Notes From A Clever Ogre: website

Showing posts with label website. Show all posts

Tuesday, March 27, 2012

Ogre Shawn Knows the Key Code: It’s F#m

Alright, listen up. If this is your first time here, look around a little. This is the final installment in our Clever Ogre “What are the ogres listening to?” blog series. We’ve talked about all kinds of different music, from Christopher’s old school jams to Nora’s punk bluegrass (Punkgrass? Blunk?) across to Dadant’s reggae and Dan’s jam bands. We finally had a chance to catch up with ogre Shawn and get his take on the listen.

When we found him, Shawn Grimes was sitting in a dark cubicle in the corner of the basement. It smelled like a coffee shop in a cave. He was wearing headphones and typing away like a crazy person. Shawn is Clever Ogre’s front-end web developer. He doesn’t work in words or images, instead he uses special characters, acronyms, and abbreviations to do his work. In other words, he’s free to rock his music loud and constantly.

So, loud and constant it is. If Shawn is streaming music he’s either using rdio or Pandora. He cranks his headphones to drown out all external sounds allowing him to dive deep into codeland. When coding, he turns to his favorite band, 311, for good tunes. Alternately, if he’s in the mood for mostly lyric free music, he’ll listen to Deadmau5, Skrillex, or some other dubstep-electronic grooves.

If Shawn finds himself cleaning the house or doing other non-web related work, he listens to a wide variety of music. Of course, 311 makes a return, but he also likes to throw in Mumford & Sons, Jimmy Eat World, Sufjan Stevens, Sublime (even with Rome), Avenged Sevenfold, Disturbed, and pretty much any 90s alternative including Pearl Jam, Nirvana, and Stone Temple Pilots. Old habits die hard, indeed.

On the off-chance he finds himself with little to do other than relax, he puts on some Pink Floyd or Adele. The melodies of Adele and lingering instrumentals of Pink Floyd allow his mind to rest. It’s tough when a person thinks in <html dir=”top”> <head> all the time. A little decompression is important for everyone, but for a programmer it’s kind of like when a daycare worker is finally able to be around adults and have actual adult conversation.

Phew. That’s 100% of the ogres. Do you think you’ve gotten some good tunes out of this series of blogs? There certainly has been a wide variety of artists in these posts. If you dig or hate any of the bands mentioned, let us know. We’re all over the place and ready to hear from you.

You’re already clicking around the internet. Click here to check us out on Facebook and here to Tweet us. Oh, don’t forget to click here to go to our website.

Friday, March 9, 2012

Music is My Literature – the writing ogre listens

If you’ve been waiting for our next ogre music blog, your wait is over. If you haven’t, hopefully you’ll be waiting for the last one – which will be out after this one.

By now, we hope to have turned you on to at least one really good band or artist. Have we succeeded? We can’t hear you or read your thoughts, so please nod at your webcam. Cool. Speaking of music, we recently told you Christopher listens to a lot of really good, but obscure, music; Chris Dadant likes his music melodic, driving, and jammin’; and Nora likes a little punk in her bluegrass. What about Dan?

Dan Fugate is Clever Ogre’s writer and social media manager; sometimes he even does graphic design. Writing doesn’t afford the same listening freedom as social media and design, so he has a couple of listening trends. This has been bittersweet for the one-time loud singing jam band enthusiast.

Being a writer, you might expect Dan to be a voracious reader. Well, he’s not. He goes after and gets into music the way other writers devour books. He often says “Music is my literature.” We believe him. When he’s writing, music generally leans toward instrumental stuff. Widespread Panic, the Grateful Dead, Phish, the London Symphony Orchestra, and Deadmau5 are where he turns for lyric free tunes.

Behind the social media and design wheels, Dan likes to add the lyrics back into his listening. The same jam bands from before are present, but also folks like: Mumford & Sons, MGMT, Keller Willaims (who he’s going to see at Vinyl in May), the Black Keys, and Ok Go.

Dan also has a soft spot for female singers. The emotion that comes through is “so powerful”, he says. When he’s in the mood for lady listening, he turns on: the Yeah, Yeah, Yeahs, Feist, Mates of State, Tori Amos, Regina Spektor, and Sugarland. Melt and swoon.

He will listen to most anything once and he’s found he has no place in his heart for rap, r&b, or the heavier rock/metal stuff. They have too much anger and screaming for his liking. Dan has a bit of music snobbery in him too. He’s of the belief if a band can’t perform as well on stage as they can in the studio, they’re not worth his time. He says he’s just about stopped listening to Modest Mouse after seeing them live.

Alright, readers, that’s 80% of the ogres down. Now, if we can track down Shawn Grimes we’ll feature his preferences next time to round out this musical exposé series.

Let us know how we’re doing. Have we turned you on to any new music? Sound off on Facebook or Twitter.

Friday, September 16, 2011

The Eye in Your Team

Every business owner has heard or read something about the importance of team and unity. When everyone knows his role, but also knows his voice is as important as anyone else's within the organization, there is a powerful yet humble force. Success seems inevitable. Who doesn't appreciate humble acts?

The truth is, most folks don't. Yes, we all are moved by anonymous gestures of kindness and sharing the glory, but more often than not, we don't even know these things happen. But that's okay. The whole point of doing good is to make something better, not to better one's reputation. Besides, who likes a boaster? Exactly.

That’s why you need an advertising agency. Hear us out.

Good business leaders know there’s no “I” in team. We’ve already established no one likes to hear others talk about themselves. Save that stuff for interviews and confession. You’re passionate about what you do, as you should be. Someone else needs to be in charge of spreading the word of the organization’s good deeds.

Enter Clever Ogre. Our passion is advertising. The root of advertising is cleverly and memorably telling folks what’s good about something, and why they should buy or use that particular something.

You don’t want to spend time talking yourself up, so let us. We can be “the eye in your team”. We’ll find out what you do, what you’re about, and who you are…truly. Then, we’ll create whatever kind of advertising thingamabob you want. Video, web, print, PR – we do it, well. <- See, we’re talking ourselves up. It just comes naturally to us.

Can you think of times when it’s appropriate to be boastful? Let us know about them here, on Facebook, or on Twitter. We wanna hear from you.

Share the glory, hog the blame.