“You ain’t the Diamond I’ve been Looking For”

This is not a music blog. There are plenty of those and they do a far better job than I; but that being said, I DO listen to a lot of music, and sometimes I like to share.

What is it about the Scandinavian countries that has produced some of my absolute favorite bands, particularly Sweden and Norway? With Kings of Convenience, The Soundtrack of Our Lives, Jens Lekman, etc., half my iTunes is probably populated by them.

Earlier this year I was excited to see that Erlend Øye’s (he of Kings of Convenience) other band The Whitest Boy Alive had a new disc out and were touring. Opening up for them are Erlend’s new protégés in The New Wine. Great stuff from these kids, the five songs they’ve released so far have been on constant repeat for the last month. There’s a lot of room to grow certainly, especially in the lyrics, but the music is that perfect blend of indie-y rock/dance-y that I always like. This classification probably means nothing to anyone but me.

The New Wine – Revolving Cylinder
[audio:http://www.damofknowledge.com/wp-content/uploads/01-Revolving-Cylinder.mp3|titles=The New Wine – Revolving Cylinder]

Sadly it’s been years since Øye in any form has been anywhere near the Midwest on tour, so for now I watch shaky hand held videos from the recent European dates on YouTube and wait. So jealous. It’s enough to make me want to buy a plane ticket and just head over there. Hmm…

Grab four songs for free from The New Wine at the band’s website.

via headphonesex

Posted on by Joel

Domain Speculation: Case Study #1

Dear Sir or Madam,

I recently had a great idea for a mini site, but when I arrived home to register the domain I see you had already beaten me to it by a month. Well played. Through an intermediary I pursued, inquiring if you might be open to selling. I offered a small but reasonable price, inline with third-party appraisals. It would have netted you a nice profit for an obscure two word phrase that has no history.

Your counter offer asking price of $750 is ridiculous. Thank you, but no; you can keep it.

If you ever do something with it I’ll let go of my disdain for you, but I suspect it will forever be parked for free.

Signed,
The Dam of Knowledge

Anyone have any good luck purchasing domains or getting those on back order? Seems like a nice little scam for the registrars. If my opinion ever changes I’ll let you know.

Posted on by Joel

Tim’s Idea

Since moving to Chicago last year my opportunities to continue to be in ThesePeople sketches have sadly been fewer, but our latest video just came out and it features a little cameo by yours truly.

I probably say this about every video of ours, but this is a fun one, enjoy!

Tim’s Idea
Tim has a great idea for a new sketch.

Posted on by Joel

Emily Hoskins’ Portfolio Launched

I’m proud to announce the completion of my friend Emily’s new photography portfolio. I’m really please with the way it turned out. It was a smooth project to work on, the only goals were that it were clean and simple to use, and that it look better than all of her friend’s photgraphy sites ;). Done and done.

The only snag that came up was near the end of the project when I upgraded to the newest version of SlideShowPro. The old param.xml file no longer worked so I had to compare the new version’s attributes to the old and port back all the old styles. A frustrating couple hours for sure.

Simple photography portfolio site includes:

  • Design
  • SlideshowPro Photo Gallery Customization

View Live Site

Posted on by Joel

Pre-programmed Randomness

That’s a pretty consistent theme in all of my interactive work… randomness. It’s a perfect way to introduce variety and gives a project a little bit of the feel of playing a (very simple) game. Your reward for returning is a little bit of new information, and if the experience is enjoyable enough why not keep hitting that refresh button?

Truth is, it’s also nice cover for a site like this where updates and new info may be sporadic. Keeps it fresh without having to update every single day (a big reason I retired the first site, creative burnout). Google loves it too, trust me.

Anyways, today I finally added a little bit of randomness around here, setting up the next development step for the site. For now the sample set is pretty small so it might not appear very random at all, but it’s just proof that it could work on something larger.

Two things:

  1. Never used PHP inside JavaScript code before, but I’m using it here to pull up a random profile pic. A feature that I’d love to see on Facebook.
  2. Getting a random post displayed out of WordPress is extremely easy. Why would I use an extra plugin? Here’s what my code looks like: 
    <?php $rand_posts = get_posts('numberposts=1&category=5&orderby=rand'); ?>
<?php foreach( $rand_posts as $post ) : setup_postdata($post); ?>
The code block for one of those front page features would go here, blah blah blah.
<?php endforeach; ?>

Both of these are just stop gaps on the way to moving the Google map code over to XML, which will allow so much more flexibility.

Posted on by Joel