TonightsLastSong

Et voilà... je pars.  Je vais au Canada pour voir une amie, qui est très spéciale à moi.  I'm headed first to Toronto to see some things with her, and then we're taking a train to Ottawa for to spend a few days with her and the family.  I couldn't fit my guitar in my bag, so I'll just have to toy with theirs while I'm in town   I'm super excited!  Sadly, I'll be missing Thanksgiving with my own family, as I'm leaving tonight, the day right before the big holiday.  On the flip side, Lisa and the family are hosting me for a belated Thanksgiving meal on Sunday.  Canadian Thanksgiving was back in October, so they're making a special effort to accomodate for me in their plans.  They used to live in Texas, so they know how these american holidays go

Since I'll be a little more than busy up in Canada, I won't really be back here to check out BandAMP stuffs until Tuesday or Wednesday of next week.

Later

Listening to a funny song by Omar Goodness, right now, called "Canadian Girls" :P  It holds a dear little place in my heart, having come back from Canada recently, and even more so because I'm currently planning trips back to Ontario to spend some quality time with a girl I've been interested in up there.  She's great-- we're planning on meeting up for a long-term "visit" for this coming summer... Don't worry, all.  I won't be quiting my music or ditching BandAMP, hahaha...

Anyway, as interesting as my private life is, I'm sure you, dear reader, aren't here to find out about that sort of stuff (I hope). 


uuuppps... I gotta help my siblings eat dinner :P  My mother's in the hospital right now, so I'm holding down the fort :P  Nothing to worry about-- she's coming home soon!

I suppose I'll finish this entry later 

So, after having left the country for 2 years, I'm slowly settling back into my life.  Funny how you can root yourself up like that, and then return and feel so detached from where you once called "home."  I feel like I have no real "home" despite the house that I stay in each night.

We tell ourselves when we're young that Friends are Forever, while we try to escape our families, thinking that one day we'll never have to deal with them again.  It seems to me that it's the other way around.... The family is what lasts forever, and the friends change as frequently as scrambled eggs need to be stirred in a frying pan.  I've come home, and 95% of my aquaintances are moved away or starting new lives for themselves elsewhere.  I may be moving someplace else once summer of 08 rolls around.  I've gained the liking of a friend of mine from Ottawa, Ontario, Canada, and we're planning on trying to close up this distance issue that looms its ugly head, threatening to destroy what we hold so dear     Who knows where I'll end up.

Has it every crossed your mind how we as humans tend to look for bold, new ways to be different?  It's interesting to me that we all think that we're something so special, when everbody else is trying to do the same thing as me (though they admittedly go about it differently).  It's like... if Traditional was how the world turned on its axis just last week, then today we're plagued with a bunch of Columbuses (Columbi?   ) that think they're going to revolutionize the joint.  But... if we're all out there trying to revolutionize, then nobody's back in the Traditional part, holding the fort down, you see?  If we're all out doing something new, then the real frontier is back where we came from, where nobody bothers walking the forgotten path.  We call Traditional the Beaten Path, but really... isn't revolutionizing things the Beaten Path today?  That would make the real revolutionizing take place in the Traditional side of things, because nobody goes there anymore.

The way I see it though, there's nothing wrong with taking some new found skills from time spent Revolutionizing and trying to combine them with Traditional.  It keeps things spicy; it keeps things interesting.

How was that for a blog?  I find it hard to stay on just one topic   Forgive me.

*does a little japanese bow*

Returned to the USA after a 2 year sojourn in Canada, I've posted a new recording of my old song "Acutally, 'Sorry' Wasn't the First Thing that Came to Mind."  Check it out, yo.

Later, friends.
XO, TLS

As promised by rule number 7 (post number 12) of the thread The Church of Bandamp... the 100th poster of the said thread would be glorified in ritual sing-song around a camp fire.

if ever there is a bandamp get-together around a campfire, this song must be sung in honor of dodosito.  The tune is put/crammed to the tune of the japanese folk song "Sakura."

dodosito, dodosito
One hundredth poster here
These stars will witness ever more,
Smiling faces, marsh-a-mallows
Yet Mud reigns supreme
Now, now
Let's not forget them both

XO, TLS

I know that not everybody automatically trusts a company like Google with private data, but I'm curious to know if anybody else at BandAMP is enthusiastic about the Google+ social network.

I like it for a few reasons, despite it being in invite-only beta right now: I stopped using the volatile Facebook (especially once the only things I was getting were spam requests from 18 year old girls in my area), it's more organized than Twitter is, and it starts from the right foundation: make groups of friends and share with those groups instead of to the masses who don't care.  Plus they give you a button to export all your data at any time, right from the start.  Google has an internal committee called the Data Liberation Front which makes sure that the Google products have export featuers.

Anybody else using G+?  If anybody is at all interested, people with accounts automatically have unlimited invites.  I'm Tim Valenta, of course, if anybody looks me up.

I had to put my fingers on the guitar strings yesterday, and after a few strums I noticed my cat, Takara, was acting a little funny, jumping around when I hit the low notes.  I decided to record a little bit as she got confused over the source of the noise...

Temporary home for the beta preview: http://bandamp.thesimpler.net - Signup available for people that want to play around

Q: What is the update?
A: A reworking of the inside programming code that powers the site.  Right this moment, new features aren't the top-priority, simply because we want to make BandAMP's core as bulletproof as possible before we start complicating things.

Q: Bottom line: what's different?
A: The site is missing a few things, such as the battle system and chat room (listed below in a more complete list).  Differences at this point are mostly things you won't be able to see.  In fact, the goal of this particular update was to avoid changing the look and feel of the site.

A few really small things that are different:
- Deletion checkboxes on profile photos (can select multiple before choosing to delete)
- In-place editing on a few pages, like links and photos.
- Sticky threads.
- Handy access to your privacy control when uploading a song.  This means you don't have to upload it and then go back to your profile to change the privacy.
- New audio player, as supported by your browser.  If your browser doesn't have a built-in player, it'll use a simple Flash one.
- Several new preferences when editing your profile, such as if you prefer to have songs auto-play when you go to the page, how long you wish to be logged in when you sign in, email notification settings, etc.

Q: I see a few things are missing... what about those?
A: Things like the battle system, the chat room, and several random features are still missing.  All of those features will return.  The goal of the update is to completely imitate our current BandAMP.


I didn't get as much done today as planned, but a good chunk of stuff is ready to preview.  I want to make the code itself public in a few days' time, but I don't have a great way to do it quite yet.  More news on that later.

Here's a (mostly?) complete list of what is missing or needs fixing:
- Read/unread status of threads
- Emoticons are clickable, but they don't turn into their actual icons when the post is displayed.
- "Sticky" selection box is available to everybody-- that'll change.  Only admins and moderators will have that control.
- Admins cannot yet move/lock threads
- Users cannot rate threads. (this is tied to the battle system just a little bit, so it's priority wasn't super high before now)
- Youtube tag doesn't actually do anything
- RSS feeds missing
- Search not implemented
- "flat" pages (About, FAQ, etc) aren't posted
- PM system not implemented
- Online indicator not yet showing next to person's name on forum posts.
- Individual blog entries aren't viewable on their own, meaning that comments cannot be posted to them yet
- "Action" links on user's Music section don't do anything yet.
- Playlist section not very spectacular yet.  This is because of a planned revision of the section and how it works.
- Can't delete items from the "Links" section yet.
- "Favorites" section not available yet.
- Home page's sidebar of recent posts (etc) not available.
- Character counter on posts doesn't actually do anything
- No email notifications

Hey all, just wanted to check in and let you know what I'm currently doing with my time.

There are a couple parts of the site that have proven to be a little bit tougher to perfectly emulate.  The one I'm currently working on is the music page on your profiles.  It's no big deal to enable uploads or put down some privacy controls, but there are a few flaws with the page that actually make it kind of hard to perfectly duplicate.  For example, you can only currently look at download stats on a song that you DON'T own (because that dropdown for joining battles is in the way when you ARE logged in), and anonymous users have the "add to playlist" button, even though they're not logged in.

Altogether, it's just little stuff like that where I think it makes more sense to rejigger it around and smooth off some rough corners, instead of spending time trying to reproduce the oddities that are purely accidental as BandAMP evolved.

I'm going to publish a major milestone Beta sometime later this week.  It'll be missing the battle system (although the ratings themselves will work), but I think that'll be an area best redesigned anyway, and I don't want to do it without your input.  I know TK wrote a good post a while back in the Ideas+Feedback forum about the battle system.

Anyway, I'll continue on this and have an preview posted later this week.

While working some programming for a site update, I had a thought:

We're working some brand new security measures into the song downloads, and I thought it would be fun to have a sound effect play for people who try to cheat the system and download songs that they don't have access to.  Instead of downloading the song, they'd just get the sound effect instead.  It would be even funnier if it was a full song, all about how they're a cheater and a thief   Normally people just won't see a link to protected songs, but I'm talking about people who are specifically trying to mess around with our site and attempt to trick BandAMP into giving them the song.

Anybody feel like writing a little jingle about thieves and cheaters?  I can't promise that many people will hear the song, but it would be truly satisfying in that passive-agressive way to know that bots and cunning folks secretly get slipped the decoy song instead!

Just let me know if you've got something.  If there are multiple ideas for jingles, we could even have the site give out a random one to the cheater.