Sock Monkeys and Vodka » Uncategorized

15 Years of Content

admin — Thu, 23 Jul 2009 01:11:38 +0000

Way back in the stone age of 1994 when I was the wee age of 22 I started a regional weekly newspaper that centered around music and culture. The heart and soul of the Synthesis Weekly has always been it’s regional focus from great writers like Max Sidman, Daniel Taylor, Matt Hogan (RIP), Spencer Teilmann and countless others. It’s still published weekly – even in this lovely economy.

The Synthesis Weekly now has 15 years of content. Mix that with our content license from BAM Magazine (which was California’s largest music magazine) and we have content dating back to 1976. Two years ago everyone was convinced that advertising would more than fund any content based venture but 2009 is a new world. Inventory is high and prices are lower than ever. Regardless of this lack of decent revenue for content we’re in this game for the long haul and even though Synthesis.net has a ton of content the Synthesis Weekly features quite a bit of locally focused content on a regular basis that hasn’t really had a home since 1998 when we shifted gears to focus our online efforts nationally rather than locally.

Lucky for me I have Karen, Jake and Rene who have taken the reigns of all of the regionally focused business which has left me the ability to fully focus on the out of market ventures that we’re currently pursuing. Since they’re driving that boat they made the decision that making a home for this local content is long overdue.

I’m excited that we’re launching Chico.Synthesis.net very shortly as the home for all the Chico / Northern California focused content – it’ll be great to begin that long process of getting this content organized and online.

Synthesis Flu 2008

admin — Sat, 01 Mar 2008 00:18:35 +0000

So I was attacked by the flu plague that’s been going around and it literally put me down. I don’t remember being this sick EVER. It started as a slight cough with a cold, a little noise running – all standard February type of stuff with nothing out of the ordinary. Virtually everyone around me was getting sick and about 30% of the office had contracted something and was out at one point. They were calling it the Synthesis Flu for a few days. I knew it was bad when I was laying down and realized that – when closed – my eyes were actually hot. This was my incredibly obvious clue that I had in fact – contracted some type of flu plague and at that very moment actually had a fever. 101.8 to be exact. At that point I started taking Nyquil and proceeded to sleep for 40 hours in the following 48 hour period. It was brutal. I snapped out of it a few days later but I’m still somewhat hurting and coughing up a pseudo storm on a semi regular basis. I was coughing so hard that space between my eyebrows started hurting. This was no fun so I decided that after 11 days of this cold and being already passed the fever portion of the whole thing for 5 days I should go get checked out. This was after having several conversations with people all telling me I could have walking pneumonia or plague or the anthrax or something. I went to my Dr who was kind enough to give me an array or prescriptions to deal with the coughing including some cough syrup / codeine combo which seems to be working quite well. That along with my handy dandy new inhaler and it’s a wonder that I’m even considering going snowboarding tomorrow.

Censorship

admin — Fri, 10 Aug 2007 19:41:48 +0000

Lollapalooza in Chicago is now a source of controversy thanks to AT&T and a “mistake” they made during the Pearl Jam performance. During their performance of “Daughter” the following lyrics were sung to the tune of Pink Floyd’s “Another Brick in the Wall” but were cut from the webcast by AT&T: “George Bush, leave this world alone.” and “George Bush find yourself another home.”
Waitaminute – this was going out on the net not on TV. Hell, even if was on TV it should play as is. Was this a simple/convenient mistake, an actual honest mistake or was this an actual act of censorship? When AT&T was asked about the missing portion of the performance they stated that portions of the show were in fact missing from the webcast, and that their content monitor had made a mistake in cutting them. AT&T spokesman Michael Coe said “Those lyrics in no way, shape or form, are something that should have been edited, we regret that this happened and we’re upset. We’re working with our vendors to ensure it doesn’t happen again.” Interesting. Was the content monitor one of the twelve people left in the US who still thinks that Bush is doing a great job? If the guy was a content monitor and his job was monitoring the Lollapalooza content and that portion of the show was omitted I’m thinking it probably wasn’t actually a mistake and now they’re just saying it was a mistake because they’ve been called out on it. AT&T donates a lot of money to political campaigns (just like all other giant mega-corporations) and this definitely brings up the question of the continued consolidation of the mass media and corporations pushing agendas – whether political or not – it’s one nation under a giant corporate flag.