10 posts tagged “css”

What do you love most about your job?

1. Problem solving. Although it's all in the field of nerdy computer things, I do like being given a problem then working out the best way to solve it. Or the best way with the time available, which are not always the same thing.
2. People. I work with several people who I love dearly and learn a lot from.
3. Learning. In the space of less than two years, I have learned a LOT and keep learning. It's great, and I attribute that to both the people I work with (especially my mentor, Eduardo, whose coding style is so easy to follow) and the fact that the company is too small for pre-defined roles to really stick on any given project. I was hired to do CSS and JavaScript, but spread out into SQL Server, ASP.Net, XML and other technologies just because I could and extra hands were needed.

I originally posted this to Facebook, but not everyone sees my Facebook. Also, as an added bonus, on Vox you can listen to songs from some of the albums I picked by going to my library:

http://dingle.vox.com/library/audio/

Anyway, this was not easy. Generally, I buy an album for two reasons:

a) I love the artist
b) I love a song (or a few) I've heard

There were a lot of artists who I love deeply that didn't make the Top 20 this year. The albums were good, but there were a surprising number of fantastic albums from bands I had never heard of before this year. Also, some of my lesser favourite bands put out solid albums this year. So Death Cab For Cutie, Nine Inch Nails, The Cure, Beck, Counting Crows, Conor Oberst, Hayden, Mercury Rev: try harder next time.

Then I had to decide my criteria. A greatest hits will never be included, because that's cheating... they're usually all the best bits of a band's career crammed into one and that's often hard to compete against. I was also unsure about letting the Au Revoir Simone album in as it's remixes, and the Flight Of The Conchords CD because it's a TV show soundtrack essentially. However, both were great little discs - and the Au Revoir Simone album opened me up to The Teenagers and James Yiull.

So this is my Top 20 Albums Of 2008 Assuming Nothing Else Comes Out That's As Good Between Now And Christmas. I do not apologise for any of them, but I do think you should buy them all at your earliest convenience.

1. Elephant Shell by Tokyo Police Club
From the second I heard 'Nursery, Academy' in the basement of a nearby Borders, I was hooked. Even if the Last.fm software is total arse and couldn't manage to scrobble every time I played this album, it spent a lot of time on rotation on my iPhone. 'Tessellate' is the sort of song I would dance to, if I could dance, and wasn't permanently embarrassed by myself.

2. The Hollow Of Morning by Gemma Hayes
The album came out in October, and has gotten a lot of plays since. It soundtracked both directions of a transatlantic flight and lots of journeys to work. That Gemma still isn't huge after three excellent albums is a huge disappointment, especially when this album stretches her sound to include more interesting arrangements, like the almost electro opening to 'At Constant Speed' - a song that somehow builds up to a Prince-esque synth riff. She's certainly my favourite female artist right now.

3. Oceans Will Rise by The Stills
While other members of the extended Broken Social Scene family came out to play this year (Brendan Canning, The Dears, Jason Collett), The Stills had them all beat with an album that straddled their first two while still veering off in its own direction - from the stately 'Everything I Build' to the hypnotic, driving 'Snakecharming The Masses'.

4. Volume One by She & Him
It's one thing for any band to produce an album that so perfectly captures the spirit of the past without being a tacky parody, but the fact it was a quirky young actress and a well-regarded but obscure indie troubadour made it seem even more out of left field. Zooey Deschanel's voice, as you may expect from brief singing bits in films like Elf and The Assassination Of Jesse James, is the star of the show - on both her own songs, such as the fantastic 'This Is Not A Test', to covers including 'I Should've Known Better' by The Beatles.

5. Turning Down Water For Air by James Yiull
Somehow performing the miraculous task of melding acoustic indie singer-songwriter material to thumping dance beats and fascinating electronic arrangements without it all going horribly wrong, this CD is the total meeting point of everything I am listening to at the moment, with some utterly gorgeous songs like 'This Sweet Love' - which does a lot with a very simple acoustic guitar motif and drum beat.

6. Field Manual by Chris Walla
His day job, Death Cab For Cutie, also put out an album, but it was Walla's solo CD that really got my love this year. 'Our Plans, Collapsing' is the highlight of the album, but it was great to hear how he sounds when he's not twiddling the knobs or plucking the strings on someone else's songs.

7. Some Racing, Some Stopping by Headlights
It took a while to sink its claws in, 'Market Girl' aside, but it slowly melted my heart... and I also managed to get some great remixes of some of the songs on an ultra-limited edition remix disc they put out, so there's now more of the songs to love. 'Cherry Tulips' is the sound of a beautiful daydream.

8. Reverse Migration by Au Revoir Simone
The remixes on this album are by and large among the best remixes I've heard. The robotic voice singing the chorus on 'Stars', the crazy campfire romp of one of two new versions of 'The Lucky One' (the other was provided by James Yiull and was so gorgeous, I bought his album), the fun electroclash-ish tweaking of 'Fallen Snow'... it's a great disc, and certainly worth inclusion here.

9. Devotion by Beach House
One of the most haunting and relaxing albums on this list, Devotion is the perfect soundtrack to cold winter evenings by the fire, breezy summer nights watching the sun set, and everything in between. It's an utterly bewitching album, with the sparse instruments drenched in so much reverb it sounds more like the memories of songs than songs themselves.

10. Hideaway by The Weepies
This was one of many albums that came out of nowhere but then spent a lot of time in my MP3 playing devices. Vocal duties are split between both members of this husband and wife duo. Steve Tannen sounds like Elliott Smith (without the penchant for stabbing himself in the gizzard) while Deb Talan has a very quirky, clearly Joni Mitchell-inspired delivery. Slightly folky, very catchy, with one song ('Antarctica') that you'd swear was a Fleetwood Mac out-take. A lovely album, and a great respite from some of my mopier choices.

11. In Ear Park by Department Of Eagles
It's hard to pin down everything I hear when I listen to Department Of Eagles. There's Nick Drake, later period Beatles, Tom Waits, Sufjan Stevens, Arcade Fire (at least, the odd yelp that reminds me of Win Butler) and a ton more. It's a wonderful, eclectic, vintage-sounding album. 'Waves Of Rye', 'Phantom Other' and 'Floating On The Lehigh' are all contenders for my song of the year, too.

12. Keeper’s by Deastro
Deastro is basically just this kid in Michigan who is fucking insanely productive. As well as Deastro, he has at least three other projects that I know of, all putting out fantastic synth-based pop that sounds like a less polished splice of The Killers and Death Cab For Cutie. There are also some bizarre instrumental pieces to break things up. It's certain to put a spring in your step.

13. Lucky by Nada Surf
Don't get me wrong, my love for the Surf isn't waning; and this is still a great record (it grows on me more with every listen), but it's not their best. Still, it was great enough to make my top twenty, thanks in no small part to catchy, hummable songs such as 'I Like What You Say' and darker, more political tracks like 'The Fox'. And let me tell you, if you can get through 'Weightless' and not get your sappy gland well and truly done over, you are an impenetrable fortress.

14. Starfucker by Starfucker
This was recommended to me by Leslie (hi Leslie!). Sometimes I am so swamped at work, I can't listen to music at all, but for some reason I gave this one a chance and I'm very happy I did. It's insanely catchy indie with a liberal helping of synths. 'Pop Song' in particular delivers on its name with a nice, fat chorus and a runaway keyboard solo that makes me all giddy.

15. Saturdays = Youth by M83
It looks like France didn't get the memo that the '80s are over and there will be no more John Hughes movies starring a young Molly Ringwald. Really, that is exactly what every song on this album will make you think of... it's extremely retro, but like She & Him, it's an authentic tribute rather than a piss-take.

16. Chinese Democracy by Guns N’ Roses
My first ever CD was Use Your Illusion II. My second ever CD was Use Your Illusion I. I have been waiting for this album since I got those two. I don't care that it's basically an Axl Rose side project with Guns N' Roses being little more than an appropriated brand name, it's still a surprisingly decent collection of songs with some fantastic guitar work from Buckethead. 'Better' would be awesome no matter what the name on the box said.

17. Keep Telling Myself It’s Alright by Ashes Divide
This is the only CD put out by a bald dude called Billy who basically plays everything bar the drums on his CDs that I have been able to endorse for several years. The Billy is Howerdel, formerly of A Perfect Circle, and this really does sound like his former band without Maynard and, strangely, less upbeat... and considering how mopey APC could get, that's saying something.

18. Crystal Castles by Crystal Castles
They sound like a brain aneurysm run through the sound chip of a Commodore 64. In case you're confused, in this case, that's actually a positive comment, as I loved the Commodore 64, and I love electroclash and electronica with the odd manipulated, screamy vocal and obscure song titles.

19. Accelerate by REM
While it could be argued that the album (and its Automatic For The People-through-New Adventures In Hi-Fi-esque sound) was an intentional, calculated response to previous album Around The Sun bombing, that familiarity makes the songs on this album very easy to swallow. There was no growth period with me. And when we saw them live, there wasn't that jolt between old and new that you get at a lot of gigs (with the awkward crowd vs. band stand-off).

20. Flight Of The Conchords by Flight Of The Conchords
While this collection of parodies of everyone from Prince to the Pet Shop Boys will have you giggling, thanks in no small part to lyrics that talk about hermaphrodites, David Bowie's nipples and try desperately to make the routine, mundane sex life of a married couple sound like Barry White fodder, it's so well put together that you spend a lot of time just appreciating the songs. Yes, really. 'Ladies Of The World' (with serious lyrics) would provide the backing music to lots of late afternoon quickies.

It's a scary good year.

Here is everything Jess and I have acquired between us (obviously, I did most of the acquiring as Jess hates democracy).

- ¿Como Te Llama? by Albert Hammond, Jr.
- Agony & Irony by Alkaline Trio
- Magic Monsters by April March & Steve Hanft
- Keep Telling Myself It's Alright by Ashes Divide
- Reverse Migration by Au Revoir Simone***
- Devotion by Beach House
- Modern Guilt by Beck
- Blackblack by Blackblack**
- Intimacy by Bloc Party**
- Something For All Of Us... by Brendan Canning**
- Wilderness by Brett Anderson*
- You Cross My Path by The Charlatans
- Field Manual by Chris Walla
- Conor Oberst by Conor Oberst*
- Saturday Nights & Sunday Mornings by Counting Crows
- Crystal Castles by Crystal Castles
- Donkey by CSS
- 4:13 Dream by The Cure***
- Keeper's by Deastro
- Narrow Stairs by Death Cab For Cutie
- In Ear Park by Department Of Eagles***
- SooL by Ellen Allien
- Flight Of The Conchords by Flight Of The Conchords
- Shade Side Sunny Side by For Against
- The Midnight Organ Fight by Frightened Rabbit
- The Hollow Of Morning by Gemma Hayes**
- Chinese Democracy by Guns N' Roses***
- In Field & Town by Hayden
- Some Racing, Some Stopping by Headlights
- Turning Down Water For Air by James Yuill***
- Here's To Being Here by Jason Collett
- The Jealous Girlfriends by The Jealous Girlfriends
- Acid Tongue by Jenny Lewis**
- The Silver City by Jeremy Messersmith**
- Boo! Human by Joan Of Arc
- Youth Novels by Lykke Li**
- Saturdays = Youth by M83
- I Know You're Married But I've Got Feelings Too by Martha Wainwright
- Snowflake Midnight by Mercury Rev**
- Strange Attractor by Mercury Rev**
- Lucky by Nada Surf
- Ghosts I-IV by Nine Inch Nails
- The Slip by Nine Inch Nails
- Skeletal Lamping by Of Montreal***
- Mercy by Ours
- Third by Portishead
- Accelerate by REM
- Volume One by She & Him
- Starf**ker by Starf**ker***
- Oceans Will Rise by The Stills**
- Walk It Off by Tapes N' Tapes
- Reality Check by The Teenagers***
- Elephant Shell by Tokyo Police Club
- Forth by The Verve***
- Hideaway by The Weepies
- At Mount Zoomer by Wolf Parade

List originally compiled in June.

* August update.
** October update.
*** November update.

Lollapalooza

It's hard to believe that it's already August, and odd that I'm attending my second Lollapalooza since moving here. Crazy!

Yesterday, after an oddly productive morning at work, I left the office to meet Jess for lunch then headed to meet our friend Josie. She's in town to join in with the shenanigans.

When we dropped her stuff off and endured the slow buses down to the festival grounds, we had missed the first few songs by Gogol Bordello, the band she wanted to see. Their music wasn't really my thing, but their gypsy punk was at least entertaining to watch.

We started to watch Mates Of State, but live they're very difficult to endure - the already ear-damaging vocals do more damage when they're out of key - so we went to wait for Jess by the merchandise stand, hearing little snippets of what I think was Grizzly Bear, judging by the schedule.

With Jess now a part of the gang, we went on down to see Bloc Party. Last year, we bought tickets to see them but didn't think we knew them well enough to justify going. They're really great live, so naturally I regret that decision. They didn't play their best song, 'Little Thoughts', but they busted out 'Helicopter' and 'Like Eating Glass', so I was happy.

Like Eating Glass

Bloc Party

After hemming and hawing about whether to stay in place for Radiohead (who were over an hour away), we decided instead to go get food. This had the added bonus of putting us in line with the stage CSS were playing on. I feel bad that I didn't give them my full intention, they sounded tight live, and were obviously far more entertaining than the annoying-sounding Stephen Malkmus & The Jicks they were competing against.

Rat Is Dead (Rage)

CSS

We witnessed the huge flood of people towards the stage for Radiohead (wisely, the organisers didn't pit anyone against them, as playing to no one would be depressing). From our distance, it was initially a little hard to get into the band, but it meant we could hear them perfectly, and we still saw their interesting new light show.

Happy-To-Be-Here

Thanks to the wonders of the internet, I also know their entire setlist:

- 15 Step
- Airbag
- There There
- All I Need
- Nude
- Weird Fishes/Arpeggi
- The Gloaming
- The National Anthem
- Faust Arp
- No Surprises
- Jigsaw Falling Into Place
- Reckoner
- Lucky
- The Bends
- Everything In Its Right Place
- Fake Plastic Trees
- Bodysnatchers
- Videotape
- Paranoid Android
- Dollar And Cents
- House of Cards
- Optimistic
- 2+2=5
- Idioteque

Highs:
- 'Weird Fishes/Arpeggi'!
- The awesome radio sampling on 'The National Anthem'
- 'Idioteque' (even though we heard it from outside of the venue as we didn't want to be crushed by the rumoured 75,000 people as they left)

Lows:
- 'The Bends' was played way too slow. There are awesome guitar lines on the verse with the line "The planet is a gunboat on a sea of fear", but the build-up to them didn't work.
- We were too far to see Thom's crazy dancing, boo.
- NOTHING from Pablo Honey? Boo!

I think 'Weird Fishes/Arpeggi' is a strong contender for my favourite song of all time.

Weird Fishes/Arpeggi

Radiohead

Roll on day two! I'm mostly aiming to see MGMT, Brand New, Broken Social Scene and Rage Against The Machine (the choice between them and Wilco was the only difficult decision all weekend).

... but I think I need a time out:

1. I saw a car with the license plate "WHT SPCE". I said to two co-workers "I can't see this car as I ignore white space." If you understand this joke... yeah.
2. I heard a co-worker laughing about hex values for colours. If you know what hex values are... yeah.

YEAH. Seriously.

This year's Lollapalooza line-up was announced this week. Jess and I already had tickets on the strength of the rumour of Radiohead and Nine Inch Nails, meaning we paid $175/£88 instead of $205/£103. Boy, am I glad we decided to go... the line-up is pretty intense. Bolded acts are acts I love, asterisked acts are acts I would be interested in seeing.

Radiohead
Rage Against the Machine
Nine Inch Nails
Kanye West
Wilco
The Raconteurs*
Louis XIV*
Love and Rockets
Gnarls Barkley*
Bloc Party*
The Black Keys* (they played last year and I enjoyed them)
Broken Social Scene
Lupe Fiasco
Flogging Molly
Mark Ronson
Cat Power*
The National
G. Love & Special Sauce
Sharon Jones & the Dap-Kings
Explosions in the Sky*
Brand New
Gogol Bordello*
Stephen Malkmus & The Jicks*
Dierks Bentley
Okkervil River
Amadou & Mariam
Blues Traveler
John Butler Trio
Girl Talk
Your Vegas
CSS
Eli "Paperboy" Reed & the True Loves
Battles*
Steel Train
Jamie Lidell
Bang Camaro
Butch Walker
The Blakes
Mates of State
Tally Hall
Spank Rock
White Lies
Brazilian Girls
Magic Wands
Chromeo
Electric Touch
Duffy
Innerpartysystem
The Kills
The Postelles
Rogue Wave
The Parlor Mob
The Go! Team
Bald Eagle
Mason Jennings
Krista
The Gutter Twins*
Ha Ha Tonka
Yeasayer
Witchcraft
Grizzly Bear
We Go To 11
MGMT*
Sofia Talvik
The Weakerthans*
Booka Shade
Santogold
Black Kids*
Black Lips
Dr. Dog
Nicole Atkins & the Sea
The Ting Tings
Kid Sister
Office
The Cool Kids
What Made Milwaukee Famous*
Does It Offend You, Yeah?*
The Whigs
Manchester Orchestra
Foals*
Uffie
The Octopus Project
Cadence Weapon
Ferras
De Novo Dahl
Noah and the Whale
Margot & the Nuclear So and So's
K'NAAN
Serena Ryder
Newton Faulkner

I only went to V and Glastonbury in the UK, but for the past three years, Lollapalooza has far outclassed both of those... and being hosted by Chicago's gorgeous park land, it's a short bus ride from home, with decent places to eat, drink and stay nearby.

This huge project that has been killing my brain cells/crushing my will to live is in the last two days of a two-week QA period. You might think QA stands for Quality Assurance, but it actually stands for Quite Annoying as we keep finding things that weren't issues before... or that are only issues in one browser... or that shouldn't be issues at all. I have my peaks and troughs of insanity and I'm sure my co-workers are feeling the same.

It's pretty impressive what we're doing. Before, to launch a new site dedicated to ONE of our products, it would take three months. In just over that, we have built a brand new platform for generating these sites, and two sites using this platform (one of which offers FOUR of our products, the other of which offers THREE of them - and e-commerce to boot).

On the surface, they just look like web sites, plain and simple. Under the hood, though, there is a lot of neat shit happening. For starters, we pretty much have one "page" that contains a single HTML tag. Based on the page ID you pass into this page, it will generate a web page entirely from the database - built on a system of rows and columns containing modules. We have modules that build forms you can submit to save data; modules that generate sortable lists of information; modules that upload and display photos; modules that generate audio files of user-inputted text being spoken; modules that let you log in and out, and more besides.

If you worked with me at a certain internet provider, think a far more advanced Frangelico built in less time for less money.

I can't claim anywhere near all the credit for it - the main genius is my boss; and everything has involved a team that has gone from just three of us up to ten of us and back down again; but I do feel proud of some of my achievements on the project and feel confident that my dedication can be measured in more than just the (long) hours I've put in. That being said, I am ready for the long hours to end.

I'll be here till 9pm tonight finishing what I can, with any luck our next build will clear a ton more bugs so we're not here late tomorrow and thus I actually get to spend time with my wife.

I am always rattling off song suggestions to people and while Vox is sometimes handy for sharing songs, if I want to share more than a handful, I either have to email them (slow!) or put them on my web space with an ugly index page.

For a long time now, I've been thinking about building a playlist tool and it took till this morning to muster up the willpower to do something other than sit on my bum. In the space of a couple of hours, I've built...

- The database tables. I have separate tables to list artists, albums, songs, a list of levels of favouritism, and two for the playlists - one to store the playlist information (name, any introductory copy I want), and another to match songs to a playlist, built in such a way that songs can appear on more than one.
- The first playlist. This is a list of my favourite songs from albums released in 2007, and I'll be unveiling that soon. As I haven't built any administrative pages for the tool yet, I had to do this all directly in the database.
- The XML file. I have this dynamically pulling the songs for a specified playlist in order of position. It pulls song, artist and album information from the different tables and formats it nicely.

I already built an account system for my site, so I am going to work on the tools for adding/deleting artists, albums and songs next - including the mechanism to upload the MP3 files, followed by the playlist administration. After that, all that'll be left is the display portion.

By the time I'm done, I will have written:

- HTML
- CSS
- SQL
- VB.Net
- JavaScript
- ActionScript/Flash

Yay for being a dork!

Audio/Video: Share a great use of a song in a commercial.

What do I choose? 'Music Is My Hot Hot Sex' by CSS in an iPod Touch commercial? 'The Way I Am' by Ingrid Michaelson in an Old Navy commercial? 'This Side Of The Blue' by Joanna Newsom in an Orange commercial? Nope. I will choose Wilco, who very bravely licensed a large chunk of recent album Sky Blue Sky to VW car commercials.

This one features the title song, which is gorgeous:

They're being called sell-outs, but fuck that noise. A band is not a charity, and if it can make some money AND expose it's music to more than just the Pitchfork Media-reading elitist fucks, then I'm all for it. More people should listen to Wilco.

What are three things you want to learn, and three things you can teach others to do? 
Submitted by bookishbiker.

Three things I want to learn...

1. How to play piano properly.
2. How to write PHP properly.
3. How to speak Spanish fluently.

I am a n00b at all three.

Three things I can teach people...

1. How to write CSS. I had to teach myself very quickly and am fairly adept despite this.
2. How to assemble a good team in Pokémon games. Being older than 15, I am not a scary dweeb who can tell you at which level Infernape learns the move Calm Mind or where to find a Magnazone in the wild. However, I've wasted enough time on them to know the relative strengths and weaknesses.
3. How to use a computer. I am fairly adept at most aspects of owning and using a computer - PC or Mac. My brother Gavin thinks he knows as much about computers as me, but he constantly got viruses or screwed his machine up to the point he had to reinstall Windows. The only time I reinstalled was when a new version of Windows came out and I upgraded.