Write Better Songs (Encore Episode 144)

Jason Tate Mar 3, 2017

On this week’s episode of Encore I am joined by special guest Jesse Cannon. Jesse has credits on albums from The Menzingers, to Man Overboard, to The Cure. He has managed bands, produced bands, and has written multiple books about the music industry and navigating the current realities of being a musician and a songwriter in the internet era. He joins the show to talk about everything from authentic creativity when writing songs, to originality in music, to the biggest mistakes bands make when recording. We talk about sophomore slumps, how being emotionally aware leads to better music, and the entire idea behind bands writing albums for themselves versus for the fans. There’s a lot here, but it’s a fun one.

Rocky Votolato – “Little Charger” (Live Song Premiere)

Jason Tate Mar 3, 2017

Rocky Votolato will be releasing a vinyl pressing of recordings from his recent series of living room shows. The album, Live at the Black Belt, will be out March 21st and pre-orders are now up. Today we’ve got a stream from the sessions of “Little Charger” — you can find that below.

New $5 Linodes Are Great Learning Tools

Jason Tate Feb 24, 2017

Linode, which is where this website is hosted, has launched a new $5 per month plan:

We’re also introducing the Linode 1GB, our lowest priced instance ever at only $5 per month. We believe this will add a great deal of utility to our service.

I have one of these that I use for testing and to run a few basic maintenance tasks (reports, stat checking, things like that), and it’s great. If you’re at all interested in learning about servers, Linux, and basic web administration, I highly recommend Linode. You can jump in, try things out, and it’s a simple and inexpensive way to learn (they also have good tutorials). If you mess something up, it’s easy to restore and reset and keep playing around. I’m a big “learn by doing” person, and if you’re like me, take the plunge and give it a shot!

As Marco Arment once wrote:

Modern Linux server administration is much easier than you think. If you can write a halfway decent app, you can manage a Linux VPS in your sleep.
You don’t need to compile kernels, build anything from source code, partition any disks, or deal with iptables in most cases. The defaults of good distributions and packages are almost always very secure. And once you set everything up, you can leave it running largely untouched indefinitely. You’ll probably never be woken up at 3 AM to reboot anything or delete log files.

I Work From Home

Jason Tate Feb 23, 2017

This is one of the funniest things I’ve read all year.

Out of Service – ‘What We Bring With Us’ (Album Premiere)

Jason Tate Feb 21, 2017

Today we’ve got the premiere of the new EP from Out of Service. You may recognize the band name and/or album cover from one of our regular community members and his memorable avatar. The album was mixed and mastered by Nathan Hussey from All Get Out and it’ll be out this Friday. You can stream the whole thing below and pre-order it on Bandcamp.

Bitter Pills – “Strange Companions” (Song Premiere)

Jason Tate Feb 20, 2017

Today we’re happy to debut the new song, “Strange Companions,” from Bitter Pills. The band will be releasing their new EP, Night Season, on February 24th and pre-orders are now up. The song is the last track the band wrote for the EP and they think it shows where they want to take their music next, while giving a nod to their influences.

Launching a Color Picker

Jason Tate Feb 18, 2017

I really love the Skala color picker for macOS, it’s a great way to grab colors from the screen and find the correct code to use in web development or other design work. I like it so much that sometimes I want to just launch the color picker outside of an app that has it built in. The best way I’ve found to do this is to create a simple AppleScript application (this app apparently does the same thing, but writing your own is fun).

I use this icon with it.

America, America

Jason Tate Feb 17, 2017

Jonathan Kirshner:

Worse still, even if we manage to endure the next four years and then oust him in the next election, from this point forward we will always be the country that elected Donald Trump as President. And as Albert Finney knew all too well in Under the Volcano, “some things, you just can’t apologize for.” This will be felt most acutely on the world stage. Keep in mind that in those areas where Trump departs from traditional Republican positions, such as those regarding trade and international security, Congressional power is much weaker. Trump can start a trade war or provoke an international crisis just by tweeting executive orders from the White House. And that damage will prove irreversible. Because from now on, and for a very long time, countries around the world will have to calculate their interests, expectations, and behavior with the understanding that this is America, or, at the very least, that this is what the American political system can plausibly produce. And so the election of Trump will come to mark the end of the international order that was built to avoid repeating the catastrophes of the first half the twentieth century, and which did so successfully — horrors that we like to imagine we have outgrown. It will not serve us well.

Favorite Bands (Encore Episode 143)

Jason Tate Feb 17, 2017

On this week’s episode of Encore I am once again joined by special guest Craig Manning. We talk about who our favorite bands are, what makes them our favorites, how that’s changed over the years and what it means to be a “favorite.” We also discuss what artists have the best chance of jumping into that list in the future. Then there’s some Grammy talk, and a look at Andrew McMahon and his career, all of his different projects, and his new album. There may be some album ranking.

ReadKit 2.5

Jason Tate Feb 8, 2017

ReadKit 2.5:

ReadKit 2.5 is a major update that introduces a new design and contains various improvements and fixes. Beside the new UI, this version also adds support for the Touch Bar on the new MacBook Pro. Delicious API has been too unstable lately; therefore, this service is no longer supported by ReadKit.

My favorite Mac RSS reader got a nice update.

NightStand for Apple Watch

Jason Tate Feb 7, 2017

ElevationLab’s Apple Watch dock, NightStand, is currently on sale:

Just set your watch on, from out of the corner of your eye, no careful alignment required. Locks to your bedside table so you never have to hunt for the cord. Undocking is one-handed. Solid, soft, seamless construction. Low-profile, minimal design.

I looked at a few different charging/docking methods and this is by far my favorite.

Call Blockers for iOS

Jason Tate Feb 4, 2017

Marco:

When I learned about Nomorobo from readers and saw how creepy it wasn’t, I deleted Truecaller immediately and subscribed to Nomorobo, and it works great.
A few days ago, after a 100% success rate for a couple of weeks — every spam call (and zero non-spam calls) identified before I answer — I enabled the option to send spam calls directly to voicemail.
Now, from my point of view, I just don’t get spam calls anymore.
To me, that’s $2/month very well spent.

I must have been put on some list somewhere because I’ve been getting one or two robocalls a day for the past month.1 I finally signed up for Nomorobo after hearing Marco talk about it on the latest episode of ATP and it’s been money well spent.

I love the fake “oh I was just putting my headset on” call the most.↩

Cool App: Downie

Jason Tate Feb 3, 2017

Downie:

Ever wished you could save a video from the Internet? Search no more, Downie is what you’re looking for. Easily download videos from thousands of different sites.

I’ve been playing around with this app the past couple of days to see how well it works and have come away impressed. I’ve tried a few of these in the past and they never quite work right for me — but this one has been solid so far.

After the Party (Encore Episode 142)

Jason Tate Feb 3, 2017

On this week’s episode of Encore I am joined once again by special guest Thomas Nassiff. Thomas returns for a deep dive on the new album, After the Party, by The Menzingers. We talk about the band in general, their catalog, and what they mean to us. Then we go through the album and talk about our favorite songs and how we think this album may just be something “special” for the music scene. We end with some chatter about the latest Japandroids’ release, and do a little bit of catching up as well.