Courtney pointed me in the direction of COOLRUNNINGS and their full-length album, Dracula Is Only The Beginning. A move I must remember to thank her for (thanks!). The album has a load of influences revealing themselves, echoes of plenty of bands you're familiar with but never in such a way that it feels derivative. I'd attempt to actually describe it with words but I'm sure I'd fall flat. Just go listen to it and consider dropping the whopping $5 for the privilege of listening to it whenever you please.

Oh, and that cover art is by Thee Ruiner; hilarious and vaguely disturbing at the same time.. always a pleasant mix.

I've no idea how long ago Google launched their page optimization tool at Page Speed Labs but it's a nice tool to have floating around the bookmarks. Aside from giving you some insight into how to potentially have your site load faster, it may give you fuel for your fire to show to clients that you just simply can't optimize it anymore. Even Google says so! via Will. AirLink tackles one very simple problem: What's the easiest way to get a browser URL from your desktop to your mobile? I assume during development people will bookmark the sites they are working on but what if you wanted to quickly check out a site in its mobile incarnation? You'd manually type it in and, more than likely, type it wrong. AirLink solves that little problem for you. It's handy, it's smart and it's a no-brainer to have it at your disposal. In regards to Instagram, the answer to the question How do I save my original non-filtered photos? may seem obvious but if you, like me, never bother to look in your app settings than you'd have no idea. Kind of a "oh... duh!" answer but one I needed shown to me in plain English. Thanks Chad.

Should I hold on to Zwack until Friday's videos? Probably. Am I able to wait that long to share new goodness from Matt and Oz? Absolutely not. Bret Gelman is a weirdo but in the best way. If you haven't seen him on Eagleheart yet.. go watch some episodes or marvel at his bizarre Mr. Celebrity series. But start by watching Zwack.

I'm a sucker for behind the scenes photography at museums and galleries. There's plenty of evidence to back this up. So, encountering this collection of Richard Ross images entitled Museology had me right from the start. The images depict a number of museums from around the world - offering a nice balance of behind the scenes imagery and quiet scenes inside the galleries. While I honestly enjoy something about every image in there I'm always given a bit of extra pause when I hit upon anything from the Booth's Bird Museum. Keep an eye out for those as you dig through.

via Nevver.

A few weeks back I saw this Madmanimation but never bothered to travel further up the domain line and see what it was actually promoting. Turns out it's a fine example of the sorts of things easily created with Animatable, a browser based animation tool for creating keyframe based CSS animations. I don't tend to use animations as large presentation / intro-movie style implementations.. so it may not be the tool for everyone.. especially if you're just looking to animate a few elements on your site. But, it looks incredibly well done and will likely prove to be very handy for anyone looking to make an HTML5 friendly animation.

I've been giving some serious consideration lately to using Acorn as an alternative to Photoshop. I've never been one to stray from the Adobe suite of goods but they really are becoming quite bloated and inefficient at memory management. For the kind of work that I do in Photoshop, Acorn seems like a good match. I've also heard Pixelmator is a decent alternative but not quite up to par yet. Does anyone have experience with either of these and can vouch for (or protest against) their goodness?

It's a little buggy but the general idea behind Every Day is Tax Day is a great use of data. Basically, every day you work your wages are taxed and contributed to the Federal Government™ - but where exactly? That's where this great chart interaction comes in, breaking down the percentages of your contributions.

I realize there's probably some reading this that could interpret anything tax related as the government "stealing your money" and not as contributing to the system we're all a part of but, for the sake of sanity, let's just treat this as an interesting way to treat data.. not a political posting. Enjoy!

via Chad.

Even if you have no interest in attending, I suggest you spend some time with the Sasquatch Festival site. It's incredibly well made, filled with great illustrations and an inspiring site design to behold. I love the loader between pages and the footer illustration is a treat every time I scroll down to it. On the whole, the site is never overwhelming or too crazy but, rather, a solid mix of new technologies, transitions, information presentation and entertainment. Oh, and it scales for browser width as well - a trick that I think will take some time to grow old for me.

• The New Guy's Computer - great blog post from 37Signals about the essential software being installed on the new guy's computer. There are a lot of recommendations I wasn't familiar with at all and a few that I'd heard of but hadn't really investigated.
• Concrete5 -a CMS that, apparently, allows you to easily edit content portions of your site in-line, rather than traveling to a backend. I've heard these promises before but never tried out a system that supposedly implements it. Regardless, I find it intriguing and would love to give it a whirl.
• Pieceable Viewer - "Show your iOS apps on the web." I've no idea how this works and I'm no iOS developer but I think the idea of being able to preview an app more in-depth than a handful of screenshots (like in the App Store) sounds great.

This National Geographic article on the aging nuclear power plant located near an active seismic zone in Armenia is surprisingly alarming. I typically don't associate National Geographic with the kind of journalism that scares the bejeezus out of you but facts like the 31-year-old plant has no primary containment structures should raise an eyebrow at the very least. The plant gives power to 40 percent of the nation, so shutting it down while they build a more modern facility is not so much an option. But what do you do in these situations? The earthquake in Japan showed that even modern, prepared, power plants can't withstand everything. Do you sacrifice quality of life for safety of life or just continue to throw caution to the wind and cross your fingers?

Possibly a bit heavy kind of content for this blog but it's worth a ponderance or two.

While I doubt he has plans to go into mass manufacturing of it, Thorunn Arnadottir easily has a hit on his hands with this Devil's Pet Candle.The geometric shaped beast melts away to reveal a metal skeleton embedded inside.

via Brandonnn. And, yes, that's likely the first post you've ever seen here about a candle.

Janet pointed out a rather interesting stance that Amazon is taking on their new Cloud Drive / Cloud Player service; namely that they aren't seeking licensing for the playback of the music that you already own.

“There has been speculation that we are looking for licenses for Cloud Drive and Cloud Player,” reads the e-mail. “We are not looking for licenses for Cloud Drive or Cloud Player as they exist today — as no licensees are required.” Amazon continues, “Cloud Player is a media management and play-back application not unlike Windows Media Player and any number of other media management applications that let customers manage and play their music. It requires a license from content owners no more than those applications do. It really is that simple.”

That's a pretty forward thinking mentality about music services and I can't imagine the record labels are going to be all too pleased. Certainly a topic to keep an eye on as it progresses.

VHX is now open for business. The site, developed by pals Casey Pugh and Jamie Wilkinson, aims to be a one-stop shop for viewing videos. You can add videos from YouTube or Vimeo into your VHX Queue (instead of two separate queues on the respective sites) and Share videos into your stream that will be viewed amongst anyone that follows you. This means that the more people you follow, the more videos appear in your stream - ideally videos that are right up your alley because your friends have similar and interesting taste.

As with any initial launch, it will have some bugs and need some tweaking but if there was ever a duo capable of seeing the issues that arrive from a larger userbase and squashing them quickly it is the team behind VHX. If it isn't obvious by now, I am a huge supporter of this project and think that, over time, it could be the easiest way to share any video to your group of friends. Go sign up.

Spent a good deal of time perusing About Today - the illustration portfolio of Lizzy Stewart. You may recall her name as being quite involved in the Sing Statistics collaboration We Are The Friction (and I Am The Friction) but there's a huge body of work outside of that worthy of exploring. I love the Gocco Prints, The Lion's Laugh and much of the Editorial Work but there's something enjoyable throughout. So dig in.

You gotta love an idea that's equal parts funny, absurd and terrible at the same time. Such is the case with M. Night School; a crowdsourced movement to raise enough money to send M. Night Shyamalan back to NYU Film School for a refresher course - ideally so he won't keep making such terrible movies. Funny? Yes. Absurd? Absolutely. Terrible? 100%. Unsurprisingly, they haven't really raise much money yet and I assume it will stay that way.

Why is it that Tumblr gets all the super specific themed blogs? Is it the ease of the format or just the general weirdness of the community? Probably both. Regardless of why please take a few moments to check out Chicks with Steve Buschemeyes - a blog which takes the eyes of Steve Buscemi and inserts them on famous women. I mean, that much should have been obvious from the title, right?

Typically, an ad campaign is obvious from the onset. Not so much with this Japanese commercial for the Touch Wood cellphone is absolutely more art than it is commerce. Playing Bach on an enormous marimba in the forest is not the first thing I would think of when I ponder an effective way to get the word out about a digital device. That's probably why I don't work at Drill Inc or Invisible Designs Lab.. both of which should be enormously respected for this undertaking.

Been enjoying the portfolio of Jason Alejandro, aka Archetype. There are some great proposed pieces and posters but I'm mostly drawn to the various book covers - a canvas I've never personally dealt with but seems incredibly fun to create for.

Can someone explain to me why there are still regional restrictions in this day and age of technology? Yea, I get that advertisers need to reach a demographic that can actually buy their products but why am I being denied this QI app? I want to peruse random trivial facts that negate my assumed knowledge about any number of topics! Or just learn random new factoids. Damn these regional restrictions.

Random stories that have been on both The Daily What and Neatorama are probably old news to everyone by now but this anecdote about a lion having undergone the taxidermy process from a person not having ever seen a lion before. The full story shows a lion that doesn't look hysterical but that face photo is.. beyond words.

Thank you Ronnie.