• 02.02.2012 – Nada Surf @ Tractor Tavern
• 02.07.2012 – Wilco @ The Paramount Theatre
• 02.14.2012 – Dr. Dog @ The Neptune
• 02.15.2012 – The Dear Hunter @ Neumo’s
• 02.17.2012 – Cursive @ Neumo’s

This is a pretty solid moth of shows, especially if you were lucky enough to get tickets to the Nada Surf show!

FUCK YES!! Andrew WK plays The Showbox Market March 3rd!! Playing his entire first album I Get Wet!!

These bills have the ability to cause catastrophic damage to the way we currently use the internet today and could potentially stop progress and innovation. If either SOPA or PIPA were law these sites would have been closed or gone bankrupt before becoming part of our lives today.

• Facebook
• Twitter
• YouTube
• Vimeo
• MySpace
• eBay
• Craigslist
• Twitpic
• WordPress.com
• and countless others.

First things first, S3 is just storage. When creating your ‘bucket’ (we will talk about that in a bit), you select the location in which it will be stored. S3 isn’t a content delivery network (CDN), but Amazon does offer that with Cloudfront. Even though this isn’t a CDN, it will probably speed up your website as well as reduce burden on your web host, only costing you a couple cents a month (depending on your audience).

1. Sign up for Amazon Web Services

This is fairly easy, it even uses your existing Amazon account if you have one. Just go to Amazon Web Services and click Sign-Up.

2. Creating the Bucket

Once you have signed up for your AWS account you can create a bucket for your files to be stored in. This is fairly painless. Just log into your account and go to the AWS Management Console. Once your on the console page, just click on the Amazon S3 tab and click ‘Create Bucket’. You can name the bucket anything you want, but I named mine shinyidol. Best to name it something that makes sense as it will be the name in your S3 url, so mine ended up being shinyidol.s3.amazonaws.com. The second option is the region in which you want the files to be stored. There are multiple options depending on what region of the globe you live in or where you think your traffic comes from. You have now created your bucket.

3. Time to Install WordPress Plugins

There are a couple WordPress plugins that come in very handy optimizing your content to move to S3, moving the actual content, and use moving forward on new posts.

Optimize your content with WP Smush.it. This really has nothing to do with S3, but really just optimizing all your images before you move them to the new server. It is super easy to use, and even has a bulk Smush.It. You will probably see a 20% savings on your file sizes.

Move your content with W3 Total Cache. This is an amazing tool to help your site load faster, but we really are only using one feature in it, which copies the media library, wp-includes/ files, and host theme files to your S3 bucket.

Just download and install the W3 Total Cache plugin. Once enabled click on General and scroll down. You will have an option to turn on CDN. Just click the check box to enable, and select Amazon Simple Storage Service (S3) from the drop-down, and click Save all settings.

Now you have to tell it what account to copy the files too. Click on CDN in W3 Total Cache. From this screen we have two options, configuration of the S3 account with our WordPress site, and the tools that allow us to copy files to the S3 bucket. Configuration is simple, you will need your Access Key ID and Secret Key from Amazon, both can be found by logging into your AWS account and selecting Security Credentials from the My Account / Console button. Just copy and paste the Access Key ID and Secret Key, type in the name of the bucket you created previously, and leave SSL Support to Auto. Once you have those set, just click Test S3 Upload, and after a couple seconds it will say Test Passed and now your can click Save all settings.

Now that we have WordPress and our S3 bucket talking to each other we can start copying content to the bucket. W3 Total Cache makes this easy by giving you a tool that just copies everything for you and creates folders in your bucket. In the CDN options you can select what items you want to upload to S3. Just click one of the various options and a popup will appear with the total files it will export to S3. Just click start and your off! This could take a couple minutes depending on how many files you have in your library. Once that is done you can also move other files such as wp-include files and theme associated files. What makes this tool so handy is it also updates all your posts to point to the S3 files. So you don’t have to update anything in previous posts.

The last plugin is Amazon S3 for WordPress with CloudFront. This plugin lets you upload directly to your S3 bucket and you get a fancy new icon next to your Media Library button. You use just the same way as you would uploading any other files previously.

Well there you have it. You should now have all your major media files on S3 at this point. You can run some tests via Pingdom to check your load times. I reduced my page loads from the 10 seconds range to 3 seconds, but also push all the heavy lifting off my shared host.

While I was working on moving assets to S3, it started to snow! Seattle covered in snow is pretty awesome!

In the meantime enjoy this sunset from my office window at work.

Moneyball is about baseball and one of my favorite things is baseball and sports movies are a guilty pleasure of mine. Moneyball tells the story of the 2002 Oakland A’s and their General Manager Billy Beane and his use of Sabermetrics. While the movie has a baseball theme, the movie really explores Beane’s attempt to have some type of success after being a failure as a baseball player.


Drive is a beautiful mess. The cast is top notch, filmed in a style that keeps you watching, and violent. Drive is violent, very violent at times, but done in such a way that it almost operatic. Ryan Gosling is brilliant in the cold calculated stunt drive and Carey Mulligan is gorgeous. Drive is so good at times, it is easily one of the best films. It does have some awkward dialog at times. Mmmmmhmmmm.


Action. Action. Action. That is pretty much what Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol has going for it. That isn’t a bad thing, the action is great, especially if you see the movie in IMAX. The sequences filmed at the Burj Khalifa (tallest building in the world) in Dubai is amazing and vertigo inducing. The entire cast is top notch including the always great Simon Pegg. Go see it in IMAX and buy some popcorn and enjoy.


Source Code came out a while ago, but still provide a great experience. Source Code plays out as a interesting present day sci-fi film by Duncan Jones (David Bowie’s son). Some parts The Matrix and Run Lola Run, it has you repeating the same sequence in attempt to solve the puzzle.


I’m a huge Conan fan, but this movie kinda change my opinion of him, for better or worse. The guy is crazy and kind of a jerk. I’m sure if you are in his inner circle, you understand his humor, but Conan is somewhat delusional and sad. Always putting himself and his staff down. A very interesting look as one of the funnier comedian of the last decade.


My only foreign film on the list, I Saw The Devil is a violent, gory, revenge film. Much like Drive, this film if gorgeously shot, each shot is brilliant, but the film is easily one of the more violent movies I have ever seen. Add the fact that the main villain is Choi Min-shik known for his role in the movie Oldboy, it makes it even more creepy. Well worth watching, but you have been warned about the content.


Super 8 was one of the more enjoyable movies I saw all year. It is a 80′s homage taking notes from classics such as E.T., Stand By Me, and The Goonies. As someone who grew up on these movies Super 8 hit all the same notes of silly kids doing crazy things under unthinkable circumstances and in the end triumphing over impossible odds.


What were some of the movies you enjoyed in 2011?

The king is back and DICE and EA have returned with an amazing return to Battlefield with Battlefield 3. Packed with a strong single player and amazing multiple experience, it just brings back great memories of Battlefield 1942 and Battlefield 2.

Orcs Must Die is the perfect game for me these days. Quick and addictive fun. Robot Entertainment have perfectly combined a tower defense game with a great feel of an action game. For those that like to plan and place traps you have that, and for those that just want to kill Orcs, you have that. The comical nature of trap development just makes you want to be more creative. Well done Robot!

I’m getting older, but blowing up stuff never gets old. The good people at Avalanche Studios have created just the game for that with Renegade Ops. This game combines two of my childhood favorites in Jackal and the Strike Series. Take your vehicle and blow shit up, that simple. Big huge explosions! Great looking graphics, and just fun to play.

What can I say about Uncharted 3 that hasn’t already been said. Go play it. It is great. Well done Naughty Dog, can’t wait to play The Last of Us.

Dead Space 2 was great. Perhaps a little more action heavy over suspense, but beggars can’t be choosers. Everything about it is polished and well designed. I’m looking forward to what they do with Dead Space 3.

It is very rare that I finish a game in just a couple days, but Portal 2 had me hooked. Smart, creative, funny, and just darn right great from start to finish. The only thing that could have made Portal 2 better is Valve to finally upgrade their streaming technology. LOADING…

I remember seeing Deus Ex: Human Revolution years ago at GDC and was blown away by the art direction that they were going after. I followed the game and it didn’t disappoint. Amazing in every regard, thrilled to see what Eidos Montreal does with Thief 4.

Thursday from The Weeknd was easily one of my favorite albums of the year. Another electronic pop album that has punishing beats, crazy singing, and it is FREE! The title track is probably my favorite song of the year.


Each year a metal album comes out that is the one to listen too. Epic facial tattoos, a crazy singing drummer, and a sick album cover, Mastodon returns this year with The Hunter and reminds us that a good rock metal album is pretty freaking awesome. Black Tongue will rock your face off.


A late addition to the list, but has been on constant rotate on the car drive to work. This all started with the new REI commercial which uses Chapel Song by We Are Augustines. This song is just so darn catchy, I had to listen to the rest of Rise Ye Sunken Ships (how awesome is that album name) and I was rewarded with a strong album. If you like Interpol, The National, and countless other bands, you would probably enjoy this one.


This list wouldn’t be complete without some local flavor and with that spot is Campfire OK. I have heard the name Campfire OK for a while, but didn’t hear them until the Nevermind 20 Year Anniversary show where they played Polly. Campfire OK first album Strange Like We Are combines all types of flavors of music into a nice mix. They also rock the banjo! I’m sad I haven’t been able to be around for one of their impromptu shows here in Seattle, including this one at Oddfellows.


The Kills return after a couple years off with Blood Pressures is pretty darn good. I was actually able to see them live at The Showbox Market, which just reminds me how awesome of a hot rocker chick Alison Mooshart is. With a different sound, The Kills still have it. Just listen to the first single, Satellite. Also Alison Mosshart is freaking hot.


While Drive the movie was hit and miss, the soundtrack is freaking amazing. The heavy flavor of electronic-pop is the perfect mood setting score. Each song fits perfectly and an amazing album to just chill out too.


I found out about Kurt Vile’s Smoke Ring for my Halo via good people on NeoGAF has this listed on the monthly rotation, and it is great. Mellow singer song writer brings a nice change of pace to the other albums I listened to this year. This really came out of nowhere for me.


While Crazy for You technically was released in 2010, I didn’t start listening to it until 2011, so I’m listing it in this years group. I have a soft spot for female singers and Best Coast hits it on every chord. The surf inspired music paired with the almost juvenile pop song makes my hear bleed. Even though the songs are from the female perspective, I think anyone can relate to the lyrics, example When I’m With You and Crazy For You.