http://www.proppe.org/blog Mon, 31 Dec 2007 20:12:06 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en Beak has achieved that confoundingly difficult feat: originality and catchiness. He's managed to integrate acoustic guitar with breakbeats and IDM in an ingeniously seamless way. The first track of Amoral Mayor Earwig EP, how a hot air balloon works, starts out straightforwardly enough. Some quiet acoustic guitar plucks, repeating and slowly ... http://www.proppe.org/blog/2007/12/31/beak/ Normally I avoid repetition in music. Usually my iTunes is randomly shuffling from my "Not Recently Played" playlist. Yet I find myself playing these two netlabel albums by Glander multiple times a week. Music that is highly repetitive, with long, sprawling arcs, and four on the floor kick drum. Reading ... http://www.proppe.org/blog/2007/12/20/glander-heavy-weights-vate/ Miraculously I remembered to turn on the TV Sunday night to catch a new episode of The Simpsons (I get TV for free on this amazing real time wireless technology called "broadcast"). It was a pretty funny episode, not relying on cameos, etc. But then it had one of those ... http://www.proppe.org/blog/2007/12/19/everyday/ A giant in the modern music world passed away last week: Karlheinz Stockhausen. He seemed to appear in every chapter of the modern music books I studied in grad school, such was his influence. I had always thought him a realist and pragmatist, so I was surprised (and touched) a ... http://www.proppe.org/blog/2007/12/13/karlheinz-stockhausen-1928-2007/ [thumb:77:l:l=g]After years of my photo gallery on this site having a completely different look, I've finally integrated it with the theme of this blog (oh-so-cleverly named Nightcappuccino). Thanks to some hard work by Billy Bullock, who ported the k2 theme to Coppermine, it just took a few tweaks to get ... http://www.proppe.org/blog/2007/12/08/finally-updated-the-photo-gallery-theme/ Recently Nathan posted a series of photo manipulations called Homeosis. Something about the contrast between ominousness and whimsey hit me in the creative nerve. It struck me that there was music implied in these compositions. They seemed to be a glimpse into, or evidence of, another history. This is a ... http://www.proppe.org/blog/2007/12/04/podcast-10-homeosis-1-sketch-01/ scribbles - simple drawing for Mac This is the way of Indie Mac development. Create a tool that either does something (one thing) new or does something old in a new, easier way. Make it beautiful and fun to use. Take advantage of the APIs Apple provides, like Core Animation. ... http://www.proppe.org/blog/2007/12/04/scribbles-simple-drawing-for-mac-by-atebits/ Konterkonzept EP by Julius Lagerfeld from the Interdisco netlabel. This is music with an evil grin. The Joker's henchmen would dance to this. Yes, it's electronica, but moreso, it is electric. According to Lagerfeld, "it was created by exclusively using hardware synthesizers to set a counterpoint to the prevailing approaches ... http://www.proppe.org/blog/2007/12/02/julius-lagerfeld-konterkonzept-ep-id19/ Apple has made some aesthetic changes to buttons in Leopard. Specifically, toolbar buttons tend to be less glossy and use 2D black and white symbols instead of full color images. The reasoning given at WWDC 2007 was that they felt the user's focus should be on the app's content rather ... http://www.proppe.org/blog/2007/12/01/nsimage-templates/ Some time last year I followed this link from Cool Hunting to Alex Young's Milieu blog about netlabels. Little did I know the world of new music it would open. A netlabel is is similar to a record label, except that it distributes its music primarily via the internet, often ... http://www.proppe.org/blog/2007/10/23/netlabels/ In the mid-eighties my parents gave me a Bic BeBop windsurf board for my birthday (pictured: me sailing it last year. Note the new wave neon 80's look... ignore my awkward posture). I don't remember if I'd been asking for one or if it was a total out-of-left-field thing but ... http://www.proppe.org/blog/2007/07/17/windsurfing/ I improvised this piece on my keyboard, in two passes. What gives it its interesting texture is a little Pd patch I created, which sits between the keyboard and Logic. It takes chords and sends each pitch automatically to the individual instruments. Successive notes are sent in round robin fashion, ... http://www.proppe.org/blog/2007/02/09/podcast-9-the-poconos/ It's 2 AM. Long past last call. The evening is winding down. Everyone's a little tired, a little buzzed, a little pensive, but happy to be warm and not entirely alone. The band goes to one last song. http://www.proppe.org/blog/2007/01/22/podcast-8-anenome/ When I resurrected proppe.org a few months ago I decided to focus on the content of the site and not worry too much about the visual style (although I still chuckle at the bored man watching the clock on the front page that leads to this blog). Having been out ... http://www.proppe.org/blog/2006/11/01/current-trends-in-web-design/ [thumb:47:l:]This weekend Nathan and I hiked to Lake Aloha, in the Sierras, and camped overnight. We took the Pacific Crest Trail from Lower Echo Lake, about a six mile trek and 1000 ft. of elevation gain. Doesn't sound like much, but with the weight of our packs it was quite ... http://www.proppe.org/blog/2006/09/01/lake-aloha-hike/