Category: News

  • From Tech Meltdown to Musical Breakthrough: A Creative Victory Story

    From Tech Meltdown to Musical Breakthrough: A Creative Victory Story

    A breakthrough! After a week a major setbacks and thinking I needed to give up, there’s finally a couple of great breakthroughs.

    As mentioned to my girlfriend the other day, if I wanted I could have gone the old route with what I know and been done with it. Meaning the server. But that applies too pretty much anything in life.

    You can’t learn a new skill if you get defeated by the process.” – Jody Whitesides

    Hell no. I’m a glutton for punishment. I’m learning a new skill. And for that it’s been a hell of a journey for the last month and a half.

    Finally after a setback with the new router, and email software that was creating major havoc. They both have now been solved! The router is going to be super crucial going forward. The email software is going to spoil me when I finally make the switch later this week.

    As an artist, I’m not overly fond of the current administration’s take on AI. In fact, I will say “Fuck Trump” for firing the head of the copyright office right after she came out with a very carefully worded statement of how the government would work with AI companies without screwing all artistic communities.

    Sadly, this flies in the face of Musk, Bezos, Zuckerberg, and others. All of whom wish to make the business on the backs of creative types without paying the price of copyright and IP law. So yeah, fuck you Trump.

    Despite that, it was Claude.AI who helped me to research the issues I was having with the server and ultimately helped me find the solution so I could code it in. Whew. There is something I think AI is useful for – research.

    I’m happy to do my own research for learning, but sometimes, there’s too much to sift through. Both Claude and ChatGPT came to my aide to parse it down. Hopefully I can get it all done prior to renewing of subscriptions. I’d like to cancel once the research is finished.

    Switching back to music now, this week, along with seeing a major leap forward for me personally, there is a new anthem for a G League basketball team known as The Mexico City Capitanes.

    The G League is going international and I’m helping them along for the ride. No I did not redo the song into Spanish. But for the fans of Mexico City Capitanes, there’s now a version of Do You Want to Play just for you!

    Stay tuned…

  • The Cost of Progress: Late-Night Failures and the Quest for a Better Music Experience

    The Cost of Progress: Late-Night Failures and the Quest for a Better Music Experience

    Major fuckin setback. Last night was a huge loss on the technical front. In the quest of building a better experience, I experienced the biggest setback yet.

    In putting together the new backend, I came to a halt early last week. I learned that I needed to purchase a high-end piece of kit to make sure the back end would do what it needed to do.

    Getting the box needed was no small feat. I found it late at night and thought I’d wait until morning to purchase the item. Stupid move number one. As the next morning the item was gone.

    Now the part cost 2x. Oops. Then due to the day of the week it was ordered, the delivery wouldn’t be until yesterday (Monday). Ok, I can wait.

    Item arrives. I unbox it. I get it plugged in. I learn immediately that it isn’t a simple plug and play situation. Really? In this day and age, there’s still tech items being made that aren’t easy?!?

    I walk thru the steps to get it up and running and it worked after multiple tries. However, it didn’t last long. I noticed something needed a change and bam, everything got hosed. Hours of time wasted late into the night. To no avail.

    Attempting to remove the new tech from the situation and revert back – nope. The old item was no stuck in some sort of loop that it still won’t come out of. Thanks a lot.

    Now, instead of worrying about music, I’m madly attempting to figure out the tech issue so that I can get on with the deployment of the new user experience. Ultimately getting me back to making more music.

    Speaking of which, I was asked to upload stems of a track that I mentioned I was asked to create last week. That’s a great sign. Maybe there will be news on that that I can announce soon.

    In the meantime, I’m hoping that tech support can solve my issue today. Then I can get back on track.

    Kinda like the Fort Wayne team of the Mad Ants now being known as the Indiana Mad Ants. Undergoing a transformation to make the end user experience more enjoyable!

    Mount up Mad Ants fans, your theme for Do You Want to Play has be updated as well. As the old wella balsam commercial stated: I told two friends, and they told two friends and so on, and so on.

  • Charging Ahead: Little Steps with New Track Drops as Music and Tech Breakthroughs Align

    Charging Ahead: Little Steps with New Track Drops as Music and Tech Breakthroughs Align

    The backward steps are starting to move forward again. This week has seen a bit of a progress in relation to music and to the tech I’m working on behind the scenes. Still charging ahead as I tend to do.

    I got a call last week asking if I would create a variation on a piece of music that I had written last year. I said sure. Easy enough task since it was already licensed and used. Though once I dug into it, it was more of a new piece rather than a variation.

    It required a change of time signature and a bump of 20 bpm in speed. That’s less a variation and more like a rewrite. However, I did retain a good portion of the chord changes. The melody was relatively similar, but more bouncy and sections got doubled in length due to the speed increase.

    I turned it in yesterday as per request and I’m waiting to find out if it hit the mark they wanted.

    On the tech side, I finally made some headway. After bashing my proverbial head on a brick wall trying to get the server backend to work with WordPress, I finally gave up on the direction I was going and chose a different path. Within an hour of the new path it was up and running. Much as it should have been with the previous path that never panned out.

    As of the release of this update, I should be working on the transfer of all the data and start in on getting the communication portion up and running. Nearing the finish line of all this stuff. I’m not out of the woods yet and I hope I don’t have another major setback. Right now, the server is running smooth.

    Which means, I hope I don’t jinx it by saying that the portion that is running, is running smoothly.

    With that, there’s another step forward this morning with the release of the song I have for the Cleveland Charge. Yes, another rendition of Do You Want to Play is ready for your ears – provided you’re a Cleveland Charge fan.

    Much like the pro players of the Charge, and their namesake, I feel like I’m charging ahead. Albeit in sometimes small steps.