Josh Reisner

Brian Booker

josh@joshreisner.com — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 13:23:54 +0000

This weekend I completed a big update on Brian Booker's website.

We added a number of new artworks, a video of him reading, and content management system to help keep the site up-to-date.

If you're on Cape Cod this weekend, you can see him read at the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown on Saturday the 13th at 8pm.

Green Man Blue Cat

josh@joshreisner.com — Sun, 07 Mar 2010 16:54:50 +0000

The Onion News Network covers the hotly-anticipated new 'cross-over' bestseller, Green Man, Blue Cat.

Marina & the Diamonds: Mowgli’s Road

Ok Go: This Too Shall Pass

josh@joshreisner.com — Wed, 03 Mar 2010 23:33:42 +0000

Mind-blowing Rube Goldberg machine video from Ok Go.

Update aaaand then there's also this equally-mind-blowing version:

OK Go - This Too Shall Pass from OK Go on Vimeo.

Ok Go - This Too Shall Pass

Living Cities Events Page

josh@joshreisner.com — Tue, 02 Mar 2010 19:19:32 +0000

Here is another Bureau Blank project that launched recently: a public calendar for Living Cities.

The nicest feature is that the client can fully control the events, RSVPs and meeting materials from their Salesforce account. Changes they make on Salesforce are pulled over automatically.

Admiral Center

Double Rainbow

josh@joshreisner.com — Sun, 28 Feb 2010 00:27:15 +0000

Faint double rainbow action.

No related posts.

Dash

josh@joshreisner.com — Mon, 22 Feb 2010 22:32:06 +0000

I recently discovered there are three types of dashes:

hypens (-) aka the minus sign
en dashes (–) option-hyphen
em dashes (—) shift-option-hyphen

I'm attempting to synthesize the information at Wikipedia, since the Chicago Manual of Style page on the subject is behind a paywall. The key equivalents above are for Mac, and the rules below are for American English.

I believe that hyphens are used to separate or disambiguate parts of a single concept (in their examples, award-winning or even compound concepts like Bose-Einstein or McCain-Feingold).

En dashes should be used to separate ranges, like June 12th–July14th, or the Giants won 7–3. There should not be spaces surrounding.

Em dashes should be used for parenthetical clauses—such as this one—and also should not have spaces.

Of course there are special cases, but I think this is a pretty good start.

No related posts.

Marina & the Diamonds: Are You Satisfied?

josh@joshreisner.com — Mon, 22 Feb 2010 06:41:14 +0000

I think this is a pretty good review of Marina & the Diamonds' debut album: it notes the Dresden Dolls influence (particularly evident in this song) and makes the following observation:

But it's her taste for the bleeding obvious which, ultimately, holds her back from greatness. … It's this kind of route-one thinking which reins in The Family Jewels … the song about being an outsider is called "The Outsider". The song about being rootless is called "Rootless." The song about feeling numb is called... OK, you're ahead of me.

Indeed! (And that's another similarity with Amanda Palmer.) But there's something wonderfully, obscenely uncensored about this obviousness. Like the video for her single Hollywood. Because yep! There can be no doubt from the look on her face that she, Marina Diamandis, is indeed obsessed with the mess that is America.

I hope she's looking forward to her upcoming dates in NYC. We are very much looking forward to seeing her.

Marina & the Diamonds - Are You Satisfied?

Sites of Conscience Update

josh@joshreisner.com — Fri, 19 Feb 2010 16:05:09 +0000

I came across this old post about my work on the Sites of Conscience site and thought I'd bring it up to date.

The design has continued to evolve, and I've made some updates to the programming, such as adding a new tab, and a newsticker on the homepage, and some new methods of administering newsletters, press releases and institutional members.

A lot of the content has evolved too, particularly in the sections on the right side of the navigation.

I've learned a lot from working on this project for the last few years. I'm not sure I ever would have really gotten into WordPress if not for this project. So this blog would be a lot different!

The map graphic on the home page is by Kerstin Vogdes.

TJF Review

josh@joshreisner.com — Thu, 18 Feb 2010 12:24:05 +0000

This is a good review of the Joy Formidable show 1/11 in Brooklyn, with video and everything. Also impressive is how quickly he posted -- 1/12 at 12:16am? That's dedication. Related posts:The Joy Formidable: Whirring The Joy Formidable: The Last Drop Related posts:

Jay Reatard: My Shadow

josh@joshreisner.com — Tue, 16 Feb 2010 17:03:06 +0000

I had just started to get into Jay Reatard's music when I heard he'd passed away. He was the best thing I discovered in my recent project to listen to all the albums on Pitchfork's Best 200 Albums of the 2000s.

Jay Reatard - My Shadow

Better Faster Cheaper

josh@joshreisner.com — Mon, 15 Feb 2010 18:59:20 +0000

I programmed this blog at Bureau Blank for Steve Goldsmith and the Ash Center at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government.

This is one of my best professional achievements! We built the whole platform from the ground up; meaning an extensive custom CMS backend that integrates between several related sites.

And because HKS has a staff of good people to keep the site growing, it's getting a lot of traffic and attention.

The Joy Formidable: The Last Drop

josh@joshreisner.com — Sun, 14 Feb 2010 21:43:19 +0000

Yeah so I'm pretty excited for the May Day Joy Formidable show at the Mercury lounge. Tickets are still available as of now (so get some).

Also if you don't have the album yet, you can buy it here.

The Joy Formidable - The Last Drop

Admiral Center

josh@joshreisner.com — Sun, 14 Feb 2010 16:47:33 +0000

On Friday, we launched a new website for the Admiral Center, a nonprofit that channels investments from celebrities. We, in this case, being myself and the good folks at the branding agency Bureau Blank, where I am Director of Web Development.

The design and intro video was done by Leah Pincsak, and a lot of the coding on this project was done by Sergiu Baluta. In fact, I didn't do that much! Honestly, I just glued it all together at the end.

Rebranding

josh@joshreisner.com — Sat, 13 Feb 2010 17:24:30 +0000

As time progresses, inexorably, so too does the visual aspect of this site. Out with the old, in with the new!

Update Ok haha, it was pointed out to me that the new design is relying pretty heavily on the old designs. And surfing back to this post from 2005, I'm inclined to agree.

Stage 1, which we're going to call Satellite Mind, was from 2001 - 2005.
Stage 2, the Beta Blog / 2005-2008 / contributed handwriting font and Last.fm
Stage 3, the Green Bean Pod, 2008-2010, contributed WordPress and podcast

Is it too soon to name Stage 4?

WHOIS Bookmarklet

josh@joshreisner.com — Wed, 10 Feb 2010 23:10:07 +0000

If you're surfing a site and want to know who owns it, you can click this nifty WHOIS bookmarket (drag it to your browser's bookmarks bar) and you will find out!

Update This appears not to work with subdomains, and when adding it from Google Reader it appears to get corrupted. I'm going to work on fixing the first thing, but think in the meantime it still has value so I'm leaving the post up.

Weather Report: NYC

josh@joshreisner.com — Wed, 10 Feb 2010 19:50:26 +0000

Snow condition reported at Eldridge and Grand.

Grand Theft Auto, NYC Ads

Jessica and Erik in Antarctica

josh@joshreisner.com — Wed, 03 Feb 2010 02:33:46 +0000

Jessica Grindstaff and Erik Sanko are in Antarctica right now to do research for their Shackleton Project.

More pictures at their blog.

The Joy Formidable: Whirring

josh@joshreisner.com — Mon, 01 Feb 2010 01:54:54 +0000

I've been listening to The Joy Formidable since mid-December, and even went to this excellent show at Union Hall in mid-Jan, but then I got so distracted with my trip to Colombia that I didn't post anything about them.

Until now that is! They're really great and you need to listen to them all the time starting right now! You can buy their record here.

Also they're playing in NYC again on Saturday 5/1. They sound really great live. Get tickets and meet me there!

The Joy Formidable - Whirring

Phil and Dina’s Wedding

josh@joshreisner.com — Tue, 19 Jan 2010 21:13:53 +0000

I just got back from Phil and Dina's wedding in Cartagena, Colombia. It was a blast! Here's my gallery of low-res telephone photos.