You might have noticed lately that the colour-scheme of this site changes each time you click a link or reload a page (currently we have blue, pink, and green). This is something easily accomplished with just an extra 2 tiny CSS files, and a little bit of PHP.
If you’ve read my previous article – WordPress And A Horizontal Baseline Pt.1 – you are already familiar with the CSS that forms the foundation of this site. What we’re going to do first is strip out anything to do with colour from the CSS and put it in it’s own separate file that we’re going to call blue.css.
a:active, a:hover, .commentlist a:hover, .commentlist a:active, .commentlist cite a:hover, .commentlist cite a:active, #recent-comments a:hover, #related-posts a:hover, .lastfm a:hover, #footer a:hover, #footer a:active, .commentlist pre a:hover, .commentlist pre a:active {color:#34B0F8;}
#menu ul li a:hover, #menu ul li a:active {background:#34B0F8;}
.entry p a:hover img, .entry p a:active img {border:1px solid #34B0F8;}
a.feature:hover {border-color:#34B0F8;}
Continue reading: Random Stylesheets in WordPress
The aim of the Echo Nest Remix API is to let you manipulate and remix music and video through code. Execute the few lines below:
import echonest.audio as audio
audio_file = audio.LocalAudioFile("input.mp3")
beats = audio_file.analysis.beats
beats.reverse()
audio.getpieces(audio_file, beats).encode("output.mp3")
And you have now reversed a song by ‘playing its beats forward from the end of the song’. The output of which would look a little something like this.mp3.
First off, you’re going to need to grab an API key by registering an account. If you’re using OS X you can follow this install process (here’s Linux and Windows). Make sure to run the example at the end of the installation process to confirm that everything works.
Congratulations! You can now mess around with beats and manipulate all your mp3s and videos. Try out the rest of the examples to get an idea for just what the Echo Nest Remix API can do. To get an idea of just how powerful the (upcoming) video manipulation is, check out Where’s The Pow by Paul Lamere in which he remixes the Black Eyed Peas – Boom Boom Pow.
41st Best Stand up Stewart Lee suggested during his recent BBC program that once upon a time in history a man who could lay claim to having read all the books in the world would be considered to be extremely intelligent. This is fact that’s hard to dispute. However, it’s equally hard to dispute the following point he put forth – that a man who could claim to have read all the books available today could be considered to be perhaps the stupidest man alive.
The idea I took from this is the perhaps controversial phrase “all of us are not as smart as one of us”.
This is a common idea on the internet – that there more people there are on it, the worse it actually gets – and has been witnessed first hand through the mass movements of people from one social networking site to another. Myspace for instance, once the happy home of everyone everywhere was abandoned for bebo at the point where it launched Lilly Allen’s career and every other ass with a guitar decided to network themselves to perfect strangers. Bebo was abandoned for Facebook when everyone we hated ended up there. Facebook has been abandoned for Twitter by idiots.
Basically as soon as everyone knows about a site and joins up to it it’s potential usefulness, fun and eventually credibility is destroyed. For an example of this just look at Trent Reznor and Ashton Kutcher’s personal use of Twitter to trumpet nothing other than their own egos and how this might affect a persons decision to use it,
So where then does this leave Hunch the new site which offers you your very own web based decision making robot?
Continue reading: Hunch
It was this article on A List Apart that first got me started on the idea of using a horizontal grid on my latest WordPress theme (the very one that you’re looking at right now). The best example of what aligning your type to a baseline grid means, can be seen here. Note how all the text falls within the lines, no matter the sizing or images. It took quite a few months of work to try and get it to look the same in all browsers using the very minimum of CSS hacks, but is now 99% done (more in the next post on how IE6 and IE7 deal with text-boxes differently).
The very first part is setting up a CSS reset. I’m using a reset that has been slightly customised from one I found a few years back. The more important changes were to do with how <table> is treated, as I found quite a few conflicts with WP-eCommerce (more on how heavily I have had to hack up that piece of junk in another post).
Continue reading: WordPress And A Horizontal Baseline Pt.1
Welcome to Edition Two. I haven’t done one of these in a while because I’m lazy, so I suppose I better get right into it.
THEM THANGS is the photo blog of Justin Blyth. There are rarely any words, and definitely no explanations, so I’m going to have to make some assumptions here. THEM THANGS is a collection of cool photos/designs/pictures/lyrics/words that Justin has found in his travels throughout the internet, and there is certainly a lot of them (over 10 pages now). Make sure to wait for the long load times, and beware of the slightly NSFW content that lurks within.
Scott Pommier takes cool pictures of cool things, there really isn’t much more to be said than that, but make sure to click on through to his interview with feature shoot and read about how he got started.
The Beardmore Bros are legends in automotive circles. Having worked for decades, and with an almost unhealthy obsession of Morris Minors, they have created some of the coolest custom cars and sleepers in the UK. Make sure to read about their latest project: A space framed, 2000cc 16v Fiat engined, 178mm widened, Morris Minor convertible that they use for hillclimbs and sprints.
Windosill is a beautiful point-and-click adventure from Vectorpark – creators of a bunch of brilliantly simple downloadable games for the Mac and PC. You can play the first part of the game online here but will have to pay US$3.00 to play the remainder.
And lastly I’m going to introduce you to the way that I’ve been spending the last 3 days: reading Fullmetal Alchemist. A manga about two brothers who are trying to restore their bodies after an attempt to bring their mother back to life went very wrong. Full of terrific action, great comedy, and an enthralling plot, it will suck you in. I’m sure that if you search hard enough you’ll find a variety of ways to read it online.
It doesn’t matter that we’re halfway through June already – there’s still time to gather up all the stuff we’ve been looking at at SPK and throw together a post of to let the internet know about it. So to make up for our extreme lateness, we will be doing two editions, one from each of us.
For the most part the reason that this post is late has a lot to do with comics. Specifically Seinen Manga which I can’t seem to get enough of right now. Since there are so many of the things out there it’s proven difficult to stop
Luckily (or unluckily) for me, as I am not Japanese and sometimes find it hard to tell which title will be what I’m looking for, recommendation sites like Anime Planet exist and their easy to use database system, though small right now, makes it very easy to pick out something new.
Just to get you started here are a few of the things it’s pointed me towards this month:
Dragon Head is post-apocalyptic, dark and creepy but otherwise difficult to catergorise but definitely worth a look.
Berserk requires a word of warning: there are just over 20 years of it to read so it could take a while to trawl through it. It’s also a fairly brutal read focusing as it does on evisceration and sexual violence towards almost everything so if these things are not to your taste it may be best avoided. However it is a brilliantly drawn, engrossing and stunning in it’s scale and imagination. There are also a lot of drawings of horses.
Hotel is a short but beautiful one-shot comic. If it doesn’t make you cry a little you are probably not human.
If you’re interested in any of these titles, or any manga at all and you’re looking for a place to try them out for yourself then you can head over to MangaFox which is easily the best site of it’s kind I have found so far.
Continue reading: Really Late Monthly Links Round Up
We all know my history with Twitter – I hate it. Unrelentingly. But I leave it alone, it leaves me alone and we’re quite happy ignoring each other. Occasionally I use it to to shout at this man as he is an old acquaintance I don’t get much of a chance to talk to anymore. On the whole I am aware of the dangers of Twitter and am happy to leave them the hell alone.
Not so for one Mr Trent Reznor, lead singer of Nine Inch Nails who has recently taken his huffy little ball and stomped all the way home. You see Trent Reznor does not understand the most important thing about the internet in that it is much like the abyss – when you stare at it, it is staring right on back.
Now I’m not a Trent Reznor aficionado. Apart from knowing that he is pretty short (5 foot 7 and 1/2 according to Yahoo answers) and that a guy I knew once whored himself out to a fat chick for tickets to one of his shows I am pretty clueless as to general Reznor facts. Which is why I have had to do some appropriate research before taking the time to write this article and what I deem appropriate is around 5 minutes scanning his Wikipedia article and checking out his now famous Twitter.
Continue reading: Trent Reznor Rage Quits Twitter

A collection of things. Expect some articles in the coming months about the Yashica Minister 700, FED1f NKVD, Nikomat FT2, and Polaroid SX-70 in the same vein as the Olympus Chrome Six. The hammer, wrench, paper bag, and girls diary will not be getting articles however.
Nico Nico Douga is the YouTube of Japan. I’d love to link you some of the brilliant videos they have over there, as well as the great interface and the way that the comments can fly across the video in relation to the point they are talking about, but you can’t see any of the videos on the site without registering. So today we’re going to walk you through the relatively simple registration process.
Continue reading: Nico Video Registration in English

Despite looking like a solo act La Roux is actually a duo comprising of Elly Jackson and Ben Langmaid who, at the beginning of the the year were tipped to become one of the big names of 2009.
Sounding as fresh and engaging as they do it’s very hard not to like them.
Similarly it’s definitely difficult to not be thankful for them – after all we’re being inundated right now with a succession of female led electronica projects whose names begin with L and who mostly sound the same:
Little Boots who’s been famous forever but now she’s been removed from her bedroom seems awkward and re-hashed, LadyHawke who I genuinely like but for some reason just doesn’t do it for me and Lady GaGa. The least said about Lady GaGa the better.
Classified as part of the Wonky Pop movement La Roux’s music is credible, androgynous, 80s influenced and mind-bendingly catchy working together addictive synth hooks, clear, piercing vocals and heart felt lyrics. Add their videos – which are in turn 80s camp, deceptively simple, and visually stunning – and you have a fantastic package that reeks of David Bowie, Annie Lennox and everything that was good about the 80s.
La Roux’s debut album is set for release on the 29th of June and promises to be something very special.