Keeping yourself organized for months at a time is almost impossible, even with the pile of productivity apps that get released for PC and Mac every day. The problem comes from the fact that if you’re using an application to help you run your life, you need to WANT to open it up and interact with it every single day. And if there’s something about that application annoys you, even just a little, you’ll never be able to keep up with it - you’ll click on something else and forget about it for a week or more, and then the whole system you’re trying to create falls apart.

I just found a program called Chandler, and it looks fundamentally different than everything else I’ve tried over the last couple years. Chandler combines the task management of OmniFocus and Things with the calender management of iCal, and it’s designed for teams, so your data can be shared and accessed from anywhere. To sum it up, imagine everything you could possibly be stressed out about in one window, like a HUD or a big scoreboard.

Most impressively, Chandler is free, cross-platform and open-source, so you can expect it to be improved and added to constantly. I’ve been complaining about iCal for a long time, and I’m happy to be finally liberated from it without having to forget what month it is.

Link: the Chandler Project
(via a comment by Wayne Arthurton on 43 Folders)

Danger Mouse is on fire lately, and I couldn’t be happier that he produced the new Beck album. I go back and forth on Beck - he’s one of those bands/artists that make consistently good records when they could be making great records. Kind of like Coldplay, but they’re more on the crap-when-they-could-be-great side of the scale.

So the addition of Danger Mouse can only be a good thing. He’s produced two of my favorite records of this year, the new Gnarls Barkley and Black Keys’ Attack and Release. I don’t know if he’s gone all analog or what, but he really captures something “old” on his latest work, something intangible that you feel when you listen to the best stuff of the 60s and 70s.

His collaboration with Beck is called Modern Guilt, and it’s out on July 6th. You can hear a few tracks on Beck’s iLike page, and they sound as good and old and psychedelic as I hoped they would. Reminds me of the new Caribou, a little.

Link: Beck on iLike

I made a donation to a political campaign today. They’re doing some sort of donation matching, where I give $25 and supposedly it inspires someone else to give $25, and then they write you an email so you can pat each other on the back. I got this in my Plastic Explosives inbox:

Like… really? This is only the second time I’ve had something like this said to me, and both comments came from members of the Obama campaign.

Sandi and I had a conversation about this when we first started the site, and decided we weren’t going to let Fox News Nation stand in the way of a great domain name. I came up with “Plastic Explosives” because it reminded me of our aesthetic and brought some kind of jagged, pink J. Mayer H.-like thing to mind. I figured the “DO THEY SELL PLASTIC EXPLOSIVES?” question would be answered by a cursory glance at the site.

We’re into art. They sell guns and weapons at Wal Mart, though.
Maybe we should swap names?

My portfolio for commercial sound design is now up and running at JonathanGraves.net.

Why don’t you have a look?

This is a wonderful video for Ensemble’s collaboration with Cat Power (Chan Marshall) - it appears to be made entirely of home movie disaster footage, and the song comes off sounding like peak-form Fiona Apple.

Courtesy of Pitchfork TV.

MacProVideo.com has the best tutorials I’ve ever used for stuff like Logic and Final Cut Pro, and they’re running a contest right now based on a recent release, Logic 404: Mixing Electronica.

You can remix a really generic dance track by Olav Basoski (sorry Olav), and if your remix is chosen as the best of the bunch, you win:

+ a copy of Logic Studio
+ a MacBook Pro
+ an Apogee Duet audio interface
+ a Universal Audio UAD-Xpander Xpress

I mean, that’s a lot of good stuff. It’d be worth entering for the laptop alone, I think.

Link: MacProVideo Remix Contest with Olav Basoski

Everyone knows that we’re supposed to learn from our mistakes, but it’s tough to remember to look back at your day/week/month and figure out what those mistakes actually were. I’ve been trying to keep track of things in iCal (with limited success) so I can see where my week went drastically off-course.

Productivity blogger Andre Kibbe has the same kind of idea - he talks about looking back at day-to-day forks in the road and figuring out what you might want to do differently next time. Worth reading.

Link: Upgrade an Unproductive Day by Mentally Rehearsing a Better One

(via Lifehacker)

Lost at E-minor is constantly putting good stuff in my inbox when most of it is crap. And the guy from Liars has started writing for them lately, making them that much more awesome.

One of their newest featured artists is Brittanie Pendleton, a 20 year-old photographer from California whose subjects crackle with emotion and sexuality, even though (because?) she captures them through a washed out, almost bored lens. I’m especially struck by the cohesiveness of Pendleton’s work - shots of dust collecting on the floor, lazy girls in their underwear and scenes from nature all share the same distinct mood. There’s something about her aesthetic that makes me feel like I’m 17 and haven’t slept in two days.

Beautiful stuff.

Link: Hairplay Photography

Sorry I haven’t been good with the blog lately - I went home last weekend to hang out with my dad and I’ve been recording and editing nonstop. One last track to go before my record is done and I can have a life again.

Here’s the sixth track - kind of an interlude.
It’s made completely with snippets of home video of me singing when I was like 11-13:

Corbu - 667 (mp3)

The Notwist is a glitchy, breathy rock-ish band from Germany that I quite like. Supposedly they were a metal band at some point, but their last record, Neon Golden, had an almost Beatles-ish pop air to it. Stately electronic pop music.

They have a new record out called the Devil, You and Me. Here’s “Alphabet” - not the most immediate track on the album, the beat that comes around the 1:07 mark is ridiculous.

The Notwist : Alphabet