Following your heart and your gut.

It is a common saying - "follow your heart", but one that is easily forgotten, until you actually stick with it and see the positive results of doing so. Case in point: About five years ago, after a decade of graphic design work, I decided to go back to school. I kind of fell into the Graphic Design business after getting my Associate's Degree in design and pre-press and meeting Bonfire Snowboarding co-founder Brad Steward in my hometown Kinkos. Brad offered me a gig doing design work for his then, fledgling, snowboard clothing company. Since I had recently fallen in love with fine art of snowboarding, I took the gig, which propelled me into the industry and a ton of cool gigs. Fast forward ten years and I realized that I didn't really enjoy the 100% office/desk/computer commitment and lifestyle that was associated with graphic design. Sure, I got to work with a ton of cool people and participated in some amazing projects - but in the end - I yearned for something more.

In high school my curiosity had been sparked in film-making after being one of a handful of students that were part of the Senior Film class. I had since dabbled with home video making over the recent years - but decided it was time to take a serious look at film and video as a profession, which led me to DeAnza College in Cupertino, California, and my second Technical Degree. The very moment I took this step, and put my heart, soul and passion into what I REALLY wanted, was the moment doors began to open. My very first project while still in school was a Marketing Video for a "little" local bike company called Specialized. Imagine that? This quickly moved forward to gigs with sports documentaries, adventure/travel television and more.

Fast forward five more years. After spending a year up in Bellingham skiing Mt. Baker and working part time shooting Seattle Sonics homegames - I decided to return to my beloved Oregon - and once again, get serious about my film and video path. I landed a job at a dotcom doing video production for the web, and begrudgingly, everything else for them. After two years as a jack-of-all-trades for the dotcom - the good old economy tanked - and yours truly found himself collecting a hefty unemployment check.

Enter - Winter 2009. What do you do? Hmmm... that heart and soul thing: Snowboarding! Haha... damn straight - midweek powder days-a-plenty this season. Perfect timing really. The dotcom 50-hour office commitment had wore me down again - so the time couldn't have been better. Which brings me to this fine Spring day in May - and the reason for this post. Even though I've been looking for a new job in both Video Production and Graphic Design world - there is a serious lack of opportunity out there in town. Not to mention - the idea of clocking back into the desk cranking out catalog designs, print ads and such, for some industry du-jour, isn't really tickling my fancy.

So - the moment I decided not to settle, but to remain true to my heart and soul, is the moment doors began to open again. Those of you that have seen the film "What the Bleep..." might get what I'm talking about here. It has to do with manifesting your own destiny, believing in your path and your mass of positive consciousness altering the flow of molecules in the universe. Really? Indeed. Easy to forget and get bogged down in the day-to-day doldrums that could be blocking your chi. But very real for those who believe and practice.

Two things have happened in recent days to vindicate this power of consciousness and positivity: One - a lucrative cottage industry as a legal videographer has just fallen in my lap. Not a full-time, sleepy courtroom sort of thing, but the occasional, and remarkably easy, on-site shoots, at full production rate. Perfect. And two - and certainly more importantly - I met a guy for beers this week who produces a rather successful and respectable piece of media in the world. Not only is he cool-as-shit and seems to vibrate on the same frequency as me, he is on the verge of creating my dream job for his company. Truly. Funny, when I first approached him to chat - I just thought he had a cool product and wanted to somehow get involved. Little did I know that he would proceed to tell me he planned to create this new position, of which it seems, I could not be more perfect for. Stunning really. Not sure he feels the same way just yet - but I have no doubt the more he gets to know me and what I do, the more likely he'll have to agree. I must say - if this goes the way I'm thinking it is going, I will be the happiest, most creative, radiant and thankful man alive.

Until then - I'm off with my trusty video camera to yet another interesting part of Portland, to shoot and learn something new.

Follow your heart, trust your gut and believe in yourself. Powerful stuff.

Rollins/Keeney Spring Equinox Jam 2009 - 2 of 3.

Ralph Nader - Know Your History Please

Watched the documentary "Ralph Nader: An Unreasonable Man" last night - a fantastic film and important biography. I'm just old enough to remember him for his virtuous life of protecting consumers in the 60-70's, but I am sad about how many Americans really only think of him as the 2004 Presidential Election spoiler. Seriously? So sad. I encourage everyone to see it and learn about a one of our country's most amazing real citizens.

Diving Back into Graphic Design with a Half Gainer

After changing careers with a new degree in Television and Video technologies several years ago, my former skills as a Graphic Designer went largely unused as Video and TV gigs kept presenting themselves in recent years. I still had to hold down the occasional gig as a magazine or advertising designer to keep the bills paid - but day to day designing from scratch was a skill I was getting burnt out on and I was glad to put to rest for a while.

In today's economy, I've learned these skills have never been so important as I'm having to ply my craft in every skill-set I have in order to compete in the extremely crowded and talented creative pool of Portland, Oregon. I picked up a gig design logos, and identity and t-shirts for an up and coming recycled materials clothing and accessories company marketing itself to the 20-30 somethings who care about the environment and might have an inclination to surf/skate/snowboard/climb/frisbee golf, etc.

So here I sit, Day Three, Hour Fifty-Three, cranking out idea, after idea, after idea. It's funny - just when I think I'm tapped out and drawing a blank, it always seems something else gurgles to the top. And the farther along I get, the more confident I get and the quicker and deeper my Illustrator and Photoshop skills seem to be coming back to me.

Hallelejuah! Bring-it Portland design community - I'm ready.

Republicans think most Americans are Idiots... and maybe they're right.

Republicans, very clearly, believe that real people are idiots. This disdain for their smarts shows up in the whole way they’ve cast this race now, turning a contest over economic and foreign policy into a culture war of the Real vs. the Elites. It’s a smoke and mirrors game aimed at diverting attention from the fact that the party’s tax policies have helped create an elite that’s more distant from “the people” than ever before.

Unicorn Slays the Ash Street...

Or did the Ash Street slay us? Hmmm... well, now I know why it's called the Ash Street Saloon. Smokers. Lots of 'em. God help us - 2009 couldn't come quick enough to rid the clubs and public places of the smokey smokers. Blech! That's right... the LAW goes into effect - and not soon enough. Anywho... that's my anti-smoking rant. Thanks for reading. Aside from that... it felt damn good to play out live again. My Unicorn comrades are the best... and so are my fine brothers and sisters that traveled great distances across the Oregon countryside to support yours truly. I love you fuckers. Jeff-n-Pips-n-Jay-n-Erin-n-Jess-n-Johnny-n-Cliff-n-such.... until next time!!!

History of Sampling Audio

Another gem found on my colleague Aaron Draplin's site.

A rather thorough interactive breakdown of music that was sampled, when it was used, and by who. Supa cool!

http://jessekriss.com/projects/samplinghistory/

Playing live in front of the people once again.

This Saturday the 23rd of August marks the first time in several years I've played live in front of an audience. Super stoked to be doing so, and quite proud to be in the company of such bad-asses for bandmates. Mighty Unicorn is what we're calling the band - and in addition to my bass playing (for those who don't know - I used to bass for Aggro Batch and The Julian Snow Index), our band features Hans Wagner (aka Schvoontz), who's drumming resume includes: Mr. Bungle, Sweaty Nipples, Cherry Poppin' Daddies, Village Idiot and Herkemer; Pat Demartino on the gee-tar, who's past and current shredding includes Village Idiot and Last Empire; Kevin Ellis on keyboards, formerly of Village Idiot, Hungry Mob and The Film fame; and our current, though temporary, singer Brad Mowen, who was an early member of Portland's Sweaty Nipples, then moved to Seattle where he fronted the incredible band Mommy, and now sings for The Accused and is also involved with the bands ASVA and The Master Musicians of Bukkake.

Ash Street Saloon's hard rock hideaway is the venue. Approximately 10:45pm is the start time for the Mighty Unicorn. Opening the gig will be Portland's Western Family featuring Brett Snyder on drums - who's "dayjob" is drumming for that famous band Everclear... oh yeah... he used to be a Village Idiot drummer too.

Bring your earplugs!

Both Hands and Both Feet - A drummer's Blog

A recent friend of mine and fellow musician, Matt Farina, has been posting this cool blog about drumming and music. Matt and I got together for a few sessions via the mighty Craigslist Musician ads earlier this year. Great guy. Fantastic drummer. Fun blog.

Go here now:
http://2handsand2feet.blogspot.com/

SEO for Video Online - or - "How to get people to watch your videos"

As video content on the web continues to proliferate, getting your videos to stand out amidst the crowd is becoming an increasingly challenging task. One of the most important recent subjects of discussion regarding video online, is figuring out how to maximize your company’s placement in search engine results and rankings. To those readers new to search engine marketing terms and acronyms, the letters SEO stand for “search engine optimization” and the SEM equates to “search engine marketing”. You’ll commonly see and hear these terms thrown around quite a bit as companies clamor to find their way into viewer’s web browsers.

Here at Test Drive Videos we quickly learned that is isn’t as easy as posting your videos online, then telling people to go watch them. There is a myriad of essential steps you need to take to start the SEO and SEM process. I’m going to list the three basic steps we’ve learned are mandatory and effective in getting the ball rolling. I will also highlight some additional things you can do that are both free and highly effective.

1. Use Descriptive Naming of Your Video Source File. When you’re creating your video file and getting ready to deploy it to your site, e-newsletter or uploading to a web video sharing site, always name the file in a very exact and descriptive manner. For example: in the early stages of our company, we might have named a test drive video we produced “Ferrari_tdv_08.mov”. Where our internal naming convention might have made sense to us for easily managing files – to the outside world it means nothing and is more easily lost in the space. Therefore, a more useful title might be: “2008 Ferrari GT430 Test Drive Video.mov”. This acts as kind of a surface level “tag” that will help search engines find your video.

2. Inserting HTML Tags on Your Site. Inserting HTML meta tags and head tags within each page that describe each video has long been the most important and basic task associated with web development and making your site visible and searchable online. Additionally, it is recommended that you let each video live on it’s own page of HTML and insert tags that describe what is in the video. One video per URL. It is also important to surround your video with relevant text about that video. Doesn’t hurt to tell viewers what they are about to see, and further helps the SEO initiative.

3. Initial Search Engine Submissions. Take the time to visit each of the top search engines and go through their process of submitting your website to be crawled, indexed, spidered, etc. Some are easier than others, but this is a crucial step in making sure you get found. Because Google more or less dominates the search engine arena (with approximately 60% of the traffic), and including the other top thre (Yahoo, MSN and AOL), they encompass about 94% of the search engines traffic altogether. Plus, these major search engine directories are shared by many other smaller search engines, including Lycos, AlltheWeb, AltaVista, Excite, Go, Search, AOL, and many others. Once the major search engines have indexed your website, regular search engine submissions are no longer required. We also recommend a one-time manual application submission to dmoz.org. (DMOZ is The Open Directory Project - the largest, most comprehensive human-edited directory of the Web. It is constructed and maintained by a vast, global community of volunteer editors.)

4. Bonus Tip! – Using Web Video Sharing as Free Advertising! Just because you’ve posted your video on your site doesn’t mean you can’t and shouldn’t post that same video elsewhere. By taking advantage of one or more of the many free video sharing websites out there like YouTube, you can help spread your message and your video out across the web. Most of these sites have very robust description and tagging sections when you upload your video which will yield top results and can in return, be linked back to your site. We have had tremendous success in getting higher search results for some of our video content through the videos we’ve uploaded at these sharing and social networking sites. The top 5 video sharing sites that will except most any user-generated content for upload are: YouTube, GoogleVideo, Metacafe, AOLvideo and Revver. There are certainly dozens more, and every indication is that this market is going to continue to grow rapidly as the demand for video on the web continues to flourish.

These are just a few things you can do immediately after deploying your video for an online audience. They are by no means the complete answer, as this new media world is changing with new web video search technologies on the horizon. Technologies that scan the audio and video content to detect if what the descriptors say is in the video, is actually in the video are one example. We'll discuss more as we learn. Thanks for reading and good luck! -ETK

Time will fly.

Somehow between dayjobbing for Test Drive Videos, playing bass in Mighty Unicorn, and squeezing in the occasional trip to the wilderness - many moons have passed once again. I have managed to start throwing a few video bits and pieces up on the wacky YouTube. I've also began pre-production on a new indie TV production based here in Portland, as well as started shooting a fun short film. Neat stuff - but there never seems to be enough hours in the day. Cursed sleep! What did Edgar Allan Poe say? "Sleep, those little slices of death; Oh how I loathe them." Ok... not that I agree so much... but I like the quote. I guess I loathe the little slices more because they steal away time I could be productive or out soaking up adventure. Sigh.

Social Networking Online Blogging Sharing Madness

How do you put it all under one umbrella?

You don't.

You link 'em all together.

http://www.myspace.com/keeneyinwashington
http://www.facebook.com/home.php?#/profile.php?id=1135094874
http://www.flickr.com/keeney

New Krackle Studios and Record Label

Our newlywed pal Jason Edwards is kicking some audio ass in the great town of Portland these days.

Not only is he the chief audio guy for Northwest Documentary Films: http://nwdocumentary.org/index.html

He now has his studio/label/store up and running with all the Julian Snow Index recordings and lots more new stuff from Portland and abroad.

check it: http://www.newkrackle.com

BACK IN THE SADDLE

Dear Friends! Finally got another post up here. Been lazy and busy I guess. Due to the recent bout of early spring - the Snomad bandwagon came to a screeching halt. We did get in some good shooting at Meadows and Bachelor - of the spring skiing variety. But many resorts closed - again! Then just when you thought it was over - blammo! Mother nature is finally giving it to us like she should have been all winter. Well... a taster anyways. Might be time to go search out some face shots on Monday. Hoodoo may be closed for the winter - but there is no easier place to hike and get some.

Beyond the world of snow and such. I just discovered the joys of craigslist.org - "rants & raves" section. Where have I been? Oh my goodness. In the spirit of Pounder's sarcastic, biting commentary - there are posts on there that literally had me laughing until my stomach hurt. Laughing has got to be one of the best things for the spirit and soul. I highly recommend visiting your nearest craigslist site and locating the rants and raves section under personals. There are some particularly funny bastards in Portland. I also found this link which made me laugh pretty hard too. hilarious

LOVER OF MUSIC

Your boy ETK loves the music - in many forms, styles and contexts. Recently we convinced a friend and former Volcano writer, Pounder, to get himself a blog. Low and behold - here it is - and with much laughter and appreciation, I hereby adopt "Judson's" music rating system as standard inclusion on all recent music listen lists found on this site and others. (5 being best, 1 worst)

1. Soft Machine - Third (3.2)
2. Rush - Permanent Waves (5.0)
3. Hi Fi Killers - Hi Fi Killers (3.4)
4. Scorpions - In Trance (3.4)
5. Secret Chiefs Trio - Eyes of Flesh (live)(4.0)
6. Boards of Canada - Geodaddi (3.8)
7. Estradasphere - Buck Fever (3.5)
8. Pink Floyd - Dark Side of the Moon (5.0)
9. Frank Zappa - Weasels Ripped My Flesh (4.3)
10. Critters Buggin' - Bumpa (4.1)

PRELUDE TO THE ROAD - Part Four

Alright then. We are hours away from departing on the largest of the Snomad road endeavors thus far. Friday afternoon and Saturday afternoon we're knocking out a camera gig shooting college basketball at the Evergreen State College in Washington. After the finish you'll find the Snoburban eating up a clump of I-5, then vast stretches of the formidable I-84. Sometime on Sunday we plan to arrive and prepare to shoot Brighton and Snowbird in Utah. At the end of the week we'll be pointing her due west for a long overdue dose of Lake Tahoe. Kirkwood and Heavenly will be the destinations, friend Eric D's pad in South Lake will be the base for several more days. After this I'm sure a "backroads way" home to Oregon will be in order with plenty of pics and vids to come!

NOW IT IS FEBRUARY

Holy Nino Batman! Where did our Winter go? Should we blame yet another El Nino system on the French? Damn straight - those sneaky bastards. Why do you think the Rainbow Warrior Greenpeace ship was so adamant on exposing those French f****? Because they were secretly testing nuclear weapons underwater in French Polynesia - wiping out miles and miles of valuable coral reefs. Many people theorize that the sheer numbers of these "tests" have had a direct effect on sea surface temperatures that are measured along this same current where El Nino systems are born. Additionally - for those who didn't know - back in 1985 Greenpeace figured it out and were about to launch the Rainbow Warrior from it's port in Auckland, NZ and expose the greasy bastards and their careless testing. The night before, two French secret-service types went scuba style in the harbor and planted a bomb on the ship - which later exploded and killed several activists. Greenpeace. Turns out, a local NZ cop figured it out and made the arrests - only to have the French Government bail them out - and set them free. Pretty fucked up. Needless to say - Kiwis don't hold much regard for the French... and I am beginning to wonder myself. Don't even get me started about the smarmy group of Frenchies we ran into on the gondola in Saas Fee - foofy French f****!

Dudes on the road.

A fine pic J.J. Merrrr snapped of us rolling thru the Idaho farm land.

NEW YEAR'S EVE IN ASHLAND

A little glimpse into a fine New Year's Eve spent in Ashland, Oregon. Thanks to Pounder for the hospitality. Watch out for those illegal lasers this year! All kinds of trouble.

WELCOME TO OREGON

New Year's Eve is upon us. Just wrapped shooting two games for John Paget's basketball documentary in K-Falls and tonight at SOC in Ashland. Also spent my first day ever snowboarding at Mt. Ashland. Over a foot of fresh from the last few days was there for the taking - although - there were many takers on this New Year's Eve day. Shot some for the upcoming Snomad Television series, but the icy-goggle-crust conditions made it next to impossible to bag much good footage - a great day nonetheless.

Tonight Pounder and I ring in the New Year at a little pub in downtown Ashland called the Black Sheep - then in the morning I'll finish the journey to the motherland with a brief visit to the Zig's in Eugene - then onward to Salem.

Hoodoo will be the first target. (Merth - getchyer board waxed, goggles de-iced and legs in order - it's gonna be a productive winter).

Farewell 2004! You were very good to me. Welcome 2005! - I'm betting it will be the best year yet - despite another inauguration of the worst president in U.S. history. Perhaps it will take another 4-years of his buffoonery to shed a little more light on his shortcomings so that the rest of the U.S. (that would be you folks in the red states) figure it out.