This is where I blog about my work, personal projects, music, and general solutions I’ve found for this ‘n’ that.
Bitcoin Paper Wallet Design
I had lots of fun this weekend working on my own design for a two-sided tri-fold tamper-resistant paper Bitcoin wallet. If you don’t know how to use Bitcoin (but you’re interested in having some) a paper wallet is the easiest way to keep your investment safe from the shark-infested waters in which this currency floats. [...]
Persephone in Hell Pomegranate Salsa Recipe
A Halloween (autumn) recipe. Makes 2 or 3 cups. Ingredients: all the seeds from 1 large pomegranate (or two medium ones) 1 medium to big red onion, finely chopped 1 minced habañero (roasted and peeled if you like), or 2 minced serranos or jalapeños 1/2 cup of chopped cilantro 1/4 cup of rice vinegar (or [...]
Canton’s 40th Birthday Mixtape
I turned 40 today! To celebrate, I put together a 2.5 hour continuous mix of the most moving, fun, inspirational, and peaceful music I’ve discovered over the last ten years. This musical trip will take you into ambient, hip hop, folk, techno, and modern classical spaces. I really enjoyed making this mix, and I [...]
Gregory Pleshaw – Two Portraits
These are a couple portraits I took of my friend Gregory Pleshaw (Santa Fe / Albuquerque NM) over the years.
Working out at work
I’m a huge fan of walking while working. A little over a year ago, I installed a treadmill under my desk and I walk an average of 20 miles a week while programming, emailing, and talking on the phone as usual. Ever since I started programming a Commodore 64 computer back in the 4th grade, [...]
Mailchimp: Editing the ‘Facebook’ link in your template
This morning I went a little crazy trying to figure out how to update the target destination URL for the *|FACEBOOK:PROFILEURL|* merge tag in my Mailchimp template. I’d share this tip since the solution was surprisingly unintuitive. If you build a campaign using a Mailchimp template as a starting point, you’ll probably notice a “friend [...]
The Great River – Happy Melodic Techno
Happy melodic techno. 122 BPM, starts off in a mellow place then gets bouncy and fun. Vocal sample is from Richard Kilmer’s LibriVox public domain reading of The Night Horseman by Max Brand (1920). Right click here (or use the down arrow icon in the player above) to download the high quality MP3 for this song [...]
Funky Breaks Indian Chant Track: “Gamaya”
I love the album “Chants of India” by Ravi Shankar, and in particular the track that features this chant: asato ma sad gamaya / From ignorance, lead me to truth tamaso ma jyotir gamaya / From darkness, lead me to light mrtyor ma amrtam gamaya / From death, lead me to immortality. Here’s a funky [...]
New Site for New Mexico Academy of Healing Arts
In 1979, The New Mexico Academy of Healing Arts, Santa Fe was founded to combine the elements of traditional healing and modern science, to offer an education in and experience of the extraordinary range of integrated massage and bodywork. Thirty-three years later, NMAHA, Santa Fe commands the lead as an Integrative, Holistic School of leading-edge [...]
Redesign for food policy expert Mark Winne
Food will be the biggest challenge of the 21st century. Will you be ready? Mark Winne is an expert in “food security”, helping communities organize themselves to control how they grow and purchase their food. The purpose of this quick WordPress website redesign was to: promote his work as a speaker and trainer (e.g. via [...]
Newspaper writeup on My Future Self
Here’s a nice write-up on My Future Self from the Santa Fe New Mexican newspaper. July 23, 2012 – About a year ago, I received an invitation to be an “alpha tester” for a new Web application called MyFutureSelf.com. Conceived and built entirely by Santa Fe Web programmer Canton Becker, the site offered me the [...]
Marketing Site for Laurie Staub
This WordPress website was designed to highlight Laurie Stuabs long career in international marketing and executive management.
Invisible Space Journeys (1997 Album)
For the last few months I’ve been overhauling my iTunes library: cleaning, tagging, organizing, re-digitizing… and this morning I realized I didn’t have any of my own compositions in my library. While I was sorting through volumes of folders looking for various scattered original tracks, I found an ambient / techno / drum ‘n’ bass album I made [...]
Ecommerce Redesign for Synergetic Press
As a result of the 2012 release of the Woocommerce framework & plugin, WordPress has finally become a viable end-to-end solution for selling products online. This website for the independent publisher Synergetic Press integrates a friendly and full-featured shopping cart where visitors can explore publications by author or topic.
Chart: Which fish & seafood have the lowest mercury levels?
Wondering which fish and seafood species are lowest and highest in mercury? Here’s a one-page printable chart suitable for hanging on your fridge or tucking in with your shopping list. I put this together based on information I gathered from the NRDC website. mercury-fish-seafood-chart.pdf
Redesign for Global Ecotechnics / Biosphere 2
This website was built for Global Ecotechnics Corporation – the parent company for a number of incredibly interesting projects including the Biosphere 2 — “the #3 greatest engineering achievement in the 20th Century“. It features a very nice homepage slider and a well organized portfolio area.
Kibera Law Centre
The Kibera Law Centre provides free legal assistance to the poor in Kibera – the largest urban slum on the African continent. This WordPress-based website uses large photos and stories to illustrate how important it is to help improve the quality of life for the estimated 1 million people dwelling in Kibera, Kenya.
How to sync Google Music genres with iTunes genres
“Why does Google Music show the wrong genres (compared to my iTunes genres?)” This past weekend I went a little crazy trying to synchronize my iTunes library with the (otherwise totally awesome) Google Music service. As someone who had spent many hours carefully organizing the genres for my iTunes library, I was depressed to see all [...]
Keep an online diary & send emails to your future self
After more than 5 years of planning and full year of on-and-off programming, I’m pleased to announce the public beta launch of My Future Self at http://MyFutureSelf.com: “My Future Self is a new way to keep an private journal online. It will encourage you to write about your life and the stories from your past. [...]
How to change the width of an automatic WordPress embed
One of the superb things about WordPress is that it will automatically convert YouTube URLs into embeds (as well as URLs pointing to Vimeo, Flickr, Hulu etc.) For example, the video you see embedded on this post was supplied from within the WordPress post editor like this: How to set the size of automatic embeds for [...]
Feedback for NPR’s Android App
Here’s some feedback for the open source development team that’s updating NPR’s somewhat buggy but hugely valuable Android application: Please make it easier to listen to NPR programs with this app. I’m sure there are users of this App who like to fiddle around with the program streams and create their own custom playlists, but the [...]
Breathe Free Tibet
Every year, I agree to build one or two non-profit websites at a discounted rate. This year, I was especially honored to be given the opportunity to design and launch BreatheFreeTibet.org. The purpose of this organization is to “save an ancient culture from extinction” by improving health care available to Tibetans in exile. This population [...]
Website Redesign for Unity Woods Yoga
Unity Woods Yoga hired me to design and build a modern website for their four yoga studio locations in the Washington DC area. The client is able to edit 100% of the pages on the website using WordPress, including all homepage content, instructor bios and the blog. Additionally, class schedules are automatically synchronized to a 3rd party [...]
Website & blog redesign for Round Mountain
Round Mountain is a “Two man singing folk orchestra” based in Santa Fe, New Mexico. When musicians Char and Robby Rothschild received a last-minute invitation to play at the Folk Alliance conference in Memphis, they asked me for an emergency meeting to see if it would be possible to build them a brand new website [...]
Eclectic Mix of “Some Guys”
A departure from my usual dance/electronica mixes. This one includes everything from Appalachian blues to electronic/glitch to hip hop to pirate ballads to chants. I put this together when a group of my Guy Friends got together to share stories and music. The only theme to this mix that the songs are all recorded by [...]
The Asia Foundation wins Non-Profit Standard of Excellence Award
Our work helped The Asia Foundation earn a prestigious Non-Profit Standard of Excellence Award in the 2010 Web Marketing Association WebAwards. Congratulations to the asiafoundation.org web team including David Hirschi, Donovan Watts, and Keith Mitchell. It’s notable that most of this award-winning design work was completed almost three years ago, proving that our work remains relevant [...]
Floodwaters (lush techno)
My first original techno track in a long, long while. Lush, layered, moody, epic. Composed in daily 20 or 30 minute stolen workday moments over the course of several weeks. Floodwaters by canton Finished this during a moment in history when 2,000 Pakistanis have died and 20 million are injured or homeless as a result [...]
Deadmau5 vs. Double Rainbow Guy (unintentional mashup)
Just now I was checking out the website belonging to techno legend Deadmau5, enjoying how his home page was bumping out a tune called “Word Problems”. Then I noticed he’d tweeted about some over-exuberant double rainbow guy on YouTube. I opened the YouTube video in a second browser tab — didn’t want to lose my [...]
Does Gmail support HTML imagemaps?
Short answer: Yes! I ran a test myself because if you search for email client support of imagemap-clicking, you’ll see everyone pointing to this article from 2007 which sadly reports that Gmail is the only significant email client that does not support HTML imagemaps. Sometime between then and now (July 2010) Gmail added HTML image [...]
Chanson pour Monsieur Du Serf (1993)
“Il y’a un truque que m’a frappé: Tu a quatre-vingnt ans, il y’a des vins que tu ne boiras jamais.” (This is the thing that struck me: You’re eighty years old, there are some wines that you’ll never drink.) This afternoon I was digging through my collection of digitized cassette tapes as part of a [...]
Toryanse Dance Remixes
This morning I flashed back to 2006 when video game maker Konami hired me to compose a techno remix of Toryanse for their Xbox release of Dance Dance Revolution. All in all I think I went through 13 rounds of remixes back and forth before Konami finally settled on a techno genre tempo-warping version of the melody. Here’s an early draft version of the final mix (to which Konami still has exclusive rights.)
Podcasting website for Future Primitive
Joanna Harcourt-Smith has been recording her interviews with visionaries and innovators for almost five years, so the most important part of this website redesign was to reorganize her 150+ recordings into topics and collections using WordPress. This also presented the opportunity to create a striking graphic design and logo to reflect the earthy and ambitious [...]
Using the TGFI SEO plugin for WordPress
Here’s my response to a client asking for guidance about filling in the fields offered by my favorite WordPress SEO plugin, TGFI.net SEO: 1) No need to set the TITLE if it’s the same as the name of the page. Only set it if you want to make a bigger fancier more keyword-rich TITLE. (Not [...]
Drinking chocolate recipes and building a site in 4-hours
Lately I’ve been trading Internet business consulting for exquisite chocolates made by my friend Mark Sciscenti, the man behind World Tree Chocolates. Mark had purchased the domain name for WorldTreeChocolates.com some time ago, and last week in a frenzy of chocolate-induced mania, we planned, designed, and launched his new website in under four hours. (We [...]
Website redesign for MMD France: MindManager experts
This project involved redeploying an extensive static HTML site as a WordPress site with a brand new look and feel. MMD France is made up of a team of experts in MindManager, software used for “Mind Mapping” ideas. To distinguish MMD from its competition, the goals for this redesign included: Becoming content-driven: Focusing attention on [...]
Tutorial: How to crop images within WordPress
WordPress is great for resizing the resolution and file size of images you upload using its editor. If you upload a huge 3000 x 2000 pixel 8MB digital camera snapshot, WordPress will do the work to reduce the image to a web-friendly 600 x 400 pixel 100KB file. And now (as of WP version 2.9) [...]
Website for Earth Treasure Vase
For Thanksgiving Day 2009, the official website for the Earth Treasure Vase Global Healing Project was completed and published. Visit EarthTreasureVase.org to see how this interesting and profound spiritual practice was illuminated using an unusual circular introductory video and an interactive geo-tagged google map. This site is 100% WordPress powered, meaning that as new Earth [...]
Website for “under the rose”
Today I designed and donated a simple website to launch under the rose, an album featuring master oud player Rajim AlHaj and nouveau flamenco pioneer Ottmar Liebert. The musicians who recorded this album are giving it away for free in support of Direct Aid Iraq.
Website for Green Psychology
This website was designed for Jake and Hannah Eagle, co-founders of Green Psychology™. The content management system for this site is based on WordPress so that the client can easily update web pages, articles, and hosted discussions.
How to search for ‘backdoors’ in a hacked WordPress site
If your WordPress site has been hacked, then you’ve probably already been advised to: Backup your WordPress database and wp-content directory Reinstall WordPress from scratch (the latest version, of course) Restore your database and wp-content directory Next, you need to make sure there are no ‘backdoors’ installed in your wp-content directory. Here are a couple [...]
How to wrap text around an image in Photoshop (Video Tutorial)
I just recorded a quick screencast video tutorial for a colleague on how to use paths or shapes to wrap text to avoid objects or circumscribe shapes (curve text around circles, etc.) using Photoshop CS. This is something more often done in Illustrator, but PS does the job pretty well too. When mocking up websites [...]
Help for “bablooO” hacked / attacked WordPress Sites
Hopefully, this information will be of use to some people out there who are unlucky enough to be hit by the “bablooO” wordpress security exploit. I believe this hack can impact anyone using WordPress version 2.8.0 and earlier. See this recent advisory, which I believe is related. If you do a ‘view source’ on your [...]
How to remove ‘Web Hosting Provided by Bluehost.com’ WordPress footer
Recently bluehost made an update to their “SimpleScripts” installer so that when you install WordPress, no matter what theme you’re using, your site gets a “Web Hosting Provided by Bluehost.com” footer advertisement. This can be pretty aggravating at first, especially since it seems like the only way to remove the promotional message is by commenting out the [...]
Using free WordPress templates for fast & affordable redesigns
Here are two beautiful, highly functional, self-editable websites that were launched on shoestring budgets by making good use of off-the-shelf WordPress templates: Deva Foundation I started off with this freely available WP theme. Then my client found a nice stock image of clouds on iStockPhoto.com that I converted into an ephemeral background. Finally, I popped [...]
Strip www off URLs at GoDaddy using .htaccess mod_rewrite
Here’s how to remove the www. from your domain name so that Google won’t “split” your pagerank as a result of some inbound links going to www.foo.com and others going to foo.com. (Google will see this as two separate sites.) This tip is tuned to work at GoDaddy, where using mod_rewrite can be a real [...]
Olympus E-620 Noise Reduction and Gradation (SAT)
So far I’m enjoying my new compact digial SLR, the Olympus E620, but I’m having a lot of trouble deciding whether or not to shoot JPGs with built-in noise reduction (NR) and/or “Gradation” (SAT) settings. Shadow Adjustment Technology is something I usually do in-computer instead of in-camera, using iPhoto and/or Photoshop’s shadow / highlight adjustments. [...]
“Narrowing down your design preferences”
Sometimes a tricky process during a website design or redesign project is to figure out what kind of a general look and feel the client wants for the new site. Asking a client to “just go find some sites you like and send me the links” is a bit like asking “just go find [...]
Flash Site for GCI
Working from Illustrator mockups (graphic design by avantgarde) this 100% Flash site was built with gorgeous full-screen portfolios, custom text and photo scrolling classes and efficient loading / pre-loading behaviors. GCI is a succesful San Francisco based commercial contracting / construction management firm.
“What makes a great newsletter?”
Here’s an example of a really super email newsletter. Even if you’re not a Yogi, it should be clear that this newsletter offers real value to its readers. Here’s what makes it so great: It’s not too long: You don’t have to set aside a special time in the day to read the whole [...]
Prototyping for PayPal
I really enjoy doing rapid prototyping, and from a business perspective there’s no better way to figure out how to bring a new product to market. This month, AnswerLab (San Francisco) hired me to produce web prototypes to test a new financial product for PayPal. Here’s how this type of study works: Figure out what [...]
“Agile design and just getting it out there”
This morning, a friend and client of mine emailed me regarding the work we’re doing to get his new website built: I interest myself in how the structure of our site will influence our behavior … As the website design develops, so does my clarity. It’s obvious to me that “site review and evaluation” will [...]
Being With Dying
Today we launched this simple elegant website to promote Upaya’s enormously important “Being With Dying” training program: “The professional Training Program in Contemplative End-of-Life Care has long been dedicated to fostering a revolution in care of the dying. This unique program provides clinicians with essential tools for taking care of dying people with skill [...]
New Song: “Snow Break” (92bpm)
On this very snowy Santa Fe morning and with one week left until the 2008 Winter Solstice, I’m pleased to release this new song for free under a creative commons license. Snow Break is a 92bpm ‘breaks’ piece based around a sampled string melody from a 1960′s Mellotron tape loop. (The Mellotron was the original pre-digital sampler, a [...]
Ottmar Liebert’s Redesign
The last time I did a complete redesign for platinum-selling flamenco guitarist Ottmar Liebert was in 1995. By 2008, he was ready for something new and fresh, something that pushed the envelope while staying rooted with his zen-sensibility for elegant, clean, functional design. The jewel of this redesign is a environmentally sensitive home page which, if left [...]
Wedding Photography Blog Redesign
This was a super-basic blog redesign for a friend and former colleague of mine. The assignment was to create a look and feel that kept his existing branding requirements (color pallette, logo) while making a new frame for his blog that would provide an elegant relief for large animated photo slideshows and sparse text.
Beauty Through Balance
www.BeautyThroughBalance.com was designed and built for Shannon Plummer, the sole proprietor of a holistic health and beauty business in Santa Fe. Her new site was built using WordPress so that Shannon could easily update the site on her own. For example, she uses WordPress to add the health tip of the month. Visitors and customers [...]
Redesign for The Greenlining Institute
I’m very pleased to announce the redesign and redeployment of greenlining.org. Associate Director Orson Aguilar at Greenlining hired me to make a brand new website, following a look and feel sketched out by their designer. They needed a customized content management system that would make it easy for them to update their news, videos, publications, [...]
Funky Nasty Techno Mix
Recorded live from on top of Roe Mesa at a party in Northern New Mexico this past weekend. Funky techno / electro, featuring songs with dirty(ish) vocal samples. Starts off with 128 BPM techno, ends up with 140 BPM full-on breaks. (The set then continued into big drum ‘n’ bass and went all over the [...]
New Donations System for Upaya.org
The Challenge: The Upaya Institute relies on donations to support a variety of projects, and using PayPal for donations has turned out to be expensive and difficult to track. Upaya needs to be able quickly manage and prioritize a list of funds, and make it easier for donors to make contributions. The Solution: We decided [...]
Serious Song (Drum ‘n’ Bass)
Wow this song was a long time in the making. 12+ months? Not sure if it’s done yet — this mix feels a little thick and awkward at times — but it’s done enough to let me move on to some other tracks in the near term. 174 BPM d’n’b, growly nasty bassline, occasional explosive [...]
Flickr Photo Updates (Finally!)
I hadn’t touched my Flickr account in a very long time. I think I’m still bummed out that Yahoo! bought Flickr. But there were a few fun photos I wanted to share, including this one: “Ocean: 1 Tank: 0″ Found on a beach in Culebra, Puerto Rico. The US military used Culebra island for practice-bombing [...]
Ottmar’s “Scent of Light”
Long-time client and friend Ottmar Liebert just released a beautiful new album of guitar music. It hits stores next week, but the music can be previewed and downloaded as of today from the ListeningLounge — a custom-built mp3 store I set up for him a couple of years ago. Each of these ten instrumentals draws [...]
White noise compositions for sleeping
I made these sounds and this web page after a rather frustrating time searching the Internet for free MP3s of ambient white-noise stuff — things to help my baby boy sleep. I was amazed when I found no high quality long playing mp3s free of charge. Click here to start snoozing: White Noise Sleepy Sounds [...]
Dance Dance Revolution
Does anyone have a Xbox 360 I can borrow? A while back I was hired to compose two songs for Konami’s DDR UltraMix 4, and they sent me some free copies of the game… but I don’t have a console to play on (or stomp on or whatever it’s called when you do the blinky-light [...]
Benbient (Ambient)
Composed for Benjamin Becker, born Feb 12, 2008. 102 bpm. Ambient groove deep ethno dub. Usually I make music on a Macintosh running Logic Audio and a sizable amount of outboard gear… but this one was composed entirely on a Palm Pilot T|X using Bhaji’s Loops between the hours of 3am and 5am while lying [...]
Space Lullaby Mix
Recorded in March 2008 – Very mellow go-to-sleep ambient space music mix. Features tracks by Bark Psychosis, Aphex Twin, Steve Roach, Michael Stearns… even some very early Moby before he was consumed by Pop. For Benjamin Becker, born on February 12, 2008. Click below to listen: MP3 Tracklist
Back At The Ranch Cowboy Boots
This design was for a vendor of high-end cowboy boots in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Each of the 100+ boots was professionally photographed from five different angles so visitors could thoroughly explore each item in the collection. You can see how the design looked when it launched in 2006 in the video below. Get the [...]
Moon Mix for Leah
Ambient-ethno grooves & oldschool intelligent drum’n’bass. Listen here: MP3 Tracklist
Stringy (Drum ‘n’ Bass)
168 bpm, lush strings, jazzy fun drum ‘n’ bass with a couple of deep-beat breakdowns. Listen: link
Twelve more hours of DJ sets (1999 – present)
Many of my sets are available for streamed listening and/or mp3 downloading here: http://cantonbecker.com/dj These include mellow sets (like Leah’s Moon Mix) as well as straight up techno and funky tekhouse mixes (like the Dinosaur Mix and Dirty Secrets) and lot of Drum and Bass — including that great 1990′s era stuff that was so [...]