Description:
These words are mine, but only when they're in this particular order.
Contents:
Our Move Is Shake Shake Shake
I am so ready for a second album from Phantogram. Sadly, who knows when we'll get one. Well, I suppose the members of Phantogram know, but that doesn't help me, now does it? Late last year, they released the short Nightlife EP. That's where you'll find Don't Move, which begins the following poppy playlist. I say 'pop' in a good way. All of the sunshine we've been having here in Portland keeps tricking me into thinking it's almost spring. And then the cold wind whips by and I realize winter isn't done with us yet. ah well.
The Sweeter The Sin, The Better The Taste In My Mouth
Here's a playlist of mellow covers. A few of these are downright superb.
One in particular worth noting. If you listen to only one song here, I highly recommend you check out track #4: Any Way You Want It. Clem Snide's cover of the Journey classic is really... well... it's both surprising and a treat.
Gun!
Every now and then, the internet makes the world a very small place.
A year or so ago, I filed away a link for the blog of a writer named Neil Cross. He writes horror novels, and though that's a genre I have absolutely no interest in, I enjoyed the blog he writes about his writing. Odd? Yes.
One day, I discovered that Neil Cross had been writing a British TV cop show called Luther. And, what's this? Luther is available on Netflix. While watching the show, I found a piece of music called "Gun" by Emiliana Torrini.
Wow. What a sexy voice. What a neat piece of music.
It's the first track in the following playlist.
Backwards, Forwards
I'm still on a big Donovan Woods kick, so... here's another playlist with that sort of sound in mind. Last time, it was piano based. This time, it's guitar.
Meet The Viewfinder In The Sony a77
This is not a review of the new Sony a77. The a77 is a superb camera, about which plenty has been written online and elsewhere. Just google "a77" and youll find more reviews than youll have time to read. Most detail things like the cameras excellent specs (24 megapixel sensor, 12 frames per second, HD video, etc) and the design of the body (dual-hinged adjustable rear LCD panel, weather sealing, customizable controls) and so on and so forth.
Just about every review I've seen for the Sony a77 online and in magazines entirely misses the point. They write about the a77 as if its just another excellent camera body, or they write about how the mirror in the a77 doesnt slap (more on that later) as if that makes it worth buying.
Im going to take a different approach here and write about one aspect of this camera: the viewfinder... but before I begin, a disclaimer. None of the pictures seen here were taken with my a77. Obviously. I'd have to own two of them to use one to take pictures of one. Instead, what you're seeing here are pictures taken with my iPhone, in most cases, pressed against the viewfinder. Thus, the blur is from the iPhone, not the actual viewfinder.
And while we're at it, let's meet our model.
Dear Nose
Dear Nose;
Come on. We've been fighting this cold for over a week. Enough with the goo. All you're doing is pissing me off. You get blown, you get blown, you get blown, and then you end up sore. I don't know what kind of game you think you're playing, but we're both losing.
P.S. Dear p***s;
I know what you heard, but nobody was talking to you. Or about you.
Jail
I wish there were a better way to find new music. Sure, there are all sorts of streaming options online, like Slacker and Pandora, or lists upon lists, like Last FM. What we really need is a combination of the two. Pandora with charts, perhaps. A list that is based on your tastes and changes with input, such as "Only albums released in 2011" or "Only artists not listed in my iTunes Library (or Last.fm maybe).
I'll follow up on this rant below... but first, a piano-based playlist that begins with a recent and amazing find. Jail, by Donovan Woods.
Jail is such a great song. It's a simple song. It doesn't tell a story. It just sets a scene and it leaves you there.
Can I Wake You Up? Is It Late Enough?
I'm on a bit of a Bombay Bicycle Club kick lately. 'How Can You Swallow So Much Sleep' is from their latest album A Different Kind Of Fix. The album came out in August, but somehow I missed it. Ah well... It's one of the things I was looping while editing all of the code it took to rebuild this site last week.
Hello Lover
Rob: "Hello coffee, my long lost love."
Coffee: "Long lost? What the hell? I see you all the time."
Rob: "I haven't seen you since LAST YEAR!"
Coffee: "FACEPALM."
Rob: "You can't facepalm me! You don't even have a face."
Coffee: "I don't have a mouth either, but that hasn't stopped you from having a conversation with me."
Rob: "Touche, coffee. Touche."
Coffee: "FACEPALM!"
Jalpuna, V4 - a.k.a., How Steve Jobs Wrecked My Website!
Obviously, I kid. Steve Jobs didn't wreck my website. The continuing march of technology made my site's design confusing if not unusable on touch devices. There is no such thing as an image rollover (where scrolling over an image reveals something hidden such as a link) on a touchscreen. Before I get into that, let's take a stroll down web-design memory lane.
Previous Designs:
This was the original design for Jalpuna, launched back in March of 2004. You can see an outdated but still working page based on that design here.
Next, I moved on to my brief flirtation with orange for Jalpuna, Version 2. You can see an outdated but still working (though not orange) page based on that design here.
That brings us to Jalpuna, V3. Ooh, minimal! I loved it! In fact, I've been tinkering with that design since 2005. It held up nicely until iPhones and iPads came along. That's when the design began to break down. The image rollovers don't work with a touchscreen.
Here's the box that used to sit at the top of that design. The photo is random (reload the page for another). Scroll over it and you'll see some hidden "extra" links.
If you're reading this on a touch device, the links look like this when scrolled over:
The links were hidden in an effort to add extra content while still keeping the site's design minimal. The links led to some extra info as well as my other websites. I really liked the effect, and I liked that the way it was built into my site made the overall design look unique. There are a bagillion websites out there. I like mine to look unique.
The "New" Design?
I realize this latest version of Jalpuna doesn't look new, but I coded everything from scratch, changing a few things along the way. The goal was to refine the look and feel of the previous design, which I liked, while making the site usable on mobile devices.
The changes can be summed up as follows:
- a new "Big Pic" header box.
- better left/right menus.
- flickr integration.
- a new media player for playlists.
- it works on mobile devices now!
The most obvious visual change is probably the "big pic" box I wrote about above. On a touchscreen, there was no way to see the hidden buttons, which meant that touching the picture could take you anywhere with no explanation as to where or why. Now, the box is larger, to hold a full image rather than a slice of one, and if you click the image, you get a bit of info about it instead of seeing hidden links. The images and info because they're pulled automatically from my flickr stream.
I also overhauled the left and right page menus. The left is now a "Blog" menu that leads to categories of stuff I've written or posted in the blog. The right is now a "Photos" menu that serves up different categories of my photography, all of which are pulled automatically from my flickr account. Neato!
And, last but not least... the flash audio player I've been using for my playlists is finally getting replaced since flash isn't available on many mobile devices. I've switched over to an HTML5 audio player with flash fallback, meaning that it works regardless of which technology your browser has. Or, more simply, new playlists here will work on mobile devices such as iPhones and iPads. I'll post a new playlist with the new player tomorrow... but here's a link to a previous playlist I converted over to the new player while testing things.
In Closing:
A few geeky details in case you're curious:
Jalpuna still uses Movable Type for serving up posts. I'm using an old version (v3.34) because I think the current platform is bloated to the point of stupidity, not to mention slow and cumbersome. Movable Type V3 was snappy and easy to configure. Sure, the interface is ugly, but I'm the only one who sees that (when I'm posting something), so who cares? I realize most people use wordpress, but I prefer static pages and I absolutely loath the wordpress template system. Movable Type is so much simpler to design for. Well... older versions of Movable Type were simpler to design for.
I'm using jQuery for some of the site's functionality, such as the jQuery based " jPlayer" media player, plus scripts that pull my flickr images and display them on my pages.
So there you have it. New year, new code. Hooray!
The Holiday Shift
I think we should make a list of all of the late-December holidays. I'm talking about Christmas, Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, Ramadan, Winter Solstice... Boxing Day... Santa Lucia Day... surely there are others.
Let's make a list of them all. Then, every other year, let's all shift our chosen holiday one place down the list. On even years, you return to celebrating your own holiday. On odd years, you return to the list, shifting down to the next holiday in order to learn about someone else's holiday by celebrating it with gusto.
Christians have been celebrating Christmas for hundreds of years. That's all fine and good, but come on... I think they've pretty much got that one down. In the next odd year, let's give them Hanukkah. For the next even year, they'll get Christmas back, and then the next year, they'll celebrate Kwanzaa. I want to see the Pope light the Mishumaa Saba. Damn straight!
And for the Jews... They'd celebrate Hanukkah in the even years. Next odd year, give 'em Kwanzaa. Then back to Hanukkah, and then, in the next, they get whatever's next on the list. Ramadan perhaps.
And all of the people whom celebrate Kwanzaa... let's give them Christmas in the next odd year. Not only that... we should ask them to hip that sucker up a bit. Jesus! Could Christmas BE any whiter of a holiday? First on the list of changes - get rid of the red hat with the little white fluff ball at the end. Surely there's a better option - something with style.
Subtle changes to each holiday are permissible - but that's not really the point.
The point is understanding.
I know jack-squat about Kwanzaa, and that ain't right. I know jack about Hanukkah too, which is odd since I know a guy named Jack who celebrates Hanukkah. I'm certain I'm not alone in terms of cluelessness there.
I bet the average Christian can't even spell Hanukkah. Or Kwanzaa.
If you can't even spell it, how can you know anything about it - let alone having even the slightest understanding of the people who celebrate it?
For even years, you celebrate your chosen holiday. For odd years, shift one down the list and celebrate it with gusto. Absodamnlutely.
Another Day, Another Night, Another Year
Goodbye 2011. Though you weren't half bad, I've never been one to judge how good something was based on how bad it wasn't. In many ways, you arrived with more potential than you could possibly live up to, leaving me feeling let down in the end. Then again, I have to remind myself that you could have been worse. Regardless, at the end of this week, I will be pleased to welcome your younger sister 2012 with open arms and a toast in her honor.
But The Very Next Day, You Gave It Away
A gentle Christmas playlist. Make sure you don't miss a superb cover of Wham's Last Christmas, by Findlay Brown. Everybody and their sister's best friend's trashy cousin has covered that song - mostly badly - but this one is actually quite nice.
My Dear Acquaintance
Raise a glass and we'll have a cheer, my dear acquaintance, it's almost time for a happy new year. I'll post a Christmas playlist next week, but today, my mind is already thinking about 2012. If you're in the mood for a Christmas playlist, click here.
An Egg Nog Playlist
Death Cab's version of Christmas (Baby Please Come Home) is my favorite modern Christmas song - cover or otherwise. And since it is that time of year again, I can't think of anywhere better to begin a playlist than that.
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