A few shots from a short walk around downtown this afternoon.

Picked up my copy of “Með suð í eyrum við spilum endalaust” (geez!) over the weekend. After a couple of play throughs it’s another solid release by the Icelandic group. A bit of a departure from their previous work, but still distinctively “Sigur Rós”. Interestingly the last track is sung in English which is a first for the band. Granted, I still couldn’t understand a word Jonsi was singing even after looking up the lyrics today and following along, but I think that’s for the best. Hearing a Sigur Rós song in English just doesn’t feel right.

Sigur Rós has the album for sale on their site for $8 as a digital download, but after realizing that I’d have to create an account with some random company, I decided to check the Amazon MP3 Store to see how much they were listing the album at. As luck would have it, Amazon were selling it for the same price. In all of my music downloading days I’ve been a predominant iTunes user (outside of a few downloads from that infamous Russian site), but I’ve been intrigued by Amazon’s service mainly after hearing that they offer DRM-free MP3s encoded at 256kb, not to mention at a few cents cheaper than iTunes. They also provide a free downloadable application that automatically adds the tracks to your iTunes library which is a huge plus.

So in the end I believe I’m a convert. I still love Apple and iTunes is the best way for me to manage my music and podcast subscriptions, but with buying music now I’ll definitely be going to Amazon first.

Saturday 28th, Björk and Sigur Rós will join together to perform a free live concert in Reykjavik. The show will be webcast live 3pm – 6pm EST on National Geographic Music. More information here.

Gorgeous UI design at 80/20, especially their designs for Adobe’s CS4 products. I doubt that’s how the new apps will look, but they get my vote.

Cynthia, take notes, this is a great birthday or Christmas gift.

My friend Carlos at Springbox just showed me his copy of “Print Liberation: The Screen Printing Primer” from Print Liberation and I’m sold. I’ve been interested in screen printing but have yet to actually try it out and this book looks like the perfect instructional companion. Granted, I need more room to actually take on a project like this and with Ethan arriving any day now, the close-quarters combination of a baby and emulsion does evoke sights of CPS knocking on my door, so I’ll shelve this one for now.

But I’m also filled with the sights from the Crowe classic “Singles” where Cliff screen prints his band’s name onto a shirt and just how rock and roll that looked to me in 1992. That piece of inspiration has been stewing for 16 years.

I really like Joshua Longbrake’s photos, especially the one above. The desaturated colors really enhance the mood and fit perfectly with the subject. I highly recommend checking out his blog while you’re at it too.

Mike does the best sketchnotes. Here are his from SXSW and recently from the SEED Conference.