Blog: Recent Work, Tips & Tricks

  • Logic Pro for iPad tutorial: How to program jungle / drum and bass using live loops

    Logic Pro for iPad tutorial: How to program jungle / drum and bass using live loops

    I think I’ve come up with a pretty good technique for doing live programming of breakbeats using Logic Pro for iPad (or iPad Logic remote.) Live loops is underutilized, really helps to turn Logic into more of an instrument and less of a stodgy DAW.
  • Total eclipses of the Sun suggest something amiss with reality…

    Total eclipses of the Sun suggest something amiss with reality…

    One year from today, those of us in North America will have an extraordinary opportunity to view a total eclipse of the Sun that blasts through major cities like Dallax TX. This had me thinking about total solar eclipses, and how unlikely they are to occur… We don’t get total …
  • Should I Copyright My Work?

    Should I Copyright My Work?

    I get this question from my clients all the time. “Should I watermark my images? Do I need to include the copyright symbol on my website footer?” The copyright symbol doesn’t give you special protection. In the United States, when you create a painting/novel/song/illustration and bring it into the world, …
  • Rare Audio Recording of Salvador Dali Talking About Logarithmic Patterns

    Rare Audio Recording of Salvador Dali Talking About Logarithmic Patterns

    “On the horns of a rhinoceros hang all the forms of art.” Michael Becker, my father, was a sound recordist for film and TV. When he passed away, I digitized his old 1/2″ reel-to-reel Nagra recordings. Here’s a bit of an interview with Dali from 1970, never broadcast until just …
  • Economist Frederick Hayek Anticipates Bitcoin in 1984

    Economist Frederick Hayek Anticipates Bitcoin in 1984

    The fundamental idea behind cryptocurrencies—money created and managed by popular consensus instead of by the government—was imagined some time ago. I excerpted this clip from a 1984 interview with Austrian-British economist and philosopher Frederick Hayek: I don’t believe we shall ever have a good money again before we take the …
  • Facebook Live Techno DJ Set (COVID-19 Quarantine)

    Facebook Live Techno DJ Set (COVID-19 Quarantine)

    One of the ways I’ve been keeping myself semi-socialized during this period of “social distancing” has been to throw down DJ sets on Facebook live. Here’s a 50 minute funky techno / acid techno set. You can see my kiddo in the background from time to time hitting buttons to …
  • Vice Motherboard Article on Shepard’s Pi

    Vice Motherboard Article on Shepard’s Pi

    Musician Creates a Million-Hour Song Based on the Number Pi Jam for 114 years to celebrate pi day. There are over 2.7 trillion known digits of Pi. This irrational (non-repeating) number we all remember from primary school has inspired all manner of artistic endeavors, from Kate Bush’s song “Pi” to …
  • Peace Channel

    Peace Channel

    An Endlessly Looping Audio/Video Space Music Composition dedicated to Michael P. Becker (1944-2018) ABOUT THE MUSIC I remember one time when my friend Matt was taking a break from work, playing a Zimbabwean melody on his mbira (thumb piano). I told him I liked how he made the song fade …
  • The Illustrated Gallery

    The Illustrated Gallery

    The Illustrated Gallery sells original illustrated artwork from 1890-1970. Their collection of over 2,000 illustrations include works by over 500 revered artists including Norman Rockwell and Maxfield Parrish.
  • The Great River (2018)

    The Great River (2018)

    Melodic fun and uplifting breaks composed between 2000 and 2018. 11 tracks, 1 hour 7 minutes STREAM / BUY Bandcamp | Spotify | Soundcloud | Apple Music | Google Play | Amazon | Tidal
  • Deep Transmission (2018)

    Deep Transmission (2018)

    Techno and drum and bass produced between 2000 and 2018. 11 tracks, 1 hour 12 minutes STREAM / BUY Bandcamp | Spotify | Soundcloud | Apple Music | Google Play | Amazon | Tidal
  • North Shore Learning Clinic

    North Shore Learning Clinic

    For this project, a complete rebranding was completed alongside the website redesign. We designed a new logo, color scheme, stationary, business cards, and consulted on overall messaging, marketing, and search engine optimization.
  • Does TRAKTOR have bad quality sound? Do STEMS sound inferior?

    Does TRAKTOR have bad quality sound? Do STEMS sound inferior?

    I use Traktor to DJ, and I always want to make sure I’m getting the best raw sound quality possible. (That’s why friends don’t let friends use pitch lock.) So, here’s my test for your ears. I was very careful to eliminate any technological bias. For example, no audio interfaces …
  • Stillness Speaks

    Stillness Speaks

    Since 2008, stillnessspeaks.com has been a leading resource for "self inquiry and self exploration – the endless journey of self realization."
  • “Light Painting” for a spooky Halloween self-portrait

    “Light Painting” for a spooky Halloween self-portrait

    Earlier this week I stayed up late but wasn’t having much look seeing any of the promised Orionids meteors. So instead I shot a spooky Halloween self-portrait. Believe it or not, this image is straight out of the camera. No Photoshop! “Light painting” is a technique where you use a long shutter exposure …
  • Google Apps: How to forward multiple emails to multiple email addresses

    Google Apps: How to forward multiple emails to multiple email addresses

    A client posed me with this tricky challenge for Google Apps mail routing: “How do I make it so that any email sent to info@mydomain.com OR sales@mydomain.com OR marketing@mydomain.com gets CC’d to boss1@mydomain.com AND boss2@gmail.com?” Buried deep inside of Google Apps, there’s a super slick way to do this, even without having to login …
  • The Asia Foundation’s 2016 Redesign

    The Asia Foundation’s 2016 Redesign

    The Asia Foundation improves lives, expands opportunities, and helps societies flourish across a dynamic and developing Asia. We work with innovative leaders and communities to build effective institutions and advance pathbreaking reforms.
  • Christ in the Desert Monastery

    Christ in the Desert Monastery

    This job had two equally important goals. First, to redesign the public website for the monastery. Second, to design and implement a database and content management system to accommodate all of the monastery's needs for managing overnight  guest reservations, taking donations, and sending out mailings.
  • How to list all email addresses and aliases from Google Apps

    How to list all email addresses and aliases from Google Apps

    If you use Google Apps for your email service, how do you export or list all of your email accounts and email aliases without clicking through each account one by one? Here’s how: Login as the an administrator for the Google Apps account Navigate to Apps Click on Gmail Click on Advanced Settings » Select Email …
  • GCI General Contractors: Portfolio site with full-screen slideshows

    GCI General Contractors: Portfolio site with full-screen slideshows

    This portfolio WordPress site was built to accommodate a graphic design supplied by Avantgarde in San Francisco. The jewel in this work is a web-based photo management library, which allows the client to use a simple drag-and-drop interface to build out gorgeous slideshows that can scale to full-screen – even on mobile devices.
  • How to use Mailchimp’s “Archive” JS code if your site is SSL encrypted

    How to use Mailchimp’s “Archive” JS code if your site is SSL encrypted

    Mailchimp has a handy feature where it can embed a list of clickable Mailchimp-hosted archives of your email newsletters. Unfortunately, if your site is served over https, then Mailchimp’s “Folder Archive Generator” Javascript code doesn’t work in modern browsers. This is because the JS tries to retrieve the archive over http which …
  • Jim Rabby Gallery: Elegant & easy-to-edit artist website

    Jim Rabby Gallery: Elegant & easy-to-edit artist website

    In redesigning www.jimrabby.com, the client wanted a very clean and minimal website to showcase the prolific amount of work produced by the artist. (At the time of launch, over 400 paintings were included.) One of my goals was to make sure that the client could edit the website with a …
  • pureregistration.com / domainsubmission.club is a Scam. Ignore their emails.

    pureregistration.com / domainsubmission.club is a Scam. Ignore their emails.

    After registering a new domain name, you may receive an email like this one: It’s a scam. It did not come from the same place where you purchased your domain name. This company watches the WHOIS database and sends unsolicited email to new registrants, which is illegal. They want to fool …
  • Configuring the Logitech F710 for OS X / Macintosh

    Configuring the Logitech F710 for OS X / Macintosh

    These instructions for how to setup the Logitech F710 gamepad (joystick) for Mavericks / Yosemite / OS X Macintosh were originally posted on now-defunct macgamepads.com.  Setup The trick is to plug in the receiver while the controller is actively connecting. Hardware/Software Logitech F710 controller (included with F710 purchase). USB Nano-receiver (included with F710 purchase). …
  • Website redesign for Upaya Zen Center, Santa Fe NM

    Website redesign for Upaya Zen Center, Santa Fe NM

    I’ve had the pleasure and good fortune of being Upaya’s webmaster since 2007, when they first asked me to modernize their system for registering visitors for meditation retreats and trainings. However it wasn’t until 2013 that we had a chance to completely redesign the look and feel of the website from …
  • How to directly link or embed Dropbox images

    How to directly link or embed Dropbox images

  • Original Thinking: Aboriginal / primitive design

    Original Thinking: Aboriginal / primitive design

    For Original Thinking, I wanted to build a website that would reflect some of the philosophy behind the book it promoted. Glenn Aparicio Parry’s book “Original Thinking: A Radical Revisioning of Time, Humanity, and Nature” speaks about our relationship with time and the lands we inhabit.  The intent of the site was to invite the …
  • How to Disable WordPress Caching at GoDaddy

    How to Disable WordPress Caching at GoDaddy

    Short answer: You probably can’t, which is another reason friends shouldn’t let friends use GoDaddy. At least, I’ve confirmed that this is the case with GoDaddy’s turnkey “managed” WordPress hosting service. If you’re a developer unlucky enough to have to work within this hosting plan, and if you’re trying to …
  • Aware Pilates: Single page style website redesign

    Aware Pilates: Single page style website redesign

    Aware Pilates Santa Fe required a simple site to let students know what kinds of classes it offered. One interesting technique for websites with only a few pages is to have the entire website content accessible from a single long-scrolling home page. This site is super-optimized for mobile phones, which is especially …
  • Bluehost Email Forwarding Addresses May Not Work

    Bluehost Email Forwarding Addresses May Not Work

    I love Bluehost, and I usually recommend them for all my clients who need a budget web host. However sometime in early 2014, Bluehost made a change to their email delivery policies which makes them much less useful, at least insofar as email is concerned. If you only rely on …
  • Selling a 1903 Wing & Son “Style 26” upright piano with 5 pedals

    Selling a 1903 Wing & Son “Style 26” upright piano with 5 pedals

    I’ve got an antique piano for sale! It plays great, holds tune, looks amazing. The extra pedals transform sound into “banjo, harpsichord, zither…” This was the original synthesizer back in the early 1900’s when these pianos were installed in saloons and silent movie theaters alike. Make an offer! And contact me …
  • Mobile responsive website design for Reology.org

    Mobile responsive website design for Reology.org

    Here’s how Reology’s founders Jake and Hannah Eagle introduce their philosophy: Imagine a practice where every time you speak you bring yourself to the present moment, become more conscious, wake yourself up, take command of your life, and experience more peaceful interactions with others. Accordingly, their website design needed to be exceedingly …
  • Persephone in Hell Pomegranate Salsa Recipe

    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 …
  • Working out at work

    Working out at work

    I’m a huge fan of walking while working. In 2011, I installed a treadmill under my desk and now I walk an average of 20 miles a week while programming, emailing, and talking on the phone as usual. I’m amazed (and a little discouraged) to realize that I may very …
  • Mailchimp: Editing the ‘Facebook’ link in your template

    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, …
  • Redesign for food policy expert Mark Winne

    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 …
  • Newspaper writeup on My Future Self

    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, …
  • Marketing Site for Laurie Staub

    Marketing Site for Laurie Staub

    This WordPress website was designed to highlight Laurie Stuabs long career in international marketing and executive management.
  • Chart: Which fish & seafood have the lowest mercury levels?

    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

    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

    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 …
  • How to sync Google Music genres with iTunes genres

    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 …
  • Keep an online diary & send emails to your future self

    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 …
  • How to change the width of an automatic WordPress embed

    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 change the …
  • Feedback for NPR’s Android App

    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 …
  • Breathe Free Tibet

    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 …
  • Website Redesign for Unity Woods Yoga

    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 …
  • The Asia Foundation wins Non-Profit Standard of Excellence Award

    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 …
  • Does Gmail support HTML imagemaps?

    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 …
  • Podcasting website for Future Primitive

    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 …
  • Using the TGFI SEO plugin for WordPress

    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 …
  • Drinking chocolate recipes and building a site in 4-hours

    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 …
  • Website redesign for MMD France: MindManager experts

    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: …
  • Tutorial: How to crop images within WordPress

    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 …
  • How to search for ‘backdoors’ in a hacked WordPress site

    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 …
  • How to wrap text around an image in Photoshop (Video Tutorial)

    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 …
  • Help for “bablooO” hacked / attacked WordPress Sites

    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 …
  • How to remove ‘Web Hosting Provided by Bluehost.com’ WordPress footer

    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 …
  • Strip www off URLs at GoDaddy using .htaccess mod_rewrite

    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 …
  • Olympus E-620 Noise Reduction and Gradation (SAT)

    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 …
  • “Narrowing down your design preferences”

    “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 …
  • “What makes a great newsletter?”

    “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 …
  • Prototyping for PayPal

    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 …
  • “Agile design and just getting it out there”

    “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 …
  • Ottmar Liebert’s Redesign

    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 …
  • New Donations System for Upaya.org

    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 …
  • Flickr Photo Updates (Finally!)

    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 …
  • Ottmar’s “Scent of Light”

    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 …
  • White noise compositions for sleeping

    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 …

“The word blog is a conflation of two words: Web and log… A ship’s log owes its name to a small wooden board, often weighted with lead, that was for centuries attached to a line and thrown over the stern. The weight of the log would keep it in the same place in the water, like a provisional anchor, while the ship moved away. By measuring the length of line used up in a set period of time, mariners could calculate the speed of their journey (the rope itself was marked by equidistant “knots” for easy measurement). As a ship’s voyage progressed, the course came to be marked down in a book that was called a log.”

– ANDREW SULLIVAN
Excerpted from Why I Blog