Gimme Some Tunes

On a pretty regular basis at work, I have a conversation with my co-worker about money, how we like it, how we need it, and different ways we can get more of it without becoming drug dealers or flesh peddlers.

Today’s conversation led to the creation of this:

gimmesometunes
gimmesometunes.iamnotagoodartist.com

It uses an old Google trick and some JavaScript to search for MP3s and WMAs with your specified keywords in open directories naively left open and without index files.

So how are the results?

Largely, unimpressive.

It turns out that most people have gotten hip to this trick, so there are fewer people leaving their online music folders unprotected. It also turns out that clever capitalists have made websites that appear to be open directories but are actually adware/splog/badness sites, often with permalinking to make pages have mp3 extensions.

I’ve gone through and tried to remove as many of them as I could from the results, but, like most things on the internet, it’s impossible to clean it up completely.

So, anyway, I decided the output wasn’t good enough to warrant the lunch money for the domain I parked for it. There are sites already online that do this sort of thing, and my version is, arguably, slightly better than them, since it filters out some of the bad apples, but it’s still not quite good enough for me.

It’s okay, though, for what it is. If you think it’s useful or have any input, let me know.

iamnotagoodartist Stickers

My fantastic girlfriend made me these iamnotagoodartist robot stickers for her flexography class. They are from a design I drew in Flash, are three inches in diameter, and very well may be the best stickers ever printed.

Want some? Contact me and we’ll figure it out.

Best Girl

Hey! I made this today!


“Best Girl”

Those lyrics are super deep. Also, it’s hard to look masculine while playing the egg shakers.

Here’s the MP3, if you want it.

[edit] It looks like one of my friends Dugg this and it’s maybe getting a little attention. Digg it too and I’ll be your homie:
http://digg.com/music/Best_Girl_Great_Ukulele_Song#

x

Drawn with a pen, colored with a wacom pen.

In other news, it may interest you to know I now have an image portfolio and critiques of it are welcome.

Sense and Sensibility

My girlfriend’s birthday was earlier this month and I had no money to buy her something. So what did I get her? A book! That I made! With text I got on the internet! For free! Legally!

The book was Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen, obtained from Project Gutenberg, a pretty cool resource for old things written by now dead people.

I laid it out in Word with a 5.5″ by 8.5″ page setup, the dimensions of a letter paper folded in half, so as to not waste any real estate. Then I exported as a PDF and used Acrobat to print it in booklet form with two pages on each side. This one turned out to be 208 pages original. With double-sided booklet printing, that’s 52 printed pages.

I took every five printed pages, that is, every 20 pages of the book, and bound them together with thread. This is called a “signature.” Here’s all 11 of them.

Then, using such professional tools as a ruler, a guitar capo, a pencil, and a clamp thing that came with a generic dremel tool, I clamped all the signatures together and glued them up with some binding glue.

After a whole bunch of coats of that stuff, it gets a cardstock cover.

Opened to a random page, in proof that it is, in fact, a real book.

Total project time: a solid 5 or 6 hours

This is actually the second Jane Austen book I’ve made for my girlfriend, the first one being Pride and Prejudice. To friends and relatives who may receive such an affordable (but thoughtful!) gift like this from me for Christmas, please forget everything you just read. Yay!!

Nooks

Just practicing.

How to Do Computer

It’s been online for awhile, but I think now it’s officially ready to be publicly unveiled: http://howtodocomputer.com/

Basically, it’s an experiment in passive income, rashly created after brainstorming ways I can conquer the internet without trying too hard or involving drugs, naked people, or naked drugs.

Ultimately, the goal is to make $10 a year to pay for the domain renewal. So far, I’ve made a penny, which is a pretty good start!

.1% Success! Huzzahs!

This is also my first time playing around with ads, which has been pretty fun.

want own business

Do I “want own business?” Hmmm… I don’t quite know exactly what that entails. I think I’m good?

Oh, one more thing… Computers, stocks, bonds, NASDAQ, black people and white people shaking hands, buzzwords, etc.

I’m sorry, internet, I had to.

Bears, Burgers, Bugs, Bots, etc

I think it’s all pretty self explanatory.

LP Shirts

I made some shirt designs for the Launching Pad, the all-ages venue where they had the Young Musician’s Club and I had my Tommies show. The place is closing in a month, due to a variety of sad reasons, so be sure to go visit before it’s too late.

Shirts are $10 and come in the following two flavors. Wear one to the last show on November 1st and get in for free.

Some of the other ideas I had:


And a picture of me wearing the yellow one, thinking about politics:

The original swooshing LP logo was made by co-YMC-intern Sarah, so props to her. To learn more about the venue and find out when the remaining shows are, visit the LP MySpace page.

Sketchpadville

I made myself a sketchpad the other day from some index cards my girlfriend gave me and some curious book binding glue stuff my mom gave me. It’s pretty rad.

I’m gonna keep it in my back pocket and try to draw something in it every day. Gotta keep up my doodling chops now that I’m not a student with boring, mandatory lectures to attend anymore.

Drawing #01 is a robot with buck teeth! Shock! Yikes! Hmph!