For some reason, I decided to sign up for Holidailies this year. It’s a month-long writing challenge to update a blog every day for the month of December, and it’s hosted by some friends of mine. I didn’t sign up Musicwhore.org, though — I signed up my Vox site instead.
Yeah, I know. I’ve got a backlog that I keep complaining about, and a month-long writing challenge should have caught me up. But my Vox blog is incredibly neglected, and I ought to show it some attention.
I’m still working in the studio, and I’m still busy at work, which means I’m pretty much taking a vacation from Musicwhore.org this month. Newsworthy items will always spur me to post, but for the time being, let’s say see you in the New Year.
The title of this post is a bastardized pronunciation of isogashii (いそがしい), which means "busy" in Japanese. This time, it’s shigoto (仕事, work) in the jimusho (事務所, office) that’s eating up my jikan (時間, time). All my web projects are built upon a very loose PHP framework I’ve built over the last five or so, eight if you count the years I was building things haphazardly.
Although I’ve managed to build a lot of applications quickly with my self-rolled framework, I’ve gotten really tired of maintaining it. The idea of hacking through that code fills me up with such dread, I end up doing nothing.
About two weeks ago, I decided to try out some established frameworks to see how fast I could port an existing application. I picked CodeIgniter because it seemed lightweight and versatile enough for such a task, and I was incredibly encouraged when I got a registration and profile system done in a few days.
So I’ve spent my work days actually, well, working, and it’s unexpectedly cut into blogging time. The release schedule is also ramping up these next two weeks, and I may as well wait till they’re done before I start writing again. So I’ll be busy with code while the stores stock up on their Guns N’ Roses, Shiina Ringo and Killers.
After the holidays, I’ll see how much my playlists have bloated.
It took about two months, but I finally managed to get through this list. Only problem? More titles were added to the backlog in the interim.
I’ve done most of my listening on a single Winamp playlist, which tends to average about two days’ worth of music. But a growing number of titles on that playlist weren’t really being considered for review, and a few titles were obvious candidates for the Slush Pile. So I split the playlist into four parts.
I found making the previous backlog entry helpful in getting reviews (eventually) done, so I’m trying it again. Accountability is a bitch.
Albums about which I’ve been meaning to write in greater detail:
Girl Talk, Feed the Animals
Samamidon, All Is Well
Spangle call Lilli Line, ISOLATION
U2, War (Remastered)
U2, Under a Blood Red Sky (Remastered)
Albums I might mention in a round-up:
Hat Makes the Man, Searching for the Fertile Fields
Ivri Lider, Beketzev A’hid Batnu’ot Shell Haguf (The Steady Rhythm Of Body Movements)
I know making myself accountable to write about the following albums may just lead to disappointment, given I’ve been feeling pretty apathetic about the whole blogging thing, as of late.
There’s only so much creative currency to go around, and Eponymous 4 has been taken a lot of my mind share (what a lovely and preposterous term), leaving all sorts of prose writing in a deficit.
One of the many things distracting me these days was a lot of QuarkXpress work for a friend’s birthday gift.
Way, way back at the turn of the century — i.e. early 2000 — I bought a computer and hadn’t completely retired the old one. My friend had none. So we decided to have a writing night, where we each hammered away at a computer, writing whatever came to mind. She finished a story, and I didn’t. I might have backed up her story on a floppy disk, but essentially, we both forgot about it.
A few weeks back, I experimented with laying out a book with scores created by a music notation software called Sibelius. I wanted to get that book printed up, so I went Lulu.com to see how hard it was. Answer: not at all. In a few days, I had my book.
Intrigued, I wanted to see what else I could get printed. My friend had a birthday coming up. (This past weekend, in fact.) I found her story on my hard drive.
Just so you don’t think I’m just hanging out on the beach and letting this site get musty, here’s the music video I’ve been working on. (Plus an explanation on how it was made.)
var s1 = new SWFObject(“http://mediaservices.myspace.com/services/media/embed.aspx/m=38566685,t=1,mt=video”,”playlist”,”425″,”360″,”7″); s1.addParam(‘quality’, ‘high’); s1.addParam(‘allowFullScreen’, ‘true’); s1.write(‘ep4_enigmatics_player’);
I’m making a music video. And in making that video, I ended up making another one in the interim. So, yes, I’m a bit pre-occupied, which is no great surprise.
However much I would like to write entries about the following topics individually, I think I’m just going to a brain dump and hope I can elucidate at a later time.
Reviews I still intend to write:
ASIAN KUNG-FU GENERATION, World World World
Emmylou Harris, All I Intended to Be
Huang Ruo, Chamber Concerto Cycle (International Contemporary Ensemble)
Janet Jackson, Discipline
Madonna, Hard Candy
Metalchicks, either St. Wonder or the self-titled album (haven’t decided which)
Midnight Oil, Diesel and Dust (Legacy Edition)
Nico Muhly, Mothertongue
R.E.M., Accelerate
The Dead Betties, Nightmare Sequence (still working on This Is My Brain on Drugs)
I’m not sure if Sony Music Japan still does it, but a few years ago, the label conglomerate would allow one of its bands to hijack the template of the site to promote an upcoming release. Using the ever clever Engrish, these events would be called "sitejacks".
Well, I’m throwing conflict of interest to the wind and letting Eponymous 4 perform some "sitejacks". It’s taken over not just here but my more neglected pieces of Internet real estate: Filmwhore.org, TVWhore.org, 作譜, 名作記 and my long-defunct online journal 日々の本.
I’ve even sitejacked my Twitter page. (Are you on Twitter?)
If you’re reading this post through an RSS reader, I encourage you to visit the site to see the hijack in progress. It ends next Monday.
While I’m pimping myself out, I may as well mention that the entire enigmatics EP is available for streaming till June 24 at the official Eponymous 4 site. I hope it encourages folks who may not have considered becoming a patrón to do so. And I hope it doesn’t discourage anyone who planned on buying a CD from not doing so. Pre-orders are still being accepted.
UPDATE [06/14/2008, 17:32]: I’m extended the sitejack till June 24. I kind of like how the site looks right now. I’m pretty sure I’ll be fully tired of it by then.
As a matter of editorial propriety, this site focuses on the music of people who are not me, the people whose day job is, in fact, the creation and performance of music.
In short, the people who are way better at it than I am.
I only ever mention my music project, Eponymous 4, in passing, usually as an excuse for not posting for long periods of time.
This entry will be no different.
This time, however, the distraction isn’t purely creative — there’s a bit of commerce involved as well. Go on and head over to the Eponymous 4 web site for the official announcement, to which I alluded a few weeks back.
So far, this trip back home to Hawaiʻi has been a wash where CD shopping is concerned. I dropped a ridiculous amount of cash on ASIAN KUNG-FU GENERATION’s World World World just because it was convenient to buy at a cash register. Had I exercised restraint, I could have ordered it online for $15 cheaper.
I did find Ann Sally’s Moon Dance and Fuji Fabric’s Ala Carte over at Book Off in Shirokiya, but I don’t think I loved those albums enough to spend money on them.
Last year, I made off with some ACO, bloodthirsty butchers, Quruli and SUPER JUNKY MONKEY. This year, no such discoveries were found. And it was a pipe dream to think I could find BUGY CRAXONE, Fuji Fabric’s TEENAGER, the Port of Notes best album or DVDs from Cocco, Supercar and Tokyo Jihen.
Had I wanted to spend cash on Do As Infinity, Hamasaki Ayumi or even Remioromen, I would have been well supplied. But for the usual favorites, I would need to resort to my usual online avenues.
My trip ends Monday night. I’ll be back in Austin on Tuesday noon-ish.