I said I was back with regular episodes of the Codex, and I meant it — Codex 41 is now available for your listening pleasure. And let me also remind you that for Christmas tunes, get the holiday episode I did last year (10).

As I posted on Monday, my Codex podcast is back because I’ve finally found a way to record it live, using music from Spotify and mixing in my talking bits, thanks to Nicecast. As I wrote in the show post on the Codex site, I’d pretty much given up on doing the show because I couldn’t find a satisfying way to record the whole thing live, which is something important to me. I had tried Nicecast back at the end of August, but at the time it didn’t properly support Mac OS X Lion, and so there were issues getting the songs to properly play from Spotify. But since then they upgraded the app — I only realized it the other day because someone tweeted it to me — and I was glad to see that it now works without a hitch (well, mostly, as there is one little glitch in the show I recorded, episode 40, at the start of one of the tracks).

It’s good to be doing these again, and one other interesting thing about using Nicecast is that as I record, I’m actually streaming the session to the web. So in the future I’ll probably share that link, for those who would like to listen in live as I record the podcast — that has the added bonus of making it feel that much more like a radio show, which is really what I try to do with Codex (hence the reason I don’t want to just edit a show together in Garageband, or similar software).

Also, since the music is coming from Spotify (for the most part), I can share the playlist that way too — so if my voice annoys you (and that’s completely understandable), you can still enjoy the music.

Since the show was on hiatus for about 3 months, I’ve got a lot of catching up to do, so you can expect quite a few episodes this month. Also, let me remind you that last year I did a Christmas episode (10), so if you’re looking for some more tunes to put you in the holiday mood, do give it a try.

It’s Christmas Eve, and so what better time to record a new episode of the Codex (11). It’s my “favorite tracks of 2010″ episode, based on what I listed in my recent “Favorite Media of 2010” post. As I explain in the show, it’s impossible for me to really say what my absolute favorite tracks of the year were, so this is mostly based on my iTunes play count. I hope you enjoy it, and just a reminder that if you’re in the mood for some Christmas music on the Eve or on the day itself, there’s last week’s Christmas episode to download — and if you liked Michael Bojkowski‘s recent Codex Coda contribution, he’s put up a great winter podcast episode as well, the “Antimix Special: Snowbound.”

The link to download the episode is below, as well as the playlist, or you can subscribe to an RSS feed of the show so as not to miss any future episode — it’s in the iTunes Store too.

Codex 11 (46.2MB)

1. The Books – “A Cold Freezin’ Night”
2. Mark Ronson and the Business Intl – “Bang Bang Bang (feat. Q-Tip and MNDR)”
3. Royksopp – “Happy Up Here”
4. Black Francis – “Threshold Apprehension”
5. Caribou – “Odessa”
6. Wavves – “King of the Beach”
7. Arcade Fire – “Rococo”
8. Four Tet – “Circling”
9. Stereolab – “Everybody’s Weird Except Me”
10. Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross – “Pieces Form the Whole”

It’s been another very long hiatus — obviously due to me breaking my spine — be the OK Fredders are finally back for a new episode of Radio OK Fred. It’s episode 15, and it’s our special Christmas show. Also, thanks to Djay — which is what I’ve been using at my PLAY events — this marks the first time we record a show live, which means we were able to prepare, record, and have it online all within 2-3 hours — for me, it was the editing that always killed me. So yes, apologies if we’re far from professional, but we’ll get better, I promise.

Below is the full rundown of what we played, as well as a link to the episode. Also, we have a new feed for the show now, so if you were subscribing to the old one, please make sure to switch.

Radio OK Fred 15 (36 MB)

1. James Kochalka – “Beautiful Christmas Lights”
2. Run DMC – “Christmas in Hollis”
3. Yoko Ono and the Plastic Ono Band – “The Sun Is Down”
4. Karen O and the Kids – “All Is Love”
5. Gayla Peevey – “I Want a Hippopotamus for Christmas”
6. Vince Guaraldi Trio – “Linus and Lucy”
7. Yuji Ohno – “Holy But Easy”
8. Naomi & Goro – “Presente de Natal”
9. Jose Feliciano – “Feliz Navidad”
10. Tokyo Panorama Lounge – “Winter Wonderland”
11. Ryuichi Sakamoto – “Merry Christmas Mr. Lawrence”

Muji has launched its annual Xmas campaign section, which includes the new collaborative project between Muji and Lego. Imagine a mix of paper crafts, using Lego blocks and pieces as accessories. I don’t know if these are sold at all stores — I don’t think so — but I saw a huge display at the Tokyo Midtown Muji store during design week.