June 11, 2001

One step at a time!

Hey, I could do that!
Some of you will laugh, some of you will cry. But I don't care, or rather I do, but have little control over the situation. What happened to me a few weeks ago was that someone whispered "Fifty bucks an hour!" in my ear. That represents what digital graphics & HTML folks can get away with charging the general public in these isolated parts (northern New Mexico). Yes, I know, that's what you California pixel pushers pay your junior high school interns, hahahaha. And some grownups charge less than that...

The point is that this is possible, but for some reason (hire a psychoanalyst!) I've preferred to go through life planning to live off Pie in the Sky. You know, the BIG PAYOFF! Wait for the columnist gig with CNN, dream of how rich I'll be when I sell a book or syndicate a print column, that kind of thing. For a while last year it looked like my Farr Site (Applelinks) and WebFaust (MacAddict.com) columns had me on a rocket ride to stardom, but then the the dot-com bomb exploded -- and there was blood all over the floor (Applelinks will survive and prosper, but many others will not.) .. Later, when it became clear that my plans for Farr Site jhad evolved beyond the scope of where you are now, I moved the namesake column to ZOOZONE.COM and gave birth to "GRACK!" Har.

This partic'lar series is one of those things that just "came" to me, and for now it fits. To repeat for the uninitiated, Raven in Native American lore and religious radition is the bringer of magic. I also like the idea of being an aerial observer, seeing things through the bird's eyes. Where I live, ravens show up all the time. It's really quiet here, and the sudden squawk of a soaring raven can make you jump! That's why the column begins with an honest-to-goodness raven's call and ends with my version of the same thing in print. (The columns themselves are my own squawk too, in case you hadn't noticed.)

Back on the track, Jack
I am writing a book about my New Mexico experiences, but in the meantime, why shouldn't I try something practical like Web site design? -- and don't get smart and say something like "'Cause you STINK!" People are crying for help, and there are all kinds of charlatans charging outrageous fees for site-related tasks: I've seen fee schedules that demand hundreds of dollars for submitting URLs to search engines and blithely ask $5-10 just to scan a single photo. Ye gods, is this legal?! I should just set up a solar-powered scanning booth by the side of the road. $50 an hour is a bargain, under the circumstances! By now it should be obvious that I've either succumbed to terminal brain rot or need to get out more, but doggone it, I smell money and I NEED some. Accordingly, I'm now a business. A dot-com business, no less, heeheeheehohohoho (oh, no...)

 

That's ZOOPILOT.COM, honeys, just click on the image. Yeah, everything needs work, including the graphic (I have better copies of this one somewhere). But we're rolling! I printed up cheapo business cards on the ole Epson and I'm about to do my first job for a local musician client who will either take my offer or steal my code and do it himself. Hey, I stole it, or rather borrowed it from a javascript reference (see? I'm learning already). There's another job pending for a local bookstore that may go out of business and can't pay me yet, plus a gig for a guy who runs a fly-flishing service and can't find his wallet, either. Hey, this is a GREAT day job!

Those of you with established high-zoot designeries have nothing to fear from ZPD, obviously, but gee whiz, this is something a person can DO with a decent Mac setup. I have all the requisite software, too, and if I ever learn to use it, I'll be in Fat City: DreamWeaver, FireWire, GoLive, Photoshop, Illustrator, Quark, Electrifier Pro, good Lord what else? Oh yes: Flash 5, Claris Home Page 3, PageMill, and the full VSE suite of site management tools (VERY VERY COOL STUFF!). Also BBEdit, blah-blah, and I don't know what all. Of course, the big question everyone wants to ask, other than "Hey, do you know anything about business?!" is...

How did you organize & protect this stuff?
I'm glad you asked. My PowerMac 8600 runs two 7200rpm SCSI hard drives, about 4GB and 9GB. The larger one is divided into 4 partions (SYS, APPS, DOCS, and MISC), the smaller into 2 (ZIA and ARCHIVE). SYS and ZIA feature complete OS 9.1 installations and either one can steer the boat. Any programs not installed in the 9.1 applications folder on the boot partitions reside in appropriate folders on APPS. But here's where it gets beautiful: you gotta get Copy Agent by Connectix. With two drives, one can serve as a backup. ARCHIVE is almost 3GB and has plenty of room for all my software plus the contents of DOCS, so I'm all set.

With Copy Agent, you can schedule any number of backup routines that run automatically at the times you set. Every day, for example, the Big Guy backs up everything on the DOCS partition by copying anything new or modified. Another routine automatically copies whatever's in my Claris Emailer folder on APPS (including the mail database) to the equivalent folder on ARCHIVE. If the larger drive craps out, I can restart from ZIA and still get right to work! Finally, a third backup copies selected essential files (all my Web pages, for example) to a special Zip disk every night at 11:00 p.m. Peace of mind, doods and doodettes! Get COPY AGENT or its equivalent, add extra hard drives (an external FireWire drive is especially handy), and set everything to back itself up without your lifting a finger. It's the only way.

Yeah, but what about that name?!
"Zoo Pilot Design"? Well, you see, during most of the 1980s, I actively wrote, recorded, and pitched original rock & roll songs under the name the Zoo Pilots (an actual band, about which more later). My business name for this enterprise was and is "Zoo Pilot Music," or ZPM. Demos were distributed under various names: the Zoo Pilots, Johnny & the Zoo Pilots, John H. Farr & the Zoo Pilots, even Bothoflu & the Zoo Pilots. Bothoflu is a special name that came to me once in a dream. I'm not sure who or what Bothoflu is, but sometimes he is me. Some of these songs were almost published! No, really. A Dutch radio station once played several songs of mine, and a San Francisco Pacifica station played a lengthy Zoo Pilots demo tape in the late '80s. (Maybe you heard it: do you remember "You Have Been Blown Up in the Name of the Lord"?) And note that zoopilote en español means "buzzard" -- decide for yourselves if the carrion-eating allusion has a place in the overall scheme of things.:-)

There has only been one actual official Zoo Pilot performance, which took place about 15 years ago at Washington College in Chestertown, MD, USA. The band members were John H. Farr, Kate Bennet, Dale Trusheim, John Hansen, and Mike McBride. There have been any number of spontaneous musical blowouts, jam sessions, etc., but only one gig! It's just as well: the only thing that costs more money than a musical addiction is owning a big boat or living in one of the poorest parts of America like I do.

Anyway, this is your lucky day (?). Since I just figured out how to do this last night,* I have 5 (count 'em) MP3s for you to download and listen to ("No salesman will call"). You can click each of the links below in turn, download the files, and leave 'em all on your desktop to function as individual MP3 players until you quit your browser. Boy, I have no shame at all -- cheesy but LOUD! Only one of these tracks is from the live gig ("Sixties Song"). I don't care if you hate it, either, but it's the real me ("Oh my GOD!") -- or rather it was. Sure, I could do it again, why not? :-) My ears are already shot to hell (blame the Sex Pistols show at Randy's Rodeo in San Antonio, Texas way back when... the loudest performance I ever attended).

Anthrax Boogie 1.4MB (demo)
Butternut Street 1.2MB (demo)
El Salvador 2.3MB (demo)
Piss Test 2.2MB (demo)
Sixties Song 2.2MB (live)

Just want to download the files to play on your own? Drag these links to your desktop: Anthrax Boogie, Butternut Street, El Salvador, Piss Test, and Sixties Song.Watch out, though. I have tons of this material. Hours and hours, most of it much worse, some of it better. Instrumentals, jams, the whole Zoo Pilots gig. "Better keep your day job!" Oh, you mean Applelinks and Zoo Pilot Design. Um, just Applelinks??

Guess I'll finish writing that book -- !!!

Senior Applelinks editor and columnist John H. Farr apologizes for making you turn down the sound on your computers and welcomes your comments. Don't forget that you can toot your horn at the Applelinks MacBoards, too. And be sure to read all the FARR SITE columns at the ZOOZONE, where you'll always find a different daily New Mexico image. The book you have to wait for.

*Brother Bob pointed out that Dreamweaver and other apps can make cranking out the javascript pop-up Zoo Pilot Music windows a snap. I'm usually inclined to tinker with the guts of things before doing it the easy way, so these were originally cobbled together out of bits of code swiped from javascript sites. They never really worked right though, until I acquired some fraternal assistance. In other words, he used Dreamweaver to create a few windows and then emailed me the code! I took that, modified it, and had great fun building what you see on this page. Thank God for Macs!

AUDIO CREDIT: embedded 44k file, European Birds -- Sounds and Sonograms.

DESIGN CREDIT: GRACK! byline graphic by Bob Farr. He's good, really good...