Archive for September, 2008

It is said that Leonardo Da Vinci lived by the principals of what is now called polyphasic sleep; basically meaning he followed a rigidly structured sleep schedule allowing for only 3-4 hours of sleep per day. Sounds pretty crazy, but it does net the faithful around 21 waking hours per day. Apparently you take several naps during the day as opposed to one big sleep at night and somehow your body adjusts to this and thrives. I must admit the concept is appealing, all that extra time each day. But judging from how I perform off even 6 hours of sleep I am pretty sure I’m out of the running as a candidate anything like Da Vinci’s system.

That doesn’t change the fact that I want this alarm clock. Designed by Marc Owens, the clock operates on a very simple system that makes adhering to the polyphasic cycle easier, and better looking. More info can be found at Yanko Design.

A contributor to this very blog swears by polyphasic sleep and seems to thrive on it. Anyone else getting by with this system? Do you get more work done? Let us know in the comments

Heading out tonight to ruin more of my hearing by seeing Carl Craig DJ after the My Bloody Valentine show the other night i’ll be deaf by Sunday. If any of you are in New York tomorrow Deaf Center from Norway are playing at Le Poisson Rouge, i’m super eager to see them live.

E-Dancer – World of Deep(Carl Craig Remix)

Mark E – Slave 1

Chris Clark – Springtime Epigram

Deaf Center – White Lake

As if you didn’t already know, Adobe today announced the latest iteration of it’s Creative Suite, CS4. There aren’t any real surprises and most of the updates fall squarely in incremental territory. I am excited about the intelligent image scaling and GPU acceleration in Photoshop. I was a beta tester for Photoshop so I’ve had a chance to see these features in action. I didn’t notice any huge performance gains with the GPU acceleration, but then again my workflow doesn’t really include a lot of the tasks the new feature is supposed to speed up. I also got a chance to get a 64-bit version of PS running on my Windows XP 64 install to test out the performance now that Photoshop can actually "see" all 8GB of memory in my system. Again, the performance gains weren’t really noticeable which was somewhat disappointing. I think the cause of this was file size though. I think once you’re dealing with files that occupy more space in memory than you have physically installed in your system, the scratch disks are the key. In other words, I don’t think Photoshop seeing and extra 6GB of memory is really all that important when the file you’re working with is taking up far more and still writing to scratch disks.

I’ll admit though, I just haven’t had the time to really put it through it’s paces and get any real figures, these were just my initial impressions from the limited experience I’ve had with the software. I guess I just always looked forward to the day Photoshop became 64-bit with GPU acceleration as the day I could effortlessly tear through an 18×26" poster @ 300dpi without so much as a screen refresh delay; sadly, I don’t think we’re there quite yet. All that aside, I’m always excited to have an update to my favorite software. All of the previous updates have added great features / functionality and this version is no different. Link

I’ll be playing a live Tycho show this weekend in Seattle (Sat. Sep. 27) as part of Decibel Festival. I’ll be doing full live ISO50 visuals along with the music. Here are the details, hope to see you all out.

GHOSTLY INTERNATIONAL LABEL SHOWCASE

Tycho (San Francisco) : Seattle Debut Live A/V Set – Ghostly International, Merck
Deru (Los Angeles) : Live – Ghostly International, Merck
Lusine (Seattle) : Live – Ghostly International, Hymen
The Sight Below (Seattle) : Debut Live A/V Set, Ghostly International

Venue: The Baltic Room – $12 presale / $15 at the door – Doors open Venue: 8pm / 21+

BUY TICKETS

After seeing his work in the new Canon promo video I decided to check out Vincent Laforet’s portfolio. He has some pretty amazing stuff up there, including some incredible high altitude shots that really put his subjects in a unique perspective. I also found his work with tilt-shift (last three shots above) to be quite refreshing for that genre. Judging from these shots this guy seems to just float around in some sort of blimp all day taking pictures. You can find more of his work at vincentlaforet.com.

I went to see My Bloody Valentine at Roseland Ballroom tonight. I wish I brought my camera to record video of it because first of all the light show and visuals were perfect for the music, so intense that the girl in front of me fainted and my friend Praveen helped carry her outside to get fresh air. I can probably use all the normal describing words for shoegaze like swirling, dreamy, lush, etc to explain the sound when you closed your eyes, it was all there but you can’t understand how loud it was, its really unexplainable, i could sit in front of any speaker you give me and it wouldn’t even get close to the levels and range. I kept running outside to see if my ears or eyes were bleeding. Other than that it was a beautiful show, now all we need is for Slowdive to get back together.

My Bloody Valentine – When You Sleep

My Bloody Valentine – Loomer

I’ve become a Burial nut over the past year or so, i just had to share this radio clip of this unreleased ambient remix he did, maybe it’ll be on the next K7 DJ Kicks series since Burial is doing it. Either way i hope it comes out soon, i’m really loving it. Also, another favorite Telefon Tel Aviv reveal a new single from their upcoming LP, the free download is on XLR8R, enjoy.

Commix – Be True (Burial Remix) [RADIO CLIP]

Telefon Tel Aviv – Helen of Troy

As for newer songs, here are a few that I’ve been listening to over and over. The TV on the Radio obviously is blowing up everywhere, I’m sure they’ll be on the cover of Rolling Stone next month and blog wise I always see this Passion Pit track up, its super short and catchy, I can’t place the girl vocal sample in there, it sounds like its from a Disney movie. As for the Sally Shapiro track, the original is a favorite of mine it’s remixed by DFA’s The Juan MacLean who has an album coming out this year. Last but not least a brand new Jimmy Edgar single called Nothing Is Better that you can download for free.

TV On The Radio – Halfway Home

Passion Pit – Sleepyhead

Sally Shapiro – I Know You’re My Love (Juan MacLean Remix)

Jimmy Edgar – Nothing Is Better

James White has posted a follow up to his excellent feature on Saul Bass’s branding work, this time focusing on logos by mid-century corporate logo extraordinaire Paul Rand. Very nice stuff, thanks for posting James! Link

Here are some older tracks that I’m pretty surprised I hadn’t posted before. All 4 tracks are a few years old at least, tomorrow i’ll put up some newer releases like TV on the Radio.

Colder – Crazy Love

Arab Strap – Cherub

Cim – Shift

Tim Tetlow – Mind is Moving