Jody Whitesides

Category: News

  • 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.

  • Overcoming Setbacks: My Unique Story of Progress and Perseverance!

    Overcoming Setbacks: My Unique Story of Progress and Perseverance!

    One step forward, three steps backward. This is a type of proverb that originally spoke of one step forward, two steps backward. The concept is that progress is made, but setbacks have occurred that delay the project.

    It’s likely there isn’t a person on earth that hasn’t experienced this problem.

    Right now, it’s a problem I’m experiencing with getting the updated server up and running. It’s also occurring with some musical things that I’d like to be working on as well.

    Today I was hoping to have the new server running the websites. Unfortunately admin user error (meaning me not understanding something about Kubernetes) caused a need to roll everything back and start over again. ARGH.

    Right when I was feeling like hell yeah this is gonna happen today; the data and server gods said: NOPE!

    Sadly the learning curve is proving a tad more than I had bargained for. Which is not what I’m used to and it’s tremendously disappointing.

    The irony is, another artist I recently chatted with thought that my ability to even attempt such ventures for computing was wild sorcery. That’s a nice thought, and in a way it is, but alas, I’m forcing my own hand to make sure its done right.

    On the musical side of things, I know that starting today, I need to get the next batch of animated cover art to the distributor. Which puts me a little behind on creating some music for a project.

    On Friday I got a call asking for me to create some music similar to something I did several months ago. This is for a client abroad. The last piece of music I did in this nature was my first jump into the genre. Apparently they liked it enough they want me to do it again.

    Therein is the issue. There isn’t enough time in the day to get everything done. Especially when stuff is piling up due to setbacks like the one I experienced today.

    Is the server important? Yes. Is it dire? No.

    However I’ve been working on this close to a month and if it was my previous method, it would have been done in a day. In order to grow, one needs to push thru the setbacks.

    To that end, I appreciate that you’ve read this far to find out that today’s musical launch is the Motor City Cruise. They are the G League basketball team for Detroit. This particular animated covers is one of my favorites. It feels subtle and also appropriate. Though I do wish I could have added some motor revving sounds to the animation.

    Of course once all these things come together for the server, I will quietly make it known.

    Come back again, same bat time, same bat website.

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