then shirts and CDs are great. I see a lot of bands who go straight to recording all their songs as soon as they have written them, this seems a bit premature but at the same time this is a double edged sword. Recording your EP before you’ve done many gigs is risky because time spent in the studio early kind of takes away from time you could be spending doing shows and practicing. If you have played the songs live a lot before you record them, you will probably be able to do a better job on the album. But if you have nothing on your social media pages that shows what you sound like, then many venues or bookers are unlikely to book you. If you can get a decent live demo done or know a sound engineering student who can just make 1 track for you or something early on as a demo then this could be handy.

The reason Why I am hesitant about recording songs straight away is this:
1 once you hit the road, you might find out your band is full of idiots you don’t want to spend lots of time with. Someone gets kicked out of the band / the whole band breaks up and the recording is kind of wasted. Also anyone who got kicked out soon after recording will also feel ripped off.
2. The first songs you write probably won’t be your best work. One of my favourite local bands, Obsidieth didn’t release their album for quite some time, they scrapped quite a few older songs and only put their best ones on their album. Most venues will only give bands a 20-30 minute set. If you are a good band, you will write more songs over time and will drop the bad ones. Why fill your CD up with bad songs if you are probably going to drop them soon?

Valentine’s Day is tomorrow so I thought I’d make a nice pic for my Facebook and Instagram friends, here is my Zubat / Dark Cave / Mount Moon Valentines Day Meme pic. Hope people like it. “Not even a max repel will keep me away this Valentine’s Day

Last Halloween I made a Zubat Swarm / Mount Moon / Dark Cave costume from the Pokemon games. I wanted to make the scariest costume ever. It was also far too expensive but I later wore a variation of this to the Melbourne Wii U Launch and won a free copy of New Super Mario Bros U so I guess the costume paid for itself in the end.

I planned on making this picture for a really long time but the original picture was really dark and annoying to cut out in Photoshop so I put off doing it for ages. It is based on the “you came to the wrong neighborhood motherfucker” meme. But says “You came to the wrong cave motherfucker” instead as you can see in the picture. The background picture is a map of Mount Moon from the original Pokemon games. I darkened the picture though because the original picture was far too bright looking (someone used Flash obviously).

On my Facebook page there’s some kind of joke going about how I really like Bacon Deluxe burgers from Hungry Jack’s. Well I guess it’s not really a joke because they are probably my favourite burger ever and I’m sure I eat them more than once a week and have a habit of posting pictures of me eating them sometimes. Above is a photo of me holding my first Bacon Deluxe Burger of 2013. The first of many. I made this photo to commemorate that special moment. The photo got over 200 likes as well which wasn’t too shabby.

Above is picture of me that I pasted on top of a picture of a cat against an optical illusion that I saw in my Facebook news feed. I figured it would probably look better if I switched the head for mine and added Bacon Deluxe burgers over my eyes. I thought maybe this picture would make a good cover photo and would encourage people to buy them for me. It didn’t really work though. Someone bought me a McFlurry recently but that’s totally different.

This picture was made with two uses in mind, the initial Instagram photo for the POW! Fridays Instagram account to promote a dress up night in 2012 (can’t remember what theme it was) and then also to go with my article about the Hungry Jack’s Makes It Better App for iPhone and Android. I wrote that article a while ago but haven’t shared it or this picture on Facebook yet, I’ll do that today, hopefully people understand it. The joke is to do with how a lot of the old McDonald’s mascots are all gone and that the Hamburglar is now unemployed and uses the Hungry Jack’s app to get his burgers. I guess it’s kind of like a political cartoon but in a photo. Political cartoons aren’t really that funny. Oh well.

Today I saw this caption “I didn’t choose the thug life – The thug life said I choose you” and on another image and thought this picture of my Ash costume from a Nintendo / Video Game themed dress up night would suit it well. I am so ASHamed of myself for making this and posting it online. I originally posted this photo saying something about how I didn’t know which Pikachu to take, I ended up taking none of them because I didn’t want to carry it around all night / lose it.

Here’s a pic of me with my friends dressed as Sora, Tingle and Gary Oak (far right, can’t see too well), by coincidence we all went to the Nintendo Wii-U launch together dressed in similar costumes except I wore the Zubat Dark Cave / Mount Moon costume to that and the guy dressed as Sora borrowed my Ash Costume and the guy dressed as Gary Oak came as Pit from Kid Icarus.

It actually turned out that I didn’t need a Pikachu doll anyway as there were a few people dressed as them there already.

Update: Since I posted this on Facebook some of my friends shared it to a bunch of other sites. Got a lot of views on Imgur, Reddit, DamnLOL and dozens of Facebook fan pages.

The original Reddit / Imgur post seems to be gone now (not really sure how those sites work) but the original post that someone from my Facebook posted it under was called “saw this on facebook made by friend” which wasn’t really the best title ever. It appears to have had 159,511 views according to what comes up in Google search (but the link doesn’t open). Here’s the original link in case it ever somehow works again but it probably won’t. http://s.imgur.com/eApg7?tags

Memebase’s Facebook page got 1577 likes and 274 shares and has a link to cheezburger.com but the link doesn’t work anymore.

Damn! LOL Facebook Page got 13371 likes and 1544 shares

“Hello, welcome to the Pokemon Centre” – *rapes A button* got 9048 likes and 951 shares

Stahp got  763 likes and 154 shares

Scott Pilgrim got 1099 likes and 152 shares

How I Met Your Mother Memes got 330 likes 17 shares

Badass Ed got 126 likes and 25 shares

“Dude I wasn’t drunk”. “Dude you used earthquake on Pidgeot” 919 likes 131 shares

4CHAN got 3703 likes and 586 shares

Team Rocket got 346 likes and 959 shares (wow? more shares than likes?)

Videogamemes got 7359 likes  and 830 shares on 10 March 2013

Mother of Mewtwo got 201 likes and 40 shares on 9 April 2013

RIP Limewire got 442 likes and 77 shares around 17 April 2013

Unfuckingbelievable got 3639 likes and 468 shares around 17 April 2013

I hate it when you’re with MC Hammer and he doesn’t let you touch anything. got 607 likes and 177 shares around 17 April 2013

I thought I’d try and make the scariest possible costume for Halloween this year. Keep in mind that basically no one takes a Max Repel or Escape Rope with them to a Halloween party. So I bought 8 plush Zubat Pokemon dolls and sadly had to cut off all their tags and pinned them to my hooded jacket. The costume was far heavier than I had anticipated but people liked it and said it was very scary.

I’d had this costume idea for months, I almost wore it to video game themed nightclub event but was worried drunk people might try and steal my Zubat dolls so I went as Ash instead. I might wear the Zubat costume to PAX Australia next year, but will not enter any cosplay competitions. Cosplay isn’t really my thing.

I currently have this as my display photo on Facebook. It is really tacky and pretentious, but people thought it was cool and had trouble reproducing the effect, so I’m making a tutorial I guess. I’ll explain the process of how I made the photo, but I would not recommend the exact same order I use, since I took the original photo sometime before I downloaded the final app used to make this photo and hadn’t originally intended for this photo to exist the way it does.

What you will need:
An Iphone 4 or newer (I used an iPhone 4S)
Slow Shutter Cam $.99
InstaEffect FX free
Instagram free

First I used Slow Shutter Cam which is one of my favourite iPhone camera apps, I fool around with this app a lot. It’s 99 cents, but totally worth it. Go download that now I guess and follow along.

When you open the app it goes straight to the camera mode. I don’t know what the default settings are, but  here are the settings I settled on ages ago (I never adjust these anymore, I’m happy with them like this). To access the settings here click on the aperture logo (bottom left button) and change them to Automatic and 2 shutter speed. This means that once you click the camera/photo button (bottom centre) it will record frames for two seconds. I usually like to turn my head in photos to get some kind of moody album cover effect. I might post some other pictures like this that I’ve taken in another post later, cos there’s a lot of cool stuff you can try.  In the originally photo I was laying down looking up in my bed. I like doing that because it gives me a flat colour in the background, you can also do it against a wall or something.

Once you take your photos, you use the top slider to move between the start and end points and stop the slider on a position that looks cool, I also increased the exposure in the original photo to make my skin look clear and pale. Once you get the picture looking the way you want it to, click the save button on the bottom right.

I then posted the photo to Instagram. I’m not sure which effect I used but it might have been Hudson, though my favourite is Lo-fi. This step I’d suggest you do last instead.

Above is how it turned out. This is the photo I inserted into the next app that I used. InstaEffect FX by monkeyX crops the picture to a square for you anyway as it is meant to be used before Instagram, so just use first ok? Select your photo when the app opens and then you get to choose some effects for your photo. Press the button that says “Effects”

I used the middle effect on the second row. There are several pages of effects to choose form, but they get progressively worse. Also note there are ads in this free version of the app (which is what those “quest” and “battle” buttons are. Ignore those.

Here was probably a good place to stop, but I also used the “DrawFX” button and drew a blue scribble on the picture

The blue I used is the default colour, I think I used the default size as well (you can choose colours and size at the bottom, slide across to access more colours) I kinda traced the shape of my head in the original pic, in the example above I just did a scribble.

After this I would then export the photo and put it on Instagram and then maybe add another filter and then post it on Facebook as your display photo. The slow shutter effect is kind of wasted on the final product, but  it’s what I used, I’m sure other apps will let you make the picture look over exposed as well, but that app is worth getting regardless. I hope this helps.

Borderlands was one of the few games of this generation that I actually finished (well finished campaign once, didn’t finish 2nd play through).

I ordered the Loot Chest edition as soon as it was announced from the Swanston street EB Games as it is near my work and I assumed it would be the best place for me to pick it up from, since I was planning to be at work on the release date (and I was there that day).

Nearer to the release date it was announced that there would be midnight launches there and at my local Werribee Plaza  EB Games store. I wasn’t sure if I should switch my order to there or not but since I didn’t really want to be up past midnight on a work night I ended up just leaving it in the city (it was sold out and couldn’t get transferred anyway).

I rocked up to the Werribee store anyway just to see what the event was like and I was very impressed. I got there at around 10pm (it started at 9.30) They had the whole food court fenced off for us, there was loud music coming from a DJ on a stage. On the way into the food court I was given some free Borderlands 2 merch (a Borderlands 2 key ring and Borderlands 2 Top Trumps
card set) and a free taco and chips voucher from Salsa (Mexican chain that had just opened in the food court).

I knew a lot of people there, said hi and chatted to people whilst they lined up to pay for their games (in order to claim a token to pick up their order quickly at 12.01). Above is the decorated entrance to the store and some people waiting in line. The line was pretty big, I never actually went inside since I wasn’t paying for my order since I was getting mine from Swanston street’s EB Games the next day.

Some people told me about additional free stuff to get my hands on. This included a free Razer drink bottle from a table promoting a new Razer gaming laptop (they let people try the new Borderlands 2 game there too).

I also got a photo of myself from a green screen both put into the head of the enemy guy from the front of game cover. I probably shouldn’t have smiled, whoops.

There was a a contest where you had 5 shots to hit various targets (or basically just aim for the 20 point one) to see if you could get at least 60 points in order to get a chance to win a prize pack. I didn’t see the prize pack but I think it involved a borderlands backpack. I did get 60 points but I’m assuming I didn’t win it since I wasn’t there when it was drawn.

Here is a picture of a Claptrap that the Werribee EB Games staff made. The JB HIFI at the Werribee Plaza have one too but this one is slightly better. He was positioned next to the DJ booth. The JB HIFI one was missing an arm when I saw it a few days ago. Poor guy.

Above is a photo of all the stuff I got, Razer drink bottle and catalog (never got to look in it, a friend used it to rest his greasy food on) Taco + chips voucher from Salsa Werribee Plaza, Borderlands 2 keyring and Top Trumps cards and my special photo thing. Overall pretty decent haul considering I didn’t even buy the game there.

By the time I actually went to sleep that night, I probably could have just collected it from midnight there. Would have been way more convenient than trying to carry the giant box in its slightly too small shopping bag from Swanston Street all the way to Etihad Stadium where our car was parked.

I have volunteered on committees that my local council pay for at least 5 years now and the entire time, we have been asking for official Social Media presence for those organisations for that entire time. Myspace completely disappeared in that time and now Facebook is the biggest thing, but by the time they actually get around to approving anything people might not even be using that one anymore. I discuss how these sort of organisations could greatly benefit from social media sites / online advertising here.

It is a real shame that waste so much money on printed newsletters which I assume few people actually read. Similar budgets could be targeted to the correct people online. It would be like shooting fish in a barrel. I find out about nearly everything that interests me via Facebook or Twitter. I actually get annoyed whenever I get mail that isn’t a parcel from eBay or something. I don’t even open half things sent to me unless it’s something important like a phone bill.