yewknee
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An internet waystation.

it me - michael eades

👋 Hi, I'm Michael Eades; a long time Internet dweller, design dabbler, dangerously amateur developer, online social experimenter and frequent curator.

Currently working as VP of Product at Smarter Apps. I also keep the lights on at a boutique record label called yk records, a podcast network called We Own This Town and a t-shirt shop called Nashville Galaxy. Previously, I built things for Vimeo OTT, VHX, KNI and Spongebath Records.

This site is an archive of ephemera I find entertaining; tweets, videos, random links, galleries of images.

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find me elsewhere

 

contact

Reach out via threads or good ole email if you have anything to discuss. I do my best to reply in a timely manner.

for the record: "yewknee" is a nonsensical word with no literal meaning but a unsurprisingly nerdy etymology. It is pronounced, "yoo • knee."

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ongoing projects

yk Records →
started in 2009 as a conduit for music that friends had no plans on releasing. now it's a full fledged boutique label focused on releasing quality music from a variety of styles. you know, like a label does. Here's a sampler on Soundcloud and a different one on Spotify. Options.

We Own This Town →
Originally a Nashville area music blog, this site has grown into a full blown podcast network as of 2018. It's an attempt to bring together creative folks about a variety of interesting topics.

I host this show all about Nashville local music outside the expectations of the city. I'm biased but all the shows are good.

Nashville Galaxy →
An online t-shirt shop featuring beloved and defunct Nashville area businesses. Very niche audience on this one but I tend to think niche is good.

some noteworthy other things

Chris Gaines: The Podcast →
published along with co-host Ashley Spurgeon; a limited series podcast that takes an absurdly researched deep dive into the time that Garth Brooks took on a fictional personality named Chris Gaines.

Garth Brooks Chris Gaines Countdown →
to celebrate the 20-year anniversary of the time Garth Brooks took on the fictional personality Chris Gaines and appeared on Saturday Night Live in character, I GIF'ed the entire episode. It's a lot of GIFs; please use them.

Whiskerino →
a social network built around communal beard growing for four months. yes, it was as weird as it sounds but equally fascinating and enjoyable.

Moustache May →
an offshoot of the beard growing contest mentioned above. equal amounts of oddball fun but only a month long.

Summer Mix Series →
before all music was streaming everywhere, Internet music fans would swap zip files of music. it was truly a strange and wonderful time.

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Floor796 is an ever-expanding animation scene showing the life of the 796th floor of the huge space station! The goal of the project is to create as huge animation as possible, with many references to movies, games, anime and memes.
Holy moly this is immersive and huge and incredibly entertaining. Can not imagine the amount of work required to conjure this into reality - even if thousands of people were involved it boggles the mind.

Blinker the Star - Call Me The Wolf

look its a new Blinker song featuring Paul D'Amour on guitar. I don't love the singy-talky bits but I can't deny the rest of it.. which is real dang good.
Happy to report I've been getting into Finnish instrumental/surf rock band Laika & The Cosmonauts. I'm also happy to report that it's delightful to say aloud that you're getting into a Finnish instrumental/surf rock band.
Topshelf Records recently tweeted that Bandcamp had contacted them to petition them to cease supporting the unionization of employees at Bandcamp. The thread is a worthwhile read and, certainly, a surprising one.

Bandcamp has always been a service that I admire. I've been a fan since the very early days, sing its praises often and leverage it as the primary hub for audience building on yk Records. Reading that they are working against unionization is disheartening and surprising. If any company is going to get the benefits of unionizing; it seems like it would be a company that helps independent musicians build a career.

The workers organizing to form the union - Bandcamp United - have not called for any action against Bandcamp; they're just working through the process of trying to establish their charter and not be squashed before things are even given a chance to begin.

This Game Developer piece has an update on the proceedings but I'm a little unclear on the timeline. The article is from Apr 6th with clear commentary from Bandcamp co-founder Ethan Diamond but the Topshelf Records tweets are from the next day. So, did Bandcamp contact Topshelf to ask them not to support the union after Diamond said Bandcamp was open to the union? Perplexing!

I was optimistic that Bandcamp being acquired by Epic Games wouldn't lead to much but I also knew that could be naive. It's all early days right now but certainly a topic to keep a look out for.

Kinetic Type Generator

Bookmarking so I don’t forget this exists but also letting you know this looks quite useful.

Runway Gen-2: Text to Video

Seeing these advances in AI tools is blowing my mind. I feel 100% the opposite of how Bitcoin made me feel. The usability of this is obvious and exciting. There’s some scary aspects too but mostly it’s just wildly cool.

AI and the American Smile

An intriguing thought piece on how AI images are homogenizing history through a lack of context. Sort of a tricky piece because the images are just silly selfies but there’s lots of quality ideas here to roll around in your noggin.

Houston - What Doesn't Kill You

for a long period of time, I was very into this Minneapolis band. They broke up years ago but recently re-emerged with new stuff. They sound very much the same; which I am quite pleased about.

Chronophoto

enjoyably difficult. Guess what year the photo was taken.

Horrorscope

nice piece on some recent trends in horror cinema. not my preferred genre but I do enjoy reading these sorts of thoughts from Forest.

Stripe Press

an excellent website to browse (even if you have no interest in the content, the presentation is stellar).

Stop Making Sense 2023

remastered from the 1984 film. Personally, I think the original is perfect but anything that gets this movie into theaters is a good thing

DeSo

i glazed over every single word on this site but the flythrough is worth the trip

Funkwhale: the decentralized audio platform

intrigued by this conceptually but hesitant on the practicalities. anyone tried making their own pod?

Zed

Yet another editor. I'm sort of desperate to get off VS Code; not a fan.

Hyper Light Breaker

Reminder I should try to play Hyper Light Drifter again. This looks well made tho

Did Philadelphia kill Uncle O’Grimacey, McD's Shamrock Shake mascot?

Grimace has an uncle?? McDonaldland goes deeper than you know.

The Big Project Syndrome

Long blog reads about being a Product Leader are not my thing but this piece about the fallacy of The Big Project speaks to me more than I can say.
For years, I've been trying to get Mac Burrus to release some music of his own. He has been the bass player for the band Self for as long as I can remember and contributed a bunch of great work to that project. I just wanted to hear Mac songwriting. With the upcoming release of Telefone, I got my wish!

The band is a collaboration between Burrus and brothers Justin & Brandon Tapp. The former lives in LA, the latter two in Austin. Across thousands of miles and many years, they wrote, recorded, mixed, re-recorded, re-mixed and anguished over their debut album. It's set for release on March 22nd via yk Records and it's damn good. Obviously I'm biased but it does such a great job of embracing its influences while building something new; exactly what you want from a project.

The first video from the undertaking - for the Burrus-penned track "Indigo" - is out today. If you're a fan of Self, you should keep your eyes peeled to try to spot the 9 Easter Eggs floating in there. If you have no idea who Self is, don't worry - it's still a damn good video and an excellent song to kick things off with.

Watch the video!

Terry Crews revives ‘Idiocracy’ President Camacho at SXSW campaign teaser

It’s for his PR company but I would welcome an Idiocracy sequel. We’re already living it.

Planned Obsolescence

Damon Krukowski always has something to say worth reading. I disagree with a few of the smaller details (movie theaters are not, for me, an experience you should talk during) but the broad point is very solid and very much letting your brain chew on.

Rotating Sandwiches

a truly fantastic website

Everything is a Remix Part 4: AI and Image Generation

Reportedly, Kirby Ferguson's final video. Looking forward to watching.

After Dark Screensavers in CSS

More performant than the actual screensavers were

Steven McFarlane Design

Instagram really pushing these on me... should I bite the bullet? Kind of a good deal, honestly.

Son of a Hitman

TIL that Woody Harrelson’s father was involved with organized crime and convicted of assassinating a judge. Gonna dive into this podcast about it!

Announcing the newest 33 1/3s, 2023

Uh, next series of 33 1/3s contains a volume dedicated to Chris Gaines (the Garth Brooks alter ego). Shocked but stoked!