dealingwith's lj

I follow the path of the comet

Thu, 17 Dec 2009 07:58:12 GMT

Myrrh is mine, its bitter perfume
Breathes a life of gathering gloom;
Sorrowing, sighing, bleeding, dying,
Sealed in the stone cold tomb. #

My friend and colleague Wood Ingham wrote the most amazing Christmas poem, one of the best things I've read all year, something I've read over and over, and something that has sent me down giant rabbit holes the likes of which I have not experienced in probably two years (and inspired this tweet). Seriously, go read it.

For music: We Three Kings of Orient Are by Sufjan Stevens.

image by Kevin Tyson of the Garabedian House Christmas Display

Margot Update from Carissa

Thu, 26 Nov 2009 16:25:14 GMT

Margot has passed the pesky fussy caterpillar stage and butterflied out into adorable. She is wide mouthed smiling happy most of the time. Her powerful cuteness causes entire grocery store aisles to spontaneously line up and goochey-goo. Her dimples can draw an entire crowd of kindergartners from a playground. Her eyes still twinkle a mystery of colors. Golden nugget giggles drip out of her mouth when we manage to kiss the right toe....

Carissa Byers: Raspberries

CPU vs <video>

Sun, 08 Nov 2009 21:40:50 GMT

Having an older Mac that positively freaks out when I try to watch videos or do anything else rather CPU intensive, and even having a relatively brand new one that gets pretty hot doing the same, I was excited to find in my Twitters this morning a YouTube HTML5 Viewer that takes a given YouTube link and renders it using the new(ish) HTML5 video tag. Common sense and the blog post that introduced it claimed to use less CPU than Flash on Mac and Linux. Here were my quick and unscientific findings.

	Flash	Video
Safari	30-60%	80-100%
Chrome		10-30%

Needless to say, I was shocked to find the video embed to perform so horribly in Safari and so well in Chrome (Chrome numbers were with a single tab open, all procs combined, for those wondering). I don't know the internals of how the video in rendered in the browser, but it is either not a part of the core Webkit, or it is something the Google folks have already improved upon despite its dearth of use.

I will perhaps spend more time testing this across different OS's (and OS versions--above was Leopard) and browsers, but would be curious what your findings were, were you to do a quick comparison.

About

Tue, 27 Oct 2009 03:31:05 GMT

When pressed for a new "about me" for my Google Profile, which I was setting up now just so I could test drive their new social search:

Too much a designer for the developers and too much a developer for the designers.

Too much a heathen for the Christians and too religious for the heathen.

Too much a lycra-wearer for the hipster fixie crowd and not hardcore enough for the racing scene.

Too much a fan of pop music for the indie scene and not glamorous enough for pop music.

Too opinionated about art for the local art scene but too into outsider art for the art academy.

Too much a meritocrat for socialism but too humanist for capitalism.

I live on the edge, in the sense of the word that involves lots of paper cuts.

Music

Thu, 15 Oct 2009 05:46:25 GMT

Presteign, randomly found site, love the overall aesthetic. Music-group-as-corporate-entity is not new (see dfg corporation #) but I also like the music-group-as-cultural-ministry, and the above-linked site pulls it off with a nice, subtle European flair.

Been thinking a lot about what I want/need to do in regards to my artistic pursuits, having done virtually nothing since the release of the last record last March.

Then there's this attitude, equally popular:

Call it God, magic, fortune or simply the sum of the variables you cannot understand or control, but know that your very best work cannot be scheduled of produced on-demand. You’ve got to be patient, you’ve got to try and try again and you’ve got to let God in.

-- from Let God In.

Coincidentally, I got a new temp site up for johnnycitizen.com, just conglomerated all the different iterations and content across four different sites. Still not sure what I'm going to do with it, but since it (and every site on my server) was hacked earlier in the summer it'd just been empty.

I have a bookmark folder around here somewhere full of great tunes I've found over the last 6 months, all free for the download. I might be posting another music post here soon.

Brunch

Fri, 11 Sep 2009 23:00:14 GMT

I've had a ton of blog entries stuck in my head and unable to make their way into any of my various publishing systems...something about having a baby and working for a startup. And getting old. But Carissa's take on our brunch last weekend was perfect:

This is time frame in most of my friend's lives where we're all settling into this world we created. We're settling in to our ideas and our beliefs and how it's all panning out. We're settling into our mates or what we want out of a mate and understanding more about what was so totally wrong with that last boy/girl friend. We're nestled in with sticky-faced children. We pride ourselves more on our practical functionality and less on our storebought fronts. We're not so swept away by the masses, trends or media and can focus on the big and small pictures individually. When we gather around food and beverage we can connect things from all over and we suddenly need to take care of one another.

Hello World

Thu, 30 Jul 2009 18:53:30 GMT

Yeah, so we had a baby, in case you don't follow the twitters, facebooks, or even my boring old website.

Her name is Margot Rose Miller. She arrived promptly on her due date, July 23rd. Since then, we have been even more unable to be on time for anything.

Also, you should download all the mp3s here if you haven't already. Then you have to track down all those artists and buy their new records in full. Because they are all totally worth it.

Wie es um 4 Uhr morgens auf dem Charles de Gaulle Flughafen klingt!

Fri, 08 May 2009 04:06:21 GMT

My songs were featured on a German online radio show (links actually came from here), I can't find an mp3 to download, but the gist of it was about free music in these troubled economic times. I don't know how they found me but I'm stoked! (Although I think they misunderstood the meaning of "What Am I Supposed to Do?")

"We hear what it sounds like at 4 in the morning in Charles de Gaulle Flughafen" they totally got right, though.

Sat, 18 Apr 2009 16:43:54 GMT

The king of Twitter isn’t amused.

Urlesque

Thu, 16 Apr 2009 15:46:20 GMT

QotD

Wed, 15 Apr 2009 13:35:50 GMT

Pacing The Panic Room:

It was so 13 year old angst and the tears and the shaky voice just leapt up and out, and the grown ass man hiding inside my brain was like, "Holy shit, you are losing it crybaby."

mp3 of the day

Tue, 14 Apr 2009 03:54:17 GMT

Robert Gomez - On This Day

NPR:

Notably, Pine Sticks and Phosphorous is the first of Gomez's LPs to be recorded almost entirely in a professional studio. Though Gomez is technically a "solo artist" and writes the songs, parts, and arrangements on his own, a number of talented musicians join him on the record, including Sarah Jaffe, and members of The Polyphonic Spree, Midlake, and Postmarks, giving Pine Sticks and Phosphorous an impressive, full band sound.

Easter

Mon, 13 Apr 2009 05:51:41 GMT

I wanted to write a profound post for Good Friday. It didn't happen.

Just go listen to this Radiolab.

I did have the realization that Christianity is possibly the most emo religion, like, evar.

What's really important is simply the satisfaction of finding all the eggs.

...

Functional programming may be the ultimate answer, but method chaining is the productivity lock people wanted to crack.

3 Tunes from last gig

Mon, 13 Apr 2009 00:55:04 GMT

Humanity's Playbill:

I Don't Know What to do About That:

I Radio Heaven:

Escalators

Sun, 12 Apr 2009 01:02:30 GMT

YouTube - Escalators

Music by giantlemondrop and associates

Our Weekend

Wed, 08 Apr 2009 21:14:26 GMT

Our Weekend, April 4-5, 2009 from Daniel Miller on Vimeo.

First on Saturday we trained it downtown for our customary bacon and pancakes at Cindi's.

Then on Sunday we had french toast at home, then drove down to Deep Ellum with friends for the arts festival there.

Thanks to everyone who hung out and had so much fun with us!

mp3s of the day

Fri, 03 Apr 2009 15:01:46 GMT

son lux - bbmix 2008
Originally uploaded by no more entropy

I mentioned Son Lux before. I'm still pretty obsessed with his record. I forgot to mention he has a bunch of stuff online for free. Here is a list on his blog.

Little bonus: Here's the song I'm obsessed with. (I am a drummer after all.)

Google search features: Didn't know these two

Fri, 03 Apr 2009 14:48:38 GMT

Search Features

Synonym Search: If you want to search not only for your search term but also for its synonyms, place the tilde sign (~) immediately in front of your search term.

Fill in the Blank: Sometimes the best way to ask a question is to get Google to ‘fill in the blank’ by adding an asterisk (*) at the part of the sentence or question that you want finished into the Google search box.

mp3 of the day

Wed, 01 Apr 2009 19:19:34 GMT

In case you missed my tweet about it, new mp3 posted by St. Vincent. Thanks to @geoffroper for the heads up.

mp3 of the day

Mon, 30 Mar 2009 15:39:11 GMT

New Jeremy Enigk

'nuff said. Follow the link to find your mp3 love.

mp3s of the day

Sun, 29 Mar 2009 14:24:24 GMT

lenses

Because it's arabic indie rock. Think Neutral Milk Hotel but in a language you can't understand. And free.

Son Lux "Break"

Fri, 27 Mar 2009 22:09:01 GMT

I'm a little obsessed with this record at the moment. I'm not a huge fan of this video, but it's ambient enough to work.

This video, however, I am a huge fan of:

videos from blogotheque.net/Why-et-Son-Lux ...there's one more on there too. I'm currently downloading it since vimeo seemed not to be with the working.

22 weeks, 5 days

Wed, 25 Mar 2009 21:42:22 GMT

22 weeks, 5 days
Originally uploaded by carissabyers

I made that

Merlin Mann and John Gruber

Wed, 25 Mar 2009 00:20:46 GMT

Merlin Mann and John Gruber
Originally uploaded by dgray_xplane

Great set. This was my fav.

Mp3s of the Day

Mon, 23 Mar 2009 15:52:04 GMT

I've been meaning to mention this for a while, but you can download Who Killed Amanda Palmer for free on Bandcamp.

Amanda Palmer is this amazing artist formerly of The Dresden Dolls. She's also an entertaining tweeter.