Posts tagged: Music

Playing the guitar again

August 17th, 2008

I recently picked up the guitar again after a few years of hardly playing and have been getting back into playing. I started playing when I was about 14 years old, being taught firstly by a neighbour, then having a few lessons at school, and then mostly learning by listening to music and playing along.

Luckily I still have 2 Epiphone guitars that I have kept in good condition over the years. Hopefully with a little more practice I’ll get back to previous form and possibly even improve.

My Epiphone guitars

iTunes now playing functionality

July 13th, 2008

This morning I integrated a cool little piece of functionality into the blog section of Hungry Browser. In a nutshell the functionality allows me to listen to my music on my MacBook Pro through iTunes and seemlessly publish what I am currently listening to on this website. Users can click on the image for each album and will be taken to Amazon where they can purchase the album/track.

The reason for integrating this was to effortlessly share the music I am listening to with others, without having to log in to a web-based service such as last.fm.

There are two parts to this functionality, both originially developed by Brand Fuller. The first part is the iTunes integration where you install a plugin to export the music you are listening to into an external XML file that can be uploaded to your website. The second part (which I have adapted) is a PHP script that looks into the XML file and then takes the data and outputs it as HTML.

In conclusion a nice little bit of functionality.

New John Mayer album: Where The Light Is

July 2nd, 2008

I’ve been a big fan of John Mayer for quite a few years now. He is exceptionally talented with his amazingly textured and diverse guitar playing, soulful voice and great song writing ability. It just happens that he has a new live album out: Where The Light Is, it is amazing, with all my fave songs on there with extended live versions. Go check it out!

John Mayer: Where The Light Is

Tru Thoughts recordings

April 1st, 2008

I first came across Tru Thoughts when I first discovered Bonobo about 5 or 6 years ago and have been a fan of their artists (Alice Russell, Quantic etc) ever since. I was looking at their (nicely designed and developed) site this evening and came across a few new artists that you should check out: TM Juke, Belleruche and Saravah Soul. You can listen to snippets of each track, read up on the artists, check out gigs, and buy their music in the online shop!

Quantic Soul Orchestra live at Koko, London

April 1st, 2008

So me and the gang went to Koko last week to see the Quantic Soul Orchestra play. We had a really cool time and I personally was really impressed with the quality of the performance. Here are a couple of pics from the evening.