Music

A lot happened in 2018. The ruinous Trump administration continued doing its ruinous thing. I finally deleted my Facebook account. I had a stressful couple of months caused by something that rhymes with “head hugs,” which I would gladly trade the life of any loved one to avoid going through again. I visited the UK for the first time. I published 33 blog posts, including several well-received posts on design and development.

Projects

Let’s check in… See more →

Can anyone recommend a good guitar teacher or school in NYC? Primarily rock but preferably well versed in a variety of styles.

What would it take to organize a mass boycott of the secondary market for event tickets?

Today’s radio station: open.spotify.com/user/spotify/p…

Ian MacKaye thought his bass was broken. Darryl from Bad Brains picked it up. “It wasn’t the bass.” I think of it when Leah uses my kitchen.

why is @kennyloggins not the spokesman for @1Password

Kudos to @MsRebeccaBlack. 8 years later, virtually every morning, I open my kitchen cabinet with a “Gotta have my bowl, gotta have cereal.”

What we now call mixtapes are cool but I wish I could still use the term unambiguously as it was originally used.

George Bush, Who Steered Nation in Tumultuous Times, Is Dead at 94

I like this Bush obit as a crash course on the political forces that shaped the world during my formative years.

24 Ways

Always delighted to see this advent calendar of web design articles light up my RSS feed every December.

The Fun Is Back in Social Media…Again!

TikTok probably feels a lot like Flickr or Twitter in the early days, where everyone… See more →

“It’s okay, everybody! Mom and Dad’s imaginary friend and the kids’ imaginary friend are the same guy!”

The song tries to reconcile religious Xmas (Jesus) with secular Xmas (Santa), and the result is essentially “Santa = God.”

Never really listened to the “Here Comes Santa Claus” lyrics before. They’re… creepy. genius.com/Gene-autry-her…

If you’ve ever endured one of my diatribes about the sorry state of music metadata, these are the kinds of explorations good data enables. twitter.com/robweychert/st…

I’m so into @CarniDC’s “Visualizing the History of Fugazi.” I wish every band could be this well documented. carniklirs.com/project/fugazi

I dreamed of a gentler version of Earth Crisis’ “Firestorm”:

v̶i̶o̶l̶e̶n̶c̶e̶ kindness
begets
v̶i̶o̶l̶e̶n̶c̶e̶ kindness
let the
r̶o̶u̶n̶d̶u̶p̶s̶ kind acts
begin

🌈

I had no idea @bjork did so much before she was in The Sugarcubes! en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Björk#196…

Today I learned that @bjork recorded her first album in 1977, at the age of 11. youtube.com/watch?v=3du0Gp…

Someone make an app that lets you congratulate new parents by superimposing their faces onto Scott Stapp in the “With Arms Wide Open” video.

i listened to cat power all day and did not kill myself what do I win

Blah. RIP Pete Shelley. 💔 twitter.com/Buzzcocks/stat…

brb skipping across town from an apocalyptic jazz show to a film noir screening at 10:14 on a monday night #iloveny

Hello, dear reader!

November is gone, but its links remain.

I published a couple of nerdy blog posts in November: one about how I’m using my Letterboxd data to address my cinematic blindspots, and one about a common convention of editorial design that’s currently incompatible with CSS Grid.

Lots of interesting stuff in the links this month; for what it’s worth, my favorites are Earworm’s series of videos about jazz.

As usual, you can get many… See more →

I never noticed before that Jack Nance is the dad in Suicidal Tendencies’ classic “Institutionalized” video! youtu.be/aYItTxqTc38

I woke up convinced Oliver Reed was one of the narrators on @blind_guardian’s Nightfall in Middle-Earth, but I was wrong.

Hello, dear reader!

October is gone, but its links remain.

I was mired in personal matters throughout October, so there wasn’t any activity on my site apart from the horror extravaganza that is Robtober, which was thankfully not disrupted. I finally finished a project that had been in the works for a few months: a custom-designed story with ProPublica Illinois about a family’s heartbreaking experience with an ill-conceived psychiatric clinical trial.

This round of links… See more →

I have a rule about not bothering celebrities when I see them in the wild. But man I really wanted to say hi to @SteveEarle yesterday.

I am transmitting to you from the ’90s to let you know that NIN isn’t even onstage yet and the smoke machines are already working overtime.

I mean they really should be called John Carpenter’s The Fog: The Band twitter.com/robweychert/st…

Hello, dear reader!

September is gone, but its links remain.

It was a big month for me, as I finally finished the project I was preoccupied with for most of the summer: Incomplete Open Cubes Revisited, inspired by Sol LeWitt. I also wrote about why and how I did it.

This month’s newsletter is a few days late because I wanted to include Robtober 2018, my annual deep dive into horror films which always takes… See more →

There is a new @lowtheband record out today. Therefore, I will be listening to the new @lowtheband record today. lowtheband.bandcamp.com/album/double-n…

I’m hearing lots of music lately that takes its cues from what Purity Ring was doing six years ago, except they’re somehow making it boring.

Somehow missed the new @s_davachi record when it came out a few months ago. It is speaking my language. sarahdavachi.bandcamp.com/album/let-nigh…

Since the album version is 9 minutes long, I call the song “Tonight, Tonight, Tonight, Tonight, Tonight, Tonight, Tonight, Tonight, Tonight”

Hello, dear reader!

August is gone, but its links remain.

My site was quiet in August, as I’ve been heads-down on a project I’m pretty excited about. Its release is just one facet of the ambitious September I have planned, so if all goes well, there will be much to report in next month’s newsletter.

My alter-ego Windhammer recently returned to the competitive air guitar stage for his 10th anniversary, tying for second in the… See more →