There are two vehicles I use to get music to my ears. The first is with my iPod. the second is through the service Last.fm. I know there are a ton of other internet radio providers out there, but I have a solid reason for choosing last.fm. Simply for the ability to “scrobble” music, both online and offline listening. What this means is Last.fm tracks my listening habits even if I am listening to my iPod. Each time I synch my iPod or iPhone, last.fm gathers a list of tracks I’ve listened to, how many times I’ve listened to it, and adds it to my recently played list. This information is then used to generate a personal radio station of music I am familiar with and new music that fits my overall musical tastes. I have discovered that I am beginning to turn to last.fm more often when listing to music than my own collection. You should check it out, and maybe we’ll hook-up!

Now for my love list. These are the artists and musicians that really get my brain moving.

Apoptygma Berzerk

Apoptygma Berzerk is an ebm/futurepop/synthrock musical group from Norway. It has achieved moderate commercial success with a unique brand of gloomy, danceable gothic synthpop, winning awards and top-10 spots in Germany and Scandinavia. – via last.fm

Crystal Castles

Crystal Castles consists of producer Ethan Kath and vocalist Alice Glass. They are named after the lyrics “The fate of the world is safe in Crystal Castles” and “Crystal Castles, the source of all power” both from the theme song for She-Ra’s fortress. Ethan Kath formed the band alone in December 2003, in Toronto, Canada. In April 2005, Glass recorded vocals over five original instrumentals by Kath. The band’s first single (“Alice Practice”) was actually a microphone test by Glass. She was not aware that the recording existed until London Uk’s Merok Records asked to release the track on vinyl. The release sold out instantly. NME Magazine has included their debut album in their “Top 50 Albums of the Decade” list at #39 – via last.fm

Covenant

In the late 1970s and early 1980s, electronic music and several of its subgenres became a preferred musical style among European underground culture. It gained favor initially within major cities and eventually trickled into the continent’s more socially secluded regions. This new wave of music was discovered at different instances by a group of young friends living among the shadows of Helsingborg, a scenic municipality in western Sweden. Eskil Simonsson, Joakim Montelius, and Clas Nachmanson, three teenagers with mutual, youthful curiosities for science, philosophy, and matters of existence, were enthralled by the unique presentation and the emotional content offered through the music, specifically by that of bands such as Kraftwerk, The Human League, and by EBM pioneers Front 242 and Nitzer Ebb. – via last.fm

Boards of Canada

Boards of Canada have had an enormous influence on the ambient, downtempo and IDM scenes. They have frequently made reference to the warm, scratchy, artificial sounds of 1970s television. Indeed, the Sandison brothers admit to being inspired by the documentary films of the National Film Board of Canada, from which they take their name. The duo have recorded a few minor works under the name Hell Interface. Boards of Canada’s music has been used in several CSI episodes and on Cartoon Network’s Adult Swim interlude shorts; small bits of their music have been used on the BBC program Top Gear for transitional music. – via last.fm

Ladytron

Ladytron are an electropop and new wave band formed in 1999 at Liverpool, UK by Helen Marnie (vocals, synths), Mira Aroyo (vocals, synths), Reuben Wu (synths), and Daniel Hunt (synths, guitar). All four members are also songwriters and producers of their music and sometimes play DJ sets (except Helen) each on their own. – via last.fm

Daft Punk

Daft Punk is a multi Grammy Award-winning electronic music duo consisting of French musicians Guy-Manuel de Homem-Christo (born February 8, 1974) and Thomas Bangalter (born January 3, 1975). The duo is considered one of the most successful electronic music collaborations of all time, both in album sales and in critical acclaim. After Daft Punk reached significant popularity in the late 1990s house movement in France, other artists such as Air, Cassius, and Dimitri from Paris began to receive a similar amount of attention. – via last.fm

Kraftwerk

Kraftwerk (In English, “power plant”) is an electronic band founded in 1970 in Düsseldorf, Germany. They pioneered electronic music in the 1970s and are considered one of the most important and influential bands of their genre -often described as ‘the godfathers of electronic music”. Ralf Hütter (b. 1946, Krefeld, Germany; organ) and woodwind student Florian Schneider-Esleben (b. 1947, Düsseldorf, Germany; woodwind) met while they were studying improvised music in Düsseldorf, Germany. – via last.fm

Shiny Toy Guns

Shiny Toy Guns is an alternative/electronic band which formed in Los Angeles, California, United States in 2002. The band currently consists of Sisely Treasure (vocals), Gregori Chad Petree (vocals, guitar), Jeremy Dawson (synths, bass) and Mikey Martin (drums). Former vocalist Carah Faye Charnow left the band to pursue other musical interests in 2008 to be replaced by Treasure (who was formerly in the band Cooler Kids). – via last.fm

Massive Attack

The pioneering force behind the rise of trip-hop, Massive Attack were among the most innovative and influential groups of their generation; their hypnotic sound — a darkly sensual and cinematic fusion of hip-hop rhythms, soulful melodies, dub grooves, and choice samples — set the pace for much of the dance music to emerge throughout the 1990s, paving the way for such acclaimed artists as Portishead, Sneaker Pimps, Morcheeba, UNKLE and Tricky, himself a Massive Attack alumnus. Their history dates back to 1983 and the formation of the Wild Bunch, one of the earliest and most successful sound-system/DJ collectives to arrive on the UK music scene; renowned for their seamless integration of a wide range of musical styles, from punk to reggae to R&B, the group’s parties quickly became can’t-miss events for the Bristol club crowd, and at the peak of their popularity they drew crowds so enormous that the local live music scene essentially ground to a halt. – via last.fm

Autechre

Autechre is an English electronic music group consisting of Rob Brown and Sean Booth, both natives of Rochdale (near Manchester, England). They are one of the most prominent acts signed with Warp Records, a label known for its pioneering electronic artists. – via last.fm

Booth and Brown formed the group in 1987 while they were both living in Rochdale. They began by making and trading electro and hip-hop mixtapes, but gradually collected some cheap equipment (most notably a Casio SK-1 Sampler) and moved on to their own compositions. By the time Warp Records released their debut, Incunabula, they were employing a variety of electronic instruments to create their evolving style.

Who do you listen to & love?

The biggest aspect of the redesign that was always at the forefront of the process was the realization that Nate had build a very large catalog of articles. The content was king of the site, which totally buried the aspect of design. The design needed to help present this large amount of content without being overwhelming, yet be subtle enough to not hinder the access to the content. some of the major points to demonstrate the process:

• Compressing content within sliding blocks to help compact the material, yet keeping it SEO accessible for indexing. All possible with the use of the jQuery framework.
• Using stylized tooltip to display title attribute text. This allowed short blocks of quick information that was able to be expanded upon quickly with nothing more than a roll-over.
• Sorting and standardizing the most repeated information into reusable compact sidebar elements.
• Hiding specified form elements within calls of action. Such as the email subscription form. The privacy information and submit buttons are not visible until explicit triggering of the call to action
• The addition of search capabilities with the Search Everything plug-in to allow a wider spread of results.
• Compacting of sidebar forms, category links, Social Media Widgets, and archive access

Another aspect of this approach was to make sure that as much of the content creation process is as automated as possible. The biggest two examples are the “Interview” page, with is automated to loop through any articles which are tagged with “video interview” and generate a compressed display of all of the videos. The second would be the integration of gigpress to handle all aspects of event handling and notification. The event can be added via the WordPress Administration page. From the added event, a blog post, sidebar notification, and events listing are created. All of which can be pulled via RSS, Google Calendar, or iCal. Flexible, Robust, and automated.

I was a wonderful experience with results in a wonderful site.

Bonus List of Plug-ins used on NateRiggs.com

• Akismet : checks your comments against the Akismet web service to see if they look like spam or not.
• All in One SEO Pack : Out-of-the-box SEO for your WordPress blog.
• Disqus Comment System : The Disqus comment system replaces your WordPress comment system with your comments hosted and powered by Disqus.
• GigPress : GigPress is a live performance listing and management plugin built for musicians and performers.
• MM Forms : This is not just another form plugin ! This is THE form plugin that stores submissions in your database !
• Scribe : Quickly and easily check your content against SEO best practices utilizing the Scribe Content Optimizer.
• Search Everything : Adds search functionality without modifying any template pages: Activate, Configure and Search. Options Include: search highlight, search pages, excerpts, attachments, drafts, comments, tags and custom fields (metadata). Also offers the ability to exclude specific pages and posts. Does not search password-protected content.
• TweetMeme Retweet Button : Adds a button which easily lets you retweet your blog posts.
• Twitter for WordPress : Displays your public Twitter messages for all to read.
• WordPress Related Posts : Generate a related posts list via tags of WordPress
• WP-Paginate : A simple and flexible pagination plugin for WordPress posts and comments.

Thank you to everyone for the compliments on the site!

Here is a run-down on the places I frequent on a steady basis. Some are used weekly. Some are visited multiple times a day.

#1. Think Vitamin – http://carsonified.com/blog/

Think Vitamin is the blog of Carsonified, a web design/dev firm based out of Bath,UK. These are the guys that put on the Future of Web Design & Future of Web Apps conferences; along with Stack Overflow.

They are also the group requested by Twitter to put on the Chirp conference and create the promotional work, such as http://chirp.twitter.com. Their work is amazing, which reflects in their articles. as of January 21, 2010, they have began Think Vitamin Radio, a podcast hosted by Keir Whitaker, and joined by Ryan Carson and Mike Kus hovering aroung three main themes; web design, web development and web entrepreneurship. Read the Blog listen to the podcast. seriously.

#2. Noupe – http://noupe.com/

Noupe has been around for a while, and recently enveloped by the Smashing Media GmbH. Noupe has always been a site for very relevant fringe articles. Very niche and specific, perfectly relevant to the current trends and breakthroughs.

#3. Nettuts+ – http://net.tutsplus.com/

Nettuts+ is a site aimed at web developers and designers offering tutorials and articles on technologies, skills and techniques to improve how you design and build websites. The blog covers topics such as HTML, CSS, Javascript, CMS’s, PHP and Ruby on Rails.

There are alway great articles available, but at anytime you have the option to subscribe to the Tuts Premium. Premium content is available to Premium members only. These tutorials are extra-special, geared towards teaching professional and high-end techniques you won’t find in the free content. It’s totally worth the money.

#4. Boagworld – http://boagworld.com/

Boagworld is the blog of web strategist Paul Boag who lives in the heart of rural Dorset,UK. He produces a weekly podcast with UX consultant Marcus Lillington on building and running websites. They also run the web design agency Headscape.

The most wonderful thing about boagworld is the podcast. I have listened to just about every episode and have learned and grown so much from them. My 40 minute commute as always brightened by their podcast. Complimenting the podcast are the show notes on the site. Full of resources.

#5. Abduzeedo – http://abduzeedo.com/

Abduzeedo is a blog about design. There are all sorts of articles for those who want to look for inspiration. Also you will find very useful tutorials for the most used applications out there, with a special selection of Photoshop Tutorials and Illustrator Tutorials. Of course there are other softwares conteplated like Pixelmator, Fireworks, and web design tutorials.

Abduzeedo is an open channel to the design community, encouraging feedback. The Daily Inspiration is a proof of that, everybody can send images that inspired them so they can be shared with the community.

The blog’s name means “abducted” in Portuguese. The founder, Fabio Sasso, changed its spelling from “abduzido” to “abduzeedo” so I could add the name of his web studio company “ZEE”.

Some of the most off the wall and beautiful inspiration on the web.

#6. A List Apart – http://www.alistapart.com/

All you need to know is that this is the design blog founded by Jeffery Zeldman. The spearhead of the Web Standards Project. If you are associated with the web, I should not have to tell you to read this amazing resource.

#7. Six Revisions – http://sixrevisions.com/

Six Revisions is a website that publishes practical and useful articles for designers and web developers. They present exceptional, noteworthy tips, tutorials, and resources that the modern web professional will appreciate.

Six Revisions was launched in February 2008 by professional web developer/designer Jacob Gube. Articles are written by talented professionals from around the globe, and a high emphasis on quality, comprehensiveness, and usefulness goes into each of the articles published.

#8. Creattica – http://creattica.com/

Creattica is a gallery of great design and inspirational imagery. Anyone can submit their work for consideration and voting on items is open to one and all. The best work is accepted and featured in the gallery which receives thousands of visitors every day.

The Galleries cover every aspect of media such as 3D modeling, Advertising, Business Cards, CSS, Flash, Logos, Motion, Photos, Photoshop, and Posters. Probably my favorite site for inspiration.

#9. UX Booth – http://www.uxbooth.com/

Great resource for all that is User Experience and Usability. Everything from Research pieces on eye-tracking to great tools for helping streamline your UX processes.

#10. Smashing Magazine – http://www.smashingmagazine.com/

Smashing Magazine is, in my humble opinion, the El Dorado of design blogs. They not only have a large library of articles covering every aspect of web design, the facebook and twitter feeds constantly have a stream of amazing resources external to the site.

I swear that whenever I run into a problem I am basting in, the next morning there will always be a smashing article on that exact solution. Somewhere in the universe of quantum mechanics, I have a particle in sync with smashing.

Honorable Mentions

The above list reflects my most frequented haunts, but here are a few honorable mentions of sites I find useful to have in my RSS reader:

• 24 Ways to Impress Your Friends: An annual holiday blog, with posts written by the most influential web designers and web developers in the industry.
• Boxes and Arrows: Great articles and case studies.
• Design Informer: the new blog on the block, kicking some serious ass.
• Woorkup: web community created by Antonio Lupetti about Web Design, Tech News and Digital Inspiration that delivers tutorials, resources, documentation and tech news for web designers and developers.
• Colour Lovers: An amazing site to create
  and share colors, palettes and patterns. I love the community here and contribute.
• I Love Typography: The title pretty much explains the purpose of this site. Great articles. Great inspiration.

I’m sure there are tons that I have overlooked. Where do you haunt? Fill me in!