I like to think I’m in fairly good touch with certain regions of the blogosphere—most notably, I’d say, the web design community. By “in touch” I mean reading far too much and not contributing anything significant. Anyway, I try to share some of the more interesting websites I encounter or frequent and I will do so today within the theme of music-focused sites. And, no, I’m not going to tell you about this AMAZING! NEW! SITE I FOUND! called Rake or Shovel or something.

First up is ISO50, the online home of DJ and artist Scott Hansen and his friends. His visual work is quite nice, I think, and he seems relatively knowledgeable in music. He and the other contributing authors offer regular selections of quality tunes under the Music category—good examples are a short list of the best indie hip hop producers or four favorite sensitive electronica tracks. Oh, and I enjoy their attention to the design of album covers.

My next offering is a much-lauded blog, Just Watch the Sky. The author—I’m not sure who he or she is—presents a song accompanied by beautifully rendered typography of a notable sequence of the song’s lyrics. The color palettes are spot on and the presentation always balances subtlety and power. I don’t like all of the songs but I cannot stop myself from clicking through all the posts and having a listen. I particularly like the presentation for Now I want to give away, I want to hurry home to you, and The empty movements that once were so inspired. Maybe this was not so much about music as it was typography. Shocking.

And lastly, I’d like to share OMG Posters, a website which is only tenuously having to do with music. The author posts daily updates on art prints, posters, toys and the like, including interviews with noted poster artists / designers. The aforementioned tenuous connection is that many of the posters featured are for musicians, bands and concerts. Regardless, I enjoy the site as a source of inspiration and artistic stimuli.

So there you go. Anything good to share with me?

Oh, bonus: you can check out my listening habits via carlosdavis on last.fm. Here’s a teaser: all I listen to are Girl Talk and Rilo Kiley.

I find grammar, punctuation, semantics, etc. to be quite interesting and tend to obsess over certain rules or peculiarities. In addition to my constant battle against incorrectly dangling prepositions, I am currently focused on each versus both, using ellipses (…) instead of three periods (…) and proper choice of hyphens and dashes.

I mention this interest because of a short but informative article on the capitalization of the word “I”:

i suggest that You try, as an experiment, to capitalize those whom You address while leaving yourselves in the lowercase. It may be a humbling experience. It was for me.

Incidentally, does anyone understand the header graphic for the article?

I actually took my camera out of its case on Sunday at Kleinman—not to take photographs of Ultimate, mind you, but rather to snap a bunch of portraits of our squad that weekend. I think I’ll be sticking to such shots for as long as I’m only packing my 50mm 1.8 portrait lens. In truth, I get a bit overwhelmed when I try to shoot with wider glass; I like the enforced composition limits with a 50mm.

Check out Shadrach at Kleinman Eruption 2008.

Dave and I headed to Portland Friday morning to meet Whit and Claire for a day of fun and then reunite with Shadrach for Kleinman Eruption, an annual mixed tournament.

Cheer: Lunch at Pok Pok offered distinctive and delicious Thai. I quite enjoyed my tamarind whiskey sour, the roasted game hen and the desserts—we sampled every single one on their menu. I recommend it highly.

Cheer: The Fisher have a beautiful home and offer fantastic hospitality. Add to this hospitality a brand new Wii, Francis and company’s cooking (the polenta, oh my god, the polenta), and Abby Armstrong’s birthday and we had a wonderful evening.

Cheer: Lilli and Krump came through in the pinch to increase our number of ladies from five to seven.

Jeer: I had quite a few execution errors and some uncharacteristic drops all day Saturday. All in all, I was feeling out of sorts and disconnected from the team—I blame our time off from practice in July and general discombobulation in my life.

Cheer: Despite any lack on my part, our team came away from with a three and one record on Saturday, only falling to the stacked Montana–Portland team who eventually won the tournament.

Jeer: I turned my left ankle quite badly during our last game on Saturday and sat out the remainder. Booo.

Cheer: The hot tub at our Best Western was the size of a normal pool shallow end. So good.

Cheer: Dessert and coffee at Pix Patisserie before the party. Krump and I shared the Queen of Sheba truffle cake, warmed up and with mocha ice cream, and the Shazam! concoction.

Jeer: On Deck, the sports bar hosting the tournament party, could not decide if it wanted to be in Los Angeles or Las Vegas. In other words, it did not belong in Portland and filled with Ultimate players.

Cheer: the looks on the faces of the excessively made-up women waiting in line as our Shadrach crew skipped said line. VIP, dude. Also, we still rocked the party.

Jeer: Shadrach came out sleepy and unmotivated Sunday morning to lose our quarterfinal against crosstown rivals Moonshine. This loss was perhaps our first ever to them? They played great and we did not. At least we have some angry motivation now.

Jeer: Our consolation opponents, Thompson High JV, left after they lost in the quarterfinals and we didn’t even have a second game on Sunday.

Cheer: Dave and I hit up King Burrito for lunch, per the recommendation of a nice bearded fellow from Breaker’s Mark. $5 for a fantastic burrito and horchata? Yes, very yes.

Cheer: I had a great weekend with old Claremont friends, our beautiful Shadrach crew, and all the Ultimate acquaintances I’ve collected over the years. Hooray for friends.

My next two stops are the work week and then the final two days of WUGC 2008 in Vancouver. I’ll let you know how each go.

As previously promised while discussing the seven-year birthday of drewd, I have been working on a present for my website (and for you). You should be looking at that present now—I designed a new WordPress theme for my site. Huzzah!

I am proud of this theme for a number of reasons. The first reason is that I think the site looks great. My typographic skill and intuition has been increasing for some time and I am quite pleased with the site’s readability. I am using nothing but Helvetica (or, ew, Arial) and color is minimal. The information organization does the majority of the work in directing the user, as it should.

I might still add a few typeface flourishes to certain elements. All-uppercase words look particularly nice in Georgia, though I suppose I lose that quality on Windows. Ew, again.

The next point of pride is of a more technical bent. My CSS file for the theme is particularly simple and bare. I feel WordPress themes have a tendency to be overly complex and I wanted to avoid this pitfall, especially in the context of producing with which I can easily work in the future. Furthermore, I do not feel I sacrificed design quality or site functionality at all by taking a simplified approach to the theme.

The final matter with which I am happy is that I completed the theme. Every bit of it is done; nothing is broken. (If something is broken, please leave a comment.) Despite the completed nature of the theme, I feel that I have built in the possibility for future customization and changes without the need for a complete overhaul.

Well, okay, I admit that there are few pieces I need to add but none of them are vital to the site’s function, to your reading my writing and generally stalking me.

I hope you enjoy the new look of drewd—please leave any comments you have so that I might improve my craft.

Cheers!

Check out Greg Minnaar speeding down the World Championship downhill mountain biking track. He averages over 20 MPH on exceptionally difficult terrain but my favorite bits are when he nonchalantly goes completely horizontal on vertical walls.

(via Gwyneth)

My domain, drewd, was born seven years ago yesterday: July 28th, 2001. Take a look at my birth certificate.

This website has gone through many different designs and CMS but has always provided me with some creative outlet. Thank you, website.

I apologize for offering these congratulations one day late. And, I must apologize again because your present will not be ready until tomorrow. I think you will be quite pleased with what I am preparing, regardless.

We are both getting old, you and me, website but we are still growing. I think we will have many great years together in the future. Here’s to us.

Wooo.