I have been working lately… and have proof. Besides the indentation in my office chair [insert Steelcase shout-out here], I have some ‘artifacts’ worth sharing. Here are a few of the websites I’ve worked on that have recently gone live.

Whats Your Art?

View Site

Sebago

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Bates Footwear

View Site

I do not know if the term has been coined yet, but it seems extremely fitting for my latest musical interest, ‘The Astroids Galaxy Tour’. This danish band plays dance-able funky music that will neither make VH1’s Classic Masters or Pitchfork’s Top 100 albums of the year. Mette Lindberg’s vocals (and the respective effects) seem as though they would be a contemporary indie rock band’s. Not entirely emotionless, Mette does not have the soulful, climbing vocals that you would normally associate with true funk music. Instead she drives the music and emotion with a specific harshness that resonates quite cold. Her songs of social heartache and physical conquests echo this sentiment.

Fruit is a perfect example of fun, driving, new music that pushes pop closer to the edge and is, therefore, intriguing. Give it a few listens. I promise Mette’s melodies, the simple bass lines, loose percussion and background brass will bring you out of that slump and back to tapping your foot to something you love in no time.

You can buy it at lala.com.

Don’t do it! (yet)

With getting a new Google Wave account, I wanted to forward my Gmail emails to my Google Wave account. I saw that my Google Wave account was [username]@googlewave.com so I figured I could do it. I went into Gmail. Followed Settings > Forward and set up Gmail to pass all of my emails on to google wave.

I left it on for a day or so, and maybe that was my big mistake. I have been getting emails every 20-30 minutes that have been telling me they cannot send my emails to Google Wave, and that they will retry for the next 2 days. They have a subject line of ‘Delivery Status Notification (Failure)’. Obviously I turned off my forwarding, however now, 3 days later, they are still coming in every 20-30 minutes telling me that the email failed.

So moral of the story. Don’t automatically forward your emails to Google Wave (yet!) and also, don’t leave that forward on any longer than you have to. Google Wave is not ready for it yet and it will get REALLY annoying.

In my profession, web development and design, I have a lot of time to sit at a computer and listen to music. I listen to music in headphones for about 7-8 hours everyday… that is approximately 6 albums worth give or take a few. I go through a lot of music and I consider it one of my passions. However, over the last 5-6 months I have found it difficult to really get into any specific albums. Some of you know the love that I have for Cloud Cult and Frightened Rabbit, these artists have made loving music more difficult for me because the bar is now so high.

However, I have two new prospects and I will mention them here… Note: You can listen to the full albums at the end of the post, just sign up for a free lala.com account.

Number 1: Karen O and the Kids – Where the Wild Things Are OST
I don’t know if I have a thing for albums written for kids, or if it’s that I was the ‘Bull’ in the Grand Rapids Ballety Company’s performance of Where the Wild Things Are, or if it’s that Spike Jonze directed the new film, or even if it all stems to Arcade Fire doing their trailer… either way, this film has been getting me more and more excited. I recently picked up the Original Sound Track and have been unable to put it down. This album is fun, it is interesting, and really, it keeps me on the edge of my seat. I don’t know what ethos this film is going to be, but I believe it is going to be a dark and honest representation of what it is like to be a child, while still being playful and redemptive. This album really transcends this idea of love vs. struggle. I’m really enjoying it so far.

Number 2: The Mountain Goats – The Life Of The World To Come
Every track on this album is titled after a bible verse. I’m not entirely familiar with the intricacies of this album yet, but have given it some serious time and I would recommend it. John Darniel really hits on the serious side of what I am trying to do with my music writing.

(click on the photos to view larger)

Self Portrait

The Station

David Schultz

Jason Murray

Central Station

Joel Stob

1) Turn on Column Browser: View > Show Column Browser
2) Show Albums as well as artists: View > Column Browser > Albums
3) Show Genres as well as albums and artists: View > Column Browser > Genres
4) Setup Column Browser to show up above your song lists: View > Column Browser > On Top

1. A normal form field watermark that empties on focus and refills on blur.
2. A value that is set by the server trumps anything that the plugin does. (Note: this way, if a user has to fill out the form again because one of the fields didn’t validate, the server can send values so that the user doesn’t have to refill the whole form)
3. There may be a time when you want to ignore the plugin and keep your label visible. Just add a ‘ignore’ class to your label and the plugin doesn’t touch it.

This solution focuses on accessibility as it does not remove the label, just moves it off the viewport. This way, if a user does not have Javascript, CSS, or uses a screen reader, they will still get normal labels.

View a demo
Download plugin (link to jQuery plugins)

Please let me know what you think about it, or if there is anything I should do to improve.

(click on the photos to view larger)

The 6th Street Bridge

The 6th Street Bridge Webs

The 6th Street Bridge Side

Kids Playing with Art

Highway (131 & 196)

maxImage is a jquery plugin that I wrote a few months ago that automatically scales images based on how much room they have in the browser window. The image will always fill your browser window. I have built a basic demo mini site for the plugin.

Note: For some reason I have lost the post that originally contained the release of my plugin. I would like a place for users of the plugin to contact me and let me know how use of the plugin is going. Please use this space, the comment area to let me know how using maxImage is going, what you would like to see added or changed.