Monthly Archives: June 2007

Little Tweaks

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So, I’ve started posting song reviews as planned (just a few days later than expected), and I’m feeling pretty good about it. I’d like to hear people’s thoughts about the format, and just in general if you like it as an addition to the site. In the process of doing those, I thought a bit about the site itself, and ended up tweaking it a little bit. I changed the font to Helvetica (if you don’t have Helvetica, it’ll show up as Verdana as before), increased the font size slightly, and added some letter spacing… the spacing is a bit wider than I’d like, but it’s still readable, and will have to do until I can really look at how different browsers handle fractional pixel widths (the spacing is currently 1px, so to get it closer than that, I’d need to get into decimals, and mucking with Safari, I honestly didn’t notice a real difference between 0 and .5px… nor did I see a difference when using percentages). I’m going to sit with it for a while and see how I like the new spacing, and if I get any votes seriously in favor or against, I’ll probably let that make the final decision. If you’re reading this via RSS, you probably don’t care, and that’s fine. I just want to make it more readable for those who are coming to the actual site.

Oh, I also increased the line-height from 1.2em to 1.3em, and I think it gives a nice boost to readability. It’s amazing how that small a change can make such a difference. No other maintenance stuff for now… one of these days, I need to get around to the 2.2 update. They finally integrated widgets directly into the code, and that could potentially be nice.

So, yeah, please let me know how you feel about the changes/additional content!

Invisible by Modest Mouse

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I think it will come as no surprise to most folks familiar with both me and the band that I’m a fan of Modest Mouse. I was initially turned on to them fairly late in their career, with their album Good News for People Who Love Bad News, notably their one-two punch of “World At Large” followed by “Float On,” which when combined, served as a personal mantra and definition through a very trying period in my life. I quickly rounded out my collection of their prior albums, and eagerly anticipated their latest album, We Were Dead Before the Ship Even Sank. The new album, while not exceeding my preference for Good News…, does not disappoint, with its frenetic, impassioned songs. Needless to say, I was glad to see one of these songs, “Invisible”, show up on KEXP’s Song of the Day Podcast.

“Invisible” starts with a muted drum and guitar build up, which then explodes into a sonic crescendo as the singing starts. Build-up and release seems to be a recurring theme within the song, with several points where the melody builds a sense of urgency before a staccato release of heavy, directed drums and guitar, with a bassline running throughout acting as a glue, bonding the elements together.

In short, the song rocks, and rocks hard. It engages the ear on several levels in a way that could be overwhelming if not prepared for it, combined with a pacing that can’t help but encourage a frenetic mood in the listener. “Invisible” is an excellent example of Modest Mouse’s musical style, and would be a great way to introduce the band musically to a newcomer.

[Invisible by Modest Mouse]

[Subscribe to the KEXP Song of the Day Podcast.]

Apple Pie by The Bastard Fairies

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“I’m the life of the party, I’m always smiling. On the surface, I’m as happy as can be.”

You all know the people “Apple Pie” (off The Bastard Fairies’ Memento Mori) is talking about: they seem upbeat and cheerful (much like this song), but the reality is that they’re fairly shallow, and avoid dealing with their emotions, or anything too heavy or serious. It describes an individual who is shallow by choice. The mood and melody of the song encourages this image, with a relatively simple tune running through it, with only the chorus having more complexity and layers: for most of the song, it is simply a synth and lo-fi vocals. With each cycle through the chorus, however, they add more and more instruments, until the final chorus is a diverse cacophany of sounds that works well in a sonic fashion. This ties really well into the metaphor of the song, since you never run into these sorts of people alone.

I like this song, for several reasons. First and foremost, it’s a catchy tune, with a simple rhythm and lyrics that are easy to sing along to — it’s easy to end up nodding your head with the beat or even singing along. In particular when I was first introduced to this song via KEXP, I was dealing with several individuals that I found I was immediately identifying with the song: not bad people, but emotionally shallow, who’d rather sweep things under the rug than address the issues at hand. This gave it enough weight that I ended up tracking down the band online, where I discovered that they were offering their entire album available for download, free (links below). I’d definitely recommend looking them up, and giving the album a few listens, to see if it’s something you might like: especially for the price, it’s worth your time.

[“Apple Pie” [Free MP3]]

[The Bastard Fairies Website]

Out of the Heat

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It was pretty hot the past few days, and my apartment was something of a sauna, but the heat has largely broken now, and it’s down to a far more comfortable 70 degrees. Definitely digging it. Today has been something of a late start, you might say, since I didn’t really wake up until 1 (I went to bed at 4, woke up at 5:30 long enough to hear the KEXP pledge drive, and then went back to sleep). What, pray tell, was I doing up so late? Excellent question! Mostly I just couldn’t sleep, and even ended up going out and walking around (it was 60 degrees still at 1:30am), and decided it was high time i started exploring this whole “video blogging”/”vlogging” thing. By which I mean making them, as I’ve already been quite familiar with the media from a user perspective for a fair bit of time.

The short of it: I could do a Ze Frank-esque show relatively easily with the tools I have now, though I’m not entirely happy with the audio at the moment: the video from the built in iSight on the iMac is quite excellent, however, using Quicktime Broadcaster to record directly to a 640×480 H.264 MP4. The audio was simply a little “fuzzy”, and could be markedly improved using an external microphone, I’m quite sure. I could clean it up and edit it using iMovie, and publish it either hosting on my own site (not feasible for a long project or if it became popular), or find one of the numerous places out there are are hosting user videoblogs (not the least of which being YouTube). A minute of footage is running around 1.2MB… reducing the resolution to 320×240 cuts it down decently (not in half, of course: the audio is still what it is), if space became an issue, and as long as it’s in that proportion, it’ll scale on iPods easily.

So, the technicals are largely out of the way: just keep an eye out for an in-expensive Mic on Craigslist (don’t need something insane, just decent, and less than the Mic they had at the Apple Store for $50) for the audio portion, and otherwise i’m good for some basic stuff. The question, then, is what the hell do I want to be recording? I’d like to put myself out there, but for what? What’s the project I should be doing with myself? I’ve thought about talking about and reviewing music and games and movies and books. I’ve thought about doing brief readings of poems and stories. The “witty newsshow” has sort of been done, and isn’t really my thing anyway. I have several ideas I’d LOVE to do, but they involve an actual video camera — until my financial situation significantly changes, it has to be something I can do from a stationary location. One idea is to write something every day, and then do a reading of what I wrote each day. Thoughts?

Selling Kidneys Averted

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With much thanks to the lovely Mickey, I now have money to pay my bills this month and hopefully still have some float for while work gets into gear. She bought my G5… it’s MARKEDLY faster than her current machine, and has half a terabyte of storage to help house her pictures, and helps me out of a really tight spot in the process. I also reactivated CS2 on it before handing it over, so until she picks up her copy of CS3, she has a more up to date copy of Photoshop in the process. In the meantime, no CS2 on my laptop, but I like doing Photoshop on the desktop more anyway, so no biggie. Just need to remember to migrate the activation to the laptop when I fly east for a week in July.

I haven’t forgotten my plan to start reviewing songs on here, I just got a little delayed in working to make sure I have food on the table. I’ll aim to actually start it Monday (tomorrow).

There’s a lot else to talk about. I hit a really low spot the other day, quite possibly the lowest I’ve been, even through the anti-depressants I’ve been prescribed. I was a mess, and sort of let my apartment become a mess (been working today on correcting that), and… well, it was rough. It wasn’t any one thing, just everything caught up to me at once, the job issues, the lack of money, the speeding ticket, the loneliness, the girl troubles. I ended up talking with my friend Lorna, recently back from Japan, and Chris out in Norway even gave a much needed and appreciated phone call. We talked a fair bit about what I need to do to get out of this hole, and that on some level, hitting bottom is a good thing (though it sucks). Talked about taking any shit job that’ll pay the bills, and when you get off work, spend the rest of the evening working on what you’re passionate about. Getting out of my own way and experiencing the muck and the shit that life has to offer. It would help give me more humanity in my writing — while I’m technically a good writer (while I occasionally make slips, my grammar, spelling, and vocabulary are good), and my theory on a number of things is good, I lack that pathos in my writing that gives it passion and humanity. And y’know, it’s true. My writing, while perhaps not sterile, isn’t exactly full of the human element, either. It’s something I’ve been aware of for a while, and it’s something I need to work on.

I’ve managed to convince a friend to come up for the week at Squam in July, which should be great, as it’s been a while since I’ve seen them. Of course, “convince” might bit a strong term… being able to relax by the lake and catch up on reading and chatting idly is pretty enticing on its own. It does mean that I’ve gone from “eagerly anticipating” to full on “excited” about coming back in July.

Well, Frak.

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I was supposed to start this full time project at work on Tuesday, but it got delayed a week, so I was supposed to start it this Monday. It just got delayed again.

Well, fuck. Who wants a Kidney?