A day at the beach for FBD version 3.0



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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!

Well I have been back home for a good couple of weeks now and looking back on my recent trip really does feel like looking back on a story that I read. I am still convincing myself that It really happened. I have gotten right back to work and I am currently juggling 4 different web projects. One of them is my upcoming desktop site which will not only have my new desktops but other photographers as well. I will be drawing up invites and working out the details in the coming month and hopefully be online by the end of March.

Let's see, what else. I have posted a couple of random desktops that I have been meaning to post for a while now so you can head over and check those out if you are interested. Also, I wanted to ask if anyone reads my music posts? It would be nice to know that some of you read them and check out the artists I talk about. Music is such a big part of who I am and I love to share it with others. But I'm sure I have already mentioned this a thousand or so times before so I apologize for sounding like a broken record on the matter.

Anyone else seen the movie Pan's Labyrinth? I saw it for the second time today and I find it to be such a fascinating movie. Really really violent which was interesting because I cant remember seeing a fantasy film like this one that was so violent. I thought that the time period that it took place in with the civil war and whatnot added a lot to the violence but the director made it work so well within the movie. I usually don't have all that high of a tolerance for really violent movies but I think that as long as it it is in place to invoke something in you to relate to the characters and story line then I can stand to watch.

Thats all for now, I just wanted to get an update in while I had a minute here. Talk to you guys again soon!

A while back I wrote about the apparent demise of my favorite podcast, Herro Flom Japan. He remained inactive for a long long time but recently has slowly started to pick up the mic again and start doing some new shows. I just wanted to mention this here because it is my favorite podcast after all. The host, Rich Pav, always seem to ramble on about something that is somehow accidentally really interesting to me, its just an honest look into the life of one foreigner living in Japan. Simple and very stripped of any fancy production but this is why I enjoy it so much.

At any rate, I know some of the readers here used to listen to the show and I thought I would mention its return into the podcasting world, lets see if it sticks shall we?

P.S - Kyoto Podcast has a new video episode as well and his video work has come a long way, great job Tim!

So I just caught wind that there will be an album released on Kill Rock Stars released in May featuring Elliott Smith rarities! A two disc set that is filled with songs from back in his Either/Or days. Looking through the tracklist I find that I have heard many of these songs before that I have found on various websites or anywhere I could find music of his like this but it will be nice to have an official release with decent sounding recordings because most of the odd mp3s of these songs that I have come across are all of terrible quality.

So I am really happy to see this getting released and I just had to write up a quick post to let you guys know because Elliott Smith is one of my very favorite musicians and I really miss seeing new releases from him.

Here is a link to the original article on Pitchfork

It has been way to long (2 months!) since I have posted a music post so here we are with another episode in the endless search to find the worlds best music. The past couple of months have brought a LOT of really really great music so I will do my best to concentrate on the best of the best. Right, so lets get on with the mini reviews of my favorite recent albums...


Menomena - Friend and Foe

For some reason when I first heard this album I didn't think to much of it. I have no idea how this happened because at this point I have listened to it a number of times and I can not get enough of it. The more I listen to it the more I find hiding inside the amazing compositions they have crafted with this release and I have found myself enjoying this even more than their first album which was hard to beat as much as I loved it back when it came out a couple years ago. I remember finding them on iTunes of all places and was impressed that it was on their as a self release which you don't see much on iTunes. Anyways, long story short I fell in love with the music and bought both the cd version and the amazing vinyl version as well.

The music is indie rock and is by far much more interesting than most indie rock records coming out these days. Have you heard the new Shins? Eesh, what a disappointment... anyway, If you enjoy music then you owe it to yourself to at least give this great album a listen and if you do end up buying it I would suggest picking up a copy of the album with the physical cd artwork which is really wonderful and puts a really creative use to die cuts in the printing and illustration.

Menomena website: www.menomena.com

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PostPrior - Touched Pilot - EP

Here we have a really fascinating release by a duo composed of electronic musician Midwest Product and the drummer/singer  Michael Kuzmanovski. I think these two have created a masterpiece of modern music, at least in my humble opinion. I can not really put my finger on what draws me into their music but there is some sort of brilliance within it that is hard to describe. It is seemingly simple on the surface with its synths drums and vocals but it is wonderfully produced with a really tight sound that has a lot of subtle details within its production that I love. It is like IDM Pop music or something like that. a Genera that I'm sure has some sort of other name but thats what I call it and it seems to be Ghostly International's favorite new thing to release which I welcome with open arms. This release is PostPrior's first EP and is a digital only release and I can not wait until a full length...

Ghostly International: www.ghostly.com/digital

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Korg recently released a handfull of new products including...


... a mini Kaos Pad! How cool is this!? I simply must have one of these little things...


...and check out this crazy looking digital mixer/audio interface, could be just what I was looking for in an audio interface...

..that is all, just had to share my excitement, even if this means nothing to many of you...

Well, here I am, back home and looking back at what now feels like an elaborate dream of some sort. Its feels like each day I was on my trip felt so long and full and wonderful and complete but in retrospect I feel as though the whole experience was nothing but a book I read or a collection of memories to wonderful to be my own. Surely I just imagined the whole thing in my mind. Then I look back over the hundreds of photos I took along the way to mark the journey, to offer some sort of proof that it really happened and the feelings come dripping back into my mind as though making a pot of drip coffee. The ground up beans are the photos, and I am the water, as the water pours over the beans it slowly becomes whole. Ha... maybe I'm just thinking of this silly analogy because I am sitting in a coffee shop. Who knows.

Here is a random bit from my journal about one of the last mornings I had out in the desert of the western US...

"...chasing the sun rising this morning i could not help but be reminded of sun set with its layers of light taking over the earth in front of me. i felt as though i was driving time backwards like my car and myself were sitting still in the universe yet the earth spun backwards around me like i was winding it up for night to arrive all over again through another beautiful sunset but then the sun was not fading into night, it was welcoming me to a new day..."

So with that new day I found myself driving back east. A long long drive turns out. I ended up driving nearly 24 hours straight only stopping for about an hour of that time for gas and food. It was such a long blur of a drive, I drifted through states as though I was simply skipping through the country. Im not sure why but I just kept driving and driving until I found myself in Memphis in front of my brothers apartment. I remember how disorienting it was to watch the sun rising again after driving through the night. I looked up into the sky and noticed birds migrating, hundreds of them almost filling the morning sky with V shaped patterns of birds soaring through the sky like a huge magic carpet. I couldnt help but feel a connection to their travels and I think that was the point in which I realized that I had to keep traveling. I knew that this was just the beginning. Then at that moment I felt resolved to get back home and start working towards my next adventure right away.

This lead my mind to think of being home and all of the work I needed to catch up on and how many projects I want to get going and I felt both excited for the future and a little nervous and I felt my life at home weighing down onto my shoulders and I felt the weight of my life coming back to me. I figure the Nada Surf song, Do it Again held some interesting advice for this feeling in the verse, "Maybe this weight is a gift.."

So at any rate, I'm back home in one piece and I am getting my thoughts together for the next few months of my life. I have a number of web projects to work on, audio production work to get back into, music to be written and played with matt and A Drop In Silence (my 'band'), stories to read, things to clean, insurance claims to be filed (from the robbery), prints to finally mail (from my christmas contest), photos to go through, a life to get back in the swing of living, and countless other odds and ends of things to jump into the middle of.

As for this site, I will get back to my regular postings and desktop additions, after all of these stories and things I am thinking I may continue to write about life and living from time to time because it has been nice writing like this. I will also be getting my new site rolling in a month or so when I get all of the details worked out. It is going to be great and I cant wait to tell you all of the details so stay tuned for more...


Songs of the moment: "Waiting For My Real Life To Begin" by Collin Hay and

"Woolly Mammoth's Mighty Absence" by The Microphones... below are the words to this song...


Quickly forgetting was the way I lived my life.
Try telling me your name or try telling me "don't worry".
Everything I knew would quickly wither and die
All echoes would be buried in the sound of living,
The sound of feet slapping sidewalk
That was me - treasure hunting, I would bury what I found
That was me - the gold digger, underground
Quickly forgotten was this forgetful way of life
When I left home, when I lived as if I'd died.
Sitting on a rock and doing nothing, alone for so long
In the dark I found my sight
There you name was, written large in letters bright!
And there my faith was!
"Worry not" declared the night.
In the great void of my life, I could feel the shape of what was missing
Like the way the Woolly Mammoth stands so tall and bold in our minds
I was shaking at the size of my cry
And the true love it described.
I know a new day is dawning now and so ends my holy night.
It's back to the world I go, back to little girls and shows,
and their worldly woes, all unfurling clothes.
Will I carry myself slowly enough to remember?
I sit on a dark rock doing nothing, still just crowded in.
There's the love in flesh and bones.

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!