I have the day off to get ready for Arcati Crisis’s appearance at the Tin Angel tonight (@ 8:30), including mixing down our limited edition “Live From Rehearsal” EP, and I’m still working on cramming too many links into this single-blog sack at noon.
Typical.
Harvard Avenue posted an amazing time-lapse video showing the steps behind creating an online comic. I wasn’t too impressed until about halfway through, at which point it started becoming stunning.
(When the new season of Trio starts I ought to do a behind the scenes video of Trio – way more complicated than you might think.)
Pioneer Woman posts my favorite chapter yet of her serialized “How I Met Marlboro Man.”
Life suddenly becomes a musical for EJ. This has happened to me before, but with squirrels instead of people.
In the category of “processes I’m trying to improve,” How To Blog Without the Time Sink, via Akkamsrazor.
I’m not much of a gadget monger, but after reading Web log: a20261 I’m seriously considering a Helio Ocean as my next mobile device: it features a numerical keypad as well as a querty in a slim interface. Check out a bevy of photos at Gizmodo, or get a little more technical on SlashGear, or read a full review on CNET. Overall sounds like it’s super convenient, but no feature manages to be best in class. A plus: works with my carrier (Sprint). A minus: doesn’t work internationally.
You are what you eat, but do you know what you’re eating? Ethical eating blog Ethicurean pumps out more great links than I have the time to read, let alone blog, but an NYT quote from a recent post really caught my eye because it explains exactly why I’m edging towards being a pesco-vegan:
Most countries, including China, ban the use of ractopamine in livestock destined for human consumption, but it is permitted in 24 countries, including the United States and Canada.
VetMommy talks about the humane way to declaw a cat.
I’m happy to see the opinion of a concerned professional, but still I vacillate on this one … not because I necessarily have a problem with declawing as a concept, but because I’m uncomfortable with any sort of unnecessary surgery considered necessary just for the sake of aesthetics (in this case, the aesthetics of a leather couch, but in the case of humans, circumcision for the sake of people who don’t recognize the natural form and function of a penis).
Sorry, I got kind of heavy on you there on short notice. I’ve been sitting on a lengthier post on the topic full of facts and figures, but it’s not done simmering yet. (I keep worrying that I may alienate the majority of my audience, but then I think, “hey, it’s only the majority of Americans in my audience.” But, I digress)
From Boing Boing: Rule The Web in 60 Seconds, a blog and podcast. Also from BB, an academic paper exploring how magicians keep their trade secrets safe without the bureaucracy of Intellectual Property law. Even the abstract is interesting.
I love vintage advertisements, not only for the art of them, but to try to understand how communicating to the public was fundamentally different in previous eras. Shorpy, typically a vintage photo blog, posted a great series of ads this week. My favorites were Fort Marion, Yellowstone, and Back to Books. View a gallery of all of Shorpy’s Art & Design images.
The music section.
Scott Andrew sweetens the pot for pre-orderers of his new record by offering a comp disc filled with tracks from his many talented collaborators.
Arjan Writes travels in an more urban circle of music than I do, but he’s worth monitoring for gems like Alice Smith, which on first blush is an R&B tinged KT Tunstall. Download her MP3, New Religion.
Yellow Stereo posts a gorgeous (live) track from a new free EP by Great Lakes Swimmers. I’ve never heard of them before, but at first blush they’re like Sufjan Stevens but without the studied pointlessness. Whether or not you agree with me, get the download from the awesomely titled Gorilla vs Bear.
Also from YS: I’m obsessed with Sia’s new single, “Buttons,” ever since first seeing Four Tet Remix). I wish they’d set a release date for her new disc.
Coolfer has long been one of my favorite music blogs, because it focuses more on the industry than the individual artist. Lately it hasn’t featured as many in-depth essays (I think because its blogger is in Grad school), but the links are as fresh as ever – like this Wall Street Journal article on Digital Sound Quality.
Most people (AKA, my mother) can’t tell the difference between an original MP3 and an album version, let alone the difference between encoding at 128 and 320.
I had my own intangible grasp on the quality gap, but it’s become a lot more obvious to me now that I’m recording my own music with professional fidelity. The quality loss is not always intangible – sometimes you lose punch in a specific frequency range, and its often a punch you mixed quite deliberately. Or, in the words of someone interviewed in the article:
[M]usic producers fret that they are engineering music to a technical lowest common denominator. The result, many say, is music that is loud but harsh and flat, and thus not enjoyable for long periods of time.
I am seriously going to get down to one Make You Go Hmm link per post, because posting multiple links means I’m effectively reading his blog for you, when really you ought to be reading it yourself. This edition’s link: Clocks of every kind, such as the US Crime Clock. I wonder if we could get one just for Philadelphia…
I’m trying to also get down to a link per post on Kottke, but it’s pretty damn hard. E and I love the production company logos at the beginnings of movies and ends of television shows. Who makes them? Not sure, but here’s five minutes worth of them on YouTube.
Learn how panhandlers make more money than police. Read a history and analysis of the Batman logo from comic letterer Todd Klein; here’s the first. A rare comments-on post about how to survive if you are trapped at the bottom of a blender. Finally, Statetris – Tetris with states and nations. It’s hardest on medium, because your preconceived notions of where things are located messes with your intuitive ability to place the recognizable shapes.
Quick hits: Daily Lit makes reading easy by serializing literature for you in daily emails, via Unclutterer. 21 ways to get (really) good at writing. 20 great music apps for Facebook, via Coolfer. Chime TV aggregates the best content from different video sites, like the ubiquitous YouTube. Via Fresh Arrival. How to make NYT-style charts with excel, via Communication Nation.
My final link is a tribute to reviving a memory long since forgotten: Philly music blogger Some Velvet Blog posted a great oldie nugget in his weekly mixtape – “Let the Good Times Roll.” My grandmother used to dance around the kitchen singing this every Sunday morning while she cooked brunch.
Thanks for the memory.
fin.