Autodesk in the cloud

This is interesting, especially in the light of what’s happening lately. Rumor has it that Dropbox turned down a $800M purchase bid by Apple earlier this year. Apple is releasing their own iCloud later this month (www.apple.com/icloud). Now it looks like Autodesk is getting in the game with a 1 GB option that will allow you to post and share files to their cloud offering.

What makes this really interesting to me is the race to host your data. Microsoft has a 25GB option, Amazon has one for 5GB. They’re seemingly everywhere. Do you use one? Will you use ADSK’s?

UPDATE: Just because this is important to me, it doesn’t seem to work on a Mac. which is odd for a web-based platform. Maybe v1.2.

All The Right Enemies

Good news from FLAT TIRES HQ: “All The Right Enemies” has been accepted by Pandora’s Music Genome Project. Here’s a list of the straight-up rock and roll goodness (all available here on iTunes):

1. Drink It Dry
2. Rock & Roll Weekend
3. All the Right Enemies
4. Trailer Daze
5. Pretty Lady
6. She’s Alright
7. You’re Gonna Like It
8. See See Rider
9. Fornication
10. Rag On
11. Carolina S**t Stomp

So to celebrate – here’s a link to download the opening track “Drink It Dry” (NSFW).

Enjoy!!!

And as an added bonus Eddy will be pleased to know (as I was going to the post office anyway) I’ve gone ahead and dropped off my share of the signed contracts for Mastering Revit 2013. Here we go!

Job Opening

Let’s see if Netflix CEO Reed Hastings can make it out of the company before the screen door hits him.

• Strike One: Raise prices too fast too soon and without believable explanation. Lose 1 million customers.
• Strike Two: Walk away from negotiations with 1st run content provider Starz.
• Strike Three: Further confuse your customers by splitting your business into separate content delivery models.

Result? Piss off your customers long enough and you’ll eventually piss off your share holders that don’t like watching their investments fall by nearly 50% in 8 weeks.

I predict more hemorrhaging is on the way. Usually the only thing that’ll slow the bleeding it is announce the person that keeps driving into the ditch has been told to let go of the wheel and get out of the car.

Crashed and Burned

I installed Bootcamp this week to get better Revit performance on some rather large files. I also installed an application to allow access to my OSX partition from Windows 7.

And in the process corrupted my OSX partition.

Carbon Copy Cloner saved it all and 24 hour later I’m up and running. I could have restored from a 2 week old Time Machine backup – but wasn’t willing to lose two weeks of effort.

If you have a Mac – Carbon Copy Cloner rocks. Grab it.

And go ahead and grab Tinker Tool while you’re at it. Great for showing access to all the hidden files and such.

Now’s Your Chance

Mark your calendars! The FLAT TIRES are headed to California for three days this week:

• Thursday @ The Doll Hut in Anaheim
• Friday @ Eli’s Mile High Club in Oakland
• Saturday @ The Shakedown Bar in San Diego

It was almost a year ago I had the fortune of seeing the FLAT TIRES at the Tremont Music Hall in Charlotte. The sound was awful – not because it was so loud, but because the building is built like a concrete bunker so the music bounces off everything. And about the only thing that could absorb the noise was the people in the room.

So I stood to the side of the stage – behind – the speakers. Playing loud is the easy part. But sincerity and skill are difficult to sustain. And I was blown away. Here’s a broadcast cut of “Pretty Lady”. No vocals. Listen carefully to the instrumentals:

http://cache.reverbnation.com/widgets/swf/40/pro_widget.swf?id=artist_805604&posted_by=artist_805604&skin_id=PWAS1002&border_color=000000&auto_play=false&shuffle=false&song_ids=10097506

The guitarist is equal parts Chuck Berry, Keith Richards and Johnny Ramone. The drummer tightly keeps time slightly ahead of everyone else (listen for the quick lead-in snare at the end of fourth measures) which anxiously drives the music forward. The bassist refuses to complicate matters yet plays tonal counterpoints to the drums, moving up and down the fretboard in minor arpeggios.

And the lead singer? It’s something about the way he looks at the crowd.

You’ve probably seen this look before. It’s the same kind of look your dad gave you when you were a kid and you had company for dinner and your mum tapped a big spoonful of somethingyoudontlike on your plate. You started to look up and say something about what you were and weren’t going to eat. But your dad’s eyes were already waiting for you with…that look.

And whatever it was on your plate? You ate it.

That look. The lead singer looks at the crowd with that look. It’s the visual and lyrical equivalent of hurricane force winds surrounded on three sides by musical tornadoes.

Here’s how it all comes together:

http://cache.reverbnation.com/widgets/swf/40/pro_widget.swf?id=artist_805604&posted_by=artist_805604&skin_id=PWAS1002&border_color=000000&auto_play=false&shuffle=false&song_ids=7752036

Needless to say – I hope to see you all in California. So put down the mouse and step away from the keyboard. And bring along a couple of friends as witnesses.

Because you can download the music. But you can’t download the experience.

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Thursday

Doll Hut

107 South Adams Street

Anaheim, CA 92802-1001

(714) 533-1286

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The Doll Hut

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Friday

Eli’s Mile High Club

3629 Martin Luther King Jr Way

Oakland, CA 94609

(510) 350-7818

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Eli’s Mile High

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Saturday

Shakedown Bar

3048 Midway Dr

San Diego, CA 92110

(619) 487-0373

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Shakedown Bar