ramen haiku

I put a new website up the other day.  This one purely for fun.  www.ramenhaiku.com.  You should check it out.  Here is my favorite haiku so far -




versatile ramen


so many ways to utilize


fry boil steam or bake

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Attachment_fu

In case you searched for this like I did, attachment_foo is really attachment_fu.



And, its super ninja cool too!





The best tutorial I know of on it so far is here - Mike Clark's attachment_foo tutorial.

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4gauge is back

It has been a really long time since 4gauge.com went down, but finally, tonight it is back online, and ready to start taking care of all you hard working bands out there.



So much has changed since I wrote here last. On the plus side, it looks like there is going to be a lot more free music on line, with heavyweights like Sony and BMG both making rumblings that they want to move in that direction.



Some very very bad news as well. It looks like The RIAA is about to put all of the independent radio stations out of business by hiking up the licensing fees that these of little stations pay per song to each user. They are aready were beyond reasonable from a deal struck back in 2002, but this new fee structure leaves it far, far behind.



The RIAA can only have pushed for these fees for one reason. Small, free, independent radio took the power out of their hands, and gave it back to normal people like you and me. With a strong Internet radio community, we finally had choice, and that is the last thing that the RIAA wants us to have. They want to jam the same 20 fluff songs down our ears and keep control of what we buy at the CD store.



Sadly, they have likely succeeded. Great stations like RadioParadise.com and Soma.FM are the likely casualties. That, or they'll have to move to countries like Canada who are not in bed with the Corporate music industry's muscle.



That's a bit of a rant, but its worth it, this is an important issue, especially for up and coming bands who need a wide variety of venues to play their stuff. Fortunatly, more and more sites like 4gauge are springing up every day, and 4gauge.com is back online.



Hurray!

colors and their meaning

Colors have a lot of meaning. The best graphic artists I know (including my current guy) know these meanings in their bones. They can look at a splotch of color, or wo colors next to eachother, and tell you exactly what sort of emotional reaction people are going to have to it.



The rest of us have a much harder time doing this, but this site helps.... A Lot. You can click around on a color pallete, and it searches through Flickr to show you images of predominantly that color. Not only do you get the color, but you get to put the color in context. Amazing



http://www.krazydad.com/colrpickr/

Good News for English unsigned bands

The BBC has a great article about sea change coming in the Music industry. From the article -





The English band Koopa is likely to be the first. From the article -

Chart rules were changed at the start of January to count all digital single sales, even if there is no CD version.

"It's fantastic that a band like us can have an
opportunity to put ourselves into the top 30 with Razorlight and U2,"
manager Gary Raymond told the BBC.

Until 1 January, an artist needed to release singles on
CD or another physical format - and therefore have a record deal - to
qualify for the chart.

But bands who sell songs themselves through approved download services are now eligible.

Open Moko

Lots of buzz today about the Apple Phone. It looks like quite a machine. I must say though that I'm more excited about this offereing from OpenMoko. Roughly the same form factor (probably not quite as sexy, though) and it runs Linux.



I spend about half my time on OSX, and the other half on Ubuntu. I really do prefer the Gnome interface. I know that I'm probably one in a group of about one who feels this way, but thats the way it is. Long live competition that dirves innovation.



One gadget from Apple that I may have a harder time saying no to is iTV. Are those shows on iTunes that you pay for commercial free? If so, I wonder how long they will stay that way.

good designers

There are a lot of great designers competing in the web space. Some of them have exceptional talent. I've been looking for the right designer to help with 4 gauge, and lots of great designers have sent me their portfolio.



This one in particular sticks out. He's got a knack for both page design, and stunning graphics. I like how much action there is in the layouts and graphics he uses. Even in designs of quieter moments, you get the feeling that its only a pause to reflect inbetween the action.



Great stuff



http://www.chado-design.com/

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ZiYa from Rails

Nice looking graphs have always been a challenge to get up on a web page. There are things like Gruff, that use ImageMagic, and they work well. But I've always wanted somthing that looked better. Now, it looks like you can use ZiYa to get the power and prettyness of Flash. Nice!!

Do you do logos?

Its Amazing how much time you can waste with content vendors who want to get your project in and out the door as fast as they can so they can make a quick buck. I'm looking for someone to do some logo work for 4gauge, and some other sites. If you do this kind of thing, let me know.



I don't recommend sites like this one - http://www.elance.com/

Restful and ActiveResources

Rails 1.2 is going to be released within the next few days. Sadly, ActiveResources didn't make the cut and is not included. We've been working with it a bit at work, and I can understand why, but still I'm looking forward to seeing it in wider use.



I saw DHH talk about it at Rails Conf back in June, so I know that he is fired up on Rest/ActiveResources. I'm guessing that it will be a hot topic after 1.2 ships.



Rest/ActiveResources is an alternative to RPC/Soap. The basic concepts behind the two are fundamentally difference, with my preference being the Rest approach.



Rest is better because it is OO, while RPC is procedural. Active Resources actually allows the programmer to interact with remote objects natively in the current application.



If you want to bone up on Rest/ActiveResources, try these links -

Ryan's Scraps



And a couple of podcasts - sd.rb

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