Rachel: iam.bmezine.com

Rachel Los Angeles, Ca 228 days till my birthday.

Save the world, lose the girl.

Still Rockin' BME after all these years..

360,994 days left.

"Great minds discuss ideas;
Average minds discuss events;
Small minds discuss people."
- Eleanor Roosevelt

January 2010
Photo by Katie

Back to work

2010/09/01 17:08 I had a post written up a couple of days ago but I forgot to hit post and then lost the update when my computer got restarted.

Everything that made August such a grueling month is finally over. The convention went well, aside from some problems created by the hotel. The Hollywood & Highlands security staff had blocked the entrance to the convention and their security were telling people trying to attend (if they weren't visibly tattooed) that the space was closed to the public for a private party. As you can imagine that negatively affected attendance. I didn't find out until late Saturday afternoon/evening but by then, the damage had already been done. I can only imagine the conversation that people had with their friends.

Friend 1: "Hey, let's go to the tattoo convention!"
Friend 2: "Nah, I was just there yesterday and got turned away by security saying it was a private party!"
Friend 1: "Oh, that sucks! That's so weird since it was advertised everywhere!" Friend 2: "yeah, I know, I argued with the security guard but they still wouldn't let me in!"

As you can imagine, it was pretty odd to me to have done about 4x the advertising and to have less people attend this year than last year. Overall the response about the show from the attending tattoo artists was that they loved how nice the venue was and that it was one of the best shows they'd been to, despite it being slow. I was really happy with that considering I've been trying to put on a show where the focus was tattooing. Most of the other shows happening these days are just music/car shows/car meets with tattooing added as a side show. I am glad that the amazing line up of artists that attended the show were happy with what I'm trying to do. I have to meet up with the hotel to discuss the mistakes that they made. They were unbelievable. I wouldn't have believed it if I didn't see it with my own eyes. I went downstairs and removed the barricades to the entrance and not five minutes later when I went to check again did I see them back again and witness a security guard telling people that the show was not open to the public. I was shocked!

The Kaname Ozuma & Horiyoshi III event at Known Gallery was amazing. The artwork itself is stunning. It's definitely worth making a trip to the gallery to see it as your only other options are to become friends with Ozuma and Horiyoshi III and to travel to Japan to get to see the art. I was honored to be able to curate a show like this and bring it to the states. Ozuma hasn't shown his artwork here since the 70's and Horiyoshi III doesn't generally show his work. It runs until September 18th, so make sure to check it out if you have a chance!

The new IAM should be getting ready to beta shortly. We've also made it so that people should be able to join the current IAM again. We had stopped having new members here because we thought it would be ready sooner than it was but the development team were so focused on making sure that the new BME was running smoothly and getting completed that we just didn't have the staff available to work on both. Now that BME is stable, for the most part, they're able to shift their focus on to getting IAM finalized to be released.

I've also found a reliable editor who can help me with the footage from Japan as well as helping Richard get the Australian video footage finalized. We've got about 15 interviews done already which could have been posted but I wanted to hold off until I had most of Australia done so we could release them in bulk. The Japanese footage will take a while since I have to hire a translator to watch hundreds of hours of video and translate it. Then all the footage has to have the subtitles added to it so that the video editor can go through it and edit it down. It's a lot of work to say the lease. Each video, with interviews being anywhere from 25-90 minutes long has to be translated, then edited down to 3-6 minutes. I would like to release the interviews in full but I don't know if people would be interested in watching videos that are that long. Regardless, the videos are coming, it's just a huge amount of time, money and effort involved.

I hope everyone is having a good month. I know school starts up soon so I hope those of you in school are excited to be going back. I keep thinking about going back to school but I know I don't have the free time or money available to do so. Oh well!

Tattoo Hollywood 2010
2010/07/30 11:09

Don't miss Tattoo Hollywood 2010!

Things to do!
2010/07/27 00:35 I have a long list of things to do for the convention. One of them is getting trophies. Last year I did Wolves (1st place), Tigers (2nd Place) and Coyotes (3rd Place) (First Photo). They were 3-4 inches tall on 3-4 inch bases and were very cool. A couple other shows have started using them so I want to figure out something else.

Since the convention is in Hollywood, I'd love to do something to play off that theme. If I could get little Oscars made with tattoos on them, I'd think it'd be cheesy but still fun. I just don't know how to go about it.
What do you guys think? I think the other thing that would be good would be plaques because those are easier to hang in a shop. Ink n Iron does cool shadow box type plaques with sacred hearts in them surrounded by fabric.

I also need to order little things like paper towels, distilled water, blah blah blah. So much to do! :) I really wish I had help!
Trophy Ideas/Recommendations? (5)

Data data everywhere and not a drop to drink
2010/07/21 18:16 I was taking a break from the behind the scenes work for Tattoo Hollywood when I decided to look through the photos that I almost lost. I have a back up of my photos from my first Iphoto library which contain images from 2000-2008 but I don't think I have one from the second library which has photos ranging from 2007-2010. Luckily all of the photos were recovered and they've been backed up. This is what I thought was pretty interesting:
Iphoto Library #1 2000-2008: 11,610 images = 22.89GB
Iphoto Library #4 2007- Present: 8,772 images = 33.22GB
Iphoto Library #3 BME Tour Australia: 4,022 images = 28.67GB
It's kind of amazing how much technology has changed. When photo from your digital camera at 640x480 were "huge" files and they still looked crappy. The data cards were in MB and having a 32MB card was hot shit. Though depending on the camera, you could only fit like 12 photos on the card! Now you can take a photo that's bigger than can be displayed on your monitor without scrolling and it's crisp and sharp and a less than 100Kb. SD cards come in 64 GB! That's bigger than the HD of my first laptop!
I haven't checked in to see what the video storage looks like but I know between Australia and Japan, I have filled up at least 8-10TB from all the video that was shot. That doesn't include the copies and back ups that have been made of that footage but it's great that the cost of storage has gone down to where it's almost trivial.
I would love to know what caused my drive to crash. I still don't know. The drive can be cloned but it can't be mounted to be accessed as a target drive or anything like that. They didn't tell me if it was a hardware thing or anything. I mean the drive obviously works because it was cloned without anything special being done. There weren't any weird noises or anything. I'm pretty sure it wasn't something software related since I hadn't done any updates or anything like that. I guess I just want to know if it was something about the way that I was using it so that I don't do that again!
I have to get the battery replaced on my old 15 inch MBP so that I can sell it to a friend who wants it. This will be the 4th battery that's been replaced on it. Apple said it must be in the way that I'm using it, which is killing the battery but there is no possible way that is the case. The last battery I got for it was just before we left for Australia so that Megan would have a laptop to use. That battery is no longer holding a charge for more than 15 minutes and it won't go above 68% when it's plugged in. That 68% equates to approximately 15 minutes of usage, if I'm lucky.
I've got to find the time to put all of my data back on my laptop though. It's been a pain in the ass looking for stuff. I'd copy it all over but things have kind of gotten into a bit of a mess so I'd rather not just drag it all over.
I love when I start writing a diary entry and then get distracted and start working on something else only to realize I had forgotten to finish the diary entry 2-3 hours later.
My best friend and I were talking about this and he said what I would call either the dumbest or one of the funniest things he's ever said.
"I prefer printing my photos to be safe because they don't degrade as much as digital ones do." I looked at him with what he described as a look of disgust, horror, confusion, sadness and wonderment, all in one. As it turns out, he had been in a debate with someone who said they preferred to have their photos printed out for longevity because they felt that digital photos degraded faster. W. T. F.? Really?
I forgot what else I was going to post about because I got distracted. Oh well! I hope everyone is having a great day.

August 20, 21 and 22nd 2010!
2010/07/19 02:35 It's not exactly BMEfest but I wish everyone could come out to Tattoo Hollywood to hang out. If you want to come out and spend the weekend in LA, I've got a discount code for hotel rooms at the host hotel which is Renaissance Hollywood Hotel.
There is Bob Roberts's Book Release/Show Opening party on August the 19th, the convention runs from August 20-22nd and then the following Thursday is a show at Known Gallery with Kaname Ozuma and Horiyoshi III. It's a great week to be in Los Angeles.
If you've work at a shop and would like to attend Tattoo Hollywood as an exhibitor, please hit me up at tattoohollywood@gmail.com. I have discounts on booths for IAM/BME members!
Will you be there? (3)

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