Posts by Scott

It’s always great to learn about new artists and Paul Tebbott is no exception. Alex sent me Paul’s site today and I was really moved by his color choices and restrained use of texture and distressing. Paul seems to be just getting started — as evidenced by his relatively small body of work — which is all the more reason to believe we’ll be seeing lots of great things from him in the future. If that’s not enough for you, Paul also has a music project that Boards of Canada fans will surely find enjoyable.

I’m looking for someone with detailed knowledge of overclocking Intel systems to help tweak a production system in the studio. It’s running an Intel Core 2 Extreme QX9650 CPU (liquid cooled) on an Asus Maximus Formula Mobo with Patriot 8GB DDR2 PC8500 1066MHz memory (detailed specs here). If you or anyone you know can help overclock this machine please contact talk [@] iso50 [dot] com with the word “overclock” in the subject. Location is not an issue, we can handle it over the phone or video if need be. Please include a cost estimate in your email.

I’ve had the machine overclocked in the past, but it was never as stable as I needed and I wasn’t able to get the memory running as fast as I wanted so I’m hoping someone can step up and sort it all out.

These leaked shots of Olympus’ new, vintage styled, micro four thirds shooter popped up on Engadget today. Pretty slick, with the old school range finder and everything. Looks like the body might be plastic though, would love to see this in black aluminum with the tan grip.

If you follow the blog you’ll know that I’ve touched on the subject of SSDs before. A quick primer for the uninitiated: an SSD (solid state drive) is a storage device that uses solid state memory (As in no moving parts, other examples include RAM and flash memory) and so it can access data much faster than the mechanical head/platter drives most people use now and with no moving parts, data loss due to mechanical failure is a thing of the past. The promise of SSD is huge and as they become commonplace they will no doubt revolutionize the way we work (think Photoshop swap disks that read and write @ 1400MB/s or computers that boot in 5 seconds). Because I work with such large raster files, swap disk performance in particular is a very big issue for me so I keep a close eye on the SSD market, waiting for the moment when the price to performance ratio hits the sweet spot. Right now most SSD technology is still on the pricey side and there are a few technical issues that are still being sorted out (write endurance supposedly being one of them) so I haven’t jumped in just yet. But as things change I will continue to post updates on the SSD situation.

For the first installment I thought I’d post on the very interesting OCZ Z-Drive. It’s insanely expensive right now, but as we all know, those prices drop pretty fast as the tech matures (remember $800 DVD writers?). The Z-Drive is basically 4 SSD drives in a RAID 0 array on a PCI-Express card. This is a novel concept; by using the PCI-Express bus OCZ has sidestepped the bottleneck of the SATA controllers allowing huge throughput in both directions. Boasting 700MB/s write speeds, the Z-Drive is certainly no slouch, but considering the price (they start at $1500!!) I’m holding out for more. I think the magic number for me would be 1000MB/s for around $500. This would make a perfect solution for Photoshop swap disks and other applications that require massive read/write throughput (video render disks etc.) and while it doesn’t make sense for me right now, it’s great to see this emerging technology headed in the right direction.

Things to Look At has a great post on Vintagecalculators.com. They’ve got plenty of adverts and pictures of old school adding machines. I have an old 70’s TI from my dad I should get it out and dust it off. Jakub also has a couple if I remember correctly.

Kevin Cyr is a Brooklyn based illustrator. The mundane recast as extraordinary…Beautiful. Via

A reader wrote in today asking why I haven’t posted on process or the day-to-day stuff much recently and after reading his email I realized he was right, I haven’t really been on top of that over the past couple months. This is partly due to the fact that most of the stuff I’ve been working on won’t be made public for a while and partly due to things being a bit overwhelming lately. As much as I enjoy it, running this blog has been a challenge for me at times, trying to balance getting work done and also talking about it. But even when I’m in the thick of it, it’s always nice to pop my head up and write an update and perhaps provide a little insight into the daily grind over here at the studio. So from now on I’ll make a better effort to post more often on the stuff that’s going on around here. So here’s the first installment, the studio update for June 2009.

The picture above is of Alex (the one and only ISO50 intern) in the upstairs work area which we use for printing, photography, and any other random tasks that don’t fit into the dungeon below which houses the music studio and main design systems. Alex has been prepping things for the new Epson 9900 which is finally all put together (pictured to the left). It’s scheduled to be commissioned today when the team from Meridian comes out to get it online. Once that’s up and running we’ll be able to do large format stuff so be on the lookout for some very big prints soon. Alex is also working on a very detailed article on color calibration which we’ve been sorting out for a while now and which just seems to keep growing in scope. But it will be worth the wait when it’s done, I promise!

As for new work, I’ve been locked downstairs working on the new Tycho album along with a few new posters which you will start to see coming out over the next couple months. It’s sort of been a rough few months transitioning into getting-shit-done mode. Putting together the Coastal Brake 12″ (due out in August) sort of wiped me out and then a long stretch of poorly timed traveling really put me in a bad spot as far as motivation is concerned. But after some time off I was able to get back into it over the past few weeks and the new work has been flowing pretty well. It’s nice to step away from things for a bit (even if not by choice), when I get back to it I always find myself seeing things from a different perspective and appreciating the process a little more.

Caught these images of Case Da Abitare magazine over at Things To Look At. Very nice!

Faasdant has some nice shots of the [possibly] Dieter Rams designed Gillette (Braun’s parent company) Supermax Pro 1300 hair dryer. Very 80’s, in the best possible way. I remember my mom having a similar model, but cream with black type. Now they all look like a prop from a bad sci-fi movie.

I know, it’s been way too long since we updated the Playlist, but the third installment is finally here. It’s sort of all over the place and I tried to add in a few extra tracks to make it worth the wait so there should be a little something for everyone. This will be the last one I personally compile for a little while, we’ve got some guest playlists lined up for the coming months and they should drop more punctually than this one (once a month or so). Also still working on the recall feature so you can go back and listen to past playlists, I’ll post on that when it’s ready. For now, sit back, relax, and click “Play” at the top of the center column (RSS readers must visit the site). Enjoy!

Track Listing: [Comment on this Playlist]

800BELOVED – GALAXIES
THE PAINS OF BEING PURE AT HEART – YOUNG ADULT FRICTION
GRIZZLY BEAR – CHEERLEADER
THE WHITEST BOY ALIVE – 1517
BIBIO – AMBIVALENCE AVENUE
DEERHUNTER – AGORAPHOBIA
EXPERIMENTAL AIRCRAFT – UPPER EAST SIDE
BULLION – LONG PROMISED – ORIGINAL MIX
J DILLA – GOBSTOPPER
MUX MOOL – NIGHT COURT
ELIOT LIPP – BEAMRIDER
MODERAT – A NEW ERROR
DEASTRO – LIGHT POWERED
MAX TUNDRA – WHICH SONG
NATHAN FAKE – SUPERPOSITIONS
ROYKSOPP – HAPPY UP HERE
DAMN ARMS – DESTINATION PT. I
EVERYWHERE FT. MARTINA TOPLEY-BIRD
FEVER RAY – WHEN I GROW UP (VERSION BY LISSVIK)
TIM HECKER – SEA OF PULSES
TYCHO – COASTAL BRAKE MANUAL REMIX
PANDA BEAR – I’M NOT
A SUNNY DAY IN GLASGOW – WATERY (DROWNING IS JUST ANOTHER WORD FOR BEING BURRIED ALIVE UNDER WATER)
AIRIEL – CINNAMON
SHIGETO/A SETTING SUN – POLAROID ROMANCE
ARIEL PINK’S HAUNTED GRAFFITI – FOR KATE I WAIT
CHRIST – PYLONESQUE