It's that time, as you can tell - a new, more simple site! I loved the clean and airy look of the last version for a very, very long time, but I think this more reflects my current state: pensive, galactic, and bit-crushed! Pardon the dust and placeholders, I'm working on tying up loose ends.

Last weekend was pretty much the definition of summer. I was blessed with a free ticket to Rage Against the Machine at the Palladium (thanks Chadi!) on Friday, spent the day at the beach on Saturday, and checked out the Renegade Craft Fair on Sunday. The Rage show was definitely the highlight - I must have lost 10 pounds in sweat from yelling / jumping / moshing and 10 years due to nostalgia. They sounded the same and the energy in the building was through the roof! I've seen Zach de la Rocha at the local sandwich shop three times since moving to Eagle Rock, and it was sort of surreal to be yelling along with the same guy up on stage a month later. I've been practicing "Know Your Enemy" on drums ever since the show. :D

I visited my parents this weekend and my brother and dad and I spent a while going through a bunch of antiques in their garage. My dad's always collected cool stuff and he was digging up crazy surprises including old electron tubes, irons, telephones, a Singer sewing machine (still works!), a photo proof / duplication box, and a Corona typewriter (that comes in it's own charming suitcase). I was digging the typography and package design on these old items. Check 'em out!

A new Backwords update is out in the App Store! I updated all the graphics to take advantage of the higher resolution iPhone 4 screen, and finally added Facebook sharing. Now you can post your foolish-sounding recordings all over your wall. :)

Speaking of Backwords, it was mentioned in the latest O'Reilly book, Tapworthy: Designing Great iPhone Apps by Josh Clark. He interviewed me several months ago about some interface elements in the game (more specifically the little pop-up tips during your first party mode game) and just sent me a copy of the book! I'm honored to be included amongst a bunch of high profile apps, and props to Josh for championing solid interface and interaction design.

I've been all over in iPhone land lately. Last month I was developing the foundation for a new game that I'd like to keep fleshing out. You can see some graphics tests in the little video above (I made all the backgrounds but grabbed that airship sprite off the web for now). Also brainstorming another game with a buddy, and the last few days I've been working at a crazy pace on a Nucleus app (can't wait for people to grab this one!).

You know you're in Los Angeles when you get stuck in traffic while HIKING, in the middle of the night. Single file, all the way down Echo Mountain. 3 miles of continuous people. Granted, it was the 4th of July and everyone hiked up to catch a peaceful overhead view of fireworks across the city, but still! That's ok... it was fun and a 3-mile long line of people all with flashlights hugging the mountainside looked pretty awesome at night.

And last but not least it wouldn't be proper to end this without some science links! This one comes from my bro. While teleportation is no doubt a ways away, the part of this article that got me most was the concept of quantum entanglement. If two particles are next to each other and vibrate in harmony, they are forever connected... even by vast distances of galaxies. If one vibrates, the other matches it, no matter how far away. What the?! A mysterious force indeed!

I've been working on an improved version of my melody maker, trying to make it more musical and pleasing and take out some of the chaotic randomness. I'll post it up when it's done, but in the meantime, here are a few tests running the MIDI files through some samplers and processing in Ableton Live. Kontakt crashes Live every second (maybe because I have my sample library on an external drive?), so I've been using Reason as the main rack sampler, and I'm definitely pleased! Check 'em out!

Pianos and mallets:

Banjos and guitars:

Strings:

This is incredibly fascinating! I don't want to spoil too much, but it pertains to the current research, methods and results of discovering and studying other earth-like planets in our solar system. Hats off to people like Dimitar Sasselov and his team - keep going!

This is a very interesting article about 6 seemingly unassuming glyphs overheard in a radio telescope. What is out there in the vast sea of space? More specifically, what is this noise that came all the way from Sagittarius? Fascinating!

I'm sad that Red Dead Redemption is over. I can say without a doubt that this is Rockstar's best game to date, and definitely sits on the shelf of game classics. The sandbox environment suits the wild west so much more than a crime infested urban metropolis. This land is a place you actually want to *be* in. It's a beautiful masterpiece that captures the spectrum of guilt-free action and touching moments. Do. Not. Miss. It. In the meantime, enjoy this time lapse video of a bunch of locations from Nuevo Paraiso.

Robins can see magnetic fields. You can't.

Basketball is back in my life, and my back is fine. I'm back-sketball.

Everyday I feel an inch closer to quitting Facebook and Twitter, and I can't do it because there remains 5% that I actually like/care about. I wish you could filter your feeds by type of content (i.e., nothing about what you just ate or cooked). It seems to me that most social sites market their value as a way to "share" information, but I have trouble seeing past the narcissism of it all. Or maybe sharing is* narcissism? Maybe I'm just oblivious, but rather than display our unique qualities and experiences, it's making me feel that we're all exactly the same (I'm not excluding myself from that either). I feel as if I'm willingly asking for some sort of unspecial noise throughout my day. I'm *asking for it. Is anyone else feeling this way? Maybe we can organize a mass exodus together. Or maybe it's just me?