Well, its a new year. Close enough anyway. Five and a half hours by my count, and with this new year I have something to announce.

FINALLY after all the talk and ideas and time I am launching my next step into the web which is in the form of a brand new site called fifty foot shadows.

The new site will be a replacement to twistedsun.net. Thats right, this marks the end of an era. 8+ years of twistedsun will be coming to a close with this new year. I feel as though it has run its course. Time and time again I have wondered what I should do with the site and time and time again I have found myself disappointed in some way with the result. The new site will be very similar in its content in many ways.

There will still be desktops published for everyone, and there will still be music discussed and stories told. The difference is in the name and the approach. Everything will be centralized and brought into one single blog space. Sections will be deviled simply using categories and the design will be fresh, empty, and easy to navigate.

I feel that everything around me is changing in my life and so I found it appropriate to start completely fresh this year. I am really happy with the new name and I hope everyone likes it! It came to me earlier this year while traveling out west and I think it is just what I was looking for. At one point I really wanted to turn it into a community of desktop posters I find that I just can not devote the time into moderating such a site.

My focus this year is in taking big steps forward and changing the way I live it. Also, for those of you wondering, no, twistedsun.net is not going anywhere. It will be staying as it is in its current state for the foreseeable future so everyone can get at all the desktops and posts from the past. All new content, however, will be posted on the thew site.

So with that said, I invite you all to come step into my new home on the web here, at www.fiftyfootshadows.net

enjoy, and please, let me know what you think!

A few days ago I came across a really interesting blog service and jumped right on in. I have been looking for something like it for quite some time. A simple interface to allow me to catch images and links in a really quick and basic way. Images that somehow stop me from scrolling for a minute and get me to imagine, think, or whatever else. The service is called Tumblr. Its a basic blogging service with a slick little javascipt that allows you to catch an image within a page and quickly add it to your tumblr blog along with a link to where it came from. It's great really and will give me a place to come back to look over found images for inspiration and whatnot. I think I will eventually tweak the CSS and get settled in a bit more but for the time being its perfect for my needs. I would recommend this to anyone and everyone. If you do start one up please add the link to the comments here so I can follow it.

My tumblr page is www.tsun.tumblr.com

A handful of new desktops have been added to the desktop page for your desktop needs. I know I have not been posting as much lately and that is mostly because I have been spending so much time getting my head around this trip to Europe I have been planing. I have narrowed it down to a handful of countries and now I just have to pick a few places to travel to along the way. I will most likely post more on that as it develops. THANK YOU to those who have helped out with their suggestions so far, they have helped me get some key ideas in place which has been important. Please, by all means, keep them coming.

...to the beach with a couple of new desktops. Find them HERE.

OK OK, I know I have been talking about a couple of new projects for a long long time now but I think I have just settled on a way to bring these to life. I am still a ways off from bringing these to life but I am starting to see the light at the end of the tunnel.

For those of you who may not know one idea is a new desktop site which will feature a handful of photographers from around the world all posting to one blog which I think will create a really solid desktop site to share with the world. All I need for this is to find a few photographers to help me get started in the process and get some initial content going and I will be approaching a few people that I have seen online and find to have a somewhat like minded approach to photography. I hope for the site to include stories from time to time and feature some great photography and hopefully grow to be something really unique over time. Part of me is considering letting it become multi-lingual and inviting people to post in their native language if they would prefer. Do you think that would make things overly confusing? Don't want to get in to far over my head with it...

The other project will be a podcast stripped down to its bear essentials and will probably take a little more work pulling together. For this I would also like to gather a small group of posters from various point in the world that have the capability to record high quality field recordings of various places in their life. Some could be of places in nature, some different places in more urban areas, some maybe just a recording from a party. Anything from the recorders every day life. The goal would be to have the recordings be from 15-30 minutes in length and not have any commentary during the recordings other than perhaps an opening tag line or something. This idea is not as well thought out as the desktop page but its been running around in my head for quite some time now as well and I think If i were to get the right people involved that it could be something really interesting.

So I am posting this to get any ideas that any of you readers may have for these projects or even any help any of you think you may be able to give in getting these going. So feel free to leave a comment and let me know what you think and I will go from there. Thanks!

Three new desktops have been posted and a Hi-Fi post should be coming later today for those of you who enjoy those.

It's been a busy month in my life and the site is feeling it. I have plans on posting some info on my new lens and the iphone if I can ever get my act together and sit down to make a write up and take some photos for it. Its just so hard to find free moments for these simple things. C'est la vie.

Anyways, should I make this image into a desktop? What do you think? I also have been posting images pretty regularly over on my new photoblog light.twistedsun.net which has kind of a busted rss feed at the moment but I hope to remedy that as soon as I get a chance to have a chat with my personal coding geek helper over in the Netherlands. (ahem... dave, are you listening?)

Speaking of code, Id like to get this little twitter updater script to NOT add those stupid looking tabbed over dots and just get it more list like. Any suggestions?

Hope to get back to regular posting one of these days, thanks for being patient!

New desktops, ripe for the picking over on the desktop page. Get em while they're hot.

I have launched a new mini-site and I was going to wait a few more days to announce it officially but I have decided that I want to go ahead and get it out there and make it known to everyone here. The site is a photoblog that I will hopefully be updating once each day. The time of day that I actually get around to posting will change depending on my day so don't try and set your clock to the update cycle or anything but I do hope to get a new photo up each day.

I had an older site that I had set up for friends and family where I posted photos that I may not have normally shared publicly. Mostly snapshots from my every day life, at work, traveling, sitting around, anything really. I liked to post a little comment or story or thought with each set of new photos and I really enjoyed doing it. The system I used to update it was very flawed however and so I stopped using it not to long after I had started it. Ever since I have wanted to get a simple photo blog going. Something for those shots I mentioned a moment ago, the everyday ones that I may not want to devote a whole post to here or may not want to post as a desktop for whatever reason.

in the new site you will hopefully see mostly recent photos but I will throw in the occasional older photo if I don't have something new to share. I am using a great bit of web software called pixel post to organize and do all the thinking for me so all I have to do to post is press a couple of buttons and type out a description. Simple is a good thing for a project like this and I am more than excited to announce it to all of you.

On the page you can leave comments on photos which I welcome you do, in fact, i encourage it! If you read something in a comment I have made about the image feel free to start a discussion with your thoughts on the subject. I would love to see it get some feedback and spark some ideas or something of the sort. For instance, if you see an image that you are just dying to see made into a desktop then please speak up and leave a comment and I will see what I can do.

The navigation is very simple I think, there is the home page with the newest photo and on each photo page you can click either the comments link above the image of the "photo info & comments link below the image to call forth the image description and comment field. There is a link there below the image notes to close that area should you not want to post anything but would like to read what I have written about a photo. You can navigate forwards and backwards through photos by either clicking the current image to go back or simply use the previous/next links in the white area below the image. There is also a browse page link at the top where you can see thumbnails of all photos posted and an about page which im sure you can figure out.

So that's that, my newest project is online and ready to go. I have two more in the pipeline that I can not wait to announce and get moving on but you will just have to wait for that time to come. So till next time, enjoy the photoblog and I will see you again here soon!

The new sites address is light.twistedsun.net

Well, I got my laptop back and its working good as new. I went ahead and stuck a 100gb 7200 speed drive in here to replace the tiny 60gb drive that came in it and filled out the ram to a full 2 gb as well. Hopefully that will be equal to some more speed and easier work for me. I am running the full version of the new rapidweaver without any serious issues to speak of, I will just have to keep messing with it to see how these neat new features work. In other news, the reason I have not been posting much is because, as always these days, I have been so busy with work and travel. Last week i was in nashville for a couple days working sound at a show featuring an elvis impersonator which was pretty interesting to say the least. So now I can tell people that I have done sound for both Elvis, AND the Beatles. Impressive, no?

It feels like I have been anywhere but here updating for all of you loyal readers and I hope to see that change as, once again, I am streamlining the site to try and make updates go easier and quicker for me. One of the things I have decided to change for now is to remove the podcast. I just have not had time to get them put together and released and its just sitting there dead in the water so until I have time again to put them together I am putting that on hold and removing it from the site. I will, however make all of the episodes available, just not in a fancy rss feed or anything. Eventually I am going to re-brand the show and start it up again under a new name but until then just browse through and check out the 10 zillion or so other ones out there.

I dont want to go on for to long here seeing as there are only a handful of you really interested in any of this kind of personal blah blah blah. So I will hopefully get this site moving along better again but how many times have I made THAT promise on these pages? aaahhhh life...

also, what do you think of the new slight design changes like bigger text here, a darker outer shell, archive by year, and new header. I decided to stop using that crazy script to cycle through images for now.

I have been messing with a beta version of the new rapidweaver for a few weeks now it seems in the little holes of time i could find to mess around with it and there are a few new welcome features that i could use. Mainly that it works faster and is less or a resource hog. I will find out as soon as I hit the publish button in a minute here. For those of you who dont know, I have been using some mac software called rapidweaver for over a year now to maintain the site. Why this and not wordpress or something else? Well, simply because I like having everything from my site right here with me at all times to work on with or without internet connections. This and I like the way it functions and if they keep making the nice little changes that they have been making then im sure it will just get better and better as time goes on. Hopefully this will work a bit smoother in the uploading dept. which will lead to me being able to make posts more often if it is less time consuming. So as an added bonus to the post I will throw in a photo from my flicker page that people seem to be enjoying on that side of my web existence...

New desktops have arrived safe and sound over in the desktop section. here is a preview... enjoy!

I have added a nice little php code to rotate the title photo above and threw a few photos into the folder so visitors can expect it to change aorund a bit from now on. It will be really easy for me to use new iamges in the title and I would like to eventually build a nice big library of images to randomly grab as the header. It is a really handy trick that I have been wanted to get going for a while now.

Also, im sure some of you are wondering about desktops and no worries. I should have a couple of new ones posted soon.

Till then...

The body text is now a little bigger here on the blog, just a quick change for now. What do you think, does it need to be bigger than this even? I will also be adding either a rotating image on the top of the page or a user selectable image with 4 or so choices. Just depends on what I can get to work. I am not exactly a coding geek or anything but I get by. At any rate, there are still changes yet to come around here so keep an eye out as always...

I will leave you with a photo of the best soda on the planet. Its called AppleBeer and it is non-alcoholic and I have no idea why beer is even in the name. Anyways, it can only really be found around Utah so whenever I am out there I buy up a bunch of it because it is much cheeper than mail order. till next time then...

I was getting tired of all that darkness and was looking to freshen up the site so I have decided to go ahead and give it a facelift for the zillionth time. I am really liking this one and I may make a couple little tweaks here and there before I am totally happy with it but I wanted to go ahead and get things moving with the new design. It is just the beginning of the changes coming around here. That new project I keep talking about is getting closer and closer to seeing the light of day and I am getting more and more excited about it. But in the mean time I thought I would give twistedsun.net a fresh coat of paint. There are a few things that I wish I could make possible with the design but due to the shortcomings of the software I am using to run it there is only so much I can do with it at the moment so heres hoping that future versions allow for greater flexibility in some areas! Right..

So tell me, what do you think? Also, while your at it. Is there anything you, as the readers, would like to see more of around here? More personal stories and blogging? More consistent music posts? More podcast? More desktops? Different kinds of desktops? Suggestions are always welcome and I am always looking to make this site as interesting as possible to you guys so please, let me know!

I have posted three new desktops for anyone interested and I will be posting again here soon when I gather my thoughts a bit. I am currently in Memphis, TN where my brother is attending school and will be back home in a few days. What a trip it has been, I will leave it at that for now and talk to you again soon!

Yes, you read that right, you now have twelve new desktops to choose from in the desktop section. They are from the past week and I hope you enjoy them. Please feel free to leave a comment with your favorite image, id love to know what you readers think. Sorry the descriptions are a little short this time around, I decided to spend less time writing descriptions and more time getting more images online for you guys to enjoy so have at it! By the way I have quite the story to tell from today and I will get that up tomorrow I think...

Are up in the desktop page, I will get more up sometime soon when I get some more time.



And just a bit of an update, I am leaving zion today and driving somewhere else down the road. I have a vague idea of where but not exactly yet.

Also on a side note, I would like to recommend a place of business here in Springdale which is right outside of Zion National Park here that has been really nice to me and helpful the last few days. It is called Cafe Soliel and they have everything from breakfast to lunch to coffe/ espresso and smoothies. All of which are quite good I might say, well of what I have had here. So I give my thanks to Eddie here as I leave this amazing area for the next step of my adventure...

New desktop in the friends section straight from one of my more consistent twistedsun.net friend posters Fabian. Click the image below to head over and check it out.

Some of you may have noticed slowdowns in traffic in the past day or so. This is most likely because of earthquakes in asia that have caused some serious damage to lines connecting them to the rest of the world. My host is in Hong Kong at the moment which would explain the slowdown. Sorry for any delays in accessing the site. Things seem to be moving along a little better than before so thats good to see.

It's frightening to think that this great network that now holds so much of the worlds communications together is so fragile when it comes to natural disasters and the like.

Read more here.

(Sorry for getting this up later than I wanted to guys!)

So the contest is now over and a winner has been drawn from a tiny bowl and I made a video of the big moment. I am looking a little ragged because I just woke up and because I am in a rush to get going because I woke up late. So pardon my rough appearances and somewhat terse message to you all but here it is, the winner is.... (sorry, the audio came out really quiet for some reason or another...)



Congratulations to Michu of Germany I believe and your valiant struggle to become the winner of my simple little contest! I will be in touch to get you your winnings.

But wait, there is more!

Because I am feeling for those of you who did not make it out of that tiny bowl alive I decided yesterday to give everyone who entered a gift for showing support of the site here by entering. You all will get a 5x7 print of your favorite desktop image!

I will get to mailing all of those who entered as soon as I have the chance to talk with you about the little details and whatnot so be on the lookout for an email from me soon.

Thanks to everyone once again and have a great day/night.

Update2: OK I am closing the entries now and I am going to set up the drawing and get it underway. I should have a winner posted in an hour or so, thanks to everyone who entered!

Update: I will hold off the drawing until the last moment of christmas at the far most western point of the world. I will post again when I will be closing the entries. By the way, Happy Christmas, Joyeux Noël, vrolijke Kerstmis, frohe Weihnachten, メリークリスマス, 즐거운 성탄, Feliz Navidad, веселое рождество, 圣诞快乐, Buon Natale, God jul, Mutlu noeller... !



Something like a contest, like a chance to win big* here at twistedsun.net. It's nearly christmas and people all around the world celebrate the holiday in their own way and I have decided to celebrate the holidays by giving something away.

As most of you regulars here know, I love music and I love to share it with others almost as much as I enjoy listening to it myself. So, that said, here is the deal. I have decided to give a free iTunes gift certificate worth 10... no, im feeling generous, make that 20 US dollars. Im not sure how it works if I give one to someone outside of the states but I will make it work somehow. (I wish that bleep.com, warpmart, or boomkat had gift certificates because I would like to give you an option but iTunes is simply the easiest way to go music wise. )

So at any rate, heres what you have to do to get in on the action. I was thinking of some way to make this fair and give everyone a chance so I am going to put the comment system to use. Leave a comment on this post and tell me your favorite desktop here on twistedsun.net. (I'm curious, what can I say). Just leave the name of your favorite as the comment and whatever holiday wishes you care to make to the world. Make sure your name is entered properly as well as your email (the email will not be seen by the public) I will take all of the names, put them in a hat (or something of the sort) and draw the winner. I will even make a video of the drawing and post it. The winner will be announced December 25th so check back here then to see who won!

Its that simple, so get to it!

*note that the term big is relative and the winings may or may not live up to the expectations found when you thing of something that is "big"

PS - I've decided to add another option to the prize, Now you can choose between the gift certificate or a print of your choice from those available on my store page. So if you win the drawing you now have that option as well... Hopefully enough people will enter to make for a nice fair drawing!

The new site that I mentioned starting a while back is getting clsoer to becoming a reality. I think I may have settled on a new site name to go with and I am working out exactly what I will be moving around to make it work. So far I'm thinking that the desktop section of twistedsun.net will be moved to this new site which may seem like a bold move and the only other option would be to move everything else and keep the desktops here but I'm ready for a change and hopefully moving them to their own dedicated site will work out in the end.

The idea in moving the section would be to allow myself to hopefully start more of a comunity with the project. The new page will most likely be using wordpress which will allow me to invite other people to make entries as well. In other words I wold like to invite a handfull of other photographers from around the world to participate in the site and add their own work to the site. This will, of course, be kind of tricky because it appears as though most photographers that I truly think would be fitting to be part of the project may be to attched to their own work or to afraid to let it go for this use at a big enough resolution to make them work as desktops. I understand this but also feel as though the resolution I am currently offering these images are not at all big enough to make decent prints from which would halt other uses of them. This and by compressing the desktops into .zip files you can stop people from easily adding the images as backgrounds to their web pages and eating up all of the bandwith around here which was a frustrating problem before I started doing it this way.

Sorry, im getting off topic. Imagine a site where multiple photographers submit desktops and descriptions and stories from around the world rather than just little ol' me. I feel as though it would offer a unique site that is more than a desktop sharing community, more than just a photoblog, more than just a collection of desktops from different artists. A place a little more personal where you will hopefully find little stories or thoughts to go along with the photos posted. Maybe I am too hopeful here but I may as well shoot for the stars right?

Other parts of twistedsun will stay in place, at least for now, like the podcast and this blog and probably the archive of desktops that are currently available when I switch over. So all of this out in the open, what to you guys think? Your input is always appreciated and helpful so lets hear it!

ps- I will reveal the name of the site when I know that its the right one which I am still considering so be patient.

For those of you who may not have noticed, there are new things afoot around here. The desktops page has sprouted a new image and the podcast page has grown another episode with some really great music. Click around and see whats new!

I just posted a new podcast for those interested, this is a great one in my opinion. Lots of really mellow music that I am really happy to share. I hope to get another misc ramblecast out sometime soon when I'm in the mood to record one and I already have enough music for another music episode which will be a big one including amazing acts such as Jamie Lidell, The Mountain Goats, and Joanna Newsom! So thats something to look forward to.

Other than this I will head out and shoot some photos for some new desktops, I know I have not posted many recently and I'm sorry about that but I do what I have time for here on the site. So thats all for now, thanks for visiting (I never say that it seems but I mean it) and I will see you again soon.

I wanted to step in here and mention that two of my prints have been sold from my store to long time reader Dave. He bought two of my favorite prints available and they are getting mailed off today. There are still some great prints left so head over and check them out.

I will be adding a couple poster sized prints sometime in the near future so keep an eye out...

From time to time I like to dig through my statistics to see how things are going around here traffic wise and its always interesting to dig through the x-rays for signs of life. Today for the first time I found that more people were visiting from outside of the States than inside these walls. I was always hopeful that this would happen one of these days and that day is today. The amount of visitors from various countries fluctuate a lot but thats to be expected. At the moment I'm getting a lot of visitors from Spain so I thought I would say hello.

If you can read the contents of the blog here and are following it at all take a second to leave a comment to let me know where you are visiting from.

So I have finally added some content to my store page. I am starting simple and selling off a few photos that I had made prints of recently. More will follow sometime and in different sizes and will most likely and hopefully being poster size prints of your favorite desktops. Also I will be selling a lens soon as well as other odds and ends. So I will leave it at that and present to you the twistedsun.net yardsale.

I had an unexpected absence from the internet for a couple days there from a somewhat last minue show 4 hours north in Virginia. I had a couple things I wanted to post but couldn't like the other version of the shadow desktop and another twistedsun hi-fi which will be along shortly, I have to gather album covers and links and it will be ready to go. Also I have enough music for two new music podcasts so that will be along sometime here soon as well. Most likely Sunday or Monday because I am heading back up to Virginia but this time to go through photos from a wedding I shot a couple months back. Anyways, more soon, this week just ended up being busier than I thought it would be.. as always.

(new desktop)

I have added a new section to the site which will be a temporary one probably. I will be filling it in in the coming days I hope. Prints, lenses, and whatever else. Head over and see for yourself. OK so there's nothing there yet but there will be soon. I just wanted to get the page set up and ready. Thats all for now.

I have been a fan of Flickr for a long time now, it is by far my favorite online photo sharing tool. It just works so well and seems to have a really great community of photographers and people involved within it. I have decided to start putting my account to use and I will be posting photos up on there from time to time. Currently I have uploaded most of my recent desktops and I will continue to add them there as I post them here as another way of sharing them with people. I have kept a personal photoblog over the past month or so using Apple's Aperture software and I have decided to start using Flickr for that use instead and hopefully make some new friends in the process.

That said I would like to invite any readers with Flickr accounts to become a contact of mine on flickr to help me ease into the community over there. Thanks and Ill see you there... heres a link to my profile/page:

Twistedsun.net on Flickr.com

After a couple weeks of no new desktops I have a few new ones waiting to be posted so I will be adding them slowly over the next couple of days as I have time.

update: there are now 3 more desktops available.

Some new desktops are up! Five actually, two of which are on the friends page and are two of four that I have to post in that section (the others will be there soon). The image in this post is one of them, absolutely wonderful shots I'd say. Head over and check em out.

Three new desktops are up and they are all of toys!

I will be heading out of town and away from the internet for a few days and so I wont be updating the site until monday or tuesday. Sorry for the downtime but it should be a great weekend. I will be shooting a wedding on saturday out at a farm which is where the recent farm desktops were from. Anyways, I will be thinking of that contest I mentioned a couple posts back and maybe get something going when I return. Till then, hope everyone has a great weekend. Ill be back soon with new desktops (I have a few lined up) and more so check back then!

I somehow totally missed this but if you glance at the sidebar and count the months you will find that it has been just over a year now since the launch of the current version of this site. I know it has gone through a lot of changes in the past year and I am excited about its future. I just wanted to leave a note marking the occasion and I am thinking of trying to pry some words out of all of those silent readers of the site that I have never heard from. I know sites only have a fraction of their audience participate in the happenings of the site which is fine by me for the most part but its always nice to see more even is its forced so im thinking up a contest, an interactive thing somehow if I can think of something good. Ill think of a cool prize too, something like an exclusive signed print of something and some gift certificate money or something. Who knows. Something festive but relevant. Well see how it goes. Im not promising anything but it sounds fun none the less...

(just out of curiosity, does anyone reading this remember what the homepage of twistedsun.net looked like when in the first year or so of having desktops available for download? I was just starting to have work featured on pixelgirlpresents and pulling in some decent traffic at the time...)

My newest desktop comes with a bonus option, a photoshop file of the desktop so you can download it and remix/re-design the desktop should you feel so compelled. Check out the desktops page for more. Also check out the friends desktops page for a cute one from a talented six year old named Skyler.

Over the next week or so I will be doing my best to post an image every day from a series of desktops that I have lined up which were all shot at a farm in Virginia. No cows, pigs or chickens, just things that caught my eye while I was visiting friends at there home. There is a bit more detail about why I was up there over in the desktops section with the first photo in the series seen above.

This photo has been posted over in the friends desktops section.

For those of you who may not know, there are a few new desktops up in the desktop area along with one new one in the friends section. I have also posted a new podcast which had some trouble when it was first posted and caused the previous episode to show up twice in itunes and the new one not show up in all. Sorry about that, wont happen again. The feed is all fixed up and working again so check it out.

Speaking of podcasts and itunes and venturing way off the topic of t he post, anyone else think that iTunes podcast catching abilities are lacking? It works great most of the time but then what if you delete an episode of something accidentally or the feed gets messed up somehow? There is no good way to fix this other than to delete all of the episodes and re-download them. Seems like there should be a better feature set involving them seeing as they are so cocky about the whole idea being born from one of their own products. Anyways, look out for more soon.

To a desktop near you... I just went on a brief camping trip to get out of town for the night and got a few nice shots while I was out. I don't have time at the moment to get everything all formatted and desktopized but I just thought I would share a little sneak peak here of one that will be appearing soon. I know it is similar to the city of light series but I like it anyways and besides, this may or may not be its final form. Guess you will just have to wait till tomorrow or whenever it gets posted, to find out.

I have finally had a chance to add a new soundscape to the podcast and I really enjoyed this one. Head over to the podcast page for more...

What do you think of this darker design theme? better or worse than the lighter one?

Is this theme working or it is just stinking up the place? Leave a comment with suggestions and whatnot. It will change in little ways as I settle in. I just had to get something fresh up here, that old theme was starting to get to me. Just wait till you see the theme I've been working on for Val's upcoming site, hot stuff I tell ya.

Seems like I post a lot of these site news posts as of late, I really am simply settling into this new software and working on the back end of the site before I start posting regularly again. Today I come bearing new desktops! I know that is what most people come here to grab and I have not had to many new ones as of late so I figured I would alleviate that pressure in the back of your mind by releasing some new photos for you all.

Some of you may have noticed the LED desktop that I posted and didn't say much of anything about. I just didn't think it needed a description. Simple as that. So anyways, today I have a few desktops for you music lovers so head over and check them out.

Note: I have also decided to add a new cropping ratio for certain desktops, maybe all of them from here on depending on the response of the decision. You will see that they now have a resolution of 1920x1200. I decided that with all of the widescreen displays out there today that I could get away with releasing desktops with this ratio. In the end I prefer this to the boxy feeling 1600x1200.

What on earth does that mean anyway? Anyone know the history behind that statement? So to the point of this post, as twistedsun.net evoles so does the way I orginize it. Today I have merged the Music section in with this weblog. For one, I just have not has as much time to write reviews and the like as much as I did when I started that section of the site. I also figure I might as well just keep on simplifying things around here to reduce the amount of work it takes for me to keep the site updated for all of your prying eyes. As you can see, there is now a music category to the left here which is where you can single out review posts. Any new reviews or favorites will be posted here from now on.

So what else is new? Well, July turned out to be a really busy month for me. Lots of shows happening and so lots of work to do. In the past week I have worked shows (sound production) for Cat Power, Amy Mann, Dar Williams, and more. It's been pretty constant work and so here I am at 3am squeezing out a bit of a site update for everyone. I recently picked up my broken 50mm lense from the camera shop and thankfully the manual focus is working now but the auto focus has passed away so I will be paying a bit more attention to my focusing which is not always a bad thing. This also means that I have my favorite lense back and will be out and shooting more and so you guys can expect some new desktops soon.

So what else... hmmm, ah! The electronic duo I play in, A Drop In Silence has a couple of show lined up, one tomorrow night and one later on in the month up in NYC again! So that should be fun... well I think thats all for now. Im sure I will get right back on top of things here with the site soon so keep an eye out. I still have a great soundscape that I need to add to the podcast... all in due time readers, all in due time.

P.S - Somebody remind me to update my 'about' page sometime, thanks.

I finally switched over to the newest version of Rapidweaver today and in the process decided why not go ahead and get a fresh start and re-upload the whole thing. So now im on the new version and have some new capabilities that have yet to be worked out to perfection but this is a good start, You may notice that the weblog is now the home page which I planned on doing a while ago and you can now link directly to a specific article on the site using Permalinks which is a nice touch. I hope to get the archive pages and permalinks to show up using the main style sheet but I will just have to get to that later in time. So anyways, I hope that the changes you may notice around here will be for the better.

Thats all for now, see you again soon.

Friends desktops ripe for pickin'

Desktops have been posted in the friends section of the desktops area!

New desktops both in the normal desktop area and the friends area. I know that the front page no longer lists updates, currently I have the most recent desktop there as a link to the desktop area. In the future things will get shifted around and this weblog will become the front page. A new version of RapidWeaver is out now and I am going to take full advantage of it and clean some things up around here in the coming week or so. Thats it for now, just thought I would let you guys know whats new around here. Also there are a couple new things in the music review section and I have two new soundscapes that will be added to the podcast in the coming week.

the bit of downtime, im rearranging a couple things around here and im coming across a bit of trouble but it will get worked out soon so sit tight!

update: im sure you will notice that the images on the weblog are missing, sorry about that! im working on the issue now and it will hopefully be resolved sometime soon. all of the other areas of the site should be working still.

update again: until i can fix this issue i have added a home page again because it seems to fix my issues. sorry again for the trouble...

Whew! I'm back and getting together some new content, I have a podcast, a couple desktops, a quick review or two, and hopefully some friends desktops as well so keep an eye out here on the site! I hope to get these things up soon and I know there will at least be a couple new things up tomorrow at some point to so look out for all that. OK thats all for now...

I am happy to announce that I have some new desktops all lined up and ready to roll out so you can expect those to pop up on the site in the coming hours. I am sure many of you have been patiently sitting in front of your computer hitting refresh on the desktop page for days and days now and so hopefully upon hearing this news you will get up stretch a bit, maybe eat something or take a nap and come back knowing that something new is coming soon. Until then, here is a photo of my hand from photobooth.

I will have a couple new desktops up soon but in the mean time check out the great new desktops in the friends section!

Desktops in the friends section! More to come...

all settled in over on itunes so head over and write a nice review for me. Oh, and there is a new episode out now too! You can link directly to the itunes page by using the link below.

I recently found that a dig.com story that made it up to the front page contained a link to this site and through that I have had a pretty large spike in traffic as of late. Luckily the servers are purring right along and I have plenty of bandwidth to go around. The post has also seemed to have spread out among quite a few other blogs as well including the great software blog, Download Squad. So to all you new faces around here, I hope you enjoy the site.

Original story (thanks to joeyinteractive for the link)
Digg Story

Those of you who have had trouble with the feeds around twistedsun.net can rejoice because I think I have ended the feed woes once and for all.

The weblog should have photos and all links in other feeds should now start to work correctly. Why oh why did I not figure this out until now?

This visitor highlighted above sure found the site in an interesting way.

This has to beone of t he funniest search strings that I have ever seen in my stats. Someone came here looking for "desktops you can shoot and catch on fire and blow up" and somewow ended up here on twistedsun.net. Hope you found what you were looking for!

so tell me visitors... how did you discover twistedsun.net?

Yes, literally cool. If you read back in the weblog you will find a post about someone in Japan with a personal site that linked to twistedsun.net. I had discovered this through my web stats and as I looked through his website I found some really great photos. Thanks to google translator I sent him an email asking for permission to use one of his photos as a desktop in the friends area of this site and he understood the translation enough to give me permission to use the photo as well as a description for the post!

I am happy to post this beautiful shot of fresh snow from Tokyo. The photo makes me feel nice and cool and I love the contrast and lighting in this shot. ありがとう Kazuma!

I would also like to take a second here and thank everyone who has submitted desktops for my friends section! The recent Support of this section has been wonderful and I look forward to seeing it grow in the future! I have had the opportunity to post some great photography from all around the world so to the friends of twistedsun.net, Thank You!

There are four new desktops in the friends section of the desktop area. They were shot by Fabian Gehweiler of Munich, Germany. Two of the images were taken in Thailand and one of them was taken in Laos while on a two month trip to these countries. They are really nice images and I am happy to present them to you here on twistedsun.net. Head over to the desktops area and check them out!

There is a new soundscape in the podcast. A description of the show can be found on the podcast page or in the show discription within the podcast. A new music episode will be posted later this week.

Desktops are up in both the desktops section and the friends section so be sure to check them out! There is also a new review and a podcast is on its way sometime soon.

By the way you should see a lot more activity in the friends desktop section soon so look out for that! I have some good stuff lined up starting with what is there now so thanks to Val and Dave for kicking that section off right. I will set up an rss feed for the friends page as well if you are interested and most importantly if you would like a photo of yours posted on twistedsun.net please let me know!

One last bit of news, I know there is an issue with images showing up in this rss feed so to try and fix this I might be renaming the feed so please come back in the next day or two to update your feed links!

Thats all for now!

Well I'm not quite sure if I'm reading my stats right but it would appear as though my 15 minute soundscape podcast has been pretty popular. Seeing that there is in fact this interest in the idea I am planning on recording another one in the coming days with a proper stereo mic setup as well as a new bootleg podcast sometime soon as well. When I started the podcast I was not really sure what I was going to do with it, I was just looking to play with some microphones and share some music but it has certainly found a direction with the live recordings and now the soundscape idea. I hope that I don't run into any insecure musicians that don't like that I am sharing these but I don't see that happening anytime soon so we are in good shape for now. Starting with the next podcast featuring these live recordings I plan on adding links to the artists pages so those of you interesting in knowing more are just one quick click away.

So at any rate, i just wanted to jump in here and thank everyone who has shown support of the podcast and the site in general. I have plenty of plans for its future and I can only hope to see it continue to grow over time So to the readers and listeners, Thank You!

There is a new podcast up with a slight twist. No music this time around, just a soundscape. check the podcast page to read about the episode. I love this one and I hope everyone else does as well.

In another effort to streamline things around here the music section of the site has been consolidated into one blog. In the past the music section was split into full reviews and quick mini reviews of older music that was called favorites. The new blog combines these two sections and uses categories to organize the entries. I'm not sure that everyone that visits the site understands that you can browse through old entries using the links on the sidebar to browse past months. This will be worked on in the future but for now im thinking of adding a little blurb onto the sidebars mentioning this. So thats all for now.

...are now available on the desktops page. A simple podcast will be coming soon as well as more updates so check back later on.

I started the twistedsun.net newsletter back before the days of RSS and I felt that it was a good way of getting the word out that a new desktop had been posted or something new was happening with the site but in the past few months I have had a sudden drop in the people subscribing to pretty much none and I dont seem to have the time to get them mailed out anymore so I have decided to remove the newsletter from the site.

Sorry for anyone that enjoyed the newsletters, I suggest you check out the RSS feeds on the different pages here on the site. I believe most modern browsers, well safari and firefox, have built in rss feed readers witch will make it easy for anyone to keep up with what's new here on the site.

Thats all for now, thanks for reading twistedsun.net!

-john

I'm sure many of you have noticed the changes around here, I have been kind of toying around with some site redesigns for a while and I finally just tidied everyhting up and here it is, please, let me know what you think! I wanted to streamline things and polish up the overall feel of the site.

I have also removed the links to my music project 'A Drop in Silence' from the music section to help clarify that section a bit. The desktop snaps page has also taken a permanent vacation due to lack of activity, thanks to those of you who helped while it was there, you know who you are. So other than that not to much has changed.

You can expect a new review or two shortly but in the mean time there is a new favorite to check out, ah and I have some new desktops ready to go on up so look out for those as well.

Thanks to everyone for the ongoing support of the site, its the readers that motivate me to continue on from day to day so thanks to everyone!

talk to you again soon,

-john

there would appear to be a strange issue with the rss feeds on the site and i am looking into it. the images within the feed dont show up! i believe that if you use the 'rss feed" link in the sidebar it should work. the feed for this weblog is: feed://twistedsun.net/misc/files/page3.xml

ill try and resolve these issues soon though, sorry for the inconvenience!

Well nearly a month into 2006 I am finally getting my best of 2005 music list up and going. It represents the albums that I listened to and enjoyed the most from the past year that were released in 2005. I hope that there is a little something for everyone in there so take a look in the music reviews page for that.

The wonderful illustrator David Lanham was kind enough to mail and point out something really interesting about one of my desktops.

"Just thought I'd let you know i found some weirdness in your 'windsheild' photo!  I've been using it for a while now and I just happend to have some windows positioned correctly and all of the sudden I was like "holy crap!  There's a skull!".  So yea, in your photo some burnt crispies are making a pretty accurate skull shape (nose hole and all), kind of cool, yet kind of freaky  O_O" - David Lanham



Thanks for pointing that out David! I'm not sure how I missed that one! You can find this desktop in my Classics section within the desktops area.

Well im off again, this time im heading to the wonderful world of NAMM out in California. For those of you who dont know, NAMM is a huge trade show featuring anything and everything you could ever see that has anything to do with the music industry. Guitars, concert PA's, software, recording gadgets, and plenty more. There are hundreds of vendors and thousands of people from what I hear so it should be fun. I will be reporting here about interesting things I might come across each night so stay tuned! (and maybe on that 7 hour plane ride later today I will get a chance to finnish some more of the top music of last year!?

link

The title tells all.

New desktops are up and a little storyish kind of a thing over on the desktops page. Also I have been working on the top music of 2005 list but its a good 20 albums strong so its taking a while to get it all written out. It's going to be good though so sit tight.

-john

New year everyone. I wonder what 2006 will bring?

Check back soon for a new podcast, some new desktops, some new reviews and my personal favorite music from 2005. I know that most top whatever lists have come and gone but I still want to get one out there. There was a lot of good music that im not sure got as much attention as it deserved so look out for that as well. Until then, have a nice break from the world celebrating and I will see you here again soon!

-john

...in the friends area of the desktop sections. check it out!

hey there everyone! due to the giving nature of the holiday's ive decided to give something away today! the 3rd email that i get today with the subject line, "happy day!" will get a ten dollar gift certificate to the itunes music store! so hop onto the contact page to your left and send me a mail! you could also use john (at) twistedsun.net if you would prefer.

also if you were so inclined and have the ability to do so send me a photo that you have taken to post here later today. i will post any photo that i get in the mail today! im not sure why really, just seems like it would be nice to have some readers photos here.

so to recap, send me a mail! the third person to email gets ten dollars of tunes! (hopefully international certificates will work as well so dont hesitate if you are not in the u.s!

i will be waiting for emails until the morning and if for whatever reason i get no emails then i will re-work the contest and do something different.

good luck!

-john

p.s- i hope to start having little contests for music more often so look out for that!

UPDATE: ah well, not a single email i guess people aren't here for music then! thats ok though. ill come up with something else sometime soon. have a nice day after and ill talk to you next update!

here.

I posted another Puerto Rico image as well as a shot of the inside of an old flower pot style imac for those of you who are into that kind of thing! there is also a review of the new boards of canada album so check it out!

i posted some more desktops from my trip to puerto rico. head over to the desktop section to check them out!

So I am leaving my easy to get to internet access here and leaving for a bigger fancier hotel today. Hopefully I will be able to find a hot spot somewhere around there and I can update the site some more but im not really to sure at this point what will happen. I just wanted to mention here that I have posted a couple of new desktops! So head over and check them out. Just a bit of things to come. Hope to talk to everyone soon so until then, have a good one.

-john

i know that i have been fairly inactive here on the site the past few days and that is because i have been getting ready for a trip to puerto rico next week. this trip just kind of popped up out of no where and it is courtesy of electro voice so i wont be needing a bunch of money for the trip which will be very nice. im planning on taking plenty of photos and i have plans to try a couple of things with some recording stuff that i am bringing if i find somewhere interesting to record some sound. so i hope to be posting plenty of cool content in the coming week from my trip. hopefully i will find some decent internet access so i can make this happen i hope that this trip makes for a fun week here on twistedsun.net so stay tuned for more!

by the way, this travel site is very cool and is based around user reviews. lots of photos and videos that are formated for the new video ipod! very nice. heres a link.


p.s - heres the hotel...

I got some new camera lenses recently and ive been shooting plenty of new images for desktops so I should have new ones up pretty regularly for a while. I will try and get back on the wagon here on the weblog and get some new reviewish things up and other interesting bits. at any rate. see you again soon!

there are two new desktops in the desktops section. i have 7 more desktops from the corn maze on the way which i think is a nice way to get into the upcoming fall weather here in north carolina. there are also a couple of desktops i will be posting of some fireworks which are pretty cool looking. i will be posting these 2 or three at a time over the rest of the week so check back for more soon!

UPDATE: two more desktops have been added, check back soon for more!

there has been a new review posted in the reviews page in the music section. its a great album this week so head over and check it out! the podcast will be here a little late this week but will be here before the weekend is gone so stay tuned for that! more soon! i promise! -john

i have a couple of things planned for this space here in the next few days. i will be reviewing my new bag which is very cool and a game which i posted a teaser image for a week or so ago. the reason i have put these things off is because i can not find the memory card for my camera.. it will turn up soon im sure. anyways, im just posting this to let you know whats coming up next here in the blog. i will be posting a new podcast thursday night / friday morning for those of you who may be interested as well as a new music review. anyways, thats all for now. talk to you soon.

there are 4 amazing new desktops brought to you courtesy of my younger brother over in the friends section within the desktops area of this site. he is a college student over at the memphis school of art which seems to be a pretty cozy school. at any rate, head over and check them out! here is a little sample...

there have been a ton of new desktops added, well 9 new ones at least that i shot while i was out of town. i love my job(s). because i spent my time getting these new desktops all ready and set up i have not really updated this weblog to much yet but ill be back in the swing of things tomorrow so fire up that browser again and click on that twistedsun.net link in your bookmarks bar to see whats new here on the weblog! life is throwing me in all sorts of directions right now and im looking forward to the future which is good for you readers because you get to read all about it. well the interesting bits that i come across in the world that is. so until tomorrow, enjoy the new desktops and ill talk to you then!

I worked here and there all day to make one nice big update for the weekend. There are four new desktops in the desktop section, a new Podcast, a new review, some new favorites, and a new garageband song. all just a click or two away for your convenience. I am also working on reviewing a new backpack from an amazing bag company that you will hear about when that shows up here and plenty of other little updates to give you that twistedsun.net fix that you all know and love. till next time...

update: the podcast feed changed for some reason, sorry for those of you who subscribed. hopefully this little mix up wont happen again. sorry for the inconvenience. here is the new feed for the podcast: http://www.twistedsun.net/podcast/files/page15.xml

i have been talking about this for ages and i finally got around to putting it up. as you may have noticed, i have added a donate button in the sidebar of the site. i spend a lot of time and effort to keep this site up and running with new content and although it is free to you it is not free to me.

i love my readers and all of the help they give to spread the word of twistedsun.net and i am sure you guys to throw me a few scraps from time to time to help out with server costs and future development of the site. what you see here now is just the beginning!

as a way to show my appreciation for your support of the sites development i would like to offer a gift to those who make a donation to the site. this gift will be dipping into a little something from the past. i have been releasing select images from my photographic work for years now free of charge so everyone can see what i see in there every day life and i love doing it!

as many of you know this site has gone through a few various versions and i have included version 4's desktop collection in this version of the site. i do however have a collection of desktops from version 3 that are no longer available, well all but a few old ones over at pixelgirlpresents.com. this old collection has nearly 100 desktop images from the past and i will give you access to this collection in its entirety just for donating to twistedsun.net and showing your support for the future of the site!

a little something from the past for helping me build for the future!

i have left the amount you wish to donate up to you so let me know what you think im worth.

in the future you can expect to finally see prints of some of my work for sale as well so look out for that!

so anyways, thanks again to everyone who has been there and helped through the years. heres to many more!

while i work on getting some new desktops up ive decided to go ahead and make my old featured desktop gallery available again. you can see all of the version four desktops now in the classics section of the desktops area of this site. enjoy!

its a twistedsun.net podcast! check it by clicking "the podcast" in the navigation to your left. comments are welcome as always.

i have added a new page to twistedsun.net and it can be found in the music section. the favorites section is a place that i will be posting my favorite albums, songs, and possibly a few mixes. whenever i add a new post to this page (which is, like many of the other main areas within the site a weblog) i will also include a quick review of whatever it is that i am linking to.

i hope that this will be a nice reference for anyone looking for some new music to check out. it should compliment the review page well seeing as there is a lot of music out there that i enjoy which i may not have time to write a full review for.

speaking of the review section, look out for a new review as well as a new approach to the reviews section in general. i have tried to make the reviews that i write as personal as possible so you can get an opinion that isnt as sterile as your average review and with the upcoming addition to this section i hope to take my current approach to the next level.

more soon...