What is this? There's no way to know. However, I can bet that you will be mesmerized and drawn in entirely.

Via Zach.

Please take some time today to read through this interview with musical innovator / pioneer / rule maker Brian Eno. He's kind of like the antithesis of Steve Albini in that he typically has something positive to say. His insight on why albums are still a viable packaging of music is put perfectly, as is his take on the differences in musical mediums to intake your music. I particularly enjoyed this bit:

I think we're sort of deep in the grid period of making music-- well, we're probably emerging from it a little bit now, I would say. You know how eras always have a sound to them and you don't realize it until the era has gone? I remember when in the early days of rock'n'roll, when everything sounded totally different, all amazing and blah blah blah blah blah. Now you can play me one second of any record from that time, and I'll say "1959" or "1961." I can hear precisely. It's like it has a huge date stamp on it. And I think we're all capable of doing that. You can hear the profile of a sound, in retrospect, so much more clearly than you did at the time. And I think one of the things that's going to be nauseatingly characteristic about so much music of now is its glossy production values and its griddedness, the tightness of the way everything is locked together.

The Wonder Webkit CSS3 3D Tranformations experiment is pretty impressive; particularly given how smooth it is. It is reminiscent of early 2000's Flash experiments in that it really serves no purpose beyond proving that such a crazy thing can be done... but it's appreciable for that fact.

It's a bit aggravating that all of these things are happening in Webkit only browsers but, I am told, that Firefox 4 will be able to take much of these things to task and widen the availability of implementing them. Where IE falls into that mess, I am not sure.

Nashville's Smallest Art Gallery unveiled a new show over the weekend featuring works from Brad Vetter (I have mentioned him before). The show is a collection of twelve pieces comprised of reworked / reclaimed objects, mixed media and a color palette I can fully get behind.

Come on by, check it online and keep up with NSAG happenings on the tweets.

Kate recommending the work of Carl Kleiner.. particularly his Diary and I think it's safe to say I am smitten. There's such a ridiculous range of images; portraiture, architecture, landscape, lifestyle, etc. It really is a Diary of randomly encountered occurences, documented with a great eye. Check my ffffound account for some of my favorites but, really, you can do no better service to yourself than to just read it yourself.

I've been listening to Sharon Van Etten a good deal lately. After an onslaught of recommendations from many trusted sources I sat down and dove into Epic, her second full-length release. It's tough for an album to live up to expectations when they come with so much promise of how great they will be but I'm confident in saying that this one lives up to it. It's an intimate piece of work, quite well suited for the impending cold nights. Her voice has an honest edge to it - both heartbreaking and scathing at times. Epic is short in its runtime, just over 30 minutes, but it's a half hour I've been revisiting time over and over. I suggest you do the same.

So, the Rally to Restore Sanity was this weekend and while I didn't actually attend or watch the festivities on the TV I am liking the responses that are coming from it. Andrew Sullivan has a nice take.. particularly these bits:

The point, it seemed to me, was that politics isn't all there is to life, there is something slightly off about those who think it is, and that political ideology has come to define us culturally and personally far too much. So this wasn't an angry rally for the alienated Democratic left; or even a joyous rally like last fall's March for Equality; or a desperate and frustrated rally like the Tea Partiers. No one was demanding their country back; they were just demanding, well asking, for a little less polarization, and a little more mutual understanding. It was an Obama rally that didn't want to be an Obama rally. And it was only an Obama rally sotto voce because he seems currently the only adult in Washington with any interest in compromising with anyone.

...

Is this actually a politics?

Not if one compares it with, say the Perotistas of the early 1990s, or the Beckians of August (almost all of whom will surely be voting Republican on Tuesday because to do otherwise is the end of all American liberty for ever). But it is an identity politics: proud of being educated, sick of being stereotyped, interested in facts and reality, fed up with being condescended to ... and deeply worried about the direction in this country.

Of course, political musings are nowhere near as entertaining as the onslaught of ironic signs that were present. No matter how the actual event turned out, I'm still entirely pleased at the thought of a rally to bring people together under the umbrella of rational thought, compromise and less investment in the world of political extremities.

Can someone explain to me the purpose of this Poolga App? Apparently it's "15 world-class illustrators. In your pocket and in your heart." Great. I am totally down with all the great iPhone / iPad / desktop / whatever wallpapers that Poolga offers.. they are, dare I say, the best offerings out there. But why would you need an app of the top 15? Couldn't you just have a special section of the web site that fills that means to an end? I typically get in trouble for speaking harshly on such matters but this is not a negative slant on Poolga - just confusion on why an app is being deployed for something that could be just as easily (if not better) be handled by the web.

Somehow, I blame WIRED.

Link via Dolan.

• Is Goo.gl the fastest URL shortener? - when compared to a handful of other services that do the same thing.. yes.. yes it is. Sort of an unsurprising result given the number of servers Google has available at their disposal.
• FLUX - some new HTML5 development software recommended to me via Renaud. The writeup looks good but I've not actually used it yet, so I can't say where it falls in the TextMate vs Dreamweaver vs Coda spectrum of handiness.

In keeping with yearly tradition, here's your 2010 Halloween Playlist...

• Magic: 1978 Trailer - ventriloquist dummies can be terrifying. I consider this the precursor to Chucky. Oh, and be sure to note it's starring Anthony Hopkins.. ridiculous.
• Puppies Make Spooky Halloween Sounds - seriously, if you tab to another window and just listen to this, it's the perfect spooky sound.
• Willem Dafoe's Face - it's Halloween, you need some nightmare fodder. Absolutely disgusting.
• Mary Kate and Ashley Olsen Halloween Song - children in facepaint can be unpleasant, as noted here. It's surprising that this hasn't received the Gimme Pizza treatment yet.
• Elvira Bloopers - Cassandra Peterson has a few issues during filming. I highly suggest searching out more Elvira videos.. she's just the right balance of amusing and too cheesy for her own good. It's bad but it's bad good.
• Screamin' Jay Hawkins - I Put A Spell On You - the makeup, the clothes, the complete nonsense screaming, the music.. he's basically the James Brown of Voodoo. The smoking skull cane is a nice touch.
• Tarantual Ghoul and Her Gravediggers - it's hard to go wrong with animated dancing skeletons and novelty Halloween songs are almost always entertaining a few times through.
• Mickey Mouse: Haunted House - classic 1929 animation. Take 7 minutes out of your day and enjoy.

BONUS

• The Mirror - this SNL digital short still gets me.. especially the very end.
• This Is Halloween - Simpsons Style - not a bad mashup of The Nightmare Before Christmas and Simpsons clips.

That's all I got! Consider revisiting some old Roseanne Halloween episodes or some Treehouse of Horror from The Simpsons if you need some fodder to help you get in the mood. Have a great weekend!

As Halloween is right around the bend, please allow me to remind you.. one more time.. about the following tidbits of music you need to snag for proper enjoyment of your weekend.

• Shaboi - Curse Walk - ten tracks of Halloween goodness. Seriously, there's something here for you - I promise. The album covers such a wide range of styles there's no way you won't find something enjoyable. I refuse to believe there are people out there that don't enjoy Rapsylvania `88 or Dr. Jekyll and Ms. Hideous.
• My Descent Into Madness - my annual Halloween mix is ready for your enjoyment. It's a good listen to help keep you in the holiday mood.. so get it.

Check out this promo for the return of Parks & Recreation.. coming back to NBC soon in IMAX 3D.. just like Seinfeld did.

Cat. Batman.

No further blog entry needed.

Drew gave me the heads up on Sencha Animator yesterday and, initially, I was smitten with what I was seeing. Much like the Adobe 'Edge' tool, it seemed like there was a viable solution for creating timeline based animations with CSS, JS and HTML5. My gut reaction was - Flash is really in trouble!

But on second thought, they aren't. At least not when it comes to banner advertising. You know how big most Flash banner ads are on sites? 40k, tops. You know how big this sample ad is from Sencha? Approximately 385k... and it only works in Webkit!

Long story short, I'm very pleased to see tools for timeline animation in CSS popping up but we're just on the cusp of these things being practically implemented.. be good to keep an eye on them and see where they take things.

If you ever have to debug Google Analytics code (and, really, who doesn't?) then I suggest grabbing this Code Debugger plugin for Chrome. It is a very convenient way to confirm that your Javascript events are firing and see exactly what is being sent to GA right there via the Javascript console.

I had previously seen this great video from Yum Yum London but, for some reason, didn't explore further into their offering of works until I saw some amusing new character designs courtesy of mjut. Turns out, I was missing out. There's not a ton of stuff in their portfolio yet but what is there, is pretty much perfect.

In case you missed it, President Barack Obama was on The Daily Show last night. You can watch the entire episode here. The entire episode is just a dialogue between Obama and Stewart and they cover a wide range of domestic issues. They do fail to even mention the whole debacle in the Middle East but given that the episode is meant to serve as a reminder of the good* Democrats have put into action over the past two years, I'm not entirely surprised. Obama is as personable as ever and does a really good job of explaining that his message of Change has not fallen by the wayside.. it just takes longer than people assumed it would. He's obviously a lot more eloquent with it than I am capable of but it did renew my interest and belief that he can actually help lead the change to a better functioning system.

Long story short, it's something everyone should watch.. so fire it up on your lunchbreak and remember to vote on November 2nd.

* I realize "good" is a subjective term here. Not trying to get a comment feud going like we see every single time I post something vaguely political.

Amir gave me the heads up on the works of Khuan+Ktron, a graphic design studio thats pumping out some rather impressive illustrations. Their portfolio has a number of intricate works - such as this Home Surgery infographic or this Altar Piece.. all done with a bit of whimsy and a tiny bit of the macabre. Be sure to check out their Flickr photostream as well.. loads more work there.

I'd actually love to see them do a collab with Invisible Creature, as I see some vague similarities in their styles.

The above photo is a portion of an 1838 photo taken by Louis Daguerre; basically the father of photography. In it contains what is believed to be the first human being photographed. See him down in the lower left getting his shoe shined? Apparently the long exposure time made any other living presence vanish for lack of staying still but not that guy.. he stayed the course. I'm not entirely convinced this is 100% legit because I inherently distrust anything labeled as "First Ever" but it's certainly likely that it is one of the earliest examples.. and, for that, it is worth getting a better look at.

`Tis the season for compilations of spooky music to make their way to your ears. I released my mix, Jeremy released his own and now Public School has unleashed theirs to the world. Audio Document #8 is sixteen tracks (and a worthy bonus track) of creeptacular listening.. go nab it.