Aight, everyone, here are the next two topics coming up on the hotcakes podcast. Got some input? Don’t-even for a second-consider not sending it our way!

Televised North American Football: Does it excite you? Pumped for the Super Bowl? Why/Why not?

Larry Niven & Jerry Pournelle’s Inferno: I must say, this book sounds very interesting! Can’t wait to hear what YOU ALL and Gwardo have to say about it!

I was talking to a co-worker about how they were hating the project to which they are currently assigned. They advised that they hated the fact that they were really now getting to know the material. I responded with “It’s dangerous to become an expert in something you hate”.

After I saying that, my mind blew up with everyday examples of people who have become experts in a field that they hate. You’ll see these people everywhere, people who have experience in the wrong line of work and feel like they can never leave it. Call customer service and you’ll likely talk to one, go to your grocery store and you’ll see a dozen. People who had a good paying job out of high school and never wanted to risk that income and go to school.

If you don’t know someone like the above watch an episode of “How it’s Made”. If you see a faceless pair of hands deftly connecting one hose to another they likely belong to someone in this position. Alternatively, you may have watched an episode of “Dirty Jobs” where some old coot has been sticking his thumb up a turkeys’ asses for 45 years “just cuz no one else can do it quite right’.

Are you in that position?

If you can describe yourself a being in a career rut you may just be becoming an expert of something that you hate.

Taking myself as an example, after 7 years in the same department my motivation to improve was gone and my enthusiasm destroyed. At that point in my career the only viable option would be to leave or accept that I was going to be completely miserable. Thankfully the right opportunity came along before I found myself thumb deep in turkey ass.

Keep your options open and don’t be afraid to take a risk. This may involve leaving your current company, town, province/state or country. I’m sure this is the last thing that anyone wants to consider when the job market is strangled but this may be the correct time to make your move.

Your chosen field may not pay you what you are worth from the start but enthusiasm for your work will eventually translate into recognition by your employer and or clients. I’m not trying to say that I have it all figured out but I do know that doing what you hate for the rest of your life is no way to live.

YAO -teezeCrost here. Sorry if this is reaching you a 2nd time. Feeds are wild things to try to control. Just wanted to let you all know that the Hotcakes Podcast website facelift is pretty much complete. The colors aren’t going to look 100% how I want them to on every monitor, but that’s out of my hands. Have a look and let us know what you think!

In addition to the cosmetic changes, there are now easier links for listening and getting in touch, DISQUS comment areas on the home page and on every episode in the ‘All Episodes’ section(which is also new), and a news page To keep up on what’s coming up on the show etc.

The new news section may even be where you’re reading this very post; hotcakes related news items from the sweet-dick blog are what populate it. This was done using the AMAZING Simple Pie PHP class for RSS feeds, if you’re into that kinda thing. Don’t be shocked if you see a few old episodes posted in there as well for the next little while. It’s the old podcast feed that we’re now using for news. No need to worry about resubscribing or anything though – this all happened behind the scenes.

Anyway, with this done, we’re ready to record fresh episodes again! Gwardo and I will be doing so this Saturday, then give us a few days to wrestle with a few new audio production concepts and issues, and episode 70-the first for 2010-will be out early next week.

OH! and don’t forget to call in to our new number-even just to say word up-so we can play you on the next episode! 1-339-225-3784! That’s 1-”3 EZ CAKES, UG”

Much love. Keep it right!

Tonight I was out walking Jazzy (that’s my dog, not the manner in which I was walking), and we stopped to wait for the light at a crosswalk. This middle aged dude in a flannel shirt joined us for the wait almost right away. For some reason, Jazz decided to not trust him, and gave him a loud bark just as the light was changing to green. Jazz has a great bark for his size, and I’m sure it would scare a lot of people, so this is something I can’t accept from him. “HEY!” I yelled at him as I gave his leash a good snap and continued moving across the street. “I then turned back briefly and gave a quick “Sorry about that!” to the guy.

From behind me, I hear “Hey don’t beat him too hard with that stick!” I laughed. “HAH! Ooooh nooo!” I said. The stick he was referring to was Jazz’s “Chuckit”. It’s a toy used to fling tennis balls really far. I continued “I don’t know. Sometimes he’ll just bark at a random person, but he really is friendly.”. The guy says “Oh it’s probably just me; I don’t spend a lot of time around dogs.” Brief pause. “You ever watch that dog whisperer?” he suddenly asked. “Oh yeah, I love that show.” I said. “Yeah, you should watch the dog whisperer. He’ll tell you a lot of tips for your dog.” the guy who was beginning to prod my nerves persisted. I go “Yeah, I watch it all the time. He’s great.”

That’s the end of the important part of the story. Let me get a few things out of the way now. I’d never hit my dog; especially not to hurt him! I would be crying before he would, I promise you! I’m a great pet owner, and my dog is, for the most part, very obedient. He gets babied to a ridiculous degree. Did this guy think I was a pet abuser or something because I yanked on his leash? He doesn’t even know Jazz! If he did, he’d know how little anything fazes him. He barely even acknowledged the leash snap!

So now I feel like this guy needs to know something I would never have cared about ten seconds ago. But there’s nothing to respond to! He never accused me of anything, so I can’t even redeem myself! Fuck that guy! Small deal, but DUDE, at least give me an in to set you straight!

Now I’ll begin the not caring part. I promise.

Insulting prick.

Yes, I’m Canadian, but today I’m leaving the “u” out of “color” ’cause that’s the kind of mood I’m in. That, and the main reason I’m writing this post is to attempt to help some people, and more people will be searching the term “color” than “colour”. This is not a general interest sort of post, but if you’ve stumbled across it, have a read; it does deal with stuff you see every day: the colors on the internet. You may find it interesting

I’ve been designing web sites for years now, and I’ve always found that color reproduction was good enough. When I went to spruce up hotcakespodcast.com though (revamp not yet live at the time of this posting), the design contained a blue that WOULD NOT cooperate. You’re always going to see differences between monitors, but this case was unacceptable to me. I figured this was a great excuse to finally spring for that Spyder 3 monitor calibrator I’ve been wanting. I knew it wouldn’t be the silver bullet to end all web display problems, but I figured that if I knew my monitor was calibrated, I could at least depend on the fact that my screen was a stable, middle of the road home base for designing.

A week later my calibrator arrived, and I made use of it immediately. I then attempted to get back to work and I began noticing that in Photoshop’s “save for web” dialog, the image preview was WAY off in color from what I had designed. My perfectly concocted blue had shifted to a rich, ugly purple, and my warm yellow elements were slightly more green. Hours of experimentation, reading, and frustration followed this, but I won’t bore you with those details here.

To boil down what I already knew of web design and what I learned that first night, web browsers don’t support icc color profiles by default for the most part. Most people will recommend that if  you’re designing for the web, your working color space should be sRGB because it’s the RGB profile that most closely falls in line with the gamut available on the web. The problem here though, is that when you view an sRGB image in a program that ignores it’s sRGB profile, there’s a good chance it’ll look like shit.

So what good is designing in sRGB in an age where browser color management is not quite a reality? Not much, really; not at the moment. I did read a few articles where people recommended working in the “monitor RGB” color space (and this did work well for me in terms of color matching), but this was usually followed immediately by graphics aficionados chiming in in the comments area about how you should never do that. My understanding of this is that one shouldn’t limit the website user experience to the designer’s specific monitor color gamut. This makes sense, but then how does one make one’s color selections somewhat consistent across a variety of monitors?

Here’s the middle ground I found. In Adobe Photoshop, keep your working space at sRGB. But then, go to View>Proof Setup, and select the “Monitor RGB” profile. Now when you do a “proof colors” preview, you’ll see closer to what a web browser will display. Now a word of advice from my recent experience. Don’t bother considering the sRGB view too much. There’s not much reason to put in work finding a balance between an attractive sRGB and an attractive Monitor RGB version. Go with what most people will see, and work primarily in the “proof colors” preview mode. Keep in mind that if saving out a JPG, you’ll have an “ICC profile” checkbox. If you don’t want your colors to shift in color management enabled browsers, I would uncheck this box, and also disable the “convert to sRGB” option available when you click the little double-arrow icon beside the “presets” menu. GIF never saves ICC information, so there’s nothing to worry about there, but a PNG can present different issues.

This is all shaky ground, and I’d really strongly advise anyone out there struggling with this to take a deep breath, understand what you can, but then just accept that your design will never look exactly like what you have in mind on all browsers on all monitors. You just gotta let it go. I hope this post is able to help someone out there. If it does, please leave a comment if you feel like it! If anyone has something to add or correct, definitely let me know!

Here are some good articles to help you grasp what’s going on with ICC color profiles, color spaces, etc.

Overview of Color Management

Color Management: Color Spaces

Photoshop Working (Space) Behind the Scenes

The 2010 consumer electronics show just wrapped up, so I thought I’d post some thoughts on the state of technology.

Let’s get 3D out of the way. It’ll be the treadmill of the video industry. It’ll be there, it’ll be functional, but you’ll only use it once in a while. This is how it’ll be until 3d without glasses becomes attainable and practical.

The other buzz topic of the show seemed to be tablet computing. I’m really not excited about this in any way, but I don’t doubt that whatever Apple has coming in this department is going to blow some minds. I think it’s going to be something much more substantial than a huge iPhone. I really don’t see Steve Jobs bothering with an idea that short of revolutionary. See my home entertainment concept below for another use for a tablet.

The Google Nexus One. Looks slightly better than the Motorola Droid/Milestone. Super quick, and an unmatched screen is what I hear, but guess what. Everyone just bought a Droid. That’s why it’s not selling. That aside, do you know how long I’ve been waiting to buy a smart phone? I started shopping around the time the Blackberry Storm was announced. That’s like early 2008 or something!  Apparently Canadian companies do not want my money. They’re so slow to release a product, that by the time it hits here, I’ve had detailed rundowns of what’s coming around the corner (in the US). You know what? The Motorola Milestone is only about a month away here, and I’m buying one. I’m not waiting around to see if WIND Mobile gets its shit together to bring the Nexus One here. And there’s no way something twice as good won’t be out by the time the Verizon/Telus version comes out.  There’s no good time to buy a smart phone, but if there was, it’s now for me.

To close, let me tell you what home entertainment needs. And this will solve so many of the current problems. Somebody needs to come out with a 60″ OLED screen (ok, with 3D capabilities; whatever!) that runs Android. Oh yes, android is going to be way more than a cell phone OS. Your TV will become your gaming console, your movie/music downloader, your station/program menu, and just about whatever else you can think of needing. You could even install apps for quick access to online content like that of Revision 3, Twit, or Adam Carolla’s network (laugh if you want, I think carolla is going to be the guy to bring online content mainstream.).

Of course the set will need to be wifi capable and come with USB3 ports to connect massive solid state drives to for super fast media playback. And here’s where your tablet comes in. Your tablet (or phone, realistically) is your new universal remote. It will interface with your TV, and you can use the touch screen and on-screen keyboard to control whatever’s on your TV screen. And that will be fantastic. Somebody in a position to do something, please hear me!

For some last touches, if we really want to move things forward already, let’s finally implement these amazing audio technologies: focusable audio, and invisible speakers.

There it is! Enjoy.

Goddamn, it’s hard to build a business when you also have a full time job, friends, a dog, and want to stay fit!

Here it is though, 2010, and things feel like they’re happening again finally! To keep things short and sweet, let me go department by department, and let all those interested know what’s happening with all these connected websites!

First, Sweet-Dick.com. This seems like it’s been in the hopper forever. I’ve decided to stop waiting for a convenient time to work on this though, and just keep blasting through it on evenings and weekends. Some socializing time would be nice, but enough’s enough with this “soon I’ll…” BS.

I’m a guy who has a lot of underlying enthusiasm and ambition, but it often takes something to summon all that to the surface. I’ve been listening to the “Think and Grow Rich” audio book lately, and I think it’s doing the trick. It’s on par with “The 4 Hour Work Week”, but contains info that’s a little more timeless

Shopping is now functional (on an internal basis) and all that’s left to do is the cart page and payment process. Once the Hotcakes revamp is done, it shouldn’t take me more than 3 or 4 weeks of  ”spare time” work to tie this puppy up! I’ll keep giving progress updates on Hotcakes, so stay tuned at hotcakespodcast.com!

Speaking of Hotcakes, let me start by saying we plan to record a new episode on Jan. 30th/2010. We’ve got some great changes coming your way. The logo has been revamped, the site is being spruced up, we’ve got a new publishing method, a blazing new theme song, and new format. Of course, this all takes time to complete.

At the moment, I’m waiting on my new spyder3 monitor calibrator before I continue work on the hotcakes website. Just when I thought it was safe to start coding things, I had a look at my excellent new design on a few other monitors. Garbage! So I’ll tweak, then continue with my changes.

Our theme song; Gwardo and I love it, and so do most people who’ve heard it. We had our man Abstract Artform put some work in on it, and we think it’s going to be a hit.

For publishing, we wanted to move away from this blog to sort of separate brands a bit and avoid confusion. So I started searching around for other podcast RSS generators and couldn’t find anything decent that worked exactly how I wanted it to. Then a search result came up that shocked me. The software I required was software I’ve been running for a long damn time. CUTEFTP has a podcast manager, and it works just like you’d want it to. Well done, GlobalScape! A big round of applause to you’s!

As for the new format, it’s shorter, sweeter, and well, let me just paste it in to avoid typing the show description out yet again! “We put together breakfast then take apart your world! Hotcakes is a weekly audio-cast that’s designed to be humorous, informative, and lots of fun! teezeCrost & Gwardo look up the ingredients to successes and failures of ALL kinds and encourage you to take part!”

RocketScienceDesigns.com is my recently completed website for advertising my capabilities with graphics, printing, web development, etc. I really don’t know when the hell I’d find time to do extra design work at the moment, but if you know someone in need, tell ‘em RocketScienceDesigns.com knows what time it is!

That’s about it, folks. Stay tuned for big things! I’ma have a snack now and rest up so I can continue working my ass off tomorrow. Hopefully I’ll still have friends left after all this! PEACE!

Have a listen to Deltron 3030

Super Dave’s new show

In this, the last Hotcakes episode for 2009, Gwardo cracks open the secrets of one of his favorite albums ever, and what makes it so stellar. We also check out Super Dave’s Conan appearance, and have a fake awesome convo with star gazer Mike Boudet.

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MP3: Hotcakes Episode 69 MP3 Download Subscribe:RSS/iTunes If you’re after show notes, check sweet-dick.com/blog in the Hotcakes Show Notes category or email us at hotcakes@hotcakespodcast.com

Riff Trax

Film Sack Podcast

Flop House Podcast

Fourcast Podcast

In this trial run of a concept for the NEW SOUND of Hotcakes, teezeCrost’s topic pick is the Hollywood flop “Battlefield Earth”! Have a peek at the recipe for disaster!

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MP3: Hotcakes Episode 68 MP3 Download Subscribe:RSS/iTunes If you’re after show notes, check sweet-dick.com/blog in the Hotcakes Show Notes category or email us at hotcakes@hotcakespodcast.com

MC Paul Barman speaks with Hotcakes, and we check in with our pal in vancouver, Dean Richtor, who’s doing some extras work for some pretty big name projects!

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MP3: Hotcakes Episode 67 MP3 Download Subscribe:RSS/iTunes If you’re after show notes, email us at hotcakes@hotcakespodcast.com *As always, thanks to 8-bit for our theme music!

CP joined us at Hotcakes Headquarters for some vegan vanilla pancakes, banana muffins, and home made vegan sausages! We talked about all types of ill shit! Stay tuned at the end for “our house” and “see my vest” in the sing along!

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MP3: Hotcakes Episode 66, MP3 Download Subscribe:RSS/iTunes If you’re after show notes, email us at hotcakes@hotcakespodcast.com *As always, thanks to 8-bit for our theme music!

The charade is over, ladies. It’s time to stop pretending that you’re complex and deep. “Men are such pigs!” Save it. You’ve officially given up all rights to cast any judgement in the direction of the male population with your loving reception of this pile of stink called The Twilight Saga.

Liking abs is not a crime. If it was, I wouldn’t have bothered working on mine. I’ll be the first to agree that men and women are, in terms of sexuality, objects. There’s no getting around that. What need to stop, however, are any claims that these movies have ANY other merit. I absolutely refuse to see New Moon; mostly because I HATE mindless hype around anything. Totally ruins a thing for me. I have, though, seen the first twilight movie many times for reasons I shouldn’t need to explain. Let me tell you this about that: NOTHING HAPPENS. The acting is crap, the effects are crap, and the story is NOT creative in any way. You can barely call these things movies (or books); and if you try to, you’re really just putting an exclamation point on your simple mindedness and disdain for the world of literature and art.

And all the Moms out there sporting girl boners right alongside your pre-teen daughters, that’s fine. We all need to enjoy the simple pleasures in life. But I’d better not see glare-fucking-one if you spot me stopped at a green light in front of your daughter’s high school.

I’ve heard the comment many a time from many a female fan of the Twilight franchise, that this book is all about exactly what women want. This love story is what women are after in life. Fine. I hope you don’t expect me to respect you for it though. You think any man with half a functioning brain cell wants anything to do with you and your desire to be a marginalized, helpless, docile dolt in life? Give your head a shake.

Between Twilight, Transformers2, and all the other shit bombs we’re dropping on our culture, I understand why the terrorists hate us. Our society is quickly becoming the shallow, slug-minded kind depicted in Mike Judge’s Idiocracy, and the “better half” of it is busy feverishly snapping up all the wrong traits to move forward with. They seem to want all of the piggishness, and none of the power.

To summarize, we all should watch what we enjoy watching. Everyone has their guilty pleasures. But that’s just it. This SHOULD BE a guilty pleasure. You should not want to wear this series like a badge. And if you must watch it, ladies, parents, please go home when you’re done and read/watch something with some 3(+)-syllable words in it to offset the damage.

Before I end this post, I have a bunch of Twilight-related images and articles to share with you all. They just kept popping into my Google feed reader, and they’re too good not to share. Before I even get to these though, let me just close my portion of this by making you a little guarantee… Taylor Lautner is a premature ejaculator. Whore it up with the boy if you want, ladies; I’m just sayin’!

…If this weren’t the most empty-headed studio movie I’ve sat through since PURE LUCK, I might be concerned about its racial politics. Instead, I’m delighted by its persistent reinforcement of stereotypes. Anything to tamp the dirt down more firmly….[Click to read whole Ain't it Cool article...]

…”The Twilight Saga: New Moon” takes the tepid achievement of “Twilight” (2008), guts it, and leaves it for undead…[Click to read all of Roger Ebert's review...]

…I don’t hate them because I’m a guy, or because of the excruciatingly bad prose, or the corruption of vampire mythology without acknowledging or commenting on the original, or even because Bella is such a waste of space. I hate them because of the sexual messaging they impart to teens, especially teen girls, robbing them of agency and normalizing stalking and abusive behavior….[Click to read whole YALSA article...]

…Whenever a woman criticizes a man’s lust, aggression, shallowness or any other lesser angel of his personality, the quick-witted fellow can point to the millions of women addicted to the base, insipid, bad-boy-worshiping, misogynist syrup so many female viewers of all ages knelt to this past weekend….[Click for Top 20 Unfortunate Lessons Girls Learn From Twilight...]

…I came out of the movie less smug. I remembered why I had written my original review in the first place. This movie made me sad and angry, just like the last one. Come along on the sparkly adventure to find out why…[Click to read whole Skepchick article...]

Abstract Artform was back in the hotcakes headquarters along with Cue, and G-Fresh to talk about what they’ve been up to, and all the cool hip hop artists they’ve been working with. Audio quality improves a little after the 10 minute mark. Appologies!

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Comedian Daniel Kinno Joined us at Hotcakes headquarters for a fun chat about, comedy, sperm, aids, Jesus, and other fun stuff. This is a great episode, and our first show recorded with our new mixer and new mic, which I accidentally talked into the side of due to the big foam cover hiding. So stuff may sound different; hopefully in a good way!

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MP3: Hotcakes Episode 64, MP3 Download Subscribe:RSS/iTunes If you’re after show notes, email us at hotcakes@hotcakespodcast.com *As always, thanks to 8-bit for our theme music!

Sorry, folks- no Hotcakes this week, but we’ll be back with comedian Daniel Kinno right away! Stay tunded!

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MP3: Hotcakes Update Nov 9th/09 MP3 Download Subscribe:RSS/iTunes If you’re after show notes, email us at hotcakes@hotcakespodcast.com *As always, thanks to 8-bit for our theme music!