This week’s track is Calypso by Van She, off of Idea of Happiness. This is the first album and first track from this Australian synthpop band, and the entire album has a summer-y, island feel to it. Calypso, as you might guess from the name, truly embodies that island, steel drum sound with a ton of synth thrown in for good measure. It’s a fun and poppy album and this week’s track gives a good sample of the album’s general texture .
Track of the Week: Everything by Kaskade
This week’s track is Everything by Kaskade off of a bunch of stuff, but for the sake of track of the week, Hed Kandi Beach House 49. It’s been a while since I’ve been posting laid back house tracks and the last few months of picks have been very dance-y, either indie or electro. After hearing amazing house music play at every club and cafe in Ibiza last week, I’m back on a house music tear. This track, Everything, is an easy and fun, yet laid back, house track. Simple four on the floor dump, breezy guitars and floaty vocals. It’s all the kind of stuff summers in the sun are be made from.
Best Plain English Explanation of SOCTUS’ Ruling on ACA
In Plain English: The Affordable Care Act, including its individual mandate that virtually all Americans buy health insurance, is constitutional. There were not five votes to uphold it on the ground that Congress could use its power to regulate commerce between the states to require everyone to buy health insurance. However, five Justices agreed that the penalty that someone must pay if he refuses to buy insurance is a kind of tax that Congress can impose using its taxing power. That is all that matters. Because the mandate survives, the Court did not need to decide what other parts of the statute were constitutional, except for a provision that required states to comply with new eligibility requirements for Medicaid or risk losing their funding. On that question, the Court held that the provision is constitutional as long as states would only lose new funds if they didn’t comply with the new requirements, rather than all of their funding.
via Amy Howe, http://www.scotusblog.com/cover-it-live/.
Track of the Week: Flutes by Hot Chip
This week’s track is Flutes by Hot Chip off of In Our Heads. I’ve never been a huge Hot Chip fan and that’s largely because I never took the time to listen to them, but this new album is a great indie-esque synth pop. Flutes is unlike most of the songs on the album — it’s darker, more brooding, but the sound is totally unique and yet accessible.
Track of the Week: All of Me by Tanlines
This week’s track is All of Me by Tanlines, off of their debut LP Mixed Emotions. A mostly synth-pop band with a bunch of bounce, this track is my favorite off of the album. Synth and guitars with a four-on-the-floor beat would make for much of an exceptional indie-pop band, but I love the lead singer’s voice and the lyrics and fun and catchy. Not particularly deep or thoughtful but it’s a fun summer song.
Track of the Week: Up All Night by Alex Clare
This week’s track is Up All Night by Alex Clare, off of The Lateness of the Hour. Alex Clare’s Too Close is the music behind all those very hip Bing commercials and been on the rock stations recently, so it was to find that song that I brought The Lateness of the Hour. Musically all over the place, it’s a strange mix of dubstep and rock (dubrock anyone? or perhaps rockstep?) all the while being very dance-y. The real unifying force in the album is his voice, sometimes quite raw, sometimes super processed. Some songs lean heavily in the rock genre, such as the pick for this week. I choose it since it’s so different than the one that gets radio play.
Track of the Week: Come Back Down by Greg Laswell
This week’s track is Come Back Down by Greg Laswell. Until last week I’d heard nothing of Laswell and this song randomly came showed up when shuffling around a couple of music blogs. Apparently he’s a relatively prolific singer/songwriter but this song is less “folk-y” and much more pop-rock. Sara Bareilles adds in a very dark verse against a pulsing guitar-drum-and-piano line and it totally works. It’s a beautiful song and the lyrics also feel out of place (“you gotta take it on your own from here / it’s getting pathetic and i’m almost done / here”) with how upbeat the song sounds — and again, it totally works.
Thoughts on Adobe Camp Brasil
I presented earlier today at Adobe Camp Brasil, in the city of Maceió in north-eastern Brasil. It’s a wonderful city, beach-side, with blue skies, low humidity and moderate high-80s weather. The conference has a definite Adobe-tint to it, but this year was replete with HTML5 activity with most of the sessions being about HTML5, and the Flash sessions about gaming.
My talk (slides) was about mobile HTML5, Sencha fundamentals, and Sencha Touch + Sencha Architect. It’s the first time I’ve ever presented through a simultaneous translator, where I spoke in English and the audience wore headsets. When they had a question, they’d ask in Portuguese, and I’d listen on a headset and speak back in English. It felt very UN-esque. It’s clear in this community people are looking for solutions to move on to web-standards based solutions, and Sencha and others have great offers to help. Also of note was while the conference was largely Brasilans, there was a sizable representation from places like Peru and Chile, which I think goes to show the enthusiam of the LATAM developer market.
Lastly, shout out to Demian Borba and his family. They’ve organized the event over the last few years. It’s my first time attending, but many of the Adobe folks I know here have been coming for a while and I think they’d all agree that it’s very well put together and I’m looking forward to hopefully participating again next year.
Track of the Week: Wolves at the Door by David Bazan
This week’s track is Wolves at the Door by David Bazan off of Strange Negotiations. I had asked a friend (thanks Dan P) for some recommendations for music that was rock-y, like Crosses was a few weeks back but new and fresh and this came back as his recommendation. Great album and the first few tracks on the album are really solid rock arrangements. There are a few songs in there that are more power-ballad-esque, which I don’t think work with Bazan’s delivery, but the drums, electric guitar, lead singer, jam songs are great. Now, this song, I’ve read the lyrics a few times and I can’t for the life of me figure out what it’s about, but I love the hook: “Cuz you’re a goddamn fool / and I love you / yeah I love you”. It’s either about actual wolves eating the protagonist’s family (unlikely as that is) or some very anti-government death-to-taxes story. Whatever it is, it makes for catch rocky music.
Sencha Architect 2
The very first thing my boss at Sencha asked me to work on when I joined was: “figure out what we’re doing with Designer”. Having known nothing then and only a skeleton team we started to sketch out what would become Sencha Architect 2. That was a year ago, and thankfully we’ve been lucky enough to be joined at Sencha by a great team from engineering, to product management, to UX that made Sencha Architect 2 happen. It’s crazy to look back to see in the last year all the amazing products we’ve released, such as Sencha Touch 2, the preview of Sencha.io, and now Architect 2. It’s such a huge step forward for us and for the web. I’ve been on the road demoing it at conferences and people go crazy when you see how easy it is to build an HTML5 app, which is a testament the work the team has put in to make the product easy and productive to use.