Oliver Siodmak’s Rants & Raves

You wouldn’t know it by looking at me but I was a child performer.   I sang in the NYC Opera Children’s chorus from ages 7 to 14.   It was during my first professional career that I learned the art of public speaking (or should I say public singing).   I also learned the hard truth about what it means to be a professional performer and the difference between thinking you are talented, and being talented.   I believe I fall into the former category when it comes to my musical capabilities.   By the time my professional singing career started to wind down I was in High School.   Having been a performer for 7 years (1/2 of my life), I applied and was accepted to the High School of Music & Art (M&A).   Yeah, yeah .. the “Fame” school.

It as at M&A that I met some of my life-long closest friends.   One of my dearest friends from my youth is Tony James.   Tony (pictured left) falls under the “is” talented category and has toured with many other talented musicians and bands including Acapella, Maggie’s Dream, Larry Mitchell, Brenda K. Star and Cindi Lauper to name just a few.   He was also was one the two co-stars of Disney’s long running cable show, “Out of the Box”.

As long as I have known Tony he has fully dedicated himself to developing his craft.   First as a musician and then expanding his talents to include acting.   He refused to take the easy path and settle for an easy 9to5 job.   I have always marvelled at how he has decicate himself to his passion.   To be honest, when I get stuck at work facing a difficult challenge and want to simply give up and walk away, I think about Tony and how he has continued to push himself forward.   It gives me strength to recommit and push forward.   You can’t ask more from a friend.

I was therefore pleased to see the wonderful praise Tony received in an article published on IK Software’s SimpleTank’s web site.   Tony was interviewed by Mark Hornsby about his latest album and how he uses IK’s software to produce and engineer his album himself using his Mac.

Keep watching this site for a link to Tony’s new album on iTunes.  –> Now available here

In Lev Grossman’s Time magazine article, Stevie’s Little Wonder, he talks about how Steve Jobs challenged his team at Apple to make the iPod better. It only takes one look at the new Nano for you to realize that they have succeeded. The Nano is very small and very functional. The screen is exceedingly sharp and provides features that until a few months ago were only available in the iPod Photo. “We use every fraction of a millimeter of space to get things in there,” says Apple senior vice president Phil Schiller. “It’s like a puzzle to fit all that stuff together. It has the tightest tolerances of anything we’ve ever made in the history of this company.”

All signs are pointing to another home run for Apple. My only challenge is to figure out what I’m going to do with the 3 iPods I already own!

Mozilla’s Firefox web browser allows you add additional functionality using “extensions”. These extensions provide capabilities to the browser that the original developers had not considered or did not wish to include in the core product. I zealously use the following extensions to significantly enhance my web browsing experience:

• Bookmarks Synchronizer - I work across several different PCs and Macs throughout the course of the week. Bookmarks Synchronizer allows me save my bookmarks as an XML file to my web. Each time I start Firefox, the browser downloads the latest version of the file. Changes are synchronized and added to the file which is uploaded when I close the browser. The file is small so the exchange takes but a second. A very helpful tool.
• MeasureIt - I occassionally need to check the size of an image or area of real estate a section of a web page is using. MeasureIt provides me with a quick on-screen ruler.
• Print Image - Add “print image” capabilities to the context menu

There are many, many more extensions available for Firefox. Checkout the extensions page on the Mozilla.org Web site.