Tuesday, May 31, 2016

Cut Copy, Shazam & Brewskies

Weekly Update 2016-22: The classic electronic groove of Cut Copy, using Shazam as a social media platform, and the delightful Brewskies illustration project of Kevin Yang.

Music: Cut Copy
Yet another Australian electronic band to add to this list, though this one may have been my original gateway drug, now that I think about it. I have loved this band for quite some time, I even have memories of listening to them on my old PC...when iTunes took about 20 minutes to open! Their music takes different turns throughout their discography. It can be bright and poppy (good for chair dancing at work) or moody and dramatic as well. I had the opportunity to see them play at Osheaga in 2014, and that may have been the highlight of the whole festival. Check this out:


Accomplishment:
Most of the past week was taken up in preparing for a very special Toronto Bingo Scavenger Hunt (for which our costumes won most enthusiastic team! We finished the entire hunt and found every item on the list, so I'll call that an accomplishment.


We also found a new team member on our journey - this beautiful orange pylon.

I also biked to work twice last week, and am starting to feel my legs building up muscle.

Goal:
I know I've said it a million times, but I will be attempting to work on an Arduino project this Sunday. I'd like to get the RGB LED to work somehow with the photoresistor or piezo electric disc, and try to find a way to get music to be read into the system as input (as opposed to output through the speaker).

I'm also going to finally upload photos to the newest China blog post that I've been sitting on for two weeks.

I suppose, now that I have filled my calendar with things to do every weeknight (not to mention weekends), it might be time to scale back a bit. So my new goal for June is to create a calendar (like the March version), but with some time added in for relaxation. I need more face time with the grassy hill at Christie Pits, just chilling out and doing nothing.

Random Thought:
I opened the Shazam app for the first time in a while the other day. A few things have changed that I thought were pretty cool. Specifically, when you Shazam something, it tells you how many other people have Shazammed the same song. Take this weird song for example:


I thought it was really obscure, but 614 other people have already discovered it through Shazam! That's pretty cool. I wondered if you could tap on that information to see where/when these other Shazams happened, but that functionality doesn't exist. I know we're moving dangerously close to too much personal information being shared, but I heard this song during the break between bands at a concert, and it would have been cool to know that someone else in the crowd was digging the sound enough to Shazam the song like I did. Just a thought.

One thing that I haven't yet formed an opinion on is the vocabulary they've created. A "Shazam" is both the act of finding a song, and the song itself (as pertaining to your library inside the app). It's a little confusing. And while I like the name "Shazam" because it makes you feel like it's working its magic, the word starts to feel strange and foreign (and a bit silly) the more I use it. I think two paragraphs is quite enough of that for one day.

Inspiration: Brewskies
I started following Kevin Yang on Dribbble because of his awesome style of vector art. But what really sold me was his series of six-pack beer vectors. They're so full of personality!





There's something so attractive about perfectly simplified illustrations. All of these are immediately recognizable (if you know the beer brand to begin with, granted) because Kevin has truly captured the essence of the brands and reimagined them at a smaller scale. Please do check out more of the beer series here and more of Kevin's other work here.

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