Evan Agee: Live from Richmond Indiana

So I got my taxes all paid yesterday and ended up owing much less than I had anticipated. With the extra money I had saved up Kristen and I decided to pay a few things off and I was able to purchase a new guitar for myself. So we packed up and headed to the Indianapolis Guitar Center.

I played a lot of guitars. The poor guy that just happened to ask us if we needed any help was up and down their guitar fetching ladder all night long. I played several American made Fender Strats including the Eric Johnson signature model and a new 2008 American Standard. I also played several Gibson Les Pauls including one of the beautiful blonde standards with a natural finish and a similar-looking Les Paul Studio. I even tried an SG Standard. However, all of the Gibson guitars felt almost identical to my Gibson Explorer and therefore wouldn’t offer me the tonal variety that I was looking for, so no Gibson for me today thanks.

The salesman asked me if I had ever played a PRS (Paul Reed Smith) and I haven’t. I had always assumed that they were essentially the same as a Gibson in terms of tone and playability but he insisted that they were built to be a best-of-both-worlds combination of a Gibson and a Fender, so I gave them a shot. The first one I played felt amazing. I was extremely close to choosing that guitar over all of the others I had played. It was extremely pricey but just barely under my limit. So I was down to three guitars, an American Deluxe Strat with a maple fretboard, an American Deluxe Strat with a rosewood fretboard and this PRS Custom 22 in a beautiful ruby finish. I sat them all in a row, ready to try them all again and see which felt and sounded the best. In the end the Fender American Deluxe Stratocaster with the rosewood fretboard won out over all of them, beating even the $2900 PRS. I had chosen my new guitar.

My wife, being the wonderful lady that she is, decided to also let me get a new amp also since I had chosen a guitar that was relatively inexpensive (compared to the Les Pauls and PRSs that I had played). I was looking for something with great tone, hopefully tube powered and with a few simple onboard effects so I could get by without my Line 6 Pod Pro if I didn’t want to cart my entire rig around to every practice. He recommended the Line 6/Bogner Spider Valve 112. I tried it and it is AMAZING! This thing has the best clean tone that I’ve ever been able to produce. I’ve owned a Marshall Valvestate 2×12 for the last 15 years and this amp really puts it to shame. I can get the full gamut of tones out of this small amp and it’s all tube!

I haven’t had much time to play with the guitar and amp yet, but I plan on fixing that soon.

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Feels like it has been forever since I posted last, though looking at my last post about the iPhone I guess it hasn’t really been that long. Either way, I thought that it would be a good time to stick my head out and say hi and update everyone on what I’ve been up to.

2008 has, so far, been my busiest year… EVER. As soon as January 1 hit I started getting more and more work through Agee Design. Partly due to my sponsorship of The Podcast Answer Man and some good word-of-mouth, I’ve been amazed at the amount of new projects that have been coming in this year. At last count I have no fewer than seven projects running concurrently. Thankfully I’ve been very careful to plan the timelines accordingly so this one-man-show can keep up with the flow, but it’s still pretty busy around here and I’m enjoying every minute of it!

Most of my work on these projects takes place in the evenings and weekends. I’ve been spending the majority of my day doing work for my primary client/employer. There’s been some wonderful work going on there as well, a project about six months in the making is getting closer to completion every day.

Speaking of my employer, I’ve been loving the iPhone they purchased for me! It’s quite an amazing gadget and I’m sure it’s going to be even more amazing once Apple opens up this bad boy to 3rd party developers. My only complaint continues to be that AT&T doesn’t have better coverage in this area.

On the photography front things have been quite for some time. I’ve been messing around with trying to restore some deleted masters in Aperture and finally got our photos from our Niagara Falls trip back, what a relief. Hopefully I can get the other photos from the last few years back. If not, no biggie I guess, will just have to start over. More excitingly I received a call from a local organization that is interested in hiring me to take some photos. I’m going to talk with them and may end up purchasing a new lens (Sigma 10-20mm) if the project does indeed happen.

On a side note, since my favorite office away from home Charlie’s has closed I’m looking for a new hangout. Does anyone have any recommendations for a local establishment that offers free WiFi and is locally owned? Didn’t think so…

So there’s a quick update! I’ve been working on a new episode of the EvanAgee.com Vidcast that I’ll hopefully find time to finish up soon. Hope all is well with you, I’d love to hear what you’ve been up to so feel free to email me so we can catch up or post a comment.

Last night we had a wonderful dinner at MCL (probably my favorite place to eat here in Richmond). After dinner I started showing my father-in-law Tom my new iPhone and some of the features. He was pretty amazed at the fact that we could get online and check the status of an eBay auction. As I went through the features I was struck by the fact that we were sitting in the middle of a restaurant and surfing the internet, checking email, getting driving directions and many other cool webby things, all without the faux pas of using a notebook computer in such a setting.

I left Thursday morning and drove to the AT&T store in Muncie Indiana. It was the closest place I could find that actually carried the iPhone. The company I work for offered to purchase the phone for me so I was off to pick it up and get it setup right away.

The features of the iPhone have been discussed ad nauseum and frankly I’m tired of hearing all of the feature overviews. What I will say is that The iPhone is an incredible device. It’s the first gadget I’ve ever used that actually exceeds the hype and marketing surrounding it. What’s so amazing about it? Everything works exactly as you might expect. The interface is so clean and simple and inviting and even for a person like myself with large hands it’s easy to navigate around without hitting the wrong buttons.

Here are a few of the things I’ve loved about the iPhone that I didn’t expect:

1. It brings new value and enjoyment to apps already on my computer
   I’ve always used iCal and Address Book for managing events and contacts, but neither was an app that I used every day. The fact is that I wanted a way to access that information even if I wasn’t on the computer. Until I didn’t have a way to do so. Now if I create an even in iCal and set an alarm it’s transferred to my iPhone and I get a friendly little sound when the alarm is triggered. My contacts are all synced to the iPhone and are instantly accessible with the tap of a finger. I’m especially excited about the ability to have a nice photo of all of my contacts that is displayed any time I receive or make a call to that person. Very cool indeed.

2. Truly usable portable video player
   I was pretty skeptical about whether or not I would actually want to watch a movie on a screen that’s 3.5 inches wide. However after spending some time watching YouTube videos, podcasts and even portions of feature-length movies I have to say that I enjoy it very much.

3. Data syncing from iPhone to computer
   I never got into the whole PDA thing (maybe because my life was never complicated enough to warrant having one). However, now that I’ve got the iPhone and can quickly and easily add an event to the calendar, a contact to my Address Book or even purchase songs from the iTunes store I’m wondering how I ever lived without that ability. I thought of a song I wanted to purchase from iTunes and since I wasn’t near the computer I decided to purchase it on the iPhone. Once I returned to the computer and docked the iPhone I was happy to see that the purchased song was transferred to my music library instantly.

4. The keyboard is actually nice
   I’ve got big hands. I was somewhat worried that the small, touchy keyboard in the iPhone would be a little too small for me to comfortably type on. Much to my surprise it’s actually wonderful. I don’t do the whole double-thumb express just yet but I get by pretty quickly using a single finger. I’ve been updating Twitter, replying to emails and surfing the web (including filling out forms, wow) with ease.

Here are a few features I’d love to see on the iPhone in the future:

1. Voice activated commands
   My free LG phone from Verizon allowed me to call a contact in my address book by simply saying their name. As far as I can tell the iPhone doesn’t have this ability, however I think it’s reasonable to expect that feature in the near future.

2. One touch speed dialing
   I would love to be able to display the keypad, hit the number 1 and have it automatically call my wife. Again, a feature that my LG phone had that seems absent from the iPhone. The favorite contacts list is nice but it’s a little difficult to use if you’re not looking at the phone.

3. A more robust iTunes mobile store
   Don’t get me wrong, the fact that I can purchase songs with my phone is awesome. Since I had never owned a smart phone before now this isn’t something I ever expected to have on a portable device. However it’s obviously a very watered down version of iTunes. From what I’ve seen you can’t access/subscribe to podcasts, preview/download music videos or movies or tv shows and I believe audiobooks are missing as well. I know that most of these are high bandwidth items but it would be nice if they were at least available if someone wanted to purchase them. How cool would it be if you could order a movie on your iPhone and when you returned home you find that it has been downloaded to your computer/Apple TV?

So, in short the iPhone is wonderful. I’m so thankful that my employer was gracious enough to allow me to get one and I can’t wait to start developing for it!!! Have an iPhone? I’d love to hear your thoughts on what you like and what improvements you’d like to see.

I can say without a doubt that Juno is the best movie I’ve seen in at least a year, probably a couple of years. The characters are wonderful and Juno, with her wonderful wit and charm, is one of the most lovable characters I’ve seen in a film. So you can imagine how excited I was when I found out that Juno was nominated for several Academy Awards including Best Picture and Best Actress in a Leading Role. You can check out the full list of nominations at the NY Times.

Here are all of the Oscars the film was nominated for:

• Best Motion Picture
• Performance by an actress in a leading role (Ellen Page)
• Achievement in Directing (Jason Reitman)
• Original Screenplay (Diablo Cody)

I’d love to see this film win as many awards as possible, but I know that it has some stiff competition this year with “No Country for Old Men” a film by the Coen brothers about a hunter who finds some dead bodies, heroin and millions of dollars near the Rio Grande and “There Will Be Blood”, a film about a turn of the century oil prospector starring Daniel Day-Lewis.

There’s a great interview with Juno writer Diablo Cody and star Ellen Page over at Filmspotting.net that’s worth checking out. If you haven’t seen this film yet, be sure to check it out ASAP!

Check out the full list of nominations over at the NY Times website.