Morning Dew

Condensing on Leaves:

my first 8tracks list.

Have a listen, won’t you?

8tracks.com plays in a random order, but here is what I intended:

1. Untitled, She & Him
2. Paris Sunrise #7, Ben Harper & The Innocent Criminals
3. Day Five, Explosions in the Sky
4. When I Was a Baby, The New Pornographers
5. Black River Killer, Blitzen Trapper
6. Please Concrete, Wye Oak
7. Red Dress, TV On The Radio
8. We Own The Sky, m83

Annabel Mehran…

…takes stunning photographs:

She has a way with lighting and texture.  I tried to include some examples that summarize her work, but of course this is impossible to do in just three photographs.  Visit her website for more.

Another Sporatic Update!

I really love StumbleUpon.  It lets you find really awesome, beautiful things.  Here is a list of things I’ve found recently via StumbleUpon:

• The website of Maria Hinze, an artist who apparently has no concept of a frame, in the traditional sense.  Fortunately this results in beautiful works of art that fill a space, literally.  Her website is still in development, but the small portfolio she’s posted shows some gorgeous works that I wish I could see with my own eyes – I’m sure the photos don’t do them justice.
• An excellent, Barack-Obama-rific poster that is a work of great typography and a lesson in history all in one.
• A well written and quite insightful blog all about design:  Core77.  I read the site every day; it’s a great resource for designers (they have daily job listings!) as well as people who dip a pen in design ink.

Plenty of Time to Reconsider

What I don’t get is that he had plenty of time to reconsider his choice while putting those things on.  Seriously – in the hour he probably spent getting pretty for the day, he probably spent at least one hundred and twenty seconds putting on those boots.  And I’m guessing they don’t slip on like flip flops, either.

But really:  Chewbacca from the shin down is a great look, as is Audrey Hepburn from the nose up.

Stuff I Like Right Now

Need something to do online?  Check out these links to the music and words capturing my attention right now.

Music:

• Shiny Toy Guns’ album Season of Poison (MySpace)
  
• The Dodos’ album Visiter (Their song Red and Purple especially) (MySpace, YouTube)
  
• Paramore’s (live) album The Final Riot! (Particularly the intro of Hallelujah) (imeem)
• Kanye West’s songs Love Lockdown and Heartless (YouTube)
  
• Lily Allen’s cover of the Kooks’ Naive (A live version here) (YouTube)

Books:

• Mohammed Hanif’s A Case of Exploding Mangoes (Amazon)
• Chuck Palahniuk’s Choke (Amazon)
• Jose Saramago’s Blindness (Amazon)
• Michael Freeman’s The Photographer’s Eye (Amazon)
• (I’m still enjoying this one in retrospect) David Carr’s Night Of The Gun (Amazon)

Images from Amazon.com, Borders.com, and terababes.com.

I’m Glad “The New Yardbirds” Didn’t Stick

Ever wonder where band names come from?  Why Vampire Weekend, Queen, and Oasis are named the way they are?  An interesting list compiled by DanFalco over at rateyourmusic.com chronicles the origins of various bands’ names from !!! to ZZ Top.  It’s quite an interesting read, and fairly comprehensive.

Check it out!

And by the way, “The New Yardbirds” was the name adopted by Jimmy Page, Robert Plant, John Bonham, and John Paul Jones before they became superstars as Led Zeppelin

Journey to Hong Kong

Check out my latest online gallery of photos from my trip to Hong Kong.

And Happy New Year!

In Brief: Holy Crap, It’s an Effective Music Search Engine

New music search engine “Just Hear It” purports to be able to find “any song in the world.” Not only can it find the song, it can play the song for free, make playlists, etc., all within a stunning interface. Check it out.

International

So I’m in Hong Kong right now on holiday with my family…surprise!  I’ll be back on the 27th and will have new posts shortly thereafter.  I’m taking lots of pictures that I’ll post here and on my Flickr page, and I picked up Oasis’ new album (with plans to get more:  CDs are cheaper here than they are in the US).

See y’all soon!

An Alternative to iTunes? Songbird 1.0 Review

GetSongbird.com. Will this program replace iTunes?

Apple’s iTunes is one of the most popular media library management applications currently on the market.  It’s available for free, comes pre-installed on all Apple computers, supports all of the most popular audio and video formats, and is the most compatible application with the iPod.

But a tall tree attracts a lot of wind.  Just as Mozilla decided to take on the task of toppling Internet Explorer’s dominance of the web browser world (after a few other companies tried), a new start-up is trying to take on iTunes.  And wouldn’t you know it:  their software is based upon the same code as Mozilla’s Firefox.