fuzzygroove

New Fuzz Features

Mon, 10 Mar 2008 07:42:36 -0700

Sorry for being so quiet these past couple of months, there hasn't been nearly enough shenanigans coming from The Goat recently, but we do have a surprise for you. We've been working on a few things here at Fuzz and we think it's time to light 'em up. It's been an ambitious project, lots of long nights and smoked cigarettes. I think Arin is actually going gray. So today we're going to show you what we've been working on.

Sometimes there's just too much stuff to add that we can't do it without taking the site down for a few hours. We think you'll think that's OK, since we've been busting our keisters adding more features to the site just for you. This afternoon we'll be pulling everything offline to perform the surgery. It shouldn't take more than a couple of hours (knock on wood) and then you'll forget all about the wait when you see what we have done.

I'll be updating this blog post with any new developments, so keep checking back.

In the meantime, feel free to suggest your favorite internet time wasting flash game (like Penguin Toss or Spank the Monkey) and we'll post it on the page that you see while we're frantically updating databases and hunting code gremlins.

I waited a long time for these guys

Mon, 28 Jan 2008 17:57:09 -0800

I knew someone would have to do it. Ever since Daft Punk took the turn from the driving, gritty, pounding beats of "Homework" toward the lighter, cleaner tracks in "Discovery" and further with "Human After All" I have been waiting for someone to pick up the slack. I loved Daft Punk, and still do, but I feel like there is something lacking in their new albums.

I could not have imagined that a duo would pop out of the womb of the same label with such an amazing affinity for their predecessors and a penchant for exactly my kind of music. Its like Daft Punk was frozen in 1997, cubed, mashed, electrified and revived.

Thank you, Justice.

Now if I could only figure out what the deal is with the Jesus stuff.

I've got a theme

Thu, 03 Jan 2008 14:10:50 -0800

I'm going to start blogging DJ mixes. The kind of broken dirty electro breaks that pack dance floors and make me bust a whiteboy maneuver in inappropriate places.

The trouble is... there's no single reliable place to go to find the mixes I neeeed. So I will be that source. I'm going to start building a list of sites to scour and people to bother in order to keep the freshest shit flowing. If you are a DJ or know a DJ who plays to the crowd and can juggle a beat like Cirque Du Soleil please send me your mixes.

If you PM me on Fuzz I'll give you a place to upload the mp3 if it's not already online. I only want the hottest shit around, so if you send me crap I'll make fun of you publicly.

Stay tuned...

Weekend Mix

Fri, 28 Dec 2007 17:58:05 -0800

It's going to be a heavy weekend. If you're like me you have no concrete plans for the excessively over-anticipated New Year's Eve party night but will inevitably be pulled in 30 directions by your friends to spend your evening (and wallet) hurrying to get drunk and pretend the overpriced venue you find yourself in is somehow better than it would have been on any other given weekend.

It doesn't even seem like the clubs are trying this year in San Francisco. There isn't really anyone worth spending a $20 cover to go see, let alone the $80+ to get through the door and fight for a glass of Andre. The best I can find is Mars Volta, which honestly should be a good night, if not a little strange to ring in the new year to, so I can't talk shit there. But others include Crystal Method (who's sound hasn't really progressed since the 90's, which is great for the high school hackers clinging to their golden raver days but unfortunately the rest of us have to wait for MSTRKRFT or someone else from this century to remix the tracks before they're worth a listen), The Brazillian Girls and Bassbin Twins (there's an "A team" lineup), Krafty Kuts (which Mighty proclaims as the #1 breakbeat DJ in the world ??), or a buffet of local has-been DJ's. Where is the talent? Here I was thinking SF was a hotbed for the club scene. You'd think we'd be able to afford the likes of MSTRKRFT, Justice, Digitalism, Does it Offend You Yeah!, Boys Noize, The Villains, etc.

UPDATE: Wait, Diplo is going to be in SF at Temple. And Les Claypool will be at the Fillmore. Still, whatever.

Yes, I just pigeonholed my musical tastes, but that's what I want to hear while dancing the regrets of 2007 out of my pores. It really is no matter though, this year I've actually got a much better plan in store. I'm going to spend the evening with my girlfriend and three other very special ladies. I have no idea how the evening will pan out except that it's going to be zero part frantic hunt for jollies and one hundred percent unadulterated good times. Suckers!

Here's some music you San Franciscans WON'T be listening to this NYE (unless you know something I don't, which is completely possible since the only research I did was a google search for "New Years Eve San Francisco"). And yea, I'll probably end up at a club somewhere on NYE.

THE mix of latter day 2007: The Villains (via missingtoof)

MP3: Villains - Vol 1.mp3

Another tight mix: Does it Offend You Yeah XFM Remix Show:

MP3: Does_It_Offend_You_Yeah-XFM_Mix.mp3

Music Blogs on Fuzz (Embedding MP3's)

Fri, 14 Dec 2007 14:01:45 -0800

Those of you with keen eagle-eye vision will notice something fantastic near the bottom of the new formatting guide (in the media section).

We've added a tag called "[mp3]". This fancy new tag, when used correctly (please reference the formatting guide), will embed an mp3 directly in your blog. You can use it as many times as you want and it's smart enough to play only one song at a time.

You can thank Martin Laine from 1pixelout.net for the inline mp3 player. It's the same one all my favorite music blogs have, so I thought, "why mess around? Lets use it on Fuzz." So I used it on Fuzz.

Just to make things clear, we don't host the mp3s ON fuzz. When you enter the url for the mp3 file make sure it is an absolute url (starting with 'http:' ) that points to the mp3 file you want to play.

For example:
http://www.phatduckk.com/music/VictimNation/Sunday%20Insomniac.mp3 begets

MP3: Sunday Insomniac.mp3

Please make sure you have the rights or permission to include the music on your blog; many savvy labels will provide promotional material for anyone who is willing to ask. We are all about sharing good music, but we are also about supporting the artists. If the copyright owner asks us to remove the song, we gotta do it.

Now you can use Fuzz as a fully fledged mp3 blog. You can share your page with all your friends and newcomers will discover your fantastic taste through the main Fuzz Blogs page.

Text Formatting Guide

Fri, 14 Dec 2007 13:47:03 -0800

So it's about time we made a reference card for our super awesome blog entry formatting tags. Those who have been around since the early days know that you can create rich style in blog entries using our BBCode-based formatting system. For those who don't know, we have a simple system for adding fancy things like colored text, links, images, videos and mixtapes to your blog entries (bios, reviews, and comments too). But until now there has been no quick reference sheet to remind you of what all is possible.

Today we fix all that. Now there is a quick little cheat sheet that you can access from your blog management page. The next time you go to write a blog post, click the link just above the content text entry area that says, "View the formatting guide". A helper window will pop up to the left of the entry form that looks strikingly similar to the following screenshot:

Feel free to save the above image for future reference. I'll make sure to keep it updated with the latest tags and whatever other fanciness abounds.

Tuesday Release

Tue, 03 Jul 2007 18:10:08 -0700

It's Tuesday again, that means new features.

This week we have some awesome stuff to tell you about. First of all, we have a new engineer working ridiculous hours to bring you new features. Her name is Regina and she is rad. We figured she would run for the hills after spending a week with us uncouth bastards, but it turns out she can bring it.

You might have noticed some of the big stuff already, like the new music page with featured genres, but some other features are a little less obvious, though people have been bugging The Goat to add them for a long while now (princej, maureen).

1) Music Page: From now on you're going to see fresh music under seven genres (to start). Rock, Hip-hop, Indie, Electronic, Punk, Metal, and Americana will feature new artists every two weeks. We'll be adding more genres as often as possible too.

2) Free downloads: Arin spent the last week busting his ass to allow artists to give their music away for free. So you'll start noticing more and more free high-quality mp3's for download on your favorite band pages. One little kink until Ry Ry gets back from Italy to fix it: Only sale-quality music (192k or better) will sound good when downloaded for free.

3) Previous/Next buttons in PM's. Everyone has been asking for this. No more tedious carpal-tunnel clicking back, finding the next message, clicking it, reading it, clicking back, clicking next, ad nauseam. Revel in the bliss.

4) For bands: Regina first project was to show the sales summary for albums. Rock.

Also worth mentioning is that we just teamed up with a hotshot media company on a secret project that should be coming out pretty soon. It's going to be awesome, you can't know about it, so just know it's awesome.

Thank you, drive through...

Simplify Media makes a strumpet of iTunes

Thu, 28 Jun 2007 14:51:20 -0700

Everyone should go download Simplify Media right now. It lets you share your iTunes library across the internet with friends. Promiscuity hasn't been this safe since the 60's.

Make sure to add us fuzz people to your friends list:

fuzzygroove
phatduckk
faseplant

Whine & Dine video up

Sun, 03 Jun 2007 00:11:13 -0700

It's 12:00 on Sunday morning, which means you fuckers get to see The Lovemakers new video for Whine & Dine before anyone else.

Watch it now: The Lovemakers

Learning to play

Fri, 25 May 2007 20:12:09 -0700

So I'm learning how to play the guitar. I am at the point where my pinky won't do what I tell it to do and it frustrates the hell out of me. So what I want to know is, how did you learn to play? What was it that kept you going three hours into playing the same three chords? Everyone has their thing, like a hangover cure, and I want to know yours.

Help me.

Why I want to move to the jungle

Tue, 17 Apr 2007 08:55:51 -0700

I have been living in SF for about 8 months now, parking my motorcycle on a piece of sidewalk that serves no use to pedestrians. It's a wasted piece of concrete that was a safe haven from clumsy cagers. Last week I got a $100 ticket for parking on the sidewalk -- excessive, and without common sense, but it's technically the law.

So I park it on the street, and get another $50 ticket for not having a permit to park in the area. Not as though I had the time to get a permit between tickets, and I can't exactly park my motorcycle in my apartment.

So I get a permit for $60 to park near my home. Sweet, no more tickets.

Last night I rode home and found the flattest spot of the hill where I live to park my newly 100% legal bike, plenty of wiggle room for even the worst drivers to get out both ahead and behind me. But not for the retarded fuck in the BMW parked in front.

I go out this morning to find that someone had not only tapped my bike, but completely ran it down, knocking it on it's side and pushing it partially under the truck parked behind it.

They didn't leave a note, didn't have the courtesy to pick it back up.

Awesome, I fucking love people.

Mezzawhat?

Sat, 14 Apr 2007 11:18:18 -0700

Maldroid was AWES last night. The fuckers can rock. My friends think Ryan Divine is stuck up, the girls acted like they didn't care and the guys think he's a genius.

Poor Dr. Edge and company didn't make it past the nazi bouncer who denies fun and enjoyment without compunction. I hope they managed to make the best of the evening.

A few really good friends of mine came out, Carlos (Fuzz Bucket), Brett and Elizabeth (along with about 80% of Fuzz). They all thought it was a great night.

I drank a little, people told me I was wasted, which I wouldn't remember if I really was. Got the bartender upstairs to wear Fuzz tattoos, passed out a million fliers to people who didn't know they actually wanted them.

Then I went to the Aero bar around the corner where nobody was, which was lame. Emilio, Carlos and I closed the bar and took off.

Let's do that again soon.

The price of fame

Sat, 07 Apr 2007 16:03:03 -0700

You never know what you'll find when looking through web stats. I found this little gem today:

Someone went to Google, searched for "arin nude pics", and ended up on Arin's profile. In fact, it's the top search result.

Go ahead, try it yourself.

Can't get it out of my dome

Fri, 06 Apr 2007 16:39:43 -0700

"Rights" is a ridiculously good song. It's the first time since "New Noise" by The Refused that I've played a song on repeat and still can't get enough.

Sucks that I'm going to miss the Royalty show tonight at the Stork in Oaktown, but I'll be seeing them at Bottom of the Hill next week.

Assuming they can hold their own live as well as they can recorded, these fuckers are going to be huge.

Pins and Tattoos

Fri, 06 Apr 2007 12:57:54 -0700

We just got a shipment of a bazillion blimp tattoos. If you see us at shows, make sure you come find us and ask us for one. Style points will be awarded for clever and interesting placement of tattoos.

Actually, we always roll with a pocketload of shwag. I was surprised that I didn't run into anyone at the Push To Talk show, I brought a bunch of pins and stickers to hand out but nobody found us. It's like "Where's Waldo", but instead of a dude in a red and white striped hat, you're looking for The Goat.

In a couple of weeks we'll have an extra special something to give to extra special people. More info on that later.

I know all there is to know abouy pygmy goats

Fri, 06 Apr 2007 00:19:25 -0700

Tell Jeff what you think about Fuzz having a goat around.

Special BBCode

Thu, 05 Apr 2007 16:57:25 -0700

Here's a quick rundown of all the stuff you can post in your blogs/reviews/comments on the site. We kind of use this thing called "BBCode" but it's a severely bastardized version of it. There's some extra stuff you can do on Fuzz because we're badass like that.

In all of the following examples, strip out the spaces inside the brackets to make it work.

Text:
[ color=red]red[/color ] = red
[ i]italic[i ] = italic
[ b]bold[/b ] = bold

Links:
[ url=http://www.fuzz.com]Fuzz[/url ] = Fuzz
(regular links automatically get linked) http://www.fuzz.com

Images:
[ img]http://www.fuzz.com/images/user/0/fuzzygroove/a29f5247-pxs.jpg[/img ] =

Youtube videos:
[ youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qkFPbIEluEU[/youtube ] =

FREE: Atari's @ Slim's TONIGHT

Tue, 27 Mar 2007 00:49:04 -0700

Due to a random progression of events we have two extra tickets for the Atari's show tonight at Slim's. The first two (cool) people to send a message to me or The Goat get them.

Playing:
Atari's
Blackpool Lights
Wax On Radio
Here's the deets

Fuzz will be rolling deep. Phatduckk, Ry Ry, Jozay and I will be heading out of here around 8:30ish. Then we'll begin drinking and possibly eating pizza at the pizza place next door. Should be a good time, it usually is.

Chances are some late night Guitar Hero will round out the night.

Stockholm Syndrom 2.0

Fri, 16 Mar 2007 02:59:52 -0700

What does it mean when you spend over 35hrs straight staring at a computer screen, and then go home and you can't stop checking to make sure everything is ok?

I had a great plan - go home, get a six pack, watch Mythbusters on DVR and pass the fuck out. But no, I'm so far past tired that I don't have the strength to thwart my impulse to pick up the computer and check on Fuzz. I just keep checking the stats to see how the server load is (it's not even close to dangerous right now), make sure there's no horrible errors, and answer the cool people who send feedback (yes, the cooler the message you send The Goat, the faster the responses from The Goat).

Fuzz is becoming an obsession, but a good one. I work with two of the best, most dedicated engineers in the field (both in terms of the technical and the attitudinal), and also the most intelligent group of people I've ever worked with in my life. Work isn't work, it's a tight group of real people with a passion for music and a healthy disdain for authority working together to wake people up.

So, yea. I'm going to cut this off before it takes off in the cheesy direction. I'm kinda delirious at this point.

Terrible interface

Tue, 13 Mar 2007 12:26:15 -0700

I'm so much better at typing than I am at guitaring. Who invented this fucking thing? Even though there's only six strings, there's like a bazillion combinations, none of which make intuitive sense as far as fingers-to-sounds-good goes.

I think I'd do better mentally if I memorized what notes are where on the thing and the theory behind why certain notes sound good together, and why the fuck they had to name them so crooked that you have to memorize stupid shit like "Every Good Boy Does Fine" and all that crap.

But even if I did memorize everything, it's near impossible to get my fingers to make the jump from one chord to another without muting the wrong string and making the whole event sound like a choking turkey.

All that and my fucking fingers hurt. I didn't even make a sound that's near pain worthy. Painful for the poor bastards next door subjected to the *blang* *blong* *blat* that comes from my inept fingering, yea, but, not worth my pain.

Who would have thought there would be all this leg work to becoming a rock star. I think I'm going to head to Best Buy tomorrow, get Guitar Hero and call it a mother fucking day.