I got lost on the way there, I lost my keys on the way back, I still can’t hear out of my right ear, and it was all so totally worth it. There was stage diving, giant balloons, and enough confetti to, well, let’s just say there was enough confetti…
And, just because, here’s an acoustic version of the same song (full length, no 10 second excerpt like above) performed on a walk through the streets of Paris.
But it’s not a mixtape, it’s a Muxtape: No Parents!
As with most people I’ve talked to, my attraction to Muxtape, the new streaming audio phenom, is definitely grounded in its simplicity. With his initial Tumbler post announcing the service’s launch, creator Justin said “expect rapid developments,” but I’m hoping they don’t come too rapidly.
It might not advance their business model (is there one?) to take it slowly but the lack of features on Muxtape is what makes it so exciting. No friend lists, no search function, and no bloody profile to fill out. You can’t have more than one mixtape per account. It’s beautiful.
The move in this direction is a pleasant broader shift on the part of designers. Even Yahoo, usually a punchline to an untold joke about overcomplicated interfaces, just backed Flickr’s launch of video hosting that restricts length to 90 seconds. No full episodes of Family Guy there, the goal seems to be for people to upload, literally, moving pictures.
Whether either of these sites will remain in their uncluttered state for long is a mystery. Both could very well begin deploying “improvements” as soon as their basic architecture seems stable enough. I’m sure doing so will improve their bounce rate and their site-visit times and other monetizable stats, but for the sake of good design I hope they remain as they are.
After almost two years of working anywhere between 35 and 75 hours a week, I find it interesting to reflect on what wears me down and what doesn’t. The nights of working past 4 AM, thankfully themselves few and far between, don’t bother me much. I’m not sure if its a low-intensity adrenaline rush or just the interruption to the routine, but even a series of high intensity deadlines to be met doesn’t do much to interrupt my schedule outside of work.
The schedule that wears me down most is definitely the current one, working consistently until about 10 PM roughly 4 nights a week. That schedule has been going on 3 months for my current project, and the amount of work crammed between 9 AM and 10 PM has only increased over the course of that time.
Ending work at 10 on a regular basis isn’t terrible though. If something especially interesting comes up early on in the night, a quick change of clothes and cab ride to Brooklyn is usually all it takes to join the party. The most disappointing nights, tragically, are those when I leave work early at 6, when I have some hope of doing my taxes, of going to a concert. I usually end up in bed by 9.
