Dabysan writes about saving my life.

Exit poll links, the New York Times politics blog, the ever-excellent electoral-vote.com, and Taegan Goddard’s Political Wire.

Comfortably ensconced in A + A’s Manhattan abode, between three brick walls, Raptor and Chelsea, nursing the remainder of my cold, listening to In Rainbows, I revised this site. To be specific, I combined two sites: my TypePad blog and my [previously static] personal site, ydnar.com.

The design is a derivation of some recent work, an attempt to push the primary forward, and supporting content into the background without rendering it completely illegible. It’s set in a very desaturated olive, with subheads in 11px capitals, all around a uniform 15px baseline. The type is set in Helvetica Neue, with slightly condensed letter spacing. Links are Pantone 213 on hover. The only images on the page are in posts, and there is nothing except text, links and whitespace otherwise.

Back to this french press and finishing Amelie!

Ben used my theme. That’s pretty flattering!

One might be tempted to call it fast food, but it was definitely not the former. Reading an old post lamenting dearth of organic/slow (heh) fast food I was reminded of Saturday’s visit to Williamsburg. Amidst the hipster slapfights, between a gallery opening and a visit for second dinner to a sardine-packed Japanese restaurant whose matron assured us that the 45 minute wait was definitely worth it, even if we were not worthy, we paid a visit to Food Swings. Peter ordered buffalo wings, Courtney a pair of onion/ketchup/mustard laced hot dogs, Annica a veggie burger, and YT got the chicken bacon ranch sandwich and a latte. No murder (or milk) around. I kneejerked “that is soy, right?” when ordering the latte.

My inner vegan hipster danced a little that night, I think.

Thanks Anil for the tip: Ramen Setagaya is the best ramen I’ve ever had on this side of the Pacific. Or the country.

I’m not quite sure what won me over—the salt broth, the perfect noodles, the blessedly cooked fatty pork or the mega-kawaii uniformed staff.

Mad rad Japanese track bike + music + other blog, definitions of success, morale, and how lawyering and doctoring aren’t sexy rockstar like making websites or running hedge funds, and emo electropop from Texas.

I hope all my friends in SF are okay.

With a little help from my friends and some Dopplr I hacked out this magic 8-ball in the parlance of HTTP:

Originally posted to ydnar.vox.com in December 2007.

Distilling a batch of ten from a rough cut three times that size is a craft. Despite feelings of being unsuited for said craft, I humbly present my list of the ten best songs of 2007.

When initially making this list, Krissy asked if I was making a personal list or a critical list. Despite aforementioned ability to compile a reasonable cut of the latter, I made two lists. It turns out the intersection was actually pretty significant, even discounting remixes or covers. In the end I decided on the following rules: Song or source album must have been first released in 2007. For remixes and covers, the date of the derived song’s release is counted. It must have 4+ stars in my iTunes library and a pretty high listen count.

Surprises: The Streets, Bloc Party didn’t make the cut this year, despite heavy presence in last year’s top 10. No hip hop. No Air, M83, or Ratatat. No drum & bass. Hot Chip and Peter Bjorn and John barely got sliced out. Four songs are remixes, and every song has lyrics. Huge thanks to Xis, .tiff and the Toof for introducing me to most (if not all) of the songs on this list.

I’ll repurpose a tweet of a quote from Erika: each is a simple verse in a complex love story. For a lazy monday afternoon, sitting on the rug in the living room of my friend’s upper east side apartment, it seems framed correct. I have two goals today: write this post, and party. And I’m almost out of post.

1. Klaxons - Golden Skans
2. Cloud Cult - Take Your Medicine
3. Hellogoodbye - Here (In Your Arms) (CLASSIXX Remix)
4. The Bird And The Bee - Fucking Boyfriend
5. LCD Soundsystem - Someone Great
6. Digitalism - Pogo
7. LCD Soundsystem - New York I Love You But You’re Bringing Me Down
8. Thom Yorke - The Eraser (XXXChange_mix)
9. Klaxons - As Above, So Below (Justice Remix)
10. Midnight Juggernauts - Road To Recovery (Miami Horror remix)

Young Folks violates the “released in 2007” rule, but it makes the list as the bonus secret track 11 because of one night in October with my friend Elise in the middle of an epic flurry of rock shows around San Francisco. We were standing in line at Popscene to see Tokyo Police, the sounds of Peter Bjorn and John were tumbling out of the door of 330 Ritch when a dozen-odd hipsters around us started nodding their heads and whistling along.

• Peter Bjorn and John - Young Folks