CRACKUNIT2

Hotel Trauma – Or, The Moment I Realized I’ve Become a Complete Tool

Iain — Thu, 04 Apr 2013 12:33:49 +0000

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The Incredible Shrinking Ad

Iain — Mon, 25 Feb 2013 14:46:44 +0000

The most fundamental challenge is that advertising is still an old-fashioned game of “lookie here!” — and on a four-inch screen, there isn’t much to look at.

High Performance Networking in Google Chrome

Iain — Thu, 31 Jan 2013 00:56:18 +0000

This post on high performance networking in Google Chrome will blow your tiny mind, even if, like me, you can only understand 10% of the words in it.

Sandy Amazon Hack

Iain — Tue, 29 Jan 2013 05:47:32 +0000

A couple of weeks ago I presented some stuff at Google’s Creative Sandbox in NYC. One of the things I showed was a wonderful hack where the Amazon Gift Registry was used to get relief supplies to a charity effort during Sandy. Turns out someone watching knew the people behind it and wrote a great blog post about the back story. Thanks to @matt_heindl for the blog post, to Katherine Dolan and friends for the great work, and to Jamie Gaetano for pointing me in the direction of the blog post.

Another Little Thing to Love About Sugru

Iain — Tue, 29 Jan 2013 05:20:33 +0000

When you’re ordering from Sugru, they have this little ’roundup’ at the bottom. It takes a bunch of stuff from your order form and formats it in a nice friendly way. Reassures you they’ve got it all under control :-)

In case you don’t know the other reasons why you should love Sugru, well here’s a couple of things:

It’s a pretty amazing product:

And they wrote this really decent thing about fixing stuff called the Fixer’s Manifesto:

And they invite people to fix the manifesto on Github which seems like a very good idea.

Go Sugru.

The Bits They Left Behind

Iain — Thu, 24 Jan 2013 18:33:33 +0000

Here’s two albums I’ve been listening to a lot this week. Both take hectic full-on electronic music and strip out the driving force and beats to leave ambient-y soundscape-like made mainly from pads, synths and effects.

First up Lee Gamble’s Diversions 1994-1996 [Spotify | Rdio]
(thanks to @nikroope for the recco)

Boomkat say:

It has a concept so brilliant and simple we can’t quite believe it hasn’t been done before, taking the burning embers, breakdowns and ambient interludes off classic Jungle mixtapes and re-assembling them into a ghostly ambient-not-ambient mix that’s at once hugely nostalgic and totally forward thinking – so so good.

Secondly Ricardo Donoso’s – Progress Chance [Spotify]

Boomkat say:

‘Progress Chance’ is based on the “morning dance music” of raves which Ricardo visited as a youth, namely the Goan and Scandinavian strains of heavily gated and arpeggiated dance music, but he’s removed the unwieldy rhythms to leave lushly pulsating patterns and the all-important chord changes which carried all the emotive weight, resulting in something quite unexpected and brilliant.

Love the term “morning dance music” especially when it’s applied to full on banging Goa trance.

Super Hacky Way to Make Beats

Iain — Thu, 17 Jan 2013 20:39:34 +0000

Let’s just forget about the legality of any of this. It’s fast and dirty and fun. In case anyone wants to know what the controller is, it’s a Midi Fighter Pro.

First Mix of 2013

Iain — Tue, 08 Jan 2013 04:05:21 +0000

So…

Not only am I going to try and keep a blog going, I’m also going to try to keep my musical hand in too. I’m aware that trying to do more than one thing at the same time is completely and utterly beyond me, but humor me for a bit. And if I fail at one, maybe the other will survive.

Here’s the first mix of the year. It’s the usual ploddy boring dad house. Hope you enjoy it.

Backwards Fireworks

Iain — Thu, 03 Jan 2013 01:07:57 +0000

Fireworks are good. Backwards they’re also good. Happy New Year.

via: Colossal

Tuttuki Bako

Iain — Wed, 02 Jan 2013 19:12:31 +0000

I know this is old gold. It’s been around for years. But I chanced upon it again yesterday and was reminded of the genius of this toy featuring a completely unique glory-hole interaction pattern.

Plus I’d never seen this particular video featuring the hands of the one and only Matt Jones. He’s got very hand-modelly hands, don’t you think?