AntMcl's Blawg

Apologies

Haven’t really given this website too much attention recently due to a couple of reasons. First, I’m back at uni which cuts down significantly the amount of spare time I have. Second, I’ve been working on my other blog, which I am actually enjoying more because it’s so much faster and easier to post things there. 

I’ll try to keep this blog updated as frequently as I can. 

- A

The Irony of Apple’s ‘Think Different’ Campaign

Image courtesy of Mcbrooklyn

Apple’s ‘Think Different’ campaign has been one of the main driving forces behind the brand’s image and cult following. However, it’s actually pretty ironic; a lot of Apple product users are, essentially, identical. The above image illustrates this perfectly. Notice how every Apple fan thinks they’re being different, but there are so many Apple fans that this just isn’t the case any longer. It’s actually quite comical to see an image like this. 

The irony here being, of course, the fact that it has reached the stage where if somebody truly wanted to ‘think different’, the last thing they’d do is buy an Apple product. The fact that Apple seemingly hasn’t dropped the slogan shows us that the company really does exist in their own parallel universe, with their followers existing there too. It’s not a bad thing by any means, in fact it’s a very powerful marketing tool, but if you take Apple’s attitude that it isn’t “hip to be square” toward their own products, it results in a paradox of cosmic proportions. 

ES Posthumus, I miss you

ES Posthumus are, or should I say ‘were’, a duo from Los Angeles who produced a strange type of experimental music that mixed classical with popular themes such as drums, techno riffs, and synth. If you listen to a few of their songs, it’ll seem like they produced movie music; in fact, a lot of their music has been used on popular TV shows around the world. 

Sure, they weren’t the only people to attempt this style, but unlike most others, ES Posthumus’s songs actually sounded good. And by good, I mean epic in most cases. My favourite track of theirs is ‘Pompeii’, and it’s one of their best pieces to give an indication about just what their music tried to achieve. The band members are simply two brothers, and in 2010 one of the brothers died (nobody really knows why), after which the group essentially stopped dead in their tracks. It’s a real shame, because their music was brilliant in my eyes, and they didn’t get enough publicity as they deserved. I’m confident though that in five hundred years people will revere ES Posthumus in the same way that we look at Ludwig van Beethoven. 

RIP Franz. 

Normal vs HDR

I only discovered that Photoshop CS5 has a built-in effect for turning normal photos into HDR. It’s technically cheating, but it gives the desired effect and looks awesome to my eyes.