Catching Zebra

Joshua Jones recreates Safari 4 interface with CSS3 via...

Wed, 17 Mar 2010 23:36:10 PDT

Joshua Jones recreates Safari 4 interface with CSS3

Album Cover Art by Christian Marclay There are those who will...

Tue, 16 Mar 2010 17:00:14 PDT

Album Cover Art by Christian Marclay

There are those who will throw away their old record covers but there are those that will use them to create some mind blowing artistic stuff. One of them is definitely Christian Marclay, a New York visual artist, DJ and composer who used record covers of Michael Jackson, Doors, Donna Summer, David Bowie and many others for this piece of art. The relationship of sound, vision, music, art and performance is the focus of his work.

These are all pretty rad. Click through to see them all.

Spencer to Flinders I’m basically just posting this to see...

Mon, 15 Mar 2010 20:08:34 PDT

[Flash 10 is required to watch video.]

Spencer to Flinders

I’m basically just posting this to see what Tumblr’s new native video uploading is like. But it’s a movie I shot on my train ride to work a while ago.

TFTF by Aaron Scamihorn

Sun, 14 Mar 2010 21:11:12 PDT

Gravity Hook HD

Sun, 14 Mar 2010 21:03:07 PDT

Gravity Hook HD:

New, similarly addictive game from the Canabalt guys.

The Vasco Era - Oh Sam Video

Sat, 13 Mar 2010 23:44:47 PST

The Vasco Era - Oh Sam (Off Lucille) 2007’s Oh We Do Like...

Sat, 13 Mar 2010 17:58:00 PST

The Vasco Era - Oh Sam (Off Lucille)

2007’s Oh We Do Like To Be Beside The Seaside is one of my all time favourite albums. So I had high hopes for The Vascs Era’s second LP Lucille. Often bands either rush their second album, struggle to match their first or both. But this certainly isn’t the case with Lucille.

Another concept record, this is a story of a stripper called Lucille and her partner Sam. As explained by Ted O’Neil:

Basically, this is a story about Sam and Lucille. They are a loving couple, Sam is a conservative, religious man. Lucille is making ends meet by stripping. It is based on a conversation Sid had one night in the casino in Melbourne. They were completely in love but Sid could see that the girl’s occupation was driving a wedge between them. After the conversation, Sid began thinking about the emotions that this would bring up between them, so he created a conversation between the two. That conversation is our new album. By the way, that’s not their real name either. The real couple probably don’t even remember Sid.

The whole album is a bit slower and more complex than Beside The Seaside. The first three singles; For No One, I Am the Chosen Vessel and Oh Sam didn’t let me down.

There really isn’t a dud track on the album but along with the first three singles; Lucille, Casino, Rest My Head, Be There Tonight and Already Won are all massive winners.

Highly recommended. Go grab it from your local record store or from iTunes.

Wired Reread

Sat, 13 Mar 2010 13:53:03 PST

Wired Reread:

If you haven’t seen this yet, check it out. Pretty funny, but not quite as good as actually reading old Wired issues and taking the piss out of them yourself.

I love Wired. The other day, I was re-reading some of the old back-issues of Wired I have. Flipping through the pages, looking at the old ads and articles, I realized how much you can learn from exploring these pages from the viewpoint of today - and how fun it is to see them again.

This blog is not intended to be just a point-and-laugh central, picking apart the mistakes of the past and ridiculing those who got it wrong. You won’t have to look long for posts that do that, of course… but the main purpose of this blog is to put the past into perspective. In the fast paced world of tech, we often lure ourselves into believing that everything is different now, and old rules don’t apply. Well, quite often they do (if not always) and checking out our collective tech-past can help us get a perspective on the present.

So, will this blog tell you if the iPad is the next big thing? Or if Twitter is dead in 3 years? Nah. But hopefully it can shed some light on what similar ideas of the past worked out, which didn’t and why.

Record Makers 10 Year Anniversary Promo via Delete Yourself

Fri, 12 Mar 2010 18:55:20 PST

Record Makers 10 Year Anniversary Promo

via Delete Yourself

Featured and over 1000 installs Thanks so much to all the people...

Thu, 11 Mar 2010 14:48:06 PST

Featured and over 1000 installs

Thanks so much to all the people using my theme. And to the Tumblr staff for featuring it. A couple of days ago it jumped over the 1000 installs mark (excluding custom HTML). And this morning I was pleasantly surprised to see that it had been featured.

Ok, I’ll stop posting milestones now.

State of the Internet by Jess3 Matthew Buchanan: A motion...

Wed, 10 Mar 2010 21:37:00 PST

State of the Internet by Jess3

Matthew Buchanan:

A motion type presentation by the Jess3 agency of mostly mind-blowing statistics from the big social networks during 2009.

Facebook’s stats are the most mind blowing. Imagine how many people would use it if it were actually good.

Total Eclipse of the Heart: Literal Video Version by dascottjr

Wed, 10 Mar 2010 21:20:25 PST

Total Eclipse of the Heart: Literal Video Version by dascottjr

Live preview for Tumblr theming

Wed, 10 Mar 2010 17:35:00 PST

In response to my comment about a live preview for Tumblr theming, Max Wheeler said:

Hells yes. I await this bundle with bated breath. Though, as Andy mentions: “What I’d LOVE is to be able to see an example of what that is without copying and pasting the code into Tumblr”. The hassle of the copy-paste-preview workflow is one of the things that stop me building more themes for Tumblr.

Max — and anyone else designing themes for Tumblr — what is your process? I’ve only designed one. But I designed the whole thing as a static site with dummy content. Getting it as close to perfect as I possibly could. Then went through the process of adding in all the theme-tags (or whatever they’re called). But once you’ve done that you’ve committed to the copy-paste-preview workflow for refinement and any further updates.

I also did all the copy-paste-previewing on a blog I’d specifically setup with dummy content.

Type Tips—short, quick tips on all things web typography

Wed, 10 Mar 2010 16:38:55 PST

Type Tips—short, quick tips on all things web typography

ben: I’m working on a TextMate bundle for creating Tumblr...

Wed, 10 Mar 2010 15:34:00 PST

ben:

I’m working on a TextMate bundle for creating Tumblr Themes. It shouldn’t take me too long. When it’s done I’ll probably put it on github for all to enjoy.

Sweet. I use Coda so I don’t really know what TextMate bundles are. I assume it will just insert the correct template code for you. You click on 128x128 Portrait URL and it inserts {PortraitURL-128}

What I’d LOVE is to be able to see an example of what that is without copying and pasting the code into Tumblr. So as you’re designing the preview in Coda looks like it would live. Not like this:

Don’t know if that’s possible, but man, it would be awesome!

RGB Light by Fabian Nehne and Martin Meier

Wed, 10 Mar 2010 15:06:21 PST

RGB Light by Fabian Nehne and Martin Meier

Jet ski + jet pack It looks dangerous and is, reportedly,...

Wed, 10 Mar 2010 15:05:23 PST

Jet ski + jet pack

It looks dangerous and is, reportedly, incredibly expensive, but there is no denying the near-maximal awesome factor of the Jetlev Flyer. Power comes from a four-stroke engine in a small “boat” which drags in the water behind/below the flying harness, and to which it is tethered by a big yellow hose that supplies high-pressure water and prevents the operator from exceeding a safe altitude.

My birthday’s in May…

Alfred App Alfred is a new launcher app for OS X that’s...

Tue, 09 Mar 2010 16:21:00 PST

Alfred App

Alfred is a new launcher app for OS X that’s competing with Quicksilver, Google Quick Search Box and Spotlight (I guess). But the difference here is that Alfred uses Spotlight’s index for files and applications. Making it crazy fast, with the addition of many Quicksilver-like features.

It does the launching incredibly well. I really like how it displays a list of up to 7 search results straight away, but seems to know which result it is you’re actually looking for.

It has really simplified the launch/search ‘thing’. Which I think Google QSB tried to do, maybe slightly unsuccessfully. The thing that is great about QSB is that it’ll always give you an option to Google something. As it stands, in Alfred, if I search for ‘Coda’ I’m presented with only one option, the app Coda. I’d really like to be able to always Google something.

Another, probably better example: If I type ‘book’ I’m given the results Address Book and FontBook. Now, I’m unlikely to want to google the word ‘book’. But if that option doesn’t come up then I can’t rely on using this to Google things instead of the Quicksilver Google Search thing I have setup.

Note: I realise I can type google at the start of the search to make it search Google. The same way you can type wiki for Wikipedia or images for Google Images. This is probably something I just need to get used to. Or maybe it could be a preferences thing to ‘Always show Google as a search result’.

It hooks in with your bookmarks which is brilliant. But it appears to be pulling my Safari bookmarks, not Chrome which I’m currently using. Also, I almost exclusively use Delicious for my bookmarks. And I use Quicksilver to search them. It would be brilliant if Alfred could pull results from Delicious.

There are many other stranger things that I bet people are holding onto Quicksilver because of. For example, I use it to directly email files to people. I use this many, many times a day and I was kind of hoping that Google QSB would do some of these stranger things. Especially considering it’s developed by the same guy that developed Quicksilver. I really don’t expect an app like Alfred, which is pitched as a launcher to do things like that. I guess Quicksilver’s just starting to feel a bit old and un-loved and it would be nice to see something new come along and replace it.

It has options for your location to be America, Canada, France, UK, Italy etc. so that your Google results are localised. Can we have Australia please?

It’s important to remember that Alfred is still in beta and is already an incredibly good launcher. So, if you’re after one, check it out.

The Bridge by Arman-h

Tue, 09 Mar 2010 15:42:12 PST

The Bridge by Arman-h

Thanks for all your hard work on the great theme! How can I get the body text font that is used on Catching Zebra?

Tue, 09 Mar 2010 12:31:20 PST

At the moment I’m using a service called TypeKit. But I’m almost certain the license doesn’t extend to having the fonts used on a thousand different sites. So unfortunately the options are to pay for TypeKit or stick with Helvetica.