- Bat for Lashes – What’s a girl to do
- Fujiya & Miyagi – Knickerbocker
- Death From Above 1979 – Luno (Bloc Party cover)
- Radiohead – Nude
- Franz Ferdinand – Lucid Dreams
Top5 Tracks for the week of 10/27/2008
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Monthly Archives: October 2008
Good Students and Good Causes
The second of two very large sites I recently worked on just went live this week. Nipissing Universities Prospective Students site is geared towards high school students that are Post-Secondary-Shopping. The site is built using the institutes standing ASP framework, which I have to say is quite optimized in terms of how many includes and variable calls are used. I definitely learned a lot of tricks on this one. I also brushed up quite a bit on some CSS techniques like rollovers.
You can see it here http://www.nipissingu.ca/prospectivestudents/
The other site I wanted to feature on this recent work post is a charity piece I did for the North Bay & Area Community Foundation’s Stache Bash fundraiser. This was a quick-turnaround site that had to be out the door in a couple of days, but it was a lot of fun. I even got to do some of the ‘manly’ writing encouraging men from my old community to grow moustaches for a good cause.
The Eighth ArleyM.com
Today marks the launch of the 8th version of ArleyM.com! It wasn’t too long ago that Phase 7 was launched, but with all that I have learned about CSS and accessibility in the last few months I knew I needed to give the site a bit of a face lift. I was recently enjoying looking at previous installments of my site at http://www.archive.org/ and I will endeavour to restore my old image folders so these work for years to come. Seeing the rocky old sites reminds me of how far I have come. I also get a kick out of the early work I did with divs and layers before it was even hip to do so.
I do owe some thanks to Tim Lum as well as Paul Boag and the Headscape crew all for openning my eyes to tableless development.
Bed
Last week Kristi and I invested in a new bed. We had been previously sleeping on a bed that was found at an estate sale, it was a place to sleep and it was all we could afford at the time. I personally didn’t think it was so bad until we stayed at a friends house, woke up refreshed only to learn it was the cheapest bed she could buy. “Could ours be so far gone?”
The new bed is no comparison. For one thing my 6’4″ body doesn’t hang off the end for the first time in my life. For another, the bed is flat (vs. saggy in the middle) and it’s the most comfortable bed I’ve ever slept on.
This is why I thought it so funny at Thanksgiving that as I slept on the best bed ever our other guests slept on the trifecta of infamous guestbeds: a pull out couch, a futon and an inflatable matress.
If you have any doubts as to if you need a new bed remember that you spend an amazing one third of your life there. At the average life span that’s 25 years!
Video Game Music
It seems video games are the sport of choice for our generation. I think most of us could take or leave video game music, but then there are a select few like my friend Miles who has 7 hours of Final Fantasy soundtrack in his car.
Some of the most effective music in games is little more than some subtle ambient thing. Very impactful games I have liked with well timed “intense moment” music include Alien vs Preditor 2, Half Life 2 and Portals.
I find console games approach music differently, opting for the loops. That’s an art I admire, you have to make a song that can be tolerable for potentially a very long time (anyone with a friend addicted to the Mii channel knows what I mean). Favourite console loops of mine are: level 1-2 for the original Super Mario Bros., WiiWare Dr Mario and the music for the first world of Bomberman on Turbo Graphx.
Anyone have favourite video game music?!
Top5 Tracks for the week of 10/14/2008
- Beatles – I’ll follow the sun
- Jose Gonzalez – How Low
- Menomena – Weird (dekoder mix)
- Beck – Soul of a Man
- Peter Bjorn and John – Say Something
Political Distraction
It sometimes feels like it’s election season all over the world. It’s funny how low-key the Canadian election feels in comparison to our neighbours to the south. I knew about the VP debate well in advance, and learned the next day there had been a Canadian debate at the same time. I’ve never been politically inclined, and I don’t think that’s going to change any time soon. After watching the Canadian debate on youtube I only feel like voting for the most polite candidate. It was annoying to hear so much yelling and interruption. Afterward I needed a distraction; the Beatles on the rooftop did nicely. Enjoy
Dream Band
A few years ago I heard of a survey that I think could become a decent music meme.
Someone in England asked hundreds of people to name the members of their dream band; the favourite guitarist, bassist, drummer and singer. While I’m sure that there were hundreds of combinations named the most named person for each respective category was: Jimmy Page, John Paul Jones, John Bonham and Robert Plant – otherwise known as Led Zepplin.
I don’t know if I could pick a band line up so quickly, but off the top of my head:
Guitar: Britt Daniel (spoon)
Bass: Daniel K (interpol)
Drums: Danny Siem (menomena, lackthereof)
Vox: Win Butler (arcade fire)
And naturally if they had a vibraphone player I would have picked Chang Wang from Man Man, but no one ever remembers the vibraphone…
What’s your dream line-up?
Top5 Tracks for the week of 10/6/2008
- Fleet Foxes – White Winter Hymnal
- Tapes n Tapes – Omaha
- Los Campesinos – Sweet Dreams Sweet Cheeks
- Murs – Love and Appreciation
- Jose Gonzalez – Heartbeats (Knife Cover)