It’s been a while since I made a list like this. So, in light of the fact that I’ve discovered my fair share of fresh music (well, fresh to me), I thought this morning would be as good a time as any.

In no particular order, this is some new music that I have really enjoyed.

	Billie The Vision & The Dancers The World According to Pablo Fun. An obvious South American influence. Catchy as hell. Just about every song has you trying to sing along before the song is even over. Notable Tracks 1. Nightmares 2. One More Full Length Record 3. Vamos A Basarnos 4. Go to Hell
	The Pipettes We Are The Pipettes Girl band pop at its best. Also, I’m pretty sure I like anything that sounds like it’s heavily influenced by 50’s prom music. Notable Tracks 1. Pull Shapes
	Darwin Deez Darwin Deez Something like the Smiths meets something catchy and not so annoying. Notable Tracks 1. Radar Detector
	The Magic Numbers The Magic Numbers Catchy indie-pop-rock. Plus, they make me constantly reminisce about the Oneders, and every one of their awesome songs. Notable Tracks 1. Forever Lost
	Michael Bublé Crazy Love & Call Me Irresponsible & With Love No one told this guy that Rat Pack jazz ended a long time ago. But I’m not complaining because it’s about time a pop singer has a legitimately good voice. Notable Tracks 1. Haven’t Met You Yet 2. Can’t Help Falling in Love 3. Everything 4. Lost
	Tom McRea Tom McRea & King of Cards Tom McRea is mellow, awesomely sad music. Imagine Damien Rice meets emo worship music. Notable Tracks 1. The End of the World News 2. You Cut Her Hair 3. The Boy With the Bubblegun 4. The Ballad Of Amelia Earhart
	Kenna Make Sure They See My Face & New Sacred Cow If U2 and Radiohead had a baby somehow, I imagine it’d be something like Kenna. Notable Tracks 1. Baptized in Blacklight 2. Hell Bent

If you’re friends with me on Facebook, you read this blog, or watch my YouTube submissions, then you know that I am an enthusiastic hookah hobbyist. I love the tradition, I love the experience, I love what it adds to community environments, I love what it adds to private meditation and study. I just love it.

So, being that I’m the kind of person that needs an outlet to share the things I enjoy in order for me to fully appreciate it, I have begun a new blog project with an online friend, Dennin. Together we’ve been working to produce HookahReport.com. An online magazine-style blog about the hookah culture.

The new blog aims to deliver hookah related news, reviews and tips and tricks. So far, things are growing quickly and readership is steadily increasing. I love the new blog and wanted to share it.

If you’re a hookah enthusiast and you’re interested in doing some writing on HookahReport, send me an email with a sample of your writing and some background on your experience with hookah!

So what if I rushed it this week. I say if it can be done in under a minute, why take longer?

If you’re someone who reads this blog regularly, or somewhat regularly, you might notice that things look a little different around here. Well, it’s because I’ve gotten a new design for the blog. Or, should I say, finished a new design for the blog.

Since I started this blog in 2007, I’ve always been using premade themes from other designers. Mostly because it was easier, but also because the WordPress themeing system seemed a bit complicated for me.

Well, a couple months back I started brain storming and came up with an idea for my own. It took about a week. I made it. Then a week later, decided I hated it. I reverted back to the old premade theme I’d had before. Then, out of nowhere, the idea for what you see now hit me. I scratched it out in photoshop, and now here it is.

Along with this change come a few cool features that I’ve been eyeballing for a while but haven’t been ambitious enough to implement.

Search
For starters, now that I’m pushing almost 500 daily posts, I’ve integrated new search features that actually make the search function useful. The new features come through a useful plugin called Search Unleashed, by John Godley. Searching will now highlight your search term, as well as return your results according to the highest relevance. Much, much better.

Easy Sharing Links
Sociable is a little WordPress plugin that makes it easy to share a blog post with lots of different social sites, like Facebook or MySpace. Now that I’ve implemented the Sociable plugin, take advantage of sharing what you find with friends. Just click on the appropriate icon following any post you might find interesting.

Relevant Posts
I’m now using a plugin called YARPP (Yet Another Related Posts Plugin) to quickly and easily share other posts from my library that you might find interesting. This is especially useful because it takes into account the content of the post, but also tags and categories to help decide what to show you. If you find something interesting and what to read more, there’s a good chance you’ll find a related post about it. You’ll find related posts at the bottom of every post page.

So, thank you to the developers of these excellent plugins. If you’re a fellow blogger, I highly recommend you give them a shot. They’re all available in the WordPress.com plugins library.

The theme is not perfect yet. I still need to iron out some bugs. So if you happen upon an error, please let me know. But regardless, I hope you enjoy!