Posts Tagged ‘Music’

Citizen Soldier

// January 21st, 2009 // No Comments » // Music

I recently came across this video on YouTube and decided I just had to share. The song is “Citizen Soldier” by 3 Doors Down and the video is absolutely exceptional.
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My Studio Finally Has a Mic

// December 23rd, 2008 // 3 Comments » // Music

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I wasn’t expecting the delivery to come until after Christmas, but Santa (Amazon) made an early delivery. Only two days after we got socked with snow, I received my Blue Snowball USB Condenser Microphone. I had originally planned to get an MXL 990 Condenser, but to run a mic like that I would need a new interface with phantom power. While the MXL mic was under $100, the Presonus Firebox was going to set me back another $250. In the end, I decided that $80 for a stop gap mic would suit me just fine for now.

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For a test, I enlisted the help of my two girls. This is the first real creation with the mic. I used the omnidirectional setting and recorded both girls standing side by side. The guitar was recorded in directional mode and the volume knocked down a notch for the final mix. This was also the first recording where I played around with GarageBand’s builtin compressor and was amazed at the difference it made. A little reverb for both tracks and voila.

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New Additions to the Design

// October 27th, 2008 // No Comments » // Music, Web

I’ve made some additional modifications to the site and I’m officially calling the latest version “Notepad Mayhem v2″. Again the theme is still based on Evan Eckard’s “Notepad Chaos“, but its starting to drift pretty significantly from the original theme. I’ve got some great ideas for v3, but I need to put those on the back burner for a little while. Now on to the changes in v2.

First and foremost, I’ve added some flotsam and jetsam to the desktop to improve the overall metaphor as well as get around the three page link navigation limit. These items are:

  • Apple iPod Shuffle – Drawn using a great tutorial at Tutorial Dog. The shuffle makes for a good link to my “Music” page. In the future this page will be where I post my original creations.
  • Joe Satriani Pick – Pulled from an online music store to act as the link for my “Gear” page. This is where you can find out about my current musical gear and the kinds of things I’m doing with them.
  • WordPress Watermark – Just a little something to show my support for WordPress.
  • Red Haven Business Card – A shameless plug for my more capitalistic interests. Red Haven Internet Solutions is the umbrella for my freelance work.

A couple of the things I did behind the scenes that you may or may not have noticed was the following:

  • Replaced all of the graphical representations of the handwritten font with something cleaner and less cluttered than the original.
  • Obviously, added the code necessary to display the various items on the desk.
  • Decreased the size of the paper clip on the Recent Posts block to shift things up a bit.
  • Cleaned up all of the drop shadows on all graphical elements to make them more realistic and consistent. Made the light source consistent too.

Some of the things I’m thinking about for v3 include the following:

  • Separate the “Recent Posts” graphics from the notebook and make independent of the page background.
  • Create a “Clipped Coupon” wrapper for Google AdSense code in the sidebar.
  • Create an “Address Book” themed wrapper for Links in the sidebar.
  • Widgetize the sidebar and create custom widgets for Recent Posts, Categories, Tags, Calendar, Links, etc.
  • Create an “About” page template with a polaroid template for the author, space for themed social network chiclets
  • Create a generic page templates with the same home sidebar, different sidebar, and no sidebar.
  • Create an “Archives” page template with posts by tags, categories, date, comments, popularity
  • Multiple background options
  • Exhaustive code cleanup and optimizations
  • Create standard sized “Zones” for the items on the desk to make customization easier

I think if I can manage to accomplish all of those things for v3, I’ll consider asking Smashing Magazine and Evan Eckard if I can provide the theme for free. That being said, I probably wont get to work on those changes much until the new year.