Lonelystreets

A New Blog, in look and future content

Paul — Wed, 24 Oct 2012 22:29:22 +0000

Some folks reading this may notice that LonelyStreets has undergone a radical visual shift. I’ve been meaning to update the theme for years (I was frankly embarrassed by the way it looked – the design dating from before I received any formal design education when my aesthetic sense was questionable at the very best).

The sad fact is, however, that I only got around to making this update because the site got hacked a couple weeks ago, forcing me to reinstall WordPress to get everything clean. I used this as impetus to pick a new theme (made by someone with the relevant skills to properly customize a WP presentation – server-side scripting is one area of code I have yet to touch). Unlike the old theme, I did little to customize this one; partly because I want to enjoy blogging without worrying about the code, partly because I think my uneducated customizations may have been what made the site hackable previousy, and partly because this theme is so nice to begin with. So big thanks to SomaDesign.ca for the free theme. I particularly liked that the theme’s author is unapologetic that the theme was created for blogs that focus on writing, and it is not made for visual pizazz, SEO, or any other silliness that clearly doesn’t apply to my little site anyway.

Finally, I plan to begin blogging about design again. I recently re-read some of the posts I wrote while at CMU, and was surprised at how much I enjoyed them: design theory is cool. Now that I’m a professional designer with no solid connections to academia, I realize how few designers think about theory and see myself becoming one of those. To fight this decline in open-minded introspection I will henceforth blog about design and my design work with greater frequency, a focus on topical posts, and quit filling my blog with random stuff. I will probably create a second blog elsewhere to house my DJ mixes and illustrations. I’ll post a link if/when that happens.

So thanks to any and all who read this – stay tuned for interesting design musings to come!

MOTOACTV

Paul — Wed, 19 Oct 2011 01:55:23 +0000

I was crazy excited that the product I’ve been working on was finally publicly announced today! It was top topic on twitter for most of the afternoon and has been getting great feedback from the tech press. Do some Googling if you want to know more – lots of blogs have been posting their impressions.

MOTOACTV

A Bunch of Mixes

Paul — Tue, 05 Jul 2011 16:48:36 +0000

Doing some catch up over the long weekend and thought I’d post some mixes I’ve had lying around and meant to upload some time ago:

4.26.11 Hawaii Mix (did this one while on vacation in Hawaii – nothing beats DJing in the sun!) This mix is probably my favorite among this bunch.

4.17.11 Mix Mostly classic progressive house in this mix, with some older tunes by Sasha and Mark Knight mixed with newer stuff. Starts slow and picks up, hitting a crescendo about 2/3 of the way through.

5.30.11 Mix A lot of electro in this mix, including some really fantastic tunes (the Madeon remix of Deadmau5′s Raise Your Weapon is probably my favorite tune recently).

1.22.11 Mix This one starts out a bit more techy before going straight progressive. Lots of melody driven big-room stuff in the second half.

5.8.11 Mix A lot of really poppy & catchy tunes in this one – gets a little crazy (and sloppy) at the very end, but worth a listen.

Hope you enjoy them – thanks for listening!

New Mix

Paul — Sat, 09 Apr 2011 16:13:18 +0000

I’ve been meaning to put this mix up for some time – it had a couple clicks in it that I wanted to go back and edit out (which I don’t normally do, but I liked this one so much I thought it was worth it). In the meantime a new version of Traktor, the DJ software I use was released – so I’m hoping to have lots more mixes up soon.

Enjoy!

2.15.11 mix

Squidpocalypse

Paul — Fri, 04 Feb 2011 03:39:32 +0000

More Doodles

Paul — Sun, 30 Jan 2011 05:31:52 +0000

I keep a notebook full of doodles (not my work notebook), but rarely scan them. I actually only scanned this one in because I was trying to cut it up and reassemble it in interesting ways using Processing (didn’t work very well). Hope you like it!

Squid and Rain

Paul — Mon, 24 Jan 2011 05:50:44 +0000

I’ve been fascinated with the work of Femke Hiemstra recently. I picked up a book of her work (Rock Candy) that offers insight into some of her processes. It appears that she sometimes creates finished drawings with graphite, and then scans them into Photoshop for coloring. I decided to try the technique and must say that I’m quite pleased with the results: take a look!

Doodles at Work

Paul — Sat, 22 Jan 2011 04:45:32 +0000

I sometimes (ok, frequently), doodle in my notepad while at work. Last week I finally filled a notepad and moved onto a new one, so it seemed like a perfect time to go back through my notebook and pull out the various (non-work) sketches that were scattered about it. I scanned them in, and with a little Photoshop trickery was able to piece them all together into one cohesive whole. Much of the imagery was heavily influenced by things I was reading at the time, including Al Columbia’s The Trumpets They Played!, China Mieville’s Kraken, and Jeff Vandermeer’s Finch (among others).The full thing is something like 30×18 inches, but here’s a (much) smaller copy I wanted to share:

Motoskine Sketches

Thanks for looking!

Generative with Squid

Paul — Tue, 14 Dec 2010 21:43:10 +0000

New Comic

Paul — Mon, 26 Jul 2010 21:27:53 +0000

From the “Kawaii Not” vein of comics: