The web has changed an awful lot since I got my first computer in 1996. Back then, social media didn't exist like it does today. But it wasn't difficult to find communities of like-minded people. There were message boards, newsgroups, chat rooms, and e-mail groups. It wasn't difficult at all to become a member of a web community.
When I first got online, I had an AOL subscription, because I wanted access to their message board communities. I met a number of really cool people on those boards. I also got bogged down in sending, receiving and re-sending jokes through e-mail. This was the equivalent to shares and re-tweeting. This only went on for a few months before I realized how annoying it really was to open your inbox and see 43 messages, and nothing of interest.
Back then, if you wanted to have an online presence, you needed a personal website. There were WYSIWYG applications that you could use to build your website without having to know anything about HTML, but if you really wanted to have control over the way your website appeared, you really needed to learn markup.
And there were tons of really crappy websites. Mine included. Nobody really surfs the web anymore. These days, everything's pretty much presented to you via Facebook, Twitter and a host of other social media options that I'm not hip enough to even know by name. In many ways, Facebook has turned the internet to an even more passive experience.
I've found that Facebook is better for a community experience, while Twitter is better for keeping up with what celebrities are up to. There's often a lot of complaining going on about the way the masses follow celebrities, but I think we can all name at least a few celebrities that we enjoy keeping up with.
So, it's under these circumstances that I've brought my website back from the dead. I'm sure there's no real purpose to doing it, because I don't really expect to get any traffic. I never really got much traffic back in the day to begin with. But one thing I like about having a website is that it gives me someplace to upload the things I create so that I can share them with my friends if I like.
I also like to record guitar riffs that I come up with, and make them available to anyone that might need bumper music for a podcast or their own videos. As long as I receive proper credit, I don't mind it being used royalty-free. I'm never going to make a living at it, so the idea of someone hearing my music for whatever reason is appealing. Even if it's just background music that's largely ignored.
So, while it's really unnecessary for me to have a website in 2015, I am happy to have brought it back. I've enjoyed, for the most part, re-designing it these past few weeks. Even if I've struggled a bit to make some of the content work the way I'd like.
Sunday, May 31, 2015
Saturday, May 30, 2015
Why do I do this to myself?
So, I figured it would be a nice feature to have the latest episode of the podcast embedded in the web page.
Initially, I did it the easy way, which would be the hard way in the long run, meaning I'd have to update the code that embeds the audio in the page every time we issued a new episode. So I decided that I should have the page read the rss feed for the latest episode title and location.
This was a mistake.
Not because I broke the page or anything. Initially, it was pretty easy to do, until I realized that my synchronous request was poor programming practice.
I could have been lazy and said, "yeah, well, screw it, it's my site." But, dammit, 13 years working in IT made me realize that, yeah, that's not right. So I spent another couple of hours figuring out how to make an asynchronous request with a callback so that I would be doing it the right way.
So, the upshot is, I've spent far more of my off time programming than I would like to. I mean, I took a vacation day this week because I was about to start losing time, and what did I spend the day doing? Coding my fucking website.
Shoot me. Just fucking shoot me.
Oh, and the embedded audio of the latest episode thing works. All that work for something that will probably never be used.
Oh well. At least I learned something about asynchronous HTTP requests that I'm sure I'll forget by Monday. Hell, I probably learned this at work at some point and have promptly forgotten it. Why? Because I do it so fucking often.
Fuck me.
Initially, I did it the easy way, which would be the hard way in the long run, meaning I'd have to update the code that embeds the audio in the page every time we issued a new episode. So I decided that I should have the page read the rss feed for the latest episode title and location.
This was a mistake.
Not because I broke the page or anything. Initially, it was pretty easy to do, until I realized that my synchronous request was poor programming practice.
I could have been lazy and said, "yeah, well, screw it, it's my site." But, dammit, 13 years working in IT made me realize that, yeah, that's not right. So I spent another couple of hours figuring out how to make an asynchronous request with a callback so that I would be doing it the right way.
So, the upshot is, I've spent far more of my off time programming than I would like to. I mean, I took a vacation day this week because I was about to start losing time, and what did I spend the day doing? Coding my fucking website.
Shoot me. Just fucking shoot me.
Oh, and the embedded audio of the latest episode thing works. All that work for something that will probably never be used.
Oh well. At least I learned something about asynchronous HTTP requests that I'm sure I'll forget by Monday. Hell, I probably learned this at work at some point and have promptly forgotten it. Why? Because I do it so fucking often.
Fuck me.
Wednesday, May 27, 2015
New website design
A few weeks ago, I brought rockindonkey.com back to the web. The website has gone through many incarnations from when I originally created it back in 1996 on America Online, with my 5 megabytes of allocated server space.
Initially, it was a fan site for Sammy Hagar, Y&T and Rick Springfield. Later incarnations saw pages devoted to "Weird Al" Yankovic (which I called "AlNet", a "parody" of the, now defunct, RockNet, using a similar design. -- I got the idea from "Yankovic!" which itself, was a parody of the Yahoo! web portal).
Eventually, I jettisoned the fan pages, and devoted it to my own content. Nothing much, just a place to host some guitar licks and riffs I had recorded, photos I had taken, and some other personal stuff.
The thing with having a website is, I'm always tweaking the damned thing. Creating new designs, because I get tired of the last.
So, when I brought it back, the purpose was to give me a place to host this podcast. Instead of registering "alloverthepodcast.com", I found that rockindonkey.com was available again (It had been used as a Karoake business out of Denver, at one point, and something else, before that -- I don't recall) so I decided that I would reclaim my domain.
So, after reclaiming my domain, I put the old files, which I had backed up from when I still had the site some 8 years ago.
I soon came to the realization that the site needed to be updated pretty badly. The old content still worked, but it looked 8 years old.
So, I've spent the past couple of weeks replacing the tables with DIVs and CSS, but still maintaining the existing design. I added a page for the podcast, jettisoned my photo galleries, yet, the site still looked 8 years old. I really liked that design, but I realized that it really didn't play well with mobile devices.
So, over the past few days I went through the site and totally revamped all of the pages to use a design that would work better with mobile devices. I came up with something that I'm pretty happy with. There were some things about the old design that I really liked, and thought looked cute, so I've archived the old version of the site, although it won't be updated with any of the new content.
I'm sure there's a good chance that I might wind up making more changes, perhaps even jettisoning the whole thing and starting over.
But, for the time being, I have a design I'm satisfied with, and I learned a few things in the process, which, theoretically I can apply to work.
If nothing else, I'm back.
Initially, it was a fan site for Sammy Hagar, Y&T and Rick Springfield. Later incarnations saw pages devoted to "Weird Al" Yankovic (which I called "AlNet", a "parody" of the, now defunct, RockNet, using a similar design. -- I got the idea from "Yankovic!" which itself, was a parody of the Yahoo! web portal).
Eventually, I jettisoned the fan pages, and devoted it to my own content. Nothing much, just a place to host some guitar licks and riffs I had recorded, photos I had taken, and some other personal stuff.
The thing with having a website is, I'm always tweaking the damned thing. Creating new designs, because I get tired of the last.
So, when I brought it back, the purpose was to give me a place to host this podcast. Instead of registering "alloverthepodcast.com", I found that rockindonkey.com was available again (It had been used as a Karoake business out of Denver, at one point, and something else, before that -- I don't recall) so I decided that I would reclaim my domain.
So, after reclaiming my domain, I put the old files, which I had backed up from when I still had the site some 8 years ago.
I soon came to the realization that the site needed to be updated pretty badly. The old content still worked, but it looked 8 years old.
So, I've spent the past couple of weeks replacing the tables with DIVs and CSS, but still maintaining the existing design. I added a page for the podcast, jettisoned my photo galleries, yet, the site still looked 8 years old. I really liked that design, but I realized that it really didn't play well with mobile devices.
So, over the past few days I went through the site and totally revamped all of the pages to use a design that would work better with mobile devices. I came up with something that I'm pretty happy with. There were some things about the old design that I really liked, and thought looked cute, so I've archived the old version of the site, although it won't be updated with any of the new content.
I'm sure there's a good chance that I might wind up making more changes, perhaps even jettisoning the whole thing and starting over.
But, for the time being, I have a design I'm satisfied with, and I learned a few things in the process, which, theoretically I can apply to work.
If nothing else, I'm back.
Friday, May 15, 2015
The Thrill Is Gone
With the possible exception of Edward Van Halen's Frankenstrat, there has, quite possibly, never been a more famous guitar than B.B. King's Lucille.
I wasn't a huge B.B. King fan, but I appreciated what he did. I even have a couple of his CDs laying around here somewhere.
While I was in college in the late 1990's/early 2000's, I got hooked on watching Nick At Night's T.V. Land, when I wasn't doing homework or studying for an exam. During this period, one of my favorite shows to watch was Sanford & Son. There was an episode of the show on which B.B. King appeared. He performed "The Thrill Is Gone" on the episode. That got me interested in his music. So I picked up a couple of his CDs.
It would be a lie to say that I was heavily influenced by his playing, but I'm sure that the exposure to it didn't hurt my playing. It's impossible to listen to someone like B.B. King and not be influenced in some way. I'd still like to get a hollow-bodied or semi-hollow-bodied guitar, just to see what I could do with it.
So, it's a sad day when we lose a great like B.B. King. I expect that there will be a lot of blog posts about this subject, and I really wish I had more to say about it than he'll be missed. But it seemed kind of obligatory to say something about it. As a music fan, and a guitar player, I feel it's necessary to, at the very least, acknowledge his passing.
At the same time that we acknowledge that he's gone, and the world of music will be a little less awesome in his absence, we should acknowledge the amazing career he had, and celebrate the fact that he was able to continue performing to such a ripe age. He might not have died doing what he loved, but he did what he loved for a very, very long time. And that's worthwhile.
I wasn't a huge B.B. King fan, but I appreciated what he did. I even have a couple of his CDs laying around here somewhere.
While I was in college in the late 1990's/early 2000's, I got hooked on watching Nick At Night's T.V. Land, when I wasn't doing homework or studying for an exam. During this period, one of my favorite shows to watch was Sanford & Son. There was an episode of the show on which B.B. King appeared. He performed "The Thrill Is Gone" on the episode. That got me interested in his music. So I picked up a couple of his CDs.
It would be a lie to say that I was heavily influenced by his playing, but I'm sure that the exposure to it didn't hurt my playing. It's impossible to listen to someone like B.B. King and not be influenced in some way. I'd still like to get a hollow-bodied or semi-hollow-bodied guitar, just to see what I could do with it.
So, it's a sad day when we lose a great like B.B. King. I expect that there will be a lot of blog posts about this subject, and I really wish I had more to say about it than he'll be missed. But it seemed kind of obligatory to say something about it. As a music fan, and a guitar player, I feel it's necessary to, at the very least, acknowledge his passing.
At the same time that we acknowledge that he's gone, and the world of music will be a little less awesome in his absence, we should acknowledge the amazing career he had, and celebrate the fact that he was able to continue performing to such a ripe age. He might not have died doing what he loved, but he did what he loved for a very, very long time. And that's worthwhile.
Tuesday, May 12, 2015
Steel Panther
One of my favorite acts to come out in the past decade is Steel Panther. Their funny, wholly inappropriate lyrics crack me up. To top it off, these guys are top-notch musicians. They might not be responsible for the renaissance that 80's hard rock bands are enjoying today, but they certainly are evidence of it.
They are one part parody, one part homage to the glam bands that rose to prominence in the mid 1980's, only to be crushed by rap and grunge in the 1990's.
It's easy to want to dismiss them as a novelty act, because of their lyrical content, but novelty acts generally don't have much staying power, and we shouldn't be so quick to write them off as such. Look at how long "Weird Al" Yankovic has been around. He's outlasted most of the artists he parodied, and he recently enjoyed his first number one album (Mandatory Fun).
Not too shabby for someone who was written off as a novelty act several times during his career.
And, aside from the explicit lyrics, what Steel Panther is doing really isn't much different than what "Weird Al" does. While Al does a mix of full-on parodies and style parodies, Steel Panther has made their mark by recording nothing but style-parodies of specific 80's bands (with the exception of a few covers).
I don't expect that they will have the lengthy career that Al has had if they stick to the 80's bands. At some point, the genre will fall out of favor again. But, they've already released three full-length records. They've already managed to be successful longer than a number of bands that rode the last wave of popularity that the genre experienced in the early 1990's.
Now, you might not like parody bands, and you might find their music offensive. But that's your problem. For the time being, at least, they've made their mark on popular music. I, for one, really appreciate what they're doing.
They are one part parody, one part homage to the glam bands that rose to prominence in the mid 1980's, only to be crushed by rap and grunge in the 1990's.
It's easy to want to dismiss them as a novelty act, because of their lyrical content, but novelty acts generally don't have much staying power, and we shouldn't be so quick to write them off as such. Look at how long "Weird Al" Yankovic has been around. He's outlasted most of the artists he parodied, and he recently enjoyed his first number one album (Mandatory Fun).
Not too shabby for someone who was written off as a novelty act several times during his career.
And, aside from the explicit lyrics, what Steel Panther is doing really isn't much different than what "Weird Al" does. While Al does a mix of full-on parodies and style parodies, Steel Panther has made their mark by recording nothing but style-parodies of specific 80's bands (with the exception of a few covers).
I don't expect that they will have the lengthy career that Al has had if they stick to the 80's bands. At some point, the genre will fall out of favor again. But, they've already released three full-length records. They've already managed to be successful longer than a number of bands that rode the last wave of popularity that the genre experienced in the early 1990's.
Now, you might not like parody bands, and you might find their music offensive. But that's your problem. For the time being, at least, they've made their mark on popular music. I, for one, really appreciate what they're doing.
Sunday, May 10, 2015
YouTube Comments
As a fan of music, I frequently go to YouTube to check out bands I'm unfamiliar with. It's an excellent way to get a taste of a band's music to see if it's something I'm interested in purchasing, or I'll sometimes look up instructional guitar videos. But the comments often are not worth reading.
I can't tell you how many times I've seen people comment on some kid's video where he's playing a cover of some song, and there's some asshole pointing out all the flaws in the kid's playing.
Another popular comment I see is when someone posts a video of some guitarist's live performance, and some jerkoff will comment "I'm a better guitarist than he is". Interestingly, these people almost never have any videos of their own posted. The one time that the guy that said it actually had a video posted, his playing sucked.
These people are so insecure about themselves that they need to take pot-shots at others. You know what? That kid with the video you just ragged on? He's 13, and still learning. He hasn't even finished growing yet, so he probably has to struggle a little to reach some of the chord fingerings that you're mocking him for flubbing. But at least this kid had the stones to publish his work. He's not posting it for you.
If these people actually had valid criticisms that could actually help the kid improve, they would be a lot more diplomatic about their criticisms. But, they're not trying to help the kid improve. They're trying to make themselves feel better about their own shortcomings, whether perceived or real.
As for the "I'm a better guitarist than so-and-so" asshole, one question: Where's your proof? If you're so much fucking better, why are you sitting in front of your computer ragging on him/her instead of out in front of a crowd displaying your talents? Maybe if you spent a little less time trolling YouTube and a little more time focusing on promoting yourself, you would be.
When you make a claim like that, you better be ready to back it up, otherwise I'm free to dismiss your claims without any evidence. You made a claim, show me the evidence. Because not only am I going to dismiss your initial claim, but I'm not going to waste my time on anything else you have to say because, quite frankly, you've not established yourself as having any expertise on the subject.
You claim to be a great guitarist, yet you refuse to present any evidence of you even playing guitar, much less showing up the guy you're ragging on. I can't trust anything you say at that point. So it's time for you to just shut the fuck up and go sit in your corner.
I swear, people are fucking stupid as all hell.
I can't tell you how many times I've seen people comment on some kid's video where he's playing a cover of some song, and there's some asshole pointing out all the flaws in the kid's playing.
Another popular comment I see is when someone posts a video of some guitarist's live performance, and some jerkoff will comment "I'm a better guitarist than he is". Interestingly, these people almost never have any videos of their own posted. The one time that the guy that said it actually had a video posted, his playing sucked.
These people are so insecure about themselves that they need to take pot-shots at others. You know what? That kid with the video you just ragged on? He's 13, and still learning. He hasn't even finished growing yet, so he probably has to struggle a little to reach some of the chord fingerings that you're mocking him for flubbing. But at least this kid had the stones to publish his work. He's not posting it for you.
If these people actually had valid criticisms that could actually help the kid improve, they would be a lot more diplomatic about their criticisms. But, they're not trying to help the kid improve. They're trying to make themselves feel better about their own shortcomings, whether perceived or real.
As for the "I'm a better guitarist than so-and-so" asshole, one question: Where's your proof? If you're so much fucking better, why are you sitting in front of your computer ragging on him/her instead of out in front of a crowd displaying your talents? Maybe if you spent a little less time trolling YouTube and a little more time focusing on promoting yourself, you would be.
When you make a claim like that, you better be ready to back it up, otherwise I'm free to dismiss your claims without any evidence. You made a claim, show me the evidence. Because not only am I going to dismiss your initial claim, but I'm not going to waste my time on anything else you have to say because, quite frankly, you've not established yourself as having any expertise on the subject.
You claim to be a great guitarist, yet you refuse to present any evidence of you even playing guitar, much less showing up the guy you're ragging on. I can't trust anything you say at that point. So it's time for you to just shut the fuck up and go sit in your corner.
I swear, people are fucking stupid as all hell.
Saturday, May 9, 2015
All Over The Podcast - Maiden Voyage
I want to express my excitement and gratitude for being able to record the first official episode of All Over The Podcast with my good buddy, Marcus Nikolas today. We talked about a number of different topics and reminisced about the old "show" we used to do. It was a lot of fun and we hope to make it a semi-regular thing.
You can find us on iTunes or at our website.
You can find us on iTunes or at our website.
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