Well, it’s been forever. I know. I’m sorry. How’s the family?

Honestly I haven’t had much to blog about on the audio side of things… I’ve been way too busy doing things like getting married… working overtime, painting, sleeping, putting up Christmas decorations, and otherwise being as absolutely boring as possible. It’s been smashing! I’m really ready for a nice 14 day vacation, but alas, there will be no such thing in 2009. Next year, maybe… just maybe, heck maybe we’ll even get a honeymoon. But not any time soon. After all, there “Ain’t no rest for the wicked” as they (Cage the Elephant) say. By the way, that is music you should buy… Plus, they’re our neighbors from the North (Kentucky, that is… not Canada).

What have I been doing lately, audio-wise? Well let’s see…. I’ve transferred tons of tapes for Sun Records & some Bear Family releases. I restored & remastered some very old Oak Ridge Boys material for a 3 disc release through Cracker Barrel. I prepared masters for the new Johnny Cash 3 disc Cracker Barrel exclusive… I’ve completely ignored my blogging responsibilities… I developed a custom database and digital distribution platform for the Sun Records catalog. I’ve started a modest web-hosting company… I’ve been toying with the idea of starting a digital-only record label but then I realize that I would probably want to press vinyl for every release (how’s that for a crazy?) More on that later… possibly.

I’m starting to feel musically constipated… like I need to take a big creative poo. Maybe I’ll let you look at it when I’m done.

Oh yeah, this was supposed to be my 2009 list of Music You Should Buy… Here you go:

1. Paramore – brand new eyes
2. The Glen Miller Orchestra – Glenn Miller Orchestra (2 CD Set)
3. Louis Jordan – At The Swing Cat’s Ball
4. JET – Shaka Rock
5. Spoon – Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga
6. Matthew Perryman Jones – Swallow The Sea
7. Death Cab For Cutie – Narrow Stairs

What’s on your list?

James

I’ve been doing a lot of site design lately, and thought I’d share some links to what I consider to be the basic essential WordPress plugins. They’re all in use on this site, and are going on all of the other sites I’m currently running and a few that I’m building. BTW: If you’re a friend of mine, and you’re in need of hosting or a site, let me know and I can probably get you set up.

Disclaimer: This is a basic necessities list and not something experienced designers wouldn’t know.

Links open in a new window.

Basic Must Haves:

• WordPress.com Stats : Stats on your Dashboard. Yes, I do run Google analytics (via the next recommended plugin), but this is a great plugin for a quick look at your stats.
• Google Analyticator : A simple way to install Google Analytics on your WordPress site.
• Akismet : You should know this, but just in case: use this plugin. Stops 99.9% of  spam. Requires no work after the initial 30 second setup.
• WP-DBManager : Simple way to backup your site with multiple options. MUCH easier then writing the cron jobs yourself. It also lets you optimize, repair, empty/drop tables & run queries. As a side note on backups, all of my sites auto backup to a folder on my server and I have a FTP program run on a schedule to grab a copy to store on my local machine. Plus, my hosting service makes daily backups of all of my MySQL databases so I also have those to fall back on should the unfortunate happen.
• Google XML Sitemaps : Creates Sitemaps and automatically notifies Google. If you have a website (that you actually want people to know about), you should have an account with Google and go to their “Webmaster Tools” and look around. There you can manage your sitemaps and view tons of information about what Google thinks of your site and how they’re indexing it.
• All In One SEO Pack : Easy Search Engine Optimization. Important if you want people to find your site.
• Add to Any: Share/Bookmark/Email Button : Easily give your readers the ability to bookmark any page of your site or share it with others using the method/web site of their choosing. In today’s age of social media this is a must-have.
• SEO Friendly Images : Automatically adds alt and title attributes to all your images. Improves traffic from search results and makes them W3C/xHTML valid as well.
• Login LockDown : Adds some extra security to WordPress by restricting the rate at which failed logins can be re-attempted from a given IP range.
• Twitter Tools : A complete integration between your WordPress blog and Twitter. Bring your tweets into your blog and pass your blog posts to Twitter. Show your tweets in your sidebar, and post tweets from your WordPress admin.
• Worpress Firewall : A MUST have. Hacker robots hit my sites all the time trying to get in and this tool stops all of them. If you only use one thing in this list, use THIS.

What are your “Must Haves”? Leave some links in the comments!

Here’s the link.

More stuff coming soon!

Death Cab for Cutie

Man, I’m really loving this new Death Cab album. I’ve only been listenting to them for about the past year, but loving every minute of it. Seriously. Go get you some.

“I Will Possess Your Heart” is the single that they’ve been pushing, and it’s great, but if you’re going to just grab a few tracks, get the next two on the album instead… “No Sunlight” and “Cath”. There are some really cool breaks in “Cath”. Totally cool.

Currently Listening to: No Sunlight