While I get some video rendered for a client, I felt like it was a proper time to get a blog post up. It’s nice to get some of the dust off the ‘ole weblog.

Things really have hit full speed recently. My band played our first live gig at Big Daddy’s in Tallahassee with Crisis in Hollywood and Victims of Circumstance. The show was incredible, especially since it was our first one. The crowd was decent and it was a good time in all. It was really nice to see a crew from our hometown, Perry. Seriously guys, we all appreciate it so much. Just being out there and simply bobbing your head to the music and clapping is so encouraging. The last time I played a live gig was in high school at my senior prom. It was a blast but it was just covers. Playing original music and people actually liking it was a high I’ve never experienced before. I may sound like a broken record, but thank you all so much for being there. I feel like I can’t say it enough. If you couldn’t make it to the show but couldn’t, no problems! We’re actually planning a small tour for Florida this summer to spread the music around. Of course, when I think about it, it would be great to make it big in the music business but it’s next to impossible to really get out there. Right now, I’m in it for the music. I really had more fun on that stage than I’ve had in years.

Riding off of what I think was a successful show, our next tasks at hand are getting merch, a demo to hand out and playing more shows. We actually had people at the show asking for merch and our CD but we didn’t have it! So now, it’s back to work getting everything recorded for the demo and the Myspace page. We’re also going to get a purevolume page set up as well. We’ll also keep polishing our current songs and writing new material. This whole experience so far has been an epic ride. Meeting Daniel from Crisis in Hollywood and the gang from Victims of Circumstance really helped too. They had so much advice and tips for us that I’m incredibly thankful for. (By the way, if you haven’t checked them out yet, do it. An AWESOME combo of smart lyrics, melodic riffs, and powerful choruses!) In this short time that I’ve been active with this band I’ve learned so much (I was in the band in high school but had to leave the band to go to school in Gainesville. Now that I’ve moved to Tallahassee I’ve rejoined. This was in November of last year). Again, not to sound like a broken record, but I’m so thankful for everything that has happened so far. It bums me out cause I know we’re going to have bad days, but I’m certain we can ford through those and keep going.

Anyway, the video’s done rendering. If this post doesn’t make sense, sorry. It was all stream of consciousness.

Links to stuff mentioned…

Boat Crash on the Parkway (My band) – http://myspace.com/boatcrashontheparkway
Crisis in Hollywood (My friend Daniel’s band) – http://myspace.com/crisisinhollywood
Victims of Circumstance – http://myspace.com/victimsofcircumstance
Crisis’ debut LP - http://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewAlbum?id=274144448&s=143441

Yeah, I put trash and Twitter in the same sentence. Shoot me.

Lately I think the crap has hit the fan with Twitter. Don’t get me wrong ladies and gentlemen, I love Twitter. I joined in March 2008 and have found a lot of great people that I’ve built good relationships with. I found Twitter to be a great techie/new media/social media community where I could turn to for many things whether it be advice on a new gadget or who around me would let me borrow a VGA cable.

But now, everyone and their mother is on Twitter. Every time I turn on the television and watch the any news networks it’s Twitter this, Twitter that, follow us on Twitter etc. The people Twitter suggest used to be people with valuable things to say in the tech world, e.g. Robert Scoble, Michael Arrington and the like. Now it’s Dateline, CNN, Barack Obama. It’s getting to where sorting through the noise is getting harder by the second. I’m not the type of person that when one thing goes mainstream I leave and loathe it, but this is something I feel a little more near and dear to. I loved the small techie community feel. Now we have porn stars, actors (or people Tweeting for them), companies advertising how to get “success” on Twitter, spammers etc. flooding the network. A few days ago I posed the question to myself, should I delete my Twitter account? It wasn’t a serious thought but one to put on the back burner.

Then I come across TweepMe.

TweepMe is a site that guarantees you get more followers by the opt-in model they have. Basically for every member that joins, everyone automatically follows them and they follow you.

Why does the number of followers matter that much???

Has this become just another popularity contest? Honestly, I don’t care how many followers I have. That doesn’t mean that I don’t care that they follow me though. I’m glad that they think what I say is valuable enough for them to follow me in their main Twitter stream. If it weren’t for a few followers I might not have some of the opportunities and information that I have now. But Twitter isn’t about the number of followers you have. If that’s your main goal on Twitter then I politely ask to please leave. It’s because of people like that the service is looking a little more bleak to me.

I may be ranting, b&m’ing and being an elitist but I just don’t like where Twitter is going. Maybe I just need to change my angle on it? I’m not sure.

Feel free to comment or un-follow me.

Tweet: leave igerard or text “leave igerard” to 404-04

If you don’t already know, VexedTech now broadcasts the podcast recording LIVE every Monday night at 10pm ET / 7 pm PT!

I know what you’re thinking, YOU CAN GET YOUR VEX READ AND SOLVED LIVE!

That’s absolutely correct! If you haven’t dropped  your complaint card over at the VexBox, you can have it read and answered live! Now, where do you go to get this instant gratification? All you have to do is join us on Ustream at this link. You can keep the “ustreamer-xxxx” nickname but we’d love to address you by your real name/alias/twitter name/whatever you want. You can change the name by either signing up for a Ustream account or simply typing “/nick (the name you want)”. It’s as easy as that!

If you haven’t heard either, we’re giving away free software! For right now we have software from Ambrosia Software, a great company that makes incredible Mac apps including WireTap Studio, the software we use to record the show.

Special shoutout to Ambrosia for hooking us up with WireTap Studio to record the show!

We’re also brainstorming for ideas for free software to give away to Windows users so give us your ideas on the show or by simply emailing me over at igerard@vexedtech.com!

I’ll be posting a video soon on how exactly to win this free software so keep it tuned here!

Thanks to all of our viewers and listeners! We love feedback so keep the comments and emails coming, we read EVERY ONE!

I put up a follow up post on VexedTech about our earbuds discussion on episode 5. Hit the link to check it out!

Be sure to subscribe to our iTunes podcast and check us out every Monday at 9:30 PM Eastern / 6:30 PM Pacific on Ustream for the live recording! Be sure to voice your vex there or drop your complaint card over at the Complaint Box!

[Link]

Just to tell you all, I have something epic planned. A new site that’ll definitely keep you coming back for more.

That’s all I can say for now. If you’re a graphic designer or incredible CSS coder, shoot me an email over at igerard8@gmail.com.

Thanks!

Yes, camera apps seem to be a dime-a-dozen in the App Store these days. Maybe that’s why that it takes the jailbreak scene to come up with a great camera app.

Occipital’s ClearCam takes a different approach to taking better photos. What it does is takes 6 rapid succession shots, finds the best shot, and builds a composite image with the rest of the 5 images. With the few shots I’ve taken with my iPhone I can vouch for this app. You can download this program for free over on Cydia.

Hit the link for an interview with Jeffrey Powers, co-founder of Occipital, and the editor of iSmashPhone.com.

[Link]

zOMG! I’ve reached 475 Twitter followers and I’ve had +4,000 updates! Thanks everyone for following me!

Make sure to check out VexedTech too over at http://vexedtech.com/ and http://twitter.com/vexedtech !

Thanks @oliviamunn!

Check out Olivia’s newly relaunched blog over http://www.oliviamunn.com

Last night opened up the App Store on my iPhone, curious to see what new apps have been released, and got the usual badge saying that there updates for my apps.

I tapped the button and instead of looking at what apps actually got updates and what each one entailed, I just hit update all and let the iPhone do it’s work. As I scrolled through the pages of apps I saw that Facebook was getting updated.

About effing time! Maybe the app will actually work correctly.

I opened up the app and found that status updates were actually posting real times! I’ve been so used to translating that 4 hours ago on the Facebook iPhone app was actually a few minutes ago to an hour ago. This may be a trivial thing for some, but for me this was amazing. That was one of the few things that just, “grinded my gears,” as Peter Griffin would say.

Also, I haven’t experienced a crash or glitch yet with any of the screens – I just opened the Knock on Wood App so I hope that helps. What would frequently happen on my phone was after browsing for a short time on a profile page, or any page really, I would start to see nothing but blank spaces in each table. I would then have to restart the app and browse from there. Again, this may seem like a minor inconvenience to you, but as heavily as I use Facebook (which can add up to about 30-40 launches a day) you can see where it would become a huge annoyance.

Commenting also seems to have been fixed or improved! I haven’t had any errors yet with commenting on wall posts like I used to have. I remember typing long, thoughtful comments, only to find that there “was an error while posting my comment” and I would lose all the work that I just did. The fun part was attempting to remember and retype the whole thing.

So far so good Facebook, good job!

If you haven’t updated yet, run iTunes and check for updates or run the App Store on the iPhone.

Which also reminds me… where in the world is that darn Push Notification System? It would be nice of these updates would PUSH NOTIFY us.

Just a thought Apple.

iGerardFTW is no longer an Apple-centric blog.

Wow, that was easier to type than I thought.

iGerardFTW is now just a blog about everything I like. Not just Apple and tech, but really whatever I want. I’ve gotta admit, the change really makes it easier to post things on here now.

I guess that’s really all. I just thought you should know that.