UNDERDOG of PERFECTION

Having now set it up on a client’s site at work, and being impressed with the experience, I’ve gone ahead and upgraded this site to WordPress 2.5. The changes to the new version are mostly on the “back end” (it’s less unseemly than it… er… seems), but it does feature a built-in photo gallery feature I’m interested in trying out (no offense to the Dutch Monkey… but good riddance to the cumbersome-at-best Gallery2), even though it means the “Offspring” pages will probably be out of commission for a while as I restructure things.

I still haven’t really gotten into using WordPress widgets, and I’m sure there are a ton of other cool things I could implement if only I had the time to discover them. (Although now that I’m actually using WordPress — at least on one project — at work, the chance of me “discovering” these features and plug-ins should increase somewhat.)

There are some albums in my collection (such as Relayer by Yes, of all things) that I have purchased multiple (and I mean many) times over the years as new and improved versions have been released. But for some reason, after 15 or so years, I’m still stuck with the quiet, murky, horribly mastered original CD release of Bitches Brew, one of the most influential of all Miles Davis albums (all of which are influential in their way). Why? Well, that’s a good question, especially now that I’ve ripped off paid tribute to it with a track on my latest CD, Unnatural Disasters.

The price has probably been the biggest deterrent. Since it’s a double album, and most versions now feature copious bonus tracks, it’s almost impossible to find for less than $20. Even for download. iTunes has it priced at $19.90, and since all but one of the tracks are at least 11 minutes long, you can’t just scoop up the 7 individual tracks for $6.93.

Amazon MP3 Downloads has it priced at a more reasonable $16.99, but here’s the catch: you can still buy all of the individual tracks, even the 27-minute title track, separately for 99 cents each. It requires some more cumbersome clicking around (since ease of use has never been Amazon’s strongest suit, strangely enough), but it’s worth the extra calories burned by your right index finger, and the minute or two all of that takes, to save ten bucks!

Not a Creed fan here. Apparently this is one of the latest web memes that I’m about six months late to discovering. But it doesn’t matter. It’s still freakin’ hilarious. And for what it’s worth, I have Cake to thank for tipping me off to it.

I finally got myself an iPhone on Thursday. In fact tomorrow I will have two, which is one more than I need (and is also a story for another post), but the point right now is that I finally have an iPhone.

Naturally one of the first things I did with the iPhone was take a look at how room34.com looks on the iPhone. And since the iPhone’s Safari browser works pretty well, it looked fine. But since it’s optimized for a 1024×768 display, it also was a tad small.

By now I am all set to create an iPhone-friendly version of the site, but since it’s built on WordPress, I was pretty sure someone would already have created an iPhone-friendly theme, and sure enough, someone did. But they actually went one step further and built it as a plug-in, so you can keep your regular theme for computer-based visitors and mobile users will automatically see the mobile version. Nice!

It’s a bit plain for my tastes, and it doesn’t account for the fact that I’ve built my own navigation bar and menu system for browsing the non-blog pages of my site, but it’s a start. I plan to customize it over the next week or so to look more Room 34-ish, and to include all of the necessary navigation.

Participating in the 2008 RPM Challenge was great for a lot of reasons. I got fired up to produce what I think is my best solo album so far. I learned about some great online resources for musicians like Kunaki and INDISTR. I met some cool people along the way.

But perhaps the most exciting thing to come of it is that I’ve discovered the Very Us Artists, a loose collective of musicians and visual artists who collaborate to produce a brand new, “various artists” (get it?) album every few months around a shared concept. There’s some tremendous talent involved, and it’s a wonderfully welcoming environment. The upshot of all of this is that I have recorded a track to be included on the next Very Us Artists album, The Future Is Now. It’s a very cool concept (which, of course, I had to twist in my own way), and I am really looking forward to seeing and hearing what my co-conspirators have come up with. Stay tuned for more!