Candied Brain

Appliance Adventures!

admin — Mon, 29 Jun 2009 12:19:13 +0000

I just finished my first 24 hour RPG for 1,000 Monkeys, 1,000 Typewriters. The theme was “Mr. toaster needs a soul.” I ended up writing a narrative-style teamwork and exploration focused RPG. It isn’t done, but it is a decent start. You can get it here: Appliance Adventures

Jaydiohead

admin — Wed, 22 Apr 2009 00:50:45 +0000

Jay-Z + Radiohead mashup. If you like either of the artists, check it out - it is really good.

Mostly Dead.

admin — Wed, 23 Jul 2008 01:31:13 +0000

Its been almost half a year since I last updated this site. I think we all know that I’m not really cut out for blogging. I have a difficult enough time using something like Twitter, which seems to have gotten stupid simple down to a science.

This site will stay around for a while, simply because I don’t have anything that I want to do with it at this point. However, I hope at some point to do something with the domain. I don’t want to let my registration lapse, because I know that, like nearly every decent (or indecent) domain, it will get scooped up by a domain squatter.

I wish I had more time to play with this stuff, because I find that it can be terribly interesting, but my job doesn’t allow me that much time, and when I get off of work, I don’t feel like staring at a computer screen anymore.

State of the Dave

admin — Sun, 24 Feb 2008 23:01:59 +0000

Got something of a ramble for you today; got several things I would like to mention.

First of all, I broke down and bought an�iPhone.�I figured I would eventually have one when they first went on sale last summer, but I had held off until now. My previous phone, a Moto Razr had been getting progressively flakier; once I started missing calls for no apparent reason, I figured it was time to upgrade. Over all, I like the iPhone, and I would recommend it to others except for a few big caveats:

Mobile Safari crashes. Often. And for no apparent reason.
Don’t believe the commercials, EDGE is painfully slow for web browsing.

The iPhone is wonderful for email. EDGE may be too slow for today’s web pages, but it works very smoothly when it doesn’t need to pull down so much data. Personally, this thing will be a killer device for me once there is a solid RSS reader. Not a monkey-ass web app, but a full application.

Secondly, I bought�Heretic Pride,�the latest from The Mountain Goats, the day it was released (through Amazon’s Digital Download service, which I will talk about momentarily). It is a decent album. Not my favorite TMG, but pretty solid. This album isn’t as quiet as�Get Lonely,�the last one, but it is still a bit subdued in comparison to much of the earlier work. Personally, I like John Darnielle’s singing best when it is at its most manic, like in this album’s first single, Sax Rohmer #1. That said, this album is much more accessible than much of the earlier stuff, and I will be recommending it to just about everyone I know.

Thirdly, I love Amazon’s digital download service. I’ve purchased three albums from them, and honestly, I will probably never buy another song from iTunes. The service is very streamlined for existing Amazon customers, from One-Click buying to importing the songs directly into iTunes. There is a little downloader app that you must use to buy whole albums, but it keeps things nice and simple, and just works (unlike the eMusic downloader, which will no longer work on my machine).

Fourthly and finally, the reason I sat down to write this post: I may have mentioned this before, but I am getting married this June. I (foolishly) volunteered to pick all the reception music, and I am having some difficulties figuring out exactly what to play. So I’m putting out the call: what should I be sure to include in the music. Any standout tracks that worked well at weddings you’ve attended?

Right now, I’m planning on using a lot of the ‘classics’ — Ray Charles, Frank Sinatra, maybe some Thelonious Monk (if I can sneak it in) with a few diversions into some modern indie rock. I will be creating a separate�page�for the list of songs.

Sax Rohmer #1 = New Mountain Goats Hotness

admin — Tue, 05 Feb 2008 02:02:04 +0000

I’ve been a huge fan of the Mountain Goats for the last few years. The first song of theirs that I heard was “Home Again Garden Grove”, from We Shall All Be Healed (I’m not exactly an old-school fan). On the first listen, the song got mocked by all three of us who were in the office at the time. Despite the mocking, I found myself compelled to look up more information on the artist when I got home. I was shocked by sheer size of the back catalog, but not nearly as shocked as when I found myself singing and humming along with most of the groups’ stuff — including the track I ridiculed earlier.

I was hooked.

I quickly grabbed everything on eMusic by the group, which, at the time, only included We Shall All Be Healed, and “Tallahassee”. This was not sufficient. I’m not sure how or why, but this was some of the best music that I had ever heard. Strong words, I know, but I meant them then, and I’m not backing away from them now. John Darnielle is a brilliant lyrist. It is as simple as that.

Anyway, I was terribly excited when I saw that their next release, Heretic Pride, will be released this month. To add to the awesomeness, they released the video and MP3 of Sax Rohmer #1 online. Please take a listen, maybe two. You might laugh at the song at first, but I bet you will be singing along on the second time through.

I originally read about it on Pitchfork, here.

Taking a break.

admin — Sat, 02 Feb 2008 13:27:33 +0000

The Candied Brain Radio show will be going on hiatus as of right now. It has been a great learning experience and a lot of fun, but quite frankly, I’m not sure it ‘deserves’ to be around. The current incarnation doesn’t really do a whole lot, and doesn’t add anything to the conversation.� I feel that the show was just another artifact of the content-free media culture which pervades the internet in this day and age.

I do enjoy recording audio quite a bit; this isn’t my last podcast, just the last one until I can figure out what I want to do with it.

Thanks for listening.

Candied Brain Radio: Episode 29

admin — Sat, 26 Jan 2008 03:47:15 +0000

Here are the shownotes:

All the music played today was found at Jamendo.

Artist: Die Partysahnen
Album: Wir sind nicht zum Tanzen hier
Track: Kindergartenliebe
License: Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0

Artist: Exit Rom�o
Album: Cache-Coeur
Track: Malika
License: Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0

Artist: Morad Stars
Album: Imagine Peace With Popcorn
Track: Metamorphosis
License: Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.0 (French)

Artist: papa dada
Album: prePOPsterous
Track: Leave a light on for me
License: Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0

Artist: Mari Huertas Mill�n
Album: Brisha Azul
Track: Dime
License: Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0

Thanks for listening!

Check out the new duds.

admin — Sat, 19 Jan 2008 19:36:55 +0000

So, here we go.

I finally got around to doing some work on this site. This new theme is based on the “Green Love” theme by Bob. As you can probably tell, not much has changed, beyond the new top graphic and an infinitely tackier color scheme.

I won’t say this is an endpoint, but I’m pretty happy with the way the site looks now. Give me a month or so before I start fiddling again.

I used this as a chance to test out some new software I just purchased. Through the magic of MacHeist I got a copy of both CSSEdit and Pixelmator. Both seem pretty good, although Pixelmator has crashed on me a couple of times.

Enjoy!