Today Is the Day
May 14, 2008 | Categories: Blogs / Design / Music / Photography


Today Is the Day by Yo La Tengo

For some reason I woke up this morning with a hankering to hear a certain Yo La Tengo song, but I couldn’t remember which one it was. I finally remembered that the song was Today Is the Day, a song that was off of their album Summer Sun. But they released a Today Is the Day EP as well, and instead of putting the original version on there, they put this amazing sped up version that destroys the original. Seriously, if you don’t want your ass kicked by Yo La Tengo right now, don’t listen to this.

On a sidenote, I made that cover above because I couldn’t find a large image of the original. The background and letters are made up of images from Michael Surtees’ New York City Colour Study project. Basically he takes a picture of the sky over Manhattan every morning around 7 am every day, documenting how different the sky can look day to day. I figured since the album was titled Today Is the Day it was kind of fitting. Also, Yo La Tengo is from Hoboken, New Jersey which pretty much shares the same sky as Manhattan, so it works for me. Probably not the most creative of the covers I’ve made, but it’s very conceptual, something I don’t do often.

Also be sure to check out Michael’s blog DesignNotes, it’s a good read.

Bobby

God Went Surfing With The Devil
April 24, 2008 | Categories: Blogs / Life / Photography

Every now and then I’ll run across things that make me realize just how awesome and special our lives are. It doesn’t happen very often, but when it does all aIl I can think is how I want to soak in those feelings. Reading God Went Surfing With The Devil, a blog by Alex Klein and Bryan Derballa, makes me feel this way.

Alex and Bryan are a couple of surfers making their way through the Middle East, taking photos and describing their time over there. What really hit me about this blog is the beautiful and striking images coupled with the well written descriptions of their day. Sometimes you read it and laugh, other days it’s extremely depressing, sometimes frightening. But their optimistic attitudes shine through some of the scarier events. Their adventure is like a real life City of God, but being blogged instead of filmed.

They’ve only been there 16 days, so there isn’t a ton of stuff to look through, but I’ll definitely be checking this daily from now on.

Found through Fecal Face

Bobby

Nalden
April 24, 2008 | Categories: Blogs / Internet / The Desktop Wallpaper Project

One of my favorite things about the internet is how it enables you to meet people. I have friends all over the world, which is a very new thing to me, and I absolutely love it. So one day about a month ago I got an email from a fellow named Nalden, who was writing to tell me that he liked my blog and he’d like to feature some of the wallpapers on his site. I’ve had offers from people to do this before and honestly it’s just not something I’ve wanted to do. But I took a visit to his site anyhow, and I was blown away!

Nalden’s site, titled appropriately Nalden, is more like a desktop browser than a blog. It’s made for full screen viewing, with all the things he posts about lining the bottom which you can scroll through with ease. He also has a random background that shows up as well, which is where I fit into the picture. So I decided to say yes, because not only does this bring readers from the Netherlands, but Nalden is a pretty rad guy as well.

There’s only one small problem… it’s all in Dutch! It’s still worth a visit though, that interface is just so damn impressive. And if you don’t see the Dan Funderburgh background at first, just keep refreshing, it’ll show up eventually!

Bobby

Scribefire 2.0
April 21, 2008 | Categories: Blogs / Internet

I think maybe 4 people who read this blog are even going to care about this, but I do so I’m writing about it. Scribefire is an extension for Firefox that opens up a small window at the bottom of the browser. In this little window is a mini-blogging tool that let’s me look at a website while I write about, which is absolutely the most helpful tool in the world. When I first started blogging I hated the idea of having to blog through Wordpress, constantly switching between tabs, or having an entirely separate program to write posts.

I guess this is just a post about how much I love Scribefire, it’s one of the main reasons I use Firefox over Safari. And this morning they just released a brand new version (which Firefox 3 conveniently notified me of) and it’s even better than it was before. You can search for photos on Flickr and post them right to your blog and the same thing goes for YouTube, which I’ll definitely be using. My only beef so far is that I can’t resize the menu bar thingy to the right anymore, but I’m sure they’ll fix it eventually, it’s really NBD.

If you happen to have a blog and have never heard of Scribefire I highly suggest checking it out, it’s a life saver.

Bobby

The Constant Siege
April 2, 2008 | Categories: Blogs / Photography

The amazingly talented photographer Clayton Cubitt has started a new Tumblr called The Constant Siege, and it’s a slice of amazing. I kind of see it as a glimpse inside the brain of an extremely talented person, the things that make interest and excite him. The site is heavy with a lot of really interesting photos, a lot of them quite graphic (that’s your warning that it’s probably NSFW), but most of them are just really interesting portraits or landscapes.

If you have any interest in photography at all, you’re going to love this site. If you want to see some really great photos or need 10 minutes of distraction, check this site out. One of the best things I’ve come across this year so far.

Bobby

Monster-Munch
April 1, 2008 | Categories: Art / Blogs / Design / Illustration

A lot of the time, visiting the sites that link to +KN leads to me finding a lot of great new things, and every now and then a great site really gets me excited. This holds true for Monster-Munch, the creation of Nicky Gibson, a graphic designer who lives in East London. Looking through Nicky’s blog I’m absolutely amazed that she’s only been blogging for 3 months now. It could be the fact that she creates websites for a living that everything looks so good, it makes me extremely jealous.

The purpose of the blog is to show her passions and the things that make her smile, but the themes of monsters and things being handmade definitely run through the blog as well. She also seems like one of the friendliest, most down-to-earth people out there, so please pay her site a visit and leave her some nice notes!

Bobby

Ummm… I’m In The Wall Street Journal
March 20, 2008 | Categories: Blogs / The Desktop Wallpaper Project

File this post under un-fucking-believable. Earlier today I got an email from some guy named Jamin asking me for my full name and wanting to talk to me on the phone about The Desktop Wallpaper Project. I immediately think how weird this is, and then I check out out his signature, and it clearly says ” Wall Street Journal”. Turns out “some guy named Jamin” is the writer of Buzzwatch, one of the blogs that the Wall Street Journal has.

So I call him and he’s a really rad guy, and we talk about the project and it goes well, even though I’m slightly nervous. Anyhow, the post is up, it’s just a small mention, but nonetheless, it’s The Wall Street Journal, how cool is that?

Click here to check it out!

Bobby

The Trials and Tribulations of Kitsune Noir
March 13, 2008 | Categories: Blogs / Life

Yesterday night around 6 PM Kitsune Noir made a cute little appearance onto Boing Boing thanks to UPSO’s amazing contribution to The Desktop Wallpaper Project. Well, when it rains it pours, so the post also showed up on popurls, delicio.us’ popular sites, and notcot.org, the place where Boing Boing found the wallpaper in the first place. But by 10 PM, Kitsune Noir was totally dead in the water, suffering from a case of “awesome-itis”, haha… I’m not really sure when things came back online, I decided to go to bed because there was really nothing for me to do. Things are still going at the same rate they were yesterday night but things are going a little smoothly thanks to same minor, temporary tweaks. Basically, Kitsune Noir is having some growing pains.

What this means is that there’s going to start being some changes with site, though all of them are going to be positive. Those of you who read this regularly probably realize that this blog is my baby, and that I’m never going to do anything to make my baby be lame, or look ugly. The first big thing I’m adding is advertising, which you can see is being occupied by my friends over at The Quiet Life. One thing I can definitely promise though is that you’re never going to see Google Adwords or any of those other generic ad services on this blog. Any ads on the site are going to be people, products, things that I actually do enjoy or stand behind. The reason behind having advertising is for a couple reasons; A) Keep the site going and pay for all that technical mumbo jumbo & B) Actually have the money to start doing some really big projects that I have in mind. I come up with a ton of ideas all the time of crazy projects I’d love to do, and sadly not all the projects I do can be free.

So that’s my rant. I just like being as clear and open about things as I possibly can (it’s because I’m a Leo!).

Bobby

My Love/Hate Affair with Twitter
March 6, 2008 | Categories: Blogs / Internet

I’ve been using Twitter in my sidebar for the last few months, and I have to say that I really like it. I just think it’s fun that I can share with anyone reading the blog what I’m doing. But at the same time it’s completely unreliable and half the time it causes my sidebar not to load completely, making me want to lash out at the ones I love.

I’m pretty good with Google-ing stuff and finding fixes for problems like this, but for the life of me I have no idea how to write my own code to stop Twitter from being the most obnoxious thing on the planet. Can anyone help me write some code so that Twitter loads correctly and doesn’t gum up my blog? One of you out there has to know something about this! If you think you can help, email me at hello@kitsunenoir.com.

Bobby

A Brief Message from Me
January 30, 2008 | Categories: Blogs

Some of you may have noticed that there are some new changes on Kitsune Noir, and some of you may not. I’m really trying to streamline the site, and I don’t really do it in major, shocking ways, just a little nip and tuck here and there.

For example, there’s the new row of tabs under the banner, with links about and how to contact me, the RSS feed, and the search box now hangs out up there. To the right under my big, rotating head, is a field to join the mailing list. I really want to encourage everyone to join the mailing list because it’ll give you a heads up on a HUGE project that’s going to be starting on March 4th. Let’s just say that it could possibly even be beneficial to join…

I also want to take the time to thank my old friend Adam who helped me out with a lot of the stuff you see here. I’ve done a pretty good job of making things the way they are, but without his help this blog basically wouldn’t exist. Thanks again Adam!
If you see anything janky going on with the site as well, please let me know. The site is optimized for Firefox (which Google Analytics tells me that almost 60% of you use) and Safari looks good as well, but Internet Explorer may not look so hot.

Bobby