Monday, February 27, 2006

3x Performance Boost

All the performance under-the-hood boost stuff is on the site. What used to be the two slowest screen (Remix listing and artist's profile pages) should snap to attention now -- the server is dishing them out over 3 times faster than the old code.

I'm not saying this because I want love, the fact is, this one "feature" required more changes to the code at a single time in over half a year and while it's been tested, I except it to have some loose ends somewhere. If you find a bad link, or get the dreaded "Down for upgrade" screen (you really shouldn't be getting those) make sure to let me know.

Ok, now, let the lovin begin...

ALSO: I need recycle help for the next contest, anybody have an hour or two (maybe mintue or two, I wouldn't know) in the next few days?

Friday, February 24, 2006

Melfi this, Melfi that...

so did absolutely no one get the reference to dr melfi in my last upload?

I couldn't tell if shag got it or not...

Next Contest

Sorry, can't really talk about it... but I just got the source samples, they're hot.

Wednesday, February 22, 2006

Webjay Playlist






MP3 playlist (M3U)


A playlist I made this past weekend on my friends computer while he played video games. Most of it was found via the Soulsides blogroll. I haven't tested it. I hope it works.

I made this playlist on Webjay and then used Smoothhouse's Webjay Wizard to create the button(above). Which I then pasted into this blog post in "edit Html" mode. Making playlists for the blog is very easy. Please give it a go. : )

Monday, February 20, 2006

Counting Remixes

I'm working on stats and charts and I'm not sure what makes sense.

Take this case...

When I'm compiling stats for spinningmerkaba, does this count as being remixed once, or 18 times?

The reverse happened here... where it looks like sleepless (aka Brilliant Orange Object) is one of the most remixed artsts on the site, but really, it's all about g going to town on this one upload.

Is it unfair to lump these two artists in with others (like brad and j.lang) where the distribution of remixes is spread out so much more...?

thoughts...?

Friday, February 17, 2006

Can a White Guy Sing Soul?

Not to be racialist about it but you be the judge?

Thursday, February 16, 2006

Radio, Radio

This new radio buttons feature really makes me happy. I can set the "ambient" button going, and enjoy dozens of songs as I work. I'm perpetually amazed at how many great mixes exist in the mixter that I had not heard before now. It's like cruising down a river lined with trees.

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Tuesday, February 14, 2006

Optmizations

One of reasons that (some) features are so easy to produce in ccMixter is because for the last year I've totally ignored all optimizations -- this is a typical programmer's trade off: performance vs. features. There is a huge amount of flexibility in the code that allows me to reach almost any piece of data from almost anywhere in the program. The cost? Well, it takes about 3 secs to render a remix listing or artist's profile page. This is an eternity in web server time and frankly, more than a little embarrassing. (Those pages would be considered average if they took 0.5 seconds to render.)

I've been doing timing test to figure out where the bottlenecks are and I've already reduced them by half. More coming...

Monday, February 13, 2006

Sunbyrn Soul System

That was pretty cool man (posted CDK 2 SunbyrnWed Aug 17, 2005 6:31). Well, Cliff by Sunbyrn was excellent good bye track. After 2 edpick, after Scared of my own Blood, after Bloody Ties by Cezos. Why?
Well, you know, Sunbyrn is my vocal hero. Motown - like big black soul, brilliant voice. I'd like to see Sunbyrn somewhere in da Universe. 4 example a home studio in Poznan, a chinese reastaurant in Haag, or a smokie blues pub in Czheckago. And talk, talk, talk about movies, girls, musics, remixes, dreams and plans...
Hey Sunbyrn, G-d bless you and keep on rockin!

Friday, February 10, 2006

The Future of Performing?

Beatmixed is pointing to what I would love to think as the future of performance gear: a DJ mixer that connects up to a laptop. Demo movie here.

Losing Open Source Support

The "leading light" of the Open Source movement, Richard Stallman (aka RMS) is obviously very influential in the OS programming world and has recently come out against Creative Commons.

Up until now the OS programming world has been very, very good to the CC world. For example it's clear that much of Magnatune's business comes from extremely favorable write ups in the Open Source magazines and websites, including Slashdot.

RMS is extremely committed to all information and media being free (in all respects) and feels that several of the CC licenses don't adhere to the strictest interpretation of this ideology. At first you may wonder what took him so long (they don't call it some rights reserved for nothing) but he uses the point that most people conflate ALL the CC licenses into one big jumble as a reason to reject the entire CC movement. In other words, he supports some of the licenses, but because of perceptions about CC as a whole, he is rejecting CC as a whole.

Many of his followers are pretty rabid about these issues -- these are the guys that come onto the Mixter forums and scream at us for allowing MP3s to be uploaded and mourn the missing ShareAlike licenses -- and I'm sure they have spent money on open music strictly for the "cause." One important question now is whether the open music movement has enough steam behind it to withstand losing that support.

Wednesday, February 08, 2006

Hey, hey, hey.

First off, my appologies for my lack of posts lately. I've had some other things on my mind. Due to some unforseen circumstances I will not be posting very much for a little while. But not to worry I will be back shortly. You couldn't keep me away even if you wanted to. ; )

In other news. Hepepe finally got in touch with me I and sent him an invitation.

Not to brag or anything but I was expecting roughly half of the people I sent invitations to to sign up for this blog. But now I am proud to say everyone who was initially invited is now on board.

I'd also like to take this opportunity to state that this is our/your blog. Any invitations from here on will be up to you. Please feel free to send out invitations to keep this project growing. Simply go to the blog 'Settings' and then 'Add New Member'.

And lastly, feel free to make any changes, improvements or features you feel will make this Blog a better more interesting place to hang out.

The Mixter community is the best community on the web. Bar none.

Thank you all,

Eric

Site Stats

We're starting to gather some stats. Great stuff going on..

http://ccmixter.org/stats

Thursday, February 02, 2006

Mixter Power

I use a lot of different devices to "get the word out" on my simple ambient music, and I can't always tell which things make the most difference. I can tell that ccmixter brings people to my music, because folks say a kind word here or there. This week, though, I got a graphic example of how ccmixter can help promote music. I posted a remix a few days ago. Within thirty six hours, my Archive.org site (www.absurdmusic.info) for one of my albums got 20 downloads (even though it's not mentioned on the mixter site, and usually gets a few a week or two) and my www.disfish.com page suddenly got several hundred more hits in a very short time. I can't give all the credit to the mixter, but I can tell by the dramatic nature of the increase v. the timing that mixter gets a good bit of credit. Sometimes, it's easy to focus on reviews and stars, but it's fun to see a tangible evidence that people listen to what's on the site. New downloads is about as tangible as it gets. So kudos to mixter, which really does work to get the word out on my odd music.

BBC Radio1 Essential Mix ft. Coldcut

From one of the interviewed artists featured in the Copyright Criminals Contest.

The latest BBC Radio1 Essential Mix by Coldcut.



This is why they make the big bucks. : )

Happy promo

Today I am so happy. Because of this:

Line6 will promote ReasonBanks products

Just in case you're all a bit worried. Trust me, I will create some new free sounds and loops and share it on ccMixter, like I have done in the past. In a way that's a cool promo thing as well. But we all need to eat, right? So if Line6 can help me with it, no problemo!

Btw I own a Line6 Guitarport and I am planning to record more guitars than I have ever done! Victor, stay sharp!