Archive for reviews
New grindcore review up
August 2nd, 2007 • 1 comment music, reviews
Last week I wrote up a review of DANNYTANNER’s The Finest Grind over at BNNBN.COM. I forgot to cross post this. If you love grindcore, you should definitely pick up this CD.
The Physics of Fire review
May 18th, 2007 • metal, music, reviews
So this week I got Becoming the Archetype‘s new album The Physics of Fire. It’s an excellent all around death metal album that I’ve spent a little over a week listening to. So I went and reviewed the album. I love this new CD and hope their next one is just as good.
3 column layouts for sites
May 11th, 2007 • design, layout, reviewme, reviews, web
Many years ago, I was a web designer on the forefront of the now commonplace table-less layout. Places like CSS Zen Garden didn’t exist and many people were still stuck wrapping their heads around a 2 column table-less design. Then someone came up with the old Holy Grail: completely fluid 3 column designs. Now, three column designs are not new in any sense, they’ve been employed in other media for a very long time — namely newspapers. A lot of software back in 2002-2003 used them but only with tables, software such as PHP Nuke and all of its horrible branches used — and still do — a stock 3 column layout. You’ve all seen them: two smaller flanking columns around a larger one that is supposed to ‘attract’ your eyes to the content. Problem is they’re so widely used and so full of cruft that you frequently lose sight of the content itself. Thankfully, I left that game a long time ago when I realized everyone was going to be copying the work I’d done and the others before me.
Now there’s a new 3 column layout: a large block for content with two side-by-side flanking columns for everything else (but mostly ads). These are very common these days as well. You can find one almost anywhere, especially in the blogosphere where people want to do one thing and do it well: monetization and displaying ads. However, this design is not a true 3 column layout, the side-by-side flanking columns are almost always nested inside a larger box and split vertically. This makes them truly a two column layout with nested boxes — something not so easy when I was doing this. These designs are becoming all too common place for my liking.
This brings me to the whole point of this: the PurpleCrunch 3 column WordPress theme. Aside from being purple, I saw this design a while ago and it’s still uninspiring. It’s a pastel purple which, while easy on the eyes, reminds me of grape juice. Luckily, the only purple is the background and the link text as you can see here. This brings me full circle to the concept of 3 column layouts versus the flanking columns nested side-by-side in another box. Glancing at the source of this theme, this is exactly what this layout does. If you want to be pedantic about it, it’s actually merely three boxes. The outer box encapsulates the content and the right flanking column, each with its own <div> making them singular boxes nested in another. The flanking column is then split in two: left and right and each is given its own <div>. These designs are tired and uninspiring.
Overall, I remember when the box model of CSS2 was to be the catalyst for creative design but all I see is a bunch of the same. They were highly creative and original in late 2004 and early 2005 but that was then. These days, the problem isn’t a lack of creativity, it’s a lack of motivation to be creative. Honestly, if I’d found this theme back when I was helping maintain Greymatter, I would have dumped it and switched to WordPress far sooner. The next time I need to blend in with the crowd, I’ll think about using this theme.
The preceding has been a sponsored post.
New review, new review
I finally got my latest review finished! It only took about 3 weeks longer than it should have but hey, you do not want to write anything when you have to spend almost two full weeks getting a small subset of your company’s servers delisted from an incompetent blacklisting service. I have reviewed Mourning Beloveth‘s latest CD A Murderous Circle over at BNNBN.COM. It’s a great CD that will speak to the doom enthusiast in all of you…at least I can think that.
I still have one more that I need to wrap up before I can start digging into my pile of CDs for new material.
New reviews are coming
April 23rd, 2007 • blog, reviews, writing
Many of you probably do not know that I’m a huge metal fan. I love just about any genre I can find from black metal to doom metal to obscure things like pornogrind and horrorcore. I’ve been listening to metal since the ripe age of 12 and aside from abhorring it in my years after that due to immaturity, I’ve come full circle to the brutal music I love. What many of you also do not know is that besides rambling here about things, I also write reviews for metal albums over at Band Names Not Brand Names. I’ve been doing it for about a year with some breaks here and there due to work-related issues but I’m getting back into the swing of things.
My latest reviews have been for Norwegian black metal band Hordagaard and French black ambient master AEP. I’m pretty much positive that none of you have heard of either of these bands before and if you have, that’s awesome! I’m now in the final writing and editing processes for two new reviews for doom/death- and doom-based bands Novembers Doom and Mourning Beloveth respectively. Which discs of each band I won’t reveal just yet but feel free to take a guess. Here’s a kicker if you want to try and guess: I own 5 different Novembers Doom CDs and two Mourning Beloveth CDs to pick from and review. I actually have a sixth Novembers Doom CD on the way and it could potentially be that CD I review!
I’ve been trying to get published in popular metal rags and I’ve emailed a few magazines previously however, I’ve had little luck in trying to just get an “in” in how to get a review or two featured in a magazine. If any of you have tips on how to get published more easily, please let me know.