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around the traps

around the traps

street art screen savers for kindle

We bought Kindles a while back; and while the default set of wallpapers probably appeals to someone, personally I'm not into the "slightly creepy images of dead authors" aesthetic. So, I created my own set using photos I've taken of street art in Brisbane, Sydney and Melbourne.

Thumbnail mosaic of some of the wallpapers - click through for full set on Flickr

These are free to download and use if you share my "australian stickers and graffiti on your kindle" aesthetic - I'll admit this might be a niche market :) They're available separately on Flickr or you can download the whole lot (17mb zip).

To use these you need to jailbreak your Kindle and then install the screensaver hack. The trickiest bit is working out precisely which version Kindle you have so you know which files to use (go by the serial number). Note that once you copy new screen saver images onto your Kindle, you need to restart the Kindle before they'll start showing up (home, menu - settings, menu - restart).

2011 mix tape

Once again I will stubbornly call it a mix tape, even though no actual tapes were harmed in the making of this entirely digital playlist.

The yearly play list is simply a set of songs which have been on high rotation or were just the song of the moment. I used to try to reorder it to make a coherent play list but frankly they're always a grab bag, so I just leave them in the order I add them. Enjoy!

(There used to be a Grooveshark playlist here, but then record companies happened.)

Mostly for my own record, this is how these tracks came to be part of the list...

  1. Lightbringer - Covenant (inspired simply by the release of the album)
  2. Derezzed - Daft Punk
  3. TRON Legacy (End Titles) - Daft Punk (because TRON Legacy redefined what cyberspace looks like, in the general psyche - it was scrolling green text for years after The Matrix; now it's blue neon. Also I listened to the sountrack constantly during an Atlassian FedEx, during which I made a Tron theme for Confluence... yes, Tronfluence! ...it's unusable for any length of time but damn it looks cool.)
  4. Welcome Home, Son - Radical Face (forever associated with Uli Steck climbing the north face of the Eiger)
  5. The Loyal - Tiger Lou (a friend played this while were hanging out at her place and the music felt instantly familiar, ultimately becoming some of my most-played music of the year)
  6. The Answer - U.N.K.L.E.
  7. Reign - U.N.K.L.E. (because seeing them live with strings at the sydney opera house blew my socks off... and you'd better believe the pizzicato part of this song was a highlight)
  8. Oh My Brother - Mr. Percival. Note - annoyingly not available to include in the playlist, guess you'll have to go check out the albums yourselves ;) (inspired by Mr Percival singing it during a secret gig I was lucky enough to attend)
  9. Hell - Squirrel Nut Zippers (another track picked up along with Tiger Lou - yes, the playlist at our gatherings can vary a tad!)
  10. Jumping Someone Else's Train - The Cure
  11. All Cats Are Grey - The Cure (back to the Opera House! ...and while UNKLE was awesome, Reflections was a religious experience)
  12. Somebody That I Used To Know - Gotye (this is probably on every other playlist for 2011, what a ripper of a track...)
  13. Disappear Here - Hybrid (because it brings to mind the sense of flight from this video)
  14. Jilly's on Smack - Primus (I never saw Primus back in the day and only properly got into their back catalogue in the past couple of years. Anyway we saw them live and they played this ahead of the album's release.)
  15. Insect/Suspect - Pigface (Purely random - this came up in the car with the ipod on shuffle, and became my song of the moment. Something about the rhythm, I think.)

I've no idea if anyone else will like a single track off this. Well, apart from the Gotye, which echoed over the waters as we were going to sleep in the tent on Cockatoo Island on New Year's Eve. Pretty clearly that one's going around :)

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