Feb 20 2010

Sanity at last!

In case anyone’s been wondering why my blog hasn’t been updated for a while… there are a bunch of reasons.  A 1 sentence reason would be: my environment went insane!  It all started with the lack of organization in the past couple months, which began with me graduating from college (w00t!).  After this, I ended up with a lot more time than I’m used to having, along with the lack of ability to use it properly.  All of this, along with big changes in my life led to a big disorganized mess building up over time concerning my site, development environment, and life in general.

Here’s a quick summary:

  1. Started looking for a job, put off development for a couple weeks while I celebrated graduating, tried to figure out my living situation, and dealt with my first job offer fizzling due to interviewing for a position that wasn’t sure to exist.
  2. Moved in with my girlfriend, and moved my development webserver with me (a Gentoo hardened machine named Polaris).
  3. The tweeters on my studio monitor speakers blew out during a frequency sweep in the 19-20kHz range!  Note to self: CHECK LEVELS FIRST IN THE AUDIBLE RANGE! Especially before trying to reproduce frequencies on the border of the inaudible range!
  4. Finally ran an ’emerge -avuDN system’ and ’emerge -avuDN world’ on Polaris.  Had to resolve a couple blocks that arose & rebuild a bunch of stuff multiple times (ran ‘etc-update’ and ‘revdep-rebuild’ ad nauseum).
  5. Fixed database backup scripts that kept emailing me once a day about how they were failing.
  6. After server was updated, tried updating WordPress via the method I previously posted about & ran into a big issue with SVN.  I ended up having to rebuild from a fresh SVN checkout of the latest WordPress release, and re-checkout my installed plugins & other changes on top of that.
  7. After rebuild, so far site seems stable & development server is also mostly sane & stable.  Success at last!

This whole process happened over the course of months, alongside taking care of stuff with life in general.  My monitor speakers are currently in the process of making their way back to me after getting new replacement tweeters.  As such, I’m still waiting to be able to release and/or redo the mixes for the new LyraPhase episodes that were aired on radio.mines.edu after October 12th, 2009 (Episodes 004 -> 011 !!).

NOTE: I’m no longer in college, so the live radio show is now over with.  However, I am planning on doing a podcast online.  This will start with the remaining original LyraPhase episodes, and will continue from there.

I’ve currently got a recording of 004 almost ready to go, but I’m really thinking about re-recording it now, along with some of the others.  The reasons for this are: I had 1 poor track that didn’t flow well in 004, and I’m confident I can now mix much better, and have learned a couple new tricks.

To my few fans that have been waiting patiently: don’t worry, the episodes ARE coming as soon as I get my speakers back.  I’d estimate that 004 should be out sometime in the next 2 weeks (depending on the time it takes them to ship the speakers back to me).

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Nov 12 2009

LyraPhase 003 – Neon

This is the first guest mix DJ Alex M did for the show! I remember that I’d gotten totally swamped with class work so I didn’t have time to make a set-list that week.

This one’s really smooth, deep & progressive sounding. I really enjoyed listening to it a lot, and I hope you do too ^_^

Here’s the tracklist & the cuesheet

01) Sascha Funke - Mango [Bpitch Control]
02) Quarion - Takin' No Shorts [Perpsectiv Records]
03) Osamu M & Satoshi Fumi - Reminiscence [Outerspace Records]
04) Marcel Wave - Aldie 71 [Freerange Records]
05) Masaya - Intentar [Perspectiv Records]
06) Lange - Songless (Cerf & Mitiska Tranceless Remix) [Maelstrom]
07) Slytek - Nettle Crush (Original Mix) [Stanby Records]
08) Sentrafuge - Music Is Electric [Plastik Park]
09) Hernan Cerbello - Emotional Distortion (Original Mix) [Echoplast Recordings]
10) Smartminds - Eighties Verantwoord [Add2Basket Records]
11) Ulrich Schnauss - In All The Wrong Places (Tom Middleton's 3D VIP Remix) [Reniassance]

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Nov 5 2009

LyraPhase 002 – Zagnut

You know that feeling you get when you read a really old garfield comic, or watch one of the first simpsons episodes?   That’s what I felt like re-listening to this mix (ok, maybe I’m biased because I like my next one way better).

It’s interesting to see the improvements we make over time with practice and the evolution of our own creative process.  Reflecting on this makes me realize that back when I made this mix it was a different time in the learning process, and it makes all the small improvements along the way seem much greater now.  I know that I have begun to create much better quality already, and I will create even better mixes in the future.  Originally when I had posted this mix, I was a little self-critical.  In college I felt very scatterbrained and stretched too thin due to all the classes, projects, and hobbies that I spent my time on.  In reality, I made the best and most efficient effort I could with the time I had.  Back then it didn’t seem like enough… I felt it “wasn’t perfect enough”.  Listening to this again also made me realize what a broad spectrum of music that I’ve listened to over even the past 2 years!  Looking beyond that, I can say that I’ve probably accumulated the most eclectic music collection among most of my close friends besides Alex.  If it’s true that music brings people together, then those with the most open minded and encompassing tastes will not only enjoy the broadest spectrum of music, but they will enjoy the broadest spectrum of people they’ve met along the way.  This is something I’m really thankful for.

Anyway, here’s the tracklist:

01) Electrixx - Tetris (Original Mix)
02) Cyberpunkers - Is Alternative (Original Club Mix)
03) V Roth - One (Original Mix)
04) Gui Boratto and Mark Romboy - Eurasia (Marcs Mix)
05) Habersham - Follow The White Rabbit
06) D-Nox & Beckers - One shot (Gio Red remix)
07) Sisko Electrofanatik -  No Control (Original Mix)
08) Musicbump - Supersonic (Mark Graves Remix)
09) Act Sense - Pratigi (Hamelin & Jr. Remix)
10) DJ Yellow - Cleaning My Kalashnikov

And a cuesheet, made with the help of my new Audio::Cuefile::ParserPlus perl module!

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Nov 1 2009

Audio::Cuefile::ParserPlus

On Friday & had a quite eventful day involving a bunch of lucky and happy coincidences, along with an amazing spurt of ultra-productivity!  Although it was an interesting day, that’s not what this post is about.

At one point, I was working on creating a CUE sheet for episode 004 and realized that GoldWave was clobbering all the PERFORMER attributes for every track in the original CUE sheet I imported!  That was definitely no good, and really irritated me at the time.

My current workflow for CUE-ing a mix is as follows:

  1. Export tracks from Traktor to a directory (ie: “~/Music/LyraPhase/004”), then make sure tracks are in order & named in the format: 01 – Artist – Trackname.mp3
  2. Make a tracklist text file: 
    ~/Music/LyraPhase/004$ ls -l --color=never > LyraPhase_004.txt
  3. Run my magical script to generate a CUE file with empty INDEX points: 
    ~/Music/LyraPhase/004$ tracklist2cue.pl LyraPhase_004.txt
NOTE: all tracks have initial cutpoints of 00:00:00
Opening tracklist file: LyraPhase_004.txt
Writing cue file to: ./LyraPhase_004.cue
  4. Import the blank CUE file into GoldWave, listen, do audio processing stuff, then edit the track INDEX points.
  5. Save the wav & CUE files.
  6. Find out some extra stuff is gone after GoldWave got through with it 🙁

Enter perl:

So since I really like GoldWave otherwise, I decided to go dust off my monk robes & dive into perl again.  The initial goal was to be able to read in the 2 CUE sheets, copy INDEX points from one to the other, and then save it again.  I also have been thinking about other things in the future I may want to do with CUE sheets, so I decided to try to find some perl code to do what I wanted.

After a search, I found a module on CPAN called Audio::Cuefile::Parser which really didn’t do everything I wanted, or fully support the entire CUE file specification as per the documentation here.

After 1.5 days worth of hacking at it, I’ve successfully got 1/2 of the problem solved.  So far my Audio::Cuefile::ParserPlus module will happily read in CUE sheets and print out the track information for you.  The next step is to make a file output method, which should be simple now that the hard part of parsing in things via regex is finished ^_^

Current code snapshot can be found at my GitHub Repository
Happy Hacking  ^_^

– DJ Phasik

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Oct 29 2009

LyraPhase 001 – 0Day

Here’s the first episode of the radio show! I finished (re-re-)recording it finally, and even took some time to make a cue sheet for it ^_^

I wanted to release it also in FLAC format on a separate podcast feed, however git’s current bugginess is preventing me from doing so at the moment. (see: http://www.josefsipek.net/blahg/?p=219 )

Tracklist:

01) Tarrentella/Redanka - Killerloop 'Organism'
02) Pig & Dan - Eiffel Nights (Original Mix)
03) Sultan & Ned Shepard Feat Stereomovers - Connected (Dub)
04) Stu Hirst - Big Rooms Bigger Tunes (Original)
05) Simon & Shaker - Zero (Original Mix)
06) Spider and Legaz - Psych
07) Twotrups - The Cello Track (Dub One Mix)
08) Sebastian Drums Tom Geiss and Eric G - Funky Beep (Original Mix)
09) Eelke Kleijn - Luigi's Magic Mushroom
10) Da'Other - Viva La Vida (Unplugged Mix)
11) Acquaviva & Maddox - Feedback (Valentino Kanzyani Earresistable Mix)
12) Eelke Kleijn - 8 Bit Era (Dub)

cuesheet: https://www.lyraphase.com/mp3/LyraPhase/001/DJ_Phasik_-_LyraPhase_001_-_0Day.mp3.cue

EDIT:  I’ve now re-hosted the mix up on mixcloud!  Enjoy!

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Oct 22 2009

WordPress Updated to latest: 2.8.5

Thanks to the local dev server setup I have, along with svn and git, I’ve successfully and painlessly updated to wordpress 2.8.5.  Pushing changes to the wordpress_base branch on my site is quite simple, as I don’t really plan on modifying the core wordpress code that much.  Any changes to the code made by an svn update will only change files that I probably haven’t ever touched, so merging branches should be painless.  Plus, the core wordpress code is tracked by svn, while both the core code and my changes are tracked by git.  That way, I’ve got my own local branches that incorporate any updates made by svn, plus everything else.

In case you’re really interested and wondering how this is all done, see the following links:

http://codex.wordpress.org/Installing/Updating_WordPress_with_Subversion#Tracking_Stable_Versions

http://blog.zobie.com/2008/12/managing-wordpress-updates-with-git/

Basically all you have to do is follow the wordpress update instructions from the 2nd link, but replace the svn switch command with the one found at the 1st link.  The way to update in git is pretty smart, since all core wordpress code changes are tracked in the main wordpress_base branch, then updated via svn, put the changes into a new integration branch, then rebase the master branch onto that one & checkout the merged changes to the master branch.

Originally it seemed stupid to use svn to track the remote wordpress repo, however I tried using git’s svn capabilities and found that the only supported way to switch svn tags within git broke everything, so it’s actually better and more painless to use both CVS systems.

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Oct 21 2009

Hallow Freakn’ Ween!

So this Saturday is going to be awesome no matter the weather, because I’ve now found from multiple sources the venue for Hallow Freakn’  Ween this year! ^_^

It’s most definitely indoors, which will give all the scantily clad attendees more comfort than a couple of the last massive’s were 😉

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Oct 13 2009

Site finally online!

So I’ve finally managed to figure out the intricacies of tracking wordpress via SVN, while locally using git to track my entire site, plus any other changes made to wordpress locally.  So everything should be working at least until the next wordpress upgrade, at which point I’ll hope my current upgrade process still works.

I should have some mixes from the show uploaded soon.  I’m also hoping to switch to the carrington theme, but for now at least it’s working.

Peace,

-DJ Phasic (^_^)

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