If you haven’t noticed, there is a music player integrated into this site. It creates those small play buttons next to each mp3 links (such as for this incredibly amazing song), and also creates the player in the bottom-left corner of the screen. If you want to see a richer demo, play with my music posts category. This player is a free piece of software available courtesy of Yahoo!. While they have already done an excellent job of making the player easy to integrate into a site, I decided to test my coding chops and make a plugin for the Wordpress blogging platform (the one that this site uses) to make it even easier to install and manage.
I recently had some free time to work on the plugin, and it now is up to version 0.3. I have completely rewritten the plugin, and added some functionality. There is now an “options” pane that will allow you to turn on the “beta” build of the player, so to speak, so you can test the new features coming down the pipe.
Also, I must disclose that while I am a Yahoo! employee, I work on this in my free time since I love the utility, am a big music fan, and needed a cool coding project. Please play around with this latest version and pass along any feedback.
“A Paper Tiger” is an online art dealer that specializes in low-production works from LA-based artists. These limited-edition prints are refreshed on a weekly basis, and the site will soon include clothing as well. The prices seem reasonable, and while the number of available pieces is currently small, the selection is varied and features some excellent artists. I found a lithograph from the Murakami exhibit that was at MOCA, and some of the works seem to share an aesthetic with the annual gallery show I first enjoyed last year: “I Am 8-Bit”. This is definitely a site to watch. If only I had more wall space…
Many of you often ask me about/make fun of me for my addiction to Twitter. My stock response when people ask me to explain it is that, “Twitter is a real-time, subscription-based, micro-blogging service that can be used through text messaging or the web.” However, that explanation may not really mean anything to a lot of people.
Luckily, there are people out there with the ability to describe things better than I can. Apparently they are also much better at doing it with stop-motion animation and papercraft. Check out the video below for an explanation of what exactly Twitter is:
I thought it would be great to have a Mac Mini hooked up to my TV so I could have “Front Row” on the big screen. Well, this turned out to be a more complex (and more expensive) project then I had originally imagined.
After getting the Mini, the first thing I did was snag the right cables and accessories. This included a DVI <–> HDMI cable, the Apple wireless keyboard, and the Apple Mighty Mouse. With these gizmo’s, I was ready to enjoy some couch-browsing. This is when the first problem arose. I realized I was out of HDMI ports. This problem was compounded by the fact that my receiver doesn’t handle HDMI switching and was out of digital inputs. After a great deal of searching, I found a company called “Octava” that makes this wonderful product. The fantastic thing about their HDMI switcher is that it switches digital-optical signals as well. I ordered one immediately.
After the switch I arrived I got everything hooked up and was ready to rock. Actually, I wasn’t. You see, the DVI-to-HDMI setup was causing severe overscan issues (where the pixels extend out of the visible area of the screen). In order to correct the overscan, I had to spend way too many hours tweaking with SwitchResX. I finally found a custom set of settings that corrected most of the overscan. Alright, so now I was ready to sit back and enjoy some quality Front Row time.
So I was sitting at my friends’ watching the Oscars last night, and was shocked to see cosplay at the ceremony. When they announced best supporting-actress and panned over to the recipient, Tilda Swinton, it struck me. Her awards show attire made her have an uncanny resemblance to a certain video game attorney: Phoenix Wright. Is Ms. Swinton secretly a fan of the series and who sought to pay homage to our favorite “ace attorney” on the global stage? They certainly share a hair-style and a predisposition to emphatic pointing gestures…
In light of the recent announcements swirling about Blu-Ray’s defeat of HD-DVD, I decided to go out and buy my first Blu-Ray discs. i swung by Amoeba Music and picked up “Paprika” and “Tekkonkinkreet”, since I figured that animation would really pop in HD. I made the plunge into hi-def viewing by inaugurating my PS3 with “Tekkonkinkreet”.
As I sat absorbing this gritty tale of orphans taking on gangsters, I was amazed at how the cripsness and brilliance helped immerse me in the film. The film centers on two codependent children, Black and White, who challenge rival street urchins as well as the Yakuza in a territorial battle over “Treasure Town”. The film deals heavily with the question of finding balance: in the development of city, in the control of the town, in the power of friendship, and within one’s own psyche. The ethereal tone of the film highlights animation’s power to forge fantastic worlds.
There is no better way to celebrate the imminent demise of HD-DVD and the end of the “Format Wars” than by enjoying some hi-def goodness. Will I repurchase my entire movie collection? No. Is having a single format better for consumers? Certainly. Is direct-download going to replace physical media? Eventually. Is there a better way to handle this migration as well as a more convenient model for content ownership in the digital age? That is a whole other blog post…
Wow. I mean, wow. This is the union of two of the most important things in my life: Nerf Guns and video games. *Sniffle* (of joy). May heaven help those I work with…
A couple of weeks ago, I finally received my Amazon Kindle in the mail. Almost two months passed from the time I placed my order until the day it reached my doorstep. For those unfamiliar with the product, it is an ebook reader that allows a user to download books wirelessly from an Amazon store via a cellular-based network called “Whispernet”. The Kindle certainly isn’t the first ebook reader on the block, but the ability to get your content delivered to your device wirelessly sets this one apart because there is no computer required.
You can read my full review of the product after the jump…
So it seems like Hasbro is getting into the “designer toy” game. They have a new toy series called “Mighty Muggs” that looks equally at home in Wal-Mart as it does in Kidrobot. I started getting into this style when I moved to LA, and I guess most cool sub-cultures are destined to be appropriated by more commercial establishments. It wasn’t long ago that the legal chums at Epic threatened to sue someone over a custom “Munny” depicting Marcus Fenix from the game”Gears of War”.
Either way, the picture above is from a new Marvel line coming out in March. You can see the current “Star Wars” series on the Hasbro website.
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