This is a limited issue, three track CD I picked up at a Zebras show. The songs are unlabeled and it’s in a hand made CD sleeve. Zebras mix synthesizer rhythms with noisy guitar. The result is at times funky, other times metal-y but the dominating mood is a hard edged, weird Devo-inspired sound. I forget how much I liked this band live.
I’ve had pretty good luck with the string of adventure games I’ve played lately. It was inevitable that sooner or later I’d come across a dud. Yesterday had promise. I was initially drawn to the slick graphics (well, slick for a point and click game). However, the game is bogged down with nonsensical puzzles and an uneven tone to the story. There’s a horrible tangent where your character needs to learn martial arts that almost made me give up on the game completely. Eventually the story comes back around but it never is that gripping.
As I mentioned a few posts ago, this site has received a major theme overhaul. Aside from a couple form element styles, this change was mostly structural and behind-the-scenes. The new theme is my first foray into using the SASS CSS preprocessing language. Let me tell you, it was a revelation. SASS allows you to write CSS using a super-clean tabbed coding style and (finally) allows the use variables and expressions in styles. I mean, look at this OCD coder’s dreamscape:
Gone are curly brackets and semi-colons. Now elements can be nicely nested within each other and there’s lots of neat shorthand to make code more portable.
Now, I am very late to this party and it turns out much of the SASS code you find on the net is written in a more standard CSS syntax (those sass files are saved as .SCSS rather than .SASS). I hope this cleaner, more modern syntax remains supported because I am completely sold on it.
For quite some time I have heard of SASS but have always been hesitant to dig into it because I always assumed that it was some server-side application that would require SSH and Linux and a bunch of crap I don’t care about. I have since realized that this is not the case. SASS files are compiled locally into a single, standard CSS file. Still, the first thing tutorials seem to tell you to do is to go install Ruby and dive into the command prompt. Yeech! Thankfully, smart people out there (“there” equals Nepal in this case) have developed a windows app that will compile and upload everything you need.
Prepros is a tiny little app that does it all and I highly recommend it if you are developing on Windows. It processes many other languages as well (including Jade and JavaScript) and, regarding SASS, also includes Compass.
Compass is a set of functions and extensions to SASS that makes cross-browser development super easy. A word of warning about Compass: unlike pure SASS it doesn’t work out-of-the-box and requires some research into creating a “config.rb” file. The Zen Drupal theme includes this file and I used that as a base, and I think I understand it now.
In any event, I’m syched about Web development for the first time in a long while and I am glad I made the leap. Also, support Prepros and buy a copy (or two).
Started out okay enough despite the idiotic button mashing mechanics. But, man, this game became pure tedium by the ending. If there was a story here, it was totally lost on me. Just a bunch of feathery haired leather-boys jumping around and killing Raggedy Anne dolls. Is this what console gaming is like? What a bore.
This is some nice Wisconsin spaz-rock that, with it’s Devo inspired hard-rock sound, fits in nicely alongside The Polysics.
Well, recently I’ve been trying to learn how to use SASS for styling Web pages and have kind of fallen in love with it. So here is my first go at it in the form of a new site template. Not much has changed visually, but, trust me, there have been a ton of changes behind the scenes. I will post more about this and the trials of retrofitting a Drupal theme for SASS sometime in the near future. In the meantime, look at the neat comments buttons I made!
Another great 60’s girl group compilation from Ace Records. I think I like the Italian girl singers CD a tad bit more, but this is pretty great. Of course there are songs written by Serge Gainsbourg including the classic, “Laisser tomber les filles” (sung by France Gall). A solid compilation and a great introduction to yé yé.
Well, the book wasn’t great, but at least it was a new twist on the zombie genre. The movie is just terrible. The book was a meticulous telling of the logistics of fighting zombies on a global scale. The film just follows Brad Pitt from place to place where he doesn’t do much of anything. And, once again, sigh… fast zombies. I mean really fast zombies. The hordes just become a digital fluid dynamics simulation that is utterly unthreatening and just silly looking.
This movie was essentially one continuous car chase, but, as terrible as that sounds, it works perfectly. Back when I was 13, I was just the right age when Beyond Thunderdome came out and I loved it. I was not soured on the Mad Max brand and waiting for some sequel to redeem the series. So, for me, Fury Road isn’t so much a return to form as it is just another ramping up in quality. What makes this movie so excellent is the unrelenting sense of danger. As I often paraphrase from Joe Bob Briggs: in this film, anyone can die at any moment. Add to that a ton of practical effects, a solid story, and incredible art direction and you have one of the best movies in recent years (decades even). Just don’t go in with a nitpicky sci-fi fan attitude. Nothing makes practical sense. Just go with it, nerd.
The story of a finely attired gringo mercenary who falls in with a group of banditos in a scheme to steal weapons and support the revolution. Definitely not the most exciting spaghetti western I have seen (what, no gun duels!). Klaus Kinsky is tragically underused and the leads are fairly wooden. It’s mostly a heavy-handed attempt at lefty political nonsense… rich Americans are evil. We get it.
