OlberBlog | Chris Olberding’s personal website | Thoughts on life, design, and everything! | Jacksonville, Florida |

Accoutrement to your frown or smile,
Limply dangles in dejection, firmly hailing in assertion,
A Freudian fate for the early weaned,
doubles as baton if either creativity or crisis demand it
and aids in the prevention of undue post-coitus dally,
essential to both Mersault and Meursault,
convenient currency in certain circles or as a five-minute hourglass
stylishly accessorizing your meal, coffee and conversation,
the shaft allows proxy kisses with men, women, strangers and relatives,
the tip customizes furniture and upholstery;
this densely packed contrary whistle, flicked carelessly with thumb
or precisely with forefinger
is best in morning, worst when sick.

2009 in almost in the books, and while I thought overall it wasn’t the best year for new music there were definitely some great albums that came out - Metric’s Fantasies, Andrew Bird’s Noble Beast, and the Karen O soundtrack for Where the Wild Things Are among others.

Let me know what you think and enjoy.

Download the Mix

1. The XX - Intro (2:07)
2. The XX - VCR (2:57)
3. Phoenix - 1901 (3:13)
4. Girls - Lust For Life (2:18)
5. Bat For Lashes - Daniel (4:11)
6. Faunts - Feel Love Thinking of (3:09)
7. Say Hi - Hallie And Henry (3:35)
8. Karen O and the Kids - Rumpus (2:46)
9. Karen O and the Kids - Rumpus Reprise (1:56)
10. Jeremy Enigk - Mind Idea (2:37)
11. A.C. Newman - All Of My Days & All Of My Days Off (3:51)
12. St. Vincent - Actor Out Of Work (2:15)
13. Sin Fang Bous - Advent In Ives Garden (3:13)
14. Metric - Gimme Sympathy (3:54)
15. Yeah Yeah Yeahs - Heads Will Roll (3:42)
16. Cymbals Eat Guitars - And the Hazy Sea (6:13)
17. Dirty Projectors - Stillness Is The Move (5:14)
18. Au Revoir Simone - Shadows (4:02)
19. Sissy Wish - Float (3:49)
20. iglu & hartly - violent and young (4:23)
21. Friendly Fires - Jump In The Pool (3:37)
22. Sholi - All That We Can See (5:59)
23. Regina Spektor - Eet (3:49)
24. Florence + The Machine - Rabbit Heart (Raise It Up) (3:52)
25. Doves - Kingdom Of Rust (5:11)
26. Cursive - I Couldn’t Love You (3:21)
27. The Pains of Being Pure at Heart - Higher Than the Stars (Others in Conversation Remix) (4:02)
28. Japandroids - Crazy/Forever (6:03)
29. Röyksopp - The Girl And The Robot (4:28)
30. God Help The Girl - Act Of The Apostle (2:42)
31. Asobi Seksu - In The Sky (3:40)
32. Bear In Heaven - You Do You (3:43)
33. Do Make Say Think - Do (10:40)
34. Andrew Bird - Oh No (4:20)

My sister graduated from college last week and her boyfriend got her a new kitten, which unfortunately has gotten very sick. Being a recent college graduate she is pretty broke and asked for help they could get, I’m sending her some money but thought I’d repost as well:

“Ryan and Ashley’s kitten has recently gotten terribly sick. I got him last week for my birthday, he is only 10 weeks old. He can’t move, he is in a lot of pain.

He is in an animal hospital, but the cost will be somewhere in the upper hundreds. We want our kitty back home and healthy. Our hearts are broken…

Please help us!

I know times are hard, but if you could donate even a dollar that would help more than you know.

If you are looking for a good cause, you’ve found it! I really hate asking for money, but we really need it to help save our precious Lincoln.

The link below is for PayPal donations. Seriously, anything you can do. If you can’t afford to donate, please send a prayer his way. Thank you so much. Also, please forward this to anyone you think may be interested in helping”

Donations through PayPal

Overall I didn’t feel that 2008 was a wonderful year personally for new music, regardless here’s a list of 35 tracks that I’ve fully enjoyed in the last year. I threw all of the tracks in a zip with some playlist files so that you can download them here:

• Olberdings-Best-of-2008.zip (122 MB)

1. Tilly and the Wall - Too Excited (3:16)
2. Santogold - L.E.S. Artistes (3:24)
3. Stars - 14 Forever (3:47)
4. The Notwist - Good Lies (5:23)
5. Beirut - My Night With The Prostitute From Marseille (3:06)
6. DeVotchKa - Transliterator (4:29)
7. Okkervil River - Calling And Not Calling My Ex (4:21)
8. Laura Marling - Night Terror (3:09)
9. TV on the Radio - DLZ (3:48)
10. Herman Dune - 1 2 3 Apple Tree (3:21)
11. Grand Archives - Torn Blue Foam Couch (3:27)
12. Radiohead - Down Is The New Up (4:58)
13. Nick Cave And The Bad Seeds - We Call Upon The Author (5:11)
14. The Decemberists - Valerie Plame (4:54)
15. Estelle - American Boy (featuring Kanye West) (4:44)
16. Alaska in Winter - We Are Blind and Riding the Merry-Go-Round (4:33)
17. Wolf Parade - Bang Your Drum (3:12)
18. Death Cab For Cutie - Cath… (3:49)
19. Noah And The Whale - 5 Years Time (3:34)
20. The Magnetic Fields - The Nun’s Litany (2:58)
21. The New Pornographers - Adventures In Solitude (4:14)
22. De Novo Dahl - Shout (3:07)
23. Be Your Own Pet - Becky (2:58)
24. Pete and The Pirates - Ill Love (2:42)
25. Portishead - The Rip (4:32)
26. A Weather - Spiders, Snakes (5:17)
27. Vampire Weekend - Oxford Comma (3:15)
28. Andrew Bird - Oh No (4:20)
29. Kanye West - Flashing Lights (3:57)
30. Hello Saferide - Anna (3:04)
31. Destroyer - Foam Hands (3:50)
32. The Walkmen - In the New Year (4:22)
33. Sigur Rós - Gobbledigook (3:07)
34. Why? - Fatalist Palmistry (3:53)
35. She & Him - Why Do You Let Me Stay Here? (2:30)

Decided to write this down and avoid actually bugging my real life friends by saying “I had this crazy dream last night”

**Update**

I ended up blabing on about it with two friends anyway.

—

I went back to second grade. I needed to finish up elementary school for some reason even though the rest of my education was and it is in real life.

The Office of Academic Technology, which I worked at in real life at UF, was in the elementary school and all the old ladies that worked there before were there. I worked there part time while I was in school but I forgot all the details of the job. My friend Sean came by needing me to process a CLAS form and I needed help on how to do that.

My classes were extraordinarily simple as expected, except for on class on processing and formatting dates (i.e. MM-DD-YYYY DD-MM-YY etc).

–

At home I had somehow switched bodies with my friend Jeff. I was living with his girlfriend/wife Jessica. Who was a combination of herself in real life and an ex-girlfriend of mine. It slowly became apparent that she did not love me and despised me, partially because I replaced her husband but also because she, in fact, hated Joe and hated the part of me that resembled him (since I assimilated parts of his personality). I begged for her to give me a chance, told her that I loved her. It didn’t matter.

Near the end of the dream I was sleeping alone, I had lost the business I owned, and was failing 2nd grade since I stopped showing up.

I went into the backyard and shot myself with a pistol dead in the forehead. Some how the bullet was stopped in my skull, and I lived.

Yesterday, late morning, I quit smoking for the second time. The first time I quit it lasted nine months and was assisted by dating, and thus spending considerable time with, a non-smoker. Starting back up was a gradual process that took place over the course of a couple months of starting a stopping.

I’m using the stage 1 Walgreen’s brand patch which of all the patches I’ve used I find sticks the best and itches the least. However I believe I’m feeling the withdrawal effects more acutely this time, I believe I had been smoking more daily recently than I did when I quit previously.

Anyway, here’s to making it past the first couple and figgin’ awful weeks. Cheers.

In putting together a CD mix recently I compiled a list of songs that at some point in time I was obsessed with, listened to on repeat, and inevitably got a little sick of. Only rule was that I couldn’t repeat bands. I didn’t go too far back (probably ~1996) so you wont see any PM Dawn, Bon Jovi, or Mr. Mister. Songs are in no particular order.

1. The Deadly Snakes - Gore Veil
2. Editors - An End Has A Start
3. Fugazi – I’m So Tired
4. Tindersticks - Cherry Blossoms
5. Yo la Tengo – You Can Have it All
6. Pulp - TV Movie
7. Gothic Archies - Dead Only Quickly Decay
8. Bright Eyes - Kathy With a K’s Song
9. Feist - Mushaboom
10. Nine Inch Nails - A Warm Place
11. Sifl & Olly - Weird Day
12. Sigur Ros - Svefn-G-Englar
13. Tobin Sprout - Digging Up Wooden Teeth
14. Vitesse - The Human Element
15. Flaming Lips - Do You Realize
16. Azure Ray – Don’t Make a Sound
17. Unboyfriendable - Sunny Moog
18. Emiliana Torrini - If You Go Away
19. Barbara Manning - End of the Rainbow
20. Vincent Gallo - When
21. Modest Mouse - Heart Cooks Brain
22. Cat Stevens - Here Comes My Baby
23. Beta Band - Dry the Rain
24. José Gonzáles - Heartbeats
25. Yann Tiersen - La Noyée
26. Say Hi to Your Mom - The Death of Girl Number Two
27. Iron & Wine - Muddy Hymnal
28. Yeah Yeah Yeahs - Y Control
29. Shebrews - Leave All Your Old Loves in the Past
30. Radiohead - Let Down
31. Ladytron - fire
32. Kath Bloom - Come Here
33. Fischer Spooner - Emerge
34. Okkervil River - A Girl in Port
35. Peter Bjorn And John - Amsterdam
36. Postal Service - The District Sleeps Alone Tonight
37. Nick Drake - Northern Sky
38. The Notwist - Consequence
39. Múm - Green Grass Of Tunnel
40. Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds - Where The Wild Roses Grow
41. The Delgados - No Danger
42. Neutral Milk Hotel - King Of Carrot Flowers Part 1
43. Nico - The Fairest Of The Seasons
44. Jesus and Mary Chain - Sometimes Always
45. The Shins - When You Notice the Stripes
46. Kahimi Karie - What are you Wearing
47. Kind of Like Spitting - Young Fiction Writer
48. Luna - Bonnie And Clyde (Gainsbourg Cover)
49. Momus - The Penis Song
50. Paul McCarthy - Ram On
51. Paul Simon - The Vampires
52. Placebo - Every You Every M
53. Rufus Wainwright - Instant Pleasure
54. Seam – Inching Towards Juarez
55. The Velvet Teen - The Prize Fighter
56. Steve Margin and Bernadette Peters- You Belong to Me
57. Tullycraft - the lives of Cleopatria
58. Velvet Underground - Ocean
59. Jeff Buckley - Lover, You Should Have Come Over
60. Aimee Mann - It’s Not
61. Leonard Cohen - The Stranger Song
62. Coldplay - Beautiful World
63. Low - Sunflower
64. Sonic Youth - Bull In The Heather
65. Death In June - Rose Clouds Of Holocaust
66. Lambchop - Up With People
67. Grandaddy - Summer Here Kids
68. Franz Ferdinand - The Dark of the Matinee
69. King Crimson - Moonchild
70. Mirah - Recommendation
71. The Magnetic Fields - Strange Powers
72. Interpol - Untitled
73. Built to Spill - Car
74. The Good Life - Don’t Make Love So Hard
75. Counting Crows - Anna Begins
76. Sunny Day Real Estate - How it Feels to Be Something On
77. Badly Drawn Boy - A Minor Incident
78. Explosions In The Sky - Magic Hours
79. Elliott Smith - Waltz #2 (XO)
80. At the Drive In - One Armed Scissor
81. Eels - Electro-shock Blues
82. Doves - There Goes The Fear
83. Air - Sexy Boy
84. The Decemberists - The Legionnaire’s Lament
85. The Divine Comedy - Something For The Weekend
86. The New Pornographers - Use It
87. Death Cab For Cutie - What Sarah Said
88. Wolf Parade - I’ll Believe In Anything
89. Cursive - Some Red Handed Slight of Hand
90. Belle & Sebastian - Sleep The Clock Around
91. Beirut - Postcards From Italy
92. Andrew Bird - Plasticities
93. The Statler Brothers - Flowers on the Wall
94. 28 Days Later Soundtrack - In The House - In A Heartbeat
95. Sufjan Stevens - Casimir Pulaski Day
96. Joanna Newsom - Emily
97. Stars - Romantic Comedy
98. Regina Spektor - On The Radio
99. Aden - I Knew You Would Go
100. The 6ths - Aging Spinsters

As long as I can remember I’ve always had a difficult time managing my hobbies and interests… there are just too many things I want to do and learn: Raise my proficiency in French, get better at piano, write Shakespearean sonnets, pick up oil painting, learn how to play the Trumpet, actually put some real time into blogging, etc etc etc.

When I started working as a web designer/developer this problem only multiplied. Now I needed to sharpen my design skills, get better at Photoshop, Illustrator, wrap my head area pre-press production, keep tabs on the latest developments in xhtml/css, javascript, ajax, get my understanding of asp.net, database design, and C# up to snuff. Of course my bosses also wanted me to work with clients doing online marketing, search engine optimization, online ad management, so that was a completely new field for me to dive into.

Now that I own my own business the range of skills I feel I should dedicate time to has exploded. Now I have business development and marketing, heading new internal projects, business plan writing, sales and presentation techniques, bookkeeping, and accounting skills to work on.

For the most part I try do everything. Spending a little time here and a little there, and, while I can see how far I’ve come since last year, progress just seems so slow.

My (Latest) Solution: Focus, Focus, Focus

Okay, so what I’ve come up with is to create a side-project schedule. I’ll have two per week so if I just don’t feel like one I have a backup without becoming too scattered. Gonna plan it out a month or so but not be strict if I want to change things up. Also this wont apply to relaxing or casual hobbies such as playing a few tunes on the piano after work but would apply to say actively expanding my repertoire on the piano or focusing on my technique, etc. Also going to try to keep the two items somewhat different from one another.

Four-Week Schedule

• Week of 09/01
  • Ruby on Rails
  • Drawing
• Week of 09/08
  • Design Techniques (concurrent to redesign of Station Four’s website)
  • Poetry
• Week of 09/15
  • Javascript Frameworks
  • Piano (begin lessons?)
• Week of 09/22
  • SEO
  • History or philosophy (wikipedia free association)

That should do for a bit

Went out to watch the Jags training camp last night with Brandon Dyal and Sean Collins. Sean got there too late to see the Oklahoma drills, which were the highlight of the evening.

Dug these up while looking through some old files… ahh I still like ‘em.

the space between

Christopher Olberding is a nation.
Christopher Olberding was Charles de Gaulle’s sails
on his way to Algeria,
And on the return to Paris, his cap.
Most will never see him,
Inferring his existence through his acts,
The martyrdom of Paul,
Europe giving way to the States.
I met him once,
shortly after Arend Lijphart and George Tsebelis
Got through with him.
They left him infinitely small
and composed only of theory and numbers,
a subset of everything and painfully boring.
Next year he’s thinking of taking up chess
Or music. He told me he’s giving up the business.
He’s tired of the dictatorship of the mind or the act.
He left me his card, printed on top was his name,
Below, his new address: the space between.

Camus’ Cigarettte

Accoutrement to your frown or smile,
Limply dangles in dejection, firmly hailing in assertion,
A Freudian fate for the early weaned,
doubles as baton if either creativity or crisis demand it
and aids in the prevention of undue post-coitus dally,
essential to both Mersault and Meursault,
convenient currency in certain circles or as a five-minute hourglass
stylishly accessorizing your meal, coffee and conversation,
the shaft allows proxy kisses with men, women, strangers and relatives,
the tip customizes furniture and upholstery;
this densely packed contrary whistle, flicked carelessly with thumb
or precisely with forefinger
is best in morning, worst when sick.

Microtheater

A brown man is the subject or speaker in
a dream I am not in.

Fog crowds in towards the shore
where the sand is graying with the tide.
Remember: this is not navigation but
dreaming; nothing changes.

The man approaches,
I ready the designers,
wet paint on fingernails,
the stagehands.

They watch as he steps
off the ship and I give the word.
The ropes are pulled, the brushes dance.

Colors supersaturate and illuminate
so that every shade and person are given new names:
stiline, deserant, bliss, Exene;
we take our bow against
the growing sea as he wakes.

Unfinished Shakespearean Sonnet

Be still, my love, let thee not fear consume,
Though ill wind’s rank hangs heavily stale.
The shadows and corners of these fouled rooms
Do best their nature, in failing excel.

In fairer fields, thy fairness bright would stay
And conquer Nature’s beauty as thy own.
Yet death and drought, still finds, holding no sway,
Speech in sweet words, born in love, said alone.