Casper Electronics
Ever heard of circuit-bending? Neither had I until Pete Edwards asked me to redesign his site. Pete takes old toys (most famously, Speak’n‘Spells) and tweaks their circuits to make otherworldly noises which can be heard in the work of musicians such as Danny Elfman, Fantomas, Negativland, and Rahzel.
I recently updated his site and rebuilt it using Wordpress so that he would be able to make frequent updates to keep his users coming back for the most current info. There is also an updated AJAX-driven photo gallery which makes adding new photos to the gallery very easy.
There is also a Flash “casperplayer” that can play samples from each piece. I put together a script that searches for a directory with the same name as the piece, and then scans that directory for mp3 files, parses the tags of each file, and dynamically constructs an XML file that the Flash file reads. All Pete has to do is upload fresh sounds to the directory for any piece (which he can do right from the WordPress admin – there is no need for him to deal with FTP at all), and the playlist for that piece is updated in Flash automatically.
Testimonial
“Masuga has completely rebuilt the site so that an html simpleton like myself can get in on the action…Freekin awesome!!! totally amazing! It looks great. It’s super easy! You rock dude!!!!”
What Was Involved
- Design & Development
- Content Management (Wordpress)
- Photoshop
- Flash
- XHTML
- CSS
- PHP (custom)
- Editing mp3’s
