Hi.

Jeremy Keith suggests that it might be better if our websites ask people to grant permission for new content (e.g. blog posts or podcasts) to be silently cached, rather than asking permission to send intrusive notifications.

I’ve just implemented web push notifications on the Greenhill Journal so this is definitely food for thought.

A image optimisation and resizing tool with lots of different compression and format options.

Other Lands consistently plays amazing records. He’s also been cultivating a quirky but cuddly radio voice which, combined with the heartfelt electronic sounds, makes for a warm and fuzzy listen.

This two hour show is notable for featuring lots of amazing music from Glasgow and Edinburgh, including tracks by Being, Lord of the Isles, a cut from the Off-World Transmissions LP on Invisible Inc, and a preview of the forthcoming Mac-Talla Nan Creag sequel on Firecracker.

Gav also plays both sides of the new Nuclear Family EP and I'm chuffed for our record to feature in this company.

It’s taken a few years, but me and Tom are excited to be releasing a new record on our label, The Nuclear Family.

Check out the audio previews.

Titled Surface Noise, our third release will be available on both 12″ vinyl and digital, hitting all good record stores in early November ‘18.

You can pre-order it now from our Bandcamp page.

Here's what our press release says:

Artist: The Nuclear Family vs Other Lands
Title: Surface Noise
Label: The Nuclear Family
A: The Nuclear Family - Surface Noise
B: Other Lands - See Thru Time

Did you miss us? The Nuclear Family - Tom Churchill and Laurence Hughes - are back after a three-year hiatus, and this time we’ve roped in one of our good buddies, Other Lands, to help us deliver a double-header of deep delights for discerning DJs and dancers, cut nice and loud over a full side each.

Surface Noise, on side A, is the first of the Family’s recent studio jams to see the light of day, with its classic 808 drums and analogue bass underpinning warm pads, twinkling melodies and some subtle vocoder flourishes.

On the flipside, we’re honoured to present a killer track from Other Lands - aka Edinburgh’s veteran DJ/producer Gavin Sutherland, fresh from the success of his recent Pattern Transform 12” for Firecracker and all manner of other exciting studio and live projects. See Thru Time is a masterclass for the heads, with mellifluous chord progressions and a timeless groove.

TNF 003 will be available on vinyl via Rubadub in November, along with a digital version via Bandcamp.

Linking to a variety of test posts on webmention.rocks to see if my comment shows up on each of them.

The software/library I’m using is Perch.

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Update: it worked! See the following screenshot for proof.

I’ve recently added webmention capability in my CMS. Webmention is one of the building blocks of the Indieweb movement. The idea is that if my article links to another person’s article then my website will notify theirs and if their site also supports webmention then they can show beside their article that I’ve linked to it.

Likewise, other sites can notify mine if they’ve linked to mine. In this way, I eventually hope to have likes, comments etc from sites such as Facebook and Twitter fed back to here so that I can display them beside the source article.

I’m now going to test webmentions by linking to this article on the topic by Aaron Parecki. Let’s see if something shows up on his site.

I just made a first visit to Chicago. It was primarily to attend An Event Apart but I was lucky enough to have a little time to check out the city, too.

Firstly I have to thank all the friends who provided tips for things to do and see in The Windy City – Aleks, Susan, Jenny, Lucy, Alan and Karen, Collette etc – cheers!

Thanks also to Davie for jetting in from NYC to join me and Liam for a couple of days. I doff my cap to your knowledge of beautifully designed restaurants with really expensive menus ;-).

I also got the chance to catch up with old friend Nick Calingaert AKA Common Factor, a lovely guy and talented producer who DJed for me and my friends at a couple of our club nights back in the early 00s.

Here are some of the things we did. I hope that these tips will be useful to someone else.

Eating out

• Swift & Sons
• Momataro
• Chicago Athletic Club (“Dine and Libate” :-))

Bars

• Danny’s Bar
• Rainbo Bar

Record Shopping

• Gramaphone Records
• Dusty Groove
• Shuga Records, 1272 N. Milwaukee Ave
• Reckless Records

Culture / History

• Architecture Boat Tour
• The Art Institute of Chicago

Cool Neighbourhoods

• Wicker Park area

Things to do

• Millenium Park
• Cloud Gate (AKA The Bean)

If we’d had more time

• Go see the Cubs playing baseball at Wrigley Field
• Green Mill Jazz Club

When in Chicago, buy #house

I just finished reading this book and enjoyed it. Review to follow but for now suffice to say it’s pretty good, very interesting and I recommend it.

Jamie (aka Bud Burroughs of Stirling’s Jelly Roll Soul crew) kindly invited me to DJ with him at Max’s Bar last Saturday night (21st July ‘18).

We played from 9pm–3am. Max’s was rammed to the rafters as usual and it was fun to have six hours to play with, going through the gears and playing different styles and tempos. We also had some friendly faces for company – not only was it Jason Brunton's birthday but we also had Chris Reid over from Italia and on the birras!

Music-wise, it was cool to mix on the DJR-400 and I particularly enjoyed playing EXU, the new one from Patrick Pulsinger & Irl:

Jamie played lots of things I liked, including an upbeat version of Space Jungle Luv by Oneness-Of-Juju that I would post but can’t find anywhere!

Thanks to Jamie for the invite, and if you don’t already know his productions check these out:

• The Mail Art EP by Bud Burroughs on Seventh Sign Recordings
• Jelly Roll Soul record label
• Too Many Voices by Dam-Ru on Temporize Recordings