 is geeky singer-songwriter whose works run the gamut from theme songs for Popular Science magazine to love songs dedicated to characters from Mister Roger's Neighborhood. From September 2005 to 2006 Jonathan's creative experiment "Thing a Week" ran on his website. The experiment was a success garnering him a larger audience and a catalog of interesting, and sometimes amazingly inspired tracks.
I caught up with Jonathan two days later, right before his big show at San Francisco's Great American Music Hall where he will be performing "Still Alive" again this time accompanied by some blogging luminaries.
I loved "Half-Life" and so it was sort of one of those mutual fan experiences.
H: How did you get hooked up with the Valve guys?
J: So the beginning of my connection with Portal was long ago, now I'm not sure how long ago, but I was playing a show in Seattle and afterwards a couple of people came up to say hi and said that they worked for Valve. And I was very excited because I loved "Half-Life" and so it was sort of one of those mutual fan experiences. It was Kim Swift actually who came up to say hi, and she said "would you be interested in talking about maybe writing music for Valve or doing something with Valve?" I said "Yes, absolutely! Anything let's talk, please let's talk," because I've always been a huge fan of their work. So at some point later they flew me out to their office and I got to play an early version of the game, which was very exciting because I had seen the little teaser trailer and I couldn't wait for the game to come out. I have to say the Valve snack table is the best snack table I've ever seen at any tech company.
Eventually I talked with the writer, Erik Wolpaw, and it became clear almost immediately that our sensibilities overlapped in this really nice way. Where I was writing all these songs about passive aggressive monsters and here was this character in their game that was a passive aggressive monster, and that's when we decided that that's what we were going to do.
H: So how was the process of writing it with Erik and Kim, and how did you sort of work together on that?
"Cake. You should probably talk about cake."
J: I talked with Erik a lot about GLaDOS and who she was and what her back-story was. Because he's got all this back-story in his head that's not in the game about why she is the way she is and how she fits in with the rest of the Half-Life universe. So we talked a lot about her and where she came from and how she was going to feel at the end of the game after you had finished the game. And he also gave me a few suggestions "Cake. You should probably talk about cake. You should mention Black Mesa if you can." And then it was, "Go ahead and write it."
H: Yeah totally! You mentioned that it was good fit because of the type of songs that you write. Where do you get the inspiration for your songs from?
J: I think that there has to be a part of my brain that feels like this kind of character, this wronged, or misunderstood, or possibly slightly monstrous character, because it always comes up. Like the evil genius in love or the giant squid who crushes ships, but only because he loves them and feels bad about it. There's a lot of guilt and alienation in all of the characters and I think that's gotta be because that's something in me that's like that. I grew up, as all of us did, feeling uncomfortable in my own skin throughout my adolescence, and you know I've always enjoyed geeky subject matter, Sci-fi, and math, and science. And so I think all of those things, I think that's also a common theme in that medium too.
H: It's interesting that you mention growing up and feeling that way your album "Where Tradition Meets Tomorrow" that's the Colchester town motto. So I really wanted to ask you growing up in Colchester, and what that was like for you, and how it affects you now?
J: Looking back I loved Colchester, my parents still live there so I go back to visit frequently. For those who don't know Colchester, it's this little town in CT and there's a town green and a gazebo and a high school.
H: Named with bacon prominently featured.
J: Bacon Academy is the name of the high school, yeah. I lived out in the boonies of Colchester and I grew up in a house that was surrounded by woods. I used entertain myself by going out into the woods and knocking over trees and falling into ponds and stuff like that.
I do have Rock Band at home and I've been playing quite a bit.
H: John Drake [PR Coordinator] will kill me if I don't ask you about Rock Band. If you've played it, how you find it, and what instrument you like to play.
J: To have to one of my songs appear on the list next to Aerosmith and Radiohead and whatever it's this mind-blowing thing because I don't feel like I belong on that list at all. And on top of that yes, I do have Rock Band at home and I've been playing quite a bit. It's surprisingly fun, even for people who don't play games or music. At a number of parties I've busted it out and people who don't play anything at all you give 'em the bass, you set it on easy, and they don't know what they're doing for the first twenty seconds but they feel like they're playing bass guitar in a rock band. And it's the craziest thing to watch, to look over at somebody who has no musical ability and they're playing the bass. [You know it's this game and it can be just played as this game, but it's sort of crosses over into learning an instrument in a weird way. And you're reading music; essentially you're reading sheet music. I think it's just brilliant that you've actually made that fun. Cause it's awful. [laughing]
H: Cool, and I understand you actually like to play the drums.
J: I do, actually that was the first instrument I learned. I was a drummer when I was in junior high and some of high school. So yeah I haven't played actual drums in a long time cause I can't afford to have one in my Brooklyn apartment, for many reasons. But yeah I'm thrilled to have a drum set that I can play. It's always felt a little special to be the drummer because it's kind of hard to find drummers. And it's the same thing at a party with Rock Band. So you just sit down there and play and people are "wow he can play the drums.'
I almost feel like my skill at playing the guitar is rather minimal in terms of being a professional musician. So, I often feel like my guitar parts are a little boring. But that's your job you can make them interesting.
H: Yes! That's what we do.
J: Even if they're not written well you can make them harder to play than they are on the actual guitar.
.Texas A&M University Libraries has prided itself on exposing students and faculty to information resources and special collections that might otherwise be unavailable to the campus population. In the past, these collections have only been available within the parameters that physical control would allow. The University Libraries, the Bush School of Government and Public Service, and the History Department at Texas A&M have jointly organized a symposium, The Berlin Airlift and the Making of the Cold War, to mark the 70th anniversary of the airlift (1948-49). As part of this event, we are honoring U.S. Air Force Col. Gail Halvorsen, who flew many airlift missions, and won the affection of Berliners by parachuting candy to children in the city, who nicknamed him the “Candy Bomber.” We will be recording and digitally archiving an interview with Col. Halvorsen about his experiences in the Berlin Airlift. Due to exciting new technology combinations and implementations, a research group is creating a digitally archived collection of the event that will include photographs, text, and digitally captured oral history that is cohesively captured to meet the demands of the modern visual, aural, and verbal learners, and preserve the access to this information for future generations. This presentation will discuss the importance of the event, the methods of information capture, and the significance of collection delivery.FYI #82465
(@Joshua Nelson and @GuillaumeGomez already aware of it)
Oh also this made me think: should docs.rs attempt to build with the most recent stable and then on failure fallback to nightly?
I don't really know... docs.rs uses a lot of nightly features, but I don't know if it'd make sense to try to build with stable first... No idea in here. Maybe @Joshua Nelson might know more about it
at least we'd have to use RUSTC_BOOTSTRAP which makes me moderately uncomfortable
especially given that I'm actively trying to prevent other people from using it :laughing:
True, but it's for internal use only :)
i guess the concern I have is, docs.rs can do something different than
cargo doc for a majority of crates, who likely are used to working on stable
Do you have examples of such problems? I'm very curious about that!
This issue is one such example, a bug in