December 2003 – LonelyMachines

Music

Records that made the world a better place in 2003

Fourtet: Rounds

(Reviewed here) In which Hebden refines and outstrips Pause to make an electronic record that actually breathes. I catch something new every time I listen to it. His best work yet.

Xela: For Frosty Mornings…

A modest and wistful album that matches is title. Subtle and evocative; the equivalent of watching frost etch its way across a windowpane.

Postal Service: Give Up

A continuation of last year’s Benjamin Gibbard/Dntel collaboration. Some of the catchiest stuff you’ll hear this year. Good enough that the few glaring mis-steps (read the lyrics to “Nothing Better”) can be easily overlooked.

Notwist: Neon Golden (US version)

A record which channels everything from vintage New Order to Wire without missing a beat. “Pilot” is one of the best singles this year and comes off (strangely enough) as a post-rock successor to REM’s “Driver 8.”

Yasume: Where We’re from the Birds Sing a Pretty Song

Xela side project using source material from the “Twin Peaks” soundtrack.

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Music

Ashleigh and the Decline of Western Civilization

Stu dropped me an email that really got me thinking. Interestingly enough, it’s about my resent-and-bile filled review of the last Sasha album. I get alot of mail about that, sometimes more than all the other content on the site. Anyhow, on to Stu’s letter:

“While my subject line may tip you off concerning my intentions of this
email, may I say that while I don’t agree with your review of
Airdrawndagger, I still feel it is an excellent review. Your breadth of
knowledge concerning Electronica’s roots are very apparent. You mentioned
the transgendered Wendy Carlos and the decidedly non-techno Mouse on Mars.
Most of the ‘fans’ of electronic music view it as a fad, and are guilty
of not knowing electronica’s roots. People in the Punk scene know their
roots. People in the hip hop vein know their roots. Why can’t more fans
do their homework like you? (don’t answer that)”

Okay, Rule #1:Never ask me a question and append “don’t answer that.”

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Audio Technology

Creative 1.40.06 firmware released.

Creative has finally released a firmware update for the Nomad series.

Figuring I had nothing to lose, I pulled out my recently deceased NJB3, loaded the firmware, and surprise–it now boots! It would appear that something in the 1.40.06 version fixes the underlying cause of the mysterious EAX freeze. Nice.

There are some welcome interface tweaks, including a clock/screensaver and a second skin for the “Now Playing” screen with artist and title on separate lines. Track-seek and skipping have been sped up to the point that they’re almost instantaneous, and I could swear that some of the midrange frequencies have been smoothed out, but maybe that’s just me.

If you’ve got a dead Nomad on your hands, this may be the fix. You can find it at Nomadness or the Creative site.

Code

More fun with alternate stylesheets

You’ll notice that the sidebar now has a “Site Themes” section. Try it.

Pretty cool, eh? Saturday’s rant gave a general idea of how I did it, and this weekend, I’m going to work on a writeup explaining the construction of this site in more detail. There’s still no way to make most of the themes look right on Internet Explorer, but at least Windows users have a couple of usable ways to view the page. If you’re using Internet Explorer, Sobel and Woody should be fine, though some important effects are lost.

Long-time readers will probably notice that several of the site themes are adaptations of my WindowMaker themes. That’s intentional-I’m not just recycling material. With the new themable layout, the site itself can now depict the themes in use (to some extent) instead of just static screenshots.

Rpeg, for example, is a loose port of its briny forbear, while the Railway theme is a pretty much a variation on Kaamos.

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Code

In which our hero caters to the lowest common denominator

As it turns out, there is easy no way around Internet Explorer’s faulty CSS handling. Most of the audience for this page consists of Linux and BSD users, and we all use browser flavors that are almost completely compliant with CSS2, so it wouldn’t seem to be that pressing of an issue, but the plain fact is, I’ve spent alot of time on the design of this page, and the fact that 90-something percent of the world can’t view it correctly…well, it bugs me.

The simplest answer is to specify a simpler (read: “dumbed down”) alternate stylesheet that Explorer can handle. So, being the accomodating guy I am, I set about making a nice one for IE users. Then I checked it on a Windows box, and the ugly truth hit me like a wet flounder across the nose–there’s no way to select stylesheets in Explorer. W3C regs suggest that all browsers have an onboard menu for switching stylesheets.

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Code

Compatibility Notes

Received an email from Marc Cain, who informs me that the page renders just fine on Apple OSX. He’s run it on Camino, Safari, and oddly enough, the Mac version of IE5, and it renders just fine. As in *nix, the Gecko family (Mozilla, Netscape, Galeon) also renders correctly.

There’s a bug in Konqueror 3.1.4 that causes the main body to remain stationary while the title and sidebar elements scroll. If anyone knows a workaround, let me know. This is one I’d definitely want to fix.

Basically, the operative element is in the background property background: #333 url(sharp.jpg) no-repeat fixed 0 0;. The fixed 0 0 value tells the browser to keep the background image fixed and aligned to the top-left corner. The individual sections use a modified version of the image, which is blurred and darkened, but has the same dimensions and alignment. Since both the foreground and background images are aligned and (theoretically) fixed on the canvas, the effect should be that of scrolling text on a translucent background.

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