Oh so long ago (2001 maybe?), I started yellow5labs.com.  I had been recently laid off, and wanted to set myself up with an online identity to get contract work and look all flashy so people would hire me.

The name yellow5labs was inspired from Yellow #5 food dye.  You know, that stuff…that you put into twinkies, and doritos, and all sorts of good stuff to give something plain that extra pizazz.  I was kinda thinking I would sell it as I was bringing that pizazz to my interactive work.  I still think it’s a pretty cool name, except it’s horribly impractical.

Every time I have to give my email address, I have to say “yellow…..five…..no, the number five, don’t spell it out, labs.com…..no, I don’t have 5 Golden Labrador retrievers…..no…FIVE….don’t spell it out…”

It got a little tiresome.  The site is still up, but I’ll probably just let the domain lapse this summer.

Anyway, in with Blastanova.  If you hear it, I think you’ll know how it’s spelled, and that should save me a lot of grief.  Why blastanova though?  Well, lately I’m both fascinated with the idea of music based video games, and sad that I don’t like music as much as I used to.  I think a lot of it has to do with the fact that I’m not forced to use the CD player in my car anymore, and I have an unlimited amount of music.  So songs are almost disposable now, and no real connections are made with the artists, because you aren’t listening over an over again to the same disc.

I think games rhythm games (like Rock band most recently), really get you listening to the songs over and over again, and really establishing a connection between you and the music.

So – “blast” as in blasting stuff in video games…..and “blastanova” as in bossanova, a music that literally translates to “new beat” and derived from Samba which itself is known for it’s rhythm.  I dig.

In the short term, I’ll be blogging on new media, developing for the web, Adobe’s Flash & Flex, and bands I’m listening to.

In the long term, I’m developing an application to scan songs and their rhythm and structure, and soon thereafter, I’ll be applying the data to games I develop.

So that’s the plan.