First World Dilemmas

My creative impulses are dragging me all over the place. I’ve got about a half-dozen projects I want to work on and I’m paralyzed with indecision. Maybe writing them down will help. In no particular order, I want to… – Get started on the perfume I’m making for Eve. – Play the hell out of [...]

Am I a writer? Or just restless?

There’s a certain self-righteous quality to calling yourself a writer when you have no published/paid work to your name. At that point you are closer to the truth if you refer to yourself as a “typist.” I have some friends, though, that exhibit that trait that I think is the telltale sign of a “real” [...]

Dreamweaving Again

So the good news is I’ve gone longer without posting on here, but that’s like saying midget murder is more condonable because they’re about half a life. I’ve started on a new web project, and with the number of features I want to build out it stands to be my most ambitious project yet, and [...]

BMM11 Behind The Scenes: Wheeling and Dealing

Many Basenoters enjoy Basenotes March Madness, but it’s something just this side of an obsession for me as commissioner of the thing. Suffice it to say that I started preliminary work on BMM12 (March 1 2012) in December 2010. I was simultaneously working on BMM11 and in my first message on the topic to Grant [...]

BMM11 Behind The Scenes: Unexpected Successes

So the first phase of the BMM voting site has done really well in it’s first two weeks, with 106 different users, 2157 votes and 501 different fragrances in the running at the time of this writing. I’ve gotta say, I wasn’t sure what to expect but I wasn’t expecting that kind of response so [...]

Time Management Fail

I should be getting ready for work right about now, but I feel like writing too. So writing wins for now. I’m getting myself psyched up for 2011 with plans and ideas for how I’m gonna keep things interesting for this Monday-Wednesday-Friday regularity of posting. My work schedule actually calls for Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday [...]

BMM11 Behind The Scenes: Best Laid Plans

I began preliminary work for Basenotes March Madness 2011 today, a paper sketch that I always seem to need to do before designing a website or a database. I’ll be designing both in this case, but the core of the game will of course be on Basenotes. The site I’m building will host the nomination [...]

Chanel Platinum Egoiste – The Prophet Biggie Smalls

How does an early 90s aromatic fougère get street cred? “…easy, call em on the phone and Platinum Chanel cologne and I stay, dressed, to impress…” -Notorious B.I.G., Nasty Girl I’m fairly sure Platinum Egoiste is the only bottle in my collection that has been rapped about, but smelling it, it’s hard not to see [...]

SoTW 1/31/10 – 2/6/10

Hello and welcome to Week 1 of the 2010-2011 Scent of The Year experiment.  This first week has been all about finding the simplest way to process all the data, and to figure out what exactly we’ll be tracking over the next year. So let’s take a step back, for the uninitiated.  Scent of The [...]

Bond No. 9 Lexington Avenue

First: a word about art and money. Mediocre works with outrageous price tags are going to get (deservingly) harsher criticism. (Looking at you, Soup Can Man!) Arrogantly priced houses should be held to a higher standard. One as expensive as Bond No. 9 ($205 for 100mL) had better be bottled transcendence. I’ve tried a dozen [...]