I already covered this on Facebook, but I have to make a note in my log.

Good Intentions is now available on the US and Canadian iTunes Stores, as well as on eMusic, thanks to Tunecore.

I’m starting to write and record music more regularly now, which means I’ll probably have a new album ready to go at some point next year. With OEC going on on the side (or am I on the side?), I’m having a hard time deciding where new material ends up going. It may slow me down, or compel me to speed up.

If you’ve already bought the album, I thank you very much. If you haven’t, please hit up the iTunes store and have a taste.

… for my enduring love for OS X. Our relationship has been strained lately, but this article reminded me why Apple melts my heart. It’s all about text rendering.

A big problem with today’s computer displays is their resolution. It’s very low — 96 dots per inch is standard, whereas low-quality inkjet printing starts around 150dpi — and text is usually displayed at very small sizes. The problem with this is that suddenly each letter is only 5-10 pixels high, which is a staggeringly small amount of detail to work with. Many systems have been devised to make the most of the handful of pixels available; here’s a quick intro.

From the first article:

I’ll start with a tough statement. Microsoft played a dirty trick on the world. Windows XP way of text rendering has zero taste and zero engineering culture. Their text looks sharp and eye catching but wrong.

A lot of people don’t appreciate this, and I don’t blame them. It’s a trivial detail, one that’s unnoticeable save for a general feeling of “blurry” vs. “crisp”. Many people prefer crisp, but typefaces are works of art, and Microsoft’s way takes each letterform’s painstaking design for granted, opting for crisp lines over spacing and preservation of shape.

Furthermore, the article’s main point is that because Microsoft designed its rendering system in such as way as to work poorly when scaled to different dpi values, there is no motivation for display manufacturers to make higher-resolution displays. Enter Apple, with proprietary hardware and Leopard’s vector graphics, taking us into the future. Imagine a 20-inch monitor at, say, 8000x8000 resolution. It would be like nothing you’ve ever seen.

The article’s author dislikes Apple’s method of text rendering, but given the two, I will always choose the method that preserves the works of the type designers. Fonts are beautiful, and they should be beautiful no matter where they’re viewed.

Before you click the link, say it out loud a couple times. It’s exactly what it sounds like.

Faceball.

(via Daring Fireball)

By the end of the summer, my album Good Intentions will be available for sale on the US and Canadian iTunes Music Stores, as well as eMusic. This will make the songs much easier to get your hands on. Long live online music retailers.

I’ll post here when it’s available; stay tuned.

Last night I uploaded the Offshore Electric Company’s new song, Seven Hours is a Long Time. You can listen to it at our website, OffshoreElectric.net (or .org, for those who prefer organizations to networks).

This song grew from one of the very first riffs Julian, Adam and I jammed with when we moved into our current space. In fact, it’s so-named because that first jam lasted seven hours that night. We decided that that was a long time indeed. It grew and shrank and settled into its current form since then, and we enjoy its energy. I think that as a new band we are also in the process of settling into some midpoint between this song and A Year Spent Underwater in terms of our songwriting; that said, I’m proud of the versatility we’re showing.

Give it a listen, we hope you like it.