- Dr Dog – The Rabbit, The Bat and the Reindeer
- Fleet Foxes – Blue Ridge Mountains
- Menomena – Flour
- Microbricolages – Es Facil
- Cloud Cult – Tornado Lessons
Top5 Tracks for the week of 1/26/2009
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Monthly Archives: January 2009
Tablet
Growing up I was always drawing; I would bring a pen and paper everywhere I went making comics and scrawling monsters. Since college though I’ve been drawing less and less. It’s gotten to the point now where I get frustrated trying to draw without the same dynamics and precision I used to have.
This Christmas I got a Wacom tablet and was eager to start drawing again. I was surprised how incomparably different the digital version is from paper. As you can see my first attempts were to try to draw in the traditional sense; then I took advantage of the bizarre control to make some more abstract illustrations. The last one was an attempt to draw straight lines. It’s hilariously bad.
You can click to enlarge.
Top5 Tracks for the week of 1/15/2009
- Bad Dream Good Breakfast – The Urgency of Nightlight and the Temptations that come of it
- Chopin – Op. 28, no. 15
- Caribou – Pelican Narrows
- Jaydiohead – Wrong Player
- The Beatles – Hey Jude (Love)
Top5 Tracks for the week of 1/7/2009
- Dr Dog – Wake Up
- Caribou – Hello Hammerheads
- Blur – Out of Time
- Bedouin Soundclash – When the night feels my song
- British Sea Power – a little electricity
The Internets: 2008
Happy new year! It’s hard to believe nine years have passed since Y2k. 2008 is gone now, and I’m looking forward to the new year. Looking back here are some milestones for 2008 as a web developer.
Tabless design with CSS
I’ve been making tabled sites for ages, but finally decided to give the CSS route a chance. At first I really didn’t see the benefit, as creating in design mode is much more appealing (and often faster). CSS markup takes less chars and is more flexible to change.
Using Libraries
Working contract for a marketing agency has me creating multiple sites a year (guessing around 15 for last year), which means I spend a fair bit of time recycling code. Collections like CSS Grids and jQuery are incredible resources for saving time and having standardized practices. Open source libraries really changed my workflow last year.
Drupal FTW
Last year I developed my first site in this super powerful CMS. I will still use WP for most client-managed sites, but Drupal offers a lot of powerful tools.
Boag World Podcast
The guys at Headscape have really changed the way I approach CSS and accessibility. This is one of the best podcasts I have ever listened to, on any topic.
Other 2008 Milestones
- Nipissing University Prospective Students site – called by some my best site design yet.
- The latest chapter of ArleyM.com
- Craziest Deadlines ever. Not stuff to show off, but impressive amounts of work in an unprecedented amount of time
So what’s up 2009?
Dessert Island #4 Live at Folsom Prison
I hate country music. I have always tried to stay open minded about it, but the guy in the pickup truck with the flannel shirt singing soft-rock with cheesy metaphors has always been wrong no matter how I look at it. It wasn’t until 2002 that I heard Johnny Cash and the way country music used to be.
Cash’s Folsom Prison album is totally captivating, and way different than any live album I have ever heard before. He’s in a prison, you hear the men laughing, moving chairs and clapping. It’s obviously a major highlight in their dreary prisoner lives. Everything from Johnny’s sense of humor, to the songs he plays to his banter is so welcoming. It’s hard to put into words.
Why is it on my top5?
This is also not my typical kind of music, but everyone needs change now and then. This album is very light hearted, and if I was stranded on an island I might need that.
This album always makes me remember one muggy garage sale day. I bought a collection of 600 crappy country music records for $20 to hopfully find the LP that belonged in the Folsom Prison sleeve I had found. It wasn’t there. I later bought the record for a dollar from a friend.