HTML5 Audio Player Plugin for Website – Old School Cassette – So Cool

Cassette

Looking for a new updated way to play music on your website?

The developers at tympanus.net always manage to blow my mind with the web plugins they come up with. And alot of it for free!

One thing i’ve noticed as a trend in web design lately is a return of audio players thanks to jQuery and HTML5. This plugin is a very cool vintage way to play audio on your site.

And the best part? All those buttons actually work! Volume, Fast Forward, Rewind, and obviously Play and Stop. What I like the most is the “click” when you hit play and the spindles moving. Friggin’ brilliant what these guys accomplished!

“But what if my website has multiple pages? The audio will have to reload everytime!” True if you have the audio player embedded within your site but a simple workaround for this is to have a “Listen To Music” or “Audio On” call button that will open up the player in a separate window. BAZINGA!

The only issue you may have with this option is on the mobile/tablet version of your website. Since you don’t have the option of a mouse to move windows around the player will open in a new window but will usually not play the audio unless you’re actually on the page on your device. So in that instance I would recommend you deactivate the player on your mobile version of the website. Feel free to comment or email me if you need to know how to do this…

How you decide to implement it I’ll leave up to you but either way I love this player. I haven’t tested it in IE though so be sure to keep that in mind if you attempt to use this.

Click Here to View it in Action & Download 

Ray Manzarek Keyboardist of The Doors – Died from Bile Duct Cancer – RIP

Sad to hear of the passing of Ray Manzarek of The Doors yesterday… Just wanted to say a little something on this. The Doors are by far my most favorite band of all time. To hear this news depresses me as much as when George Harrison died. I grew up with posters of the Doors in my room. I own damn near every album they made on vinyl, read all their books (including his: Light My Fire), watched the movie and documentary, and so on. I AM KICKING MYSELF because Ray Manzarek and Robbie Krieger just performed at the Paramount down the block from me last year and I didn’t go and see them…At the time I didn’t feel like spending the 90 bucks on the ticket, which I now sincerely regret. Just figured I’d see them next time…

The music they produced was so different than the rest of it’s time that they had no choice but to become the rock legends that they are. Light My Fire contains one of the most recognizable intros (written by Ray) in music history accompanied by long solos in the middle (cut out from the radio version of course). I’ve listened to this song so many times I could literally hum you the entire solo section in its entirety. Moonlight Drive, perhaps my favorite song of theirs, is literally poetry put to music and also apparently the song that helped form the band when Jim Morrison sang it to Ray Manzarek on the beach.

We owe ALOT of today’s music to what these guys did back then and I thank Ray for being a part of that.

Light My Fire – Live

Moonlight Drive – Live

The Great Gatsby – 1949 Version Full Video

“Can’t repeat the past?…Why of course you can!”

The Great Gatsby has been made into film at 6 times since the book was written. I haven’t seen the new version with Leonardo DiCaprio but unfortunately have already been hearing negative reviews on it. DiCaprio I find to be a great actor and have a decently high opinion of him because of the roles he’s chosen to play (Personal favorites are The Basketball Diaries, This Boy’s Life, and The Beach [which for whatever reason most people say they didn’t like…go figure]). I’m still debating on whether or not to see it since 1. I loved the book and 2. It’s based in Long Island 3. It’s set in the 1920’s which is perhaps my favorite decade in all of history… If I do see it I’ll write a review BUT in the meantime I’ve done a search for the BEST version of The Great Gatsby and no it is not the Robert Redford 70’s version.

Believe it or not it’s said to be the movie from 1949 starring Alan Ladd and Betty Field. SO now you may be saying, “OK sounds good, I want to see it so where do I buy it?”… well the answer is currently nowhere. The good news is that someone has managed to find a copy and upload the entire movie onto youtube. There are a few versions uploaded (some cut into separate parts) but I managed to find one that has the entire movie in one video so I embedded it below for your viewing enjoyment.