Sometimes I get carried away and I can’t seem to stop myself from posting. Other times it seems there are big gaps… And, of course, if I was patient enough to post this tomorrow, it would spread things out a little… But since I’m not, I just want to take this moment to point out a feature or two on Bandcamp that I like.
1. I like the way one can be directed to a customized, tiled list of your music instead of just the most recent upload. The old way made you have to click and scroll too much and that can only lead to carpal tunnel.
Assigning an upload to each tile can be annoying (and somewhat time-consuming), but it does let you present your music in whatever way you think is most beneficial. You do, however, have to click the back button to get back to the tiles.
2. I’ve mentioned this before, but I love the customization features available in Bandcamp. I am able to really make it look like an extension of my website by changing backgrounds and so forth.
3. I love how Bandcamp lets you embed your music across several platforms. Not only that, but you can customize font and background colors, again helping you exactly match it to your site’s theme. I also like the visualizations, which can add a little flare to your example, particularly if it is a midi sample. NOTE: I am only going to use the email version of the link for this next example to see how it posts across platforms. I’ll fix it later, if necessary.
4. I like how Bandcamp lets you offer your tracks in various ways (free, set your own price, fixed price). For me, this is a little less of a concern, as I am not a band… And most of my music on Bandcamp exists for the purpose of example. To a band, however, these features are invaluable. Bandcamp allows you to download in various higher-res formats too. No low-quality MP3s here (unless you’ve tricked the system and up-converted them).
5. It doesn’t stop there. You can offer bonus downloads such as PDFs, offer physical goods and merchandise, and even provide the UPC code for your new album. Bandcamp can even use your UPC info to relay sales statistics to Nielsen SoundScan,” the company behind the Billboard charts.” You have to admit, that’s pretty cool.
6. OK, now this one is a little weird, but it’s still cool none-the-less. Ever feel the need to play Defender, but don’t own an antique Atari system? Well, you’re in luck! Bandcamp will let you play a cheesy little version of Defender with your statistics! Huh? That’s right. …With your statistics. Just click on “stats,” then on “defender” when logged into your account and let the fun begin! Well, it’s a kinda fun for a few minutes anyway…
7. Given the awesome treasure trove that Bandcamp already offers, I’m sure it does other cool things too… But now I’ve spent too much time writing about them to discover any more of them just yet.
I don’t exactly have the answer to that question yet… At least definitively. But I am going to test a few things out with this post. Yep, more live testing, but it’s the best way to see results… Good or bad. So I will try to accomplish two things:
1. Embed my Logo into the post via Feedburner’s Feed Image Burner and Flickr.
2. Make the photos you see in the actual post appear in the email. For this, I have installed a plugin that changes the image URLs to “absolute URLs.” Appropriately enough, it’s called URL Absolutifier. Since I am limited on time right now, I’m just going to shoot from the hip and see if it works. If not, I’ll move on to stage 2: Actual Research
If this works, there will be a logo in the email subscription email and an image of the MTT Blog Banner.
Feel free to report results… Also, if you have any suggestions on the best time to have email subscriptions delivered in general, please let me know. Thanks for reading!
(Oops… The server didn’t like my graphic attachment the first time I tried to post this, so I’ll just post without it and delete the previous one later. Sorry!!!)
While in the process of updating my subscription options, I realized that some of my feeds were not updating properly. The problem appears to have been related to a setting in WordPress. It was set to display 999 of my most recent posts and Feedburner evidently did not like this. As soon as I changed it to only 10, Feedburner was happy again. If you have already subscribed to the RSS feed, the address stayed the same and you shouldn’t miss any updates.
But remember, subscribing by email is the way to go. So, go ahead, it’s easy!
Also, please let me know if you have any email subscription issues or just any feedback in general. I’m always looking to improve MTT, and the best way to do that is to find out what you would like to read about.
I used to use RSS feeds to follow other blogs, and that was working out OK until I realized that I hate using RSS feeds.There were just too many, and I was really only checking a few of them regularly anyway.…Not to mention, life generally provides constant distractions, so before you know it, you’ve missed a lot of stuff that’s been posted.
So now’s your chance!Instead of just waiting around until you happen to remember to look through your RSS feeds, simply enter your email address in the sidebar on the right and click “Subscribe.”Now you can be as lazy as I am and just wait for the information to just flow your way!
Trust me it really is the best way to follow…
Besides, I know you wouldn’t want to miss out on any of the fascinating posts on Music Tech Talk.
FINAL UPDATE: Clearly, pasting from word improved things like text formatting. Text colors, for example seem to be working now. There seems to be something in particular about this post that is making Posterous insist on placing the “inline” pics at the end… If you look at previous posts, you will note that they are properly placed. I forgot to add the YouTube link for the last iteration of this post, so that was obviously not what caused the problem. If the pics place properly this time, I tried separating them with text… Other than that, there are a few challenges to overcome when posting via email, but generally it’s not too problematic. Figuring out the little quirks is half the fun.
UPDATE TO POST ATTEMPT:It was inevitable that something would not post correctly since this was a live test…In this case, the text colors did not work.Also, while the inline photos did not post as a gallery, they also did not post in the correct position within the post… That is usually not an issue.Not sure what caused that problem, but it may have been that I typed this post entirely in Thunderbird, rather than pasting from Word.Finally, adding tags within the Posterous email was NOT successful…My guess is that they only work when using the post by email feature provided by WordPress.Oh well.I guess I’ll just have to add tags manually for now.I have re-posted the same thing, but started in Word this time and pasted into Thunderbird to see if there is any difference.Below is the original content.
Unfortunately, every now and then the only way to really test a feature is to use it live. At the bottom of every post you will note that it says the post was posted by Posterous, a handy post-by-email blog utility. So far, I have been very happy with the results. It is amazingly simple, posts across multiple platforms and does so relatively consistently and intuitively. Posterous, is however, not my actual blog. Sure, I formatted it to kind of mirror my actual blog (self-hosted WordPress), but really I use it because of its email posting capabilities. It interfaces nicely with Facebook too, as a separate tab. Ironically, exponentially more people seem to read my blog via Posterous than my actual blog, but since I like the way WordPress looks and acts, I prefer WP to be my blog’s home.
Here’s an example of some generally successful formatting. This should be green, bold, italic, and centered.
Next, just by posting the LINK (much easier this way, because Posterous decides which platforms need which format), not the embedded HTML, you should see a YouTube video about some kid getting his finger bitten by his little brother with over 175 million views (why?). By link, I mean just the web address at the top of your browser. Yeah, it’s that easy.
Next, you should see some inline pics. In other words, they are just inserted into the body of the post. Some services will put multiple pics into a gallery, and just one pic inline. Posterous does this as a matter of fact. I don’t like it. Don’t worry though, if you use WordPress, the pics will still post inline, even if Posterous doesn’t.
Here are those two Pics. I’ll try to have them centered and will resize one of them by dragging. Some services will let you click on the images to see the full-size version. Others will not. Facebook will generally use them as thumbnails, which is nice.
THIS PARAGRAPH FOR FACEBOOK USER INFO ONLY: Facebook is a terribly buggy platform and will handle pics differently depending on how many there are in your post. Just one pic is great. You’ll get a thumbnail followed by a snippet of your post. More than that, and it has been posting just thumbnails with nothing else. I have to put a link in the comments below them. Strangely, those comments repeat themselves every time I post this way. I think it’s actually another Facebook bug, but in this one instance it at least saves me from having to re-type the comment. Even more strange is the fact that a fan page will post it correctly, but the regular interface will not… At least they are consistent… Follow these links to see a fan page example:Fan Page ).
TIP: When posting by email using Mozilla Thunderbird, make sure you remember to select “Rich Text” (HTML) only under “Options” before you hit send. If you forget and send the message with mixed plain and rich text, your post formatting gets all squirrelly.
Some things like emoticons (if you are into that sort of thing) are more hit-and-miss. (typed in) :-[ (pre-formatted by email client). It usually works best for me to write the post in Microsoft Word, images and all, then paste into Thunderbird (Pics, YouTube links, regular links and visual formatting).
However, there is one particularly annoying quirk that I would like to overcome.
Unfortunately, the way Posterous handles tags only works with Posterous. Everything else may post perfectly on other platforms, but none of them will have tags or categories other whatever your defaults are set to. This problem makes search engines useless unless you go back and add them in… Which, of course, wastes time and defeats the purpose of posting across multiple platforms. So, when formatting the title, the email subject is the title. This is how you format the tags in Posterous: Title of Your Post ((tag: tag, post, blog, tips, wordpress, post+by+email))
Whatever you do, DON’T FORGET THE OPENING OR CLOSING PARENTHESIS which look like this: (( )) If you do forget, your post title will include a long list of tags. Very unsightly. The thing is, if you are posting across multiple platforms, as I do, mistakes can be VERY time consuming to fix. Overall, I don’t have too many issues… This problem can be easily prevented, if you just remember to give it a quick glance before hitting send.
Making tags post on other platforms, however, is a different story… So this post will itself be a test of a work around. You can tell Posterous not to post anything beyond a pound sign followed by the word end (look for an explanation under “What Else Can Posterous Do?” I would show you of course, but then nothing else would post afterward… Annoyingly enough, I think you will see the shortcut at the bottom of this post… BEFORE that shortcut, I will put in just a couple shortcuts that WordPress recognizes to see what happens. Normally, I suppose I would put these just before the end of the post, so as not to make them too distracting, but for example I’ll put them here. Also, I’ll put a duplicate set using asterisks instead of brackets for the WordPress sites so you can still see them:
NON WORDPRESS SITES SHOULD STILL BE ABLE TO SEE THESE UNLESS CONFUSED WITH SOME OTHER KIND OF SHORTCUT, I SUPPOSE [category Blogging, internet, posted by email, reviews, websites, technology, online utilities, tips, wordpress] [tags test post, formatting, post+by+email, posterous, wordpress, tips]
DUPLICATE SET FOR WORDPRESS SITES: *category Blogging, internet, posted by email, reviews, websites, technology, online utilities, tips, wordpress* *tags test post, formatting, post+by+email, posterous, wordpress, tips*These are specifically WordPress.com shortcuts. I don’t know how the self-hosted version of WP will handle them. As I said, this is a live experiment. If you want to see if this worked, here are the appropriate links: Main Blog (self-hosted WordPress); WordPress.com Version
In case you are wondering, I post simultaneously to over 15 platforms including several blog and social networking services. Why, you ask? Because I can… And because, it’s an interesting way to try out multiple features and services at the same time. Some of them are better at getting search engine placement, others have better templates or better interfaces. Other than that, it’s just good, clean fun.
UPDATE TO POST ATTEMPT:It was inevitable that something would not post correctly since this was a live test…In this case, the text colors did not work.Also, while the inline photos did not post as a gallery, they also did not post in the correct position within the post… That is usually not an issue.Not sure what caused that problem, but it may have been that I typed this post entirely in Thunderbird, rather than pasting from Word.Finally, adding tags within the Posterous email was NOT successful…My guess is that they only work when using the post by email feature provided by WordPress.Oh well.I guess I’ll just have to add tags manually for now.I have re-posted the same thing, but started in Word this time and pasted into Thunderbird to see if there is any difference.Below is the original content.
Unfortunately, every now and then the only way to really test a feature is to use it live. At the bottom of every post you will note that it says the post was posted by Posterous, a handy post-by-email blog utility. So far, I have been very happy with the results. It is amazingly simple, posts across multiple platforms and does so relatively consistently and intuitively. Posterous, is however, not my actual blog. Sure, I formatted it to kind of mirror my actual blog (self-hosted WordPress), but really I use it because of its email posting capabilities. It interfaces nicely with Facebook too, as a separate tab. Ironically, exponentially more people seem to read my blog via Posterous than my actual blog, but since I like the way WordPress looks and acts, I prefer WP to be my blog’s home.
Here’s an example of some generally successful formatting. This should be green, bold, italic, and centered.
Next, just by posting the LINK (much easier this way, because Posterous decides which platforms need which format), not the embedded HTML, you should see a YouTube video about some kid getting his finger bitten by his little brother with over 175 million views (why?). By link, I mean just the web address at the top of your browser. Yeah, it’s that easy.
Next, you should see some inline pics. In other words, they are just inserted into the body of the post. Some services will put multiple pics into a gallery, and just one pic inline. Posterous does this as a matter of fact. I don’t like it. Don’t worry though, if you use WordPress, the pics will still post inline, even if Posterous doesn’t.
Here are those two Pics. I’ll try to have them centered and will resize one of them by dragging. Some services will let you click on the images to see the full-size version. Others will not. Facebook will generally use them as thumbnails, which is nice.
THIS PARAGRAPH FOR FACEBOOK USER INFO ONLY: Facebook is a terribly buggy platform and will handle pics differently depending on how many there are in your post. Just one pic is great. You’ll get a thumbnail followed by a snippet of your post. More than that, and it has been posting just thumbnails with nothing else. I have to put a link in the comments below them. Strangely, those comments repeat themselves every time I post this way. I think it’s actually another Facebook bug, but in this one instance it at least saves me from having to re-type the comment. Even more strange is the fact that a fan page will post it correctly, but the regular interface will not… At least they are consistent… Follow these links to see a fan page example:Fan Page ).
TIP: When posting by email using Mozilla Thunderbird, make sure you remember to select “Rich Text” (HTML) only under “Options” before you hit send. If you forget and send the message with mixed plain and rich text, your post formatting gets all squirrelly.
Some things like emoticons (if you are into that sort of thing) are more hit-and-miss. (typed in) :-[ :-\ :-* (pre-formatted by email client). It usually works best for me to write the post in Microsoft Word, images and all, then paste into Thunderbird (Pics, YouTube links, regular links and visual formatting).
However, there is one particularly annoying quirk that I would like to overcome.
Unfortunately, the way Posterous handles tags only works with Posterous. Everything else may post perfectly on other platforms, but none of them will have tags or categories other whatever your defaults are set to. This problem makes search engines useless unless you go back and add them in… Which, of course, wastes time and defeats the purpose of posting across multiple platforms. So, when formatting the title, the email subject is the title. This is how you format the tags in Posterous: Title of Your Post ((tag: tag, post, blog, tips, wordpress, post+by+email))
Whatever you do, DON’T FORGET THE OPENING OR CLOSING PARENTHESIS which look like this: (( )) If you do forget, your post title will include a long list of tags. Very unsightly. The thing is, if you are posting across multiple platforms, as I do, mistakes can be VERY time consuming to fix. Overall, I don’t have too many issues… This problem can be easily prevented, if you just remember to give it a quick glance before hitting send.
Making tags post on other platforms, however, is a different story… So this post will itself be a test of a work around. You can tell Posterous not to post anything beyond a pound sign followed by the word end (look for an explanation under “What Else Can Posterous Do?” I would show you of course, but then nothing else would post afterward… Annoyingly enough, I think you will see the shortcut at the bottom of this post… BEFORE that shortcut, I will put in just a couple shortcuts that WordPress recognizes to see what happens. Normally, I suppose I would put these just before the end of the post, so as not to make them too distracting, but for example I’ll put them here. Also, I’ll put a duplicate set using asterisks instead of brackets for the WordPress sites so you can still see them:
NON WORDPRESS SITES SHOULD STILL BE ABLE TO SEE THESE UNLESS CONFUSED WITH SOME OTHER KIND OF SHORTCUT, I SUPPOSE [category Blogging, internet, posted by email, reviews, websites, technology, online utilities, tips, wordpress] [tags test post, formatting, post+by+email, posterous, wordpress, tips]
DUPLICATE SET FOR WORDPRESS SITES: *category Blogging, internet, posted by email, reviews, websites, technology, online utilities, tips, wordpress* *tags test post, formatting, post+by+email, posterous, wordpress, tips*These are specifically WordPress.com shortcuts. I don’t know how the self-hosted version of WP will handle them. As I said, this is a live experiment. If you want to see if this worked, here are the appropriate links: Main Blog (self-hosted WordPress); WordPress.com Version
In case you are wondering, I post simultaneously to over 15 platforms including several blog and social networking services. Why, you ask? Because I can… And because, it’s an interesting way to try out multiple features and services at the same time. Some of them are better at getting search engine placement, others have better templates or better interfaces. Other than that, it’s just good, clean fun.
Unfortunately, every now and then the only way to really test a feature is to use it live. At the bottom of every post you will note that it says the post was posted by Posterous, a handy post-by-email blog utility. So far, I have been very happy with the results. It is amazingly simple, posts across multiple platforms and does so relatively consistently and intuitively. Posterous, is however, not my actual blog. Sure, I formatted it to kind of mirror my actual blog (self-hosted WordPress), but really I use it because of its email posting capabilities. It interfaces nicely with Facebook too, as a separate tab. Ironically, exponentially more people seem to read my blog via Posterous than my actual blog, but since I like the way WordPress looks and acts, I prefer WP to be my blog’s home.
Here’s an example of some generally successful formatting. This should be green, bold, italic, and centered.
Next, just by posting the LINK (much easier this way, because Posterous decides which platforms need which format), not the embedded HTML, you should see a YouTube video about some kid getting his finger bitten by his little brother with over 175 million views (why?). By link, I mean just the web address at the top of your browser. Yeah, it’s that easy.
Next, you should see some inline pics. In other words, they are just inserted into the body of the post. Some services will put multiple pics into a gallery, and just one pic inline. Posterous does this as a matter of fact. I don’t like it. Don’t worry though, if you use WordPress, the pics will still post inline, even if Posterous doesn’t.
Here are those two Pics. I’ll try to have them centered and will resize one of them by dragging. Some services will let you click on the images to see the full-size version. Others will not. Facebook will generally use them as thumbnails, which is nice.
THIS PARAGRAPH FOR FACEBOOK USER INFO ONLY: Facebook is a terribly buggy platform and will handle pics differently depending on how many there are in your post. Just one pic is great. You’ll get a thumbnail followed by a snippet of your post. More than that, and it has been posting just thumbnails with nothing else. I have to put a link in the comments below them. Strangely, those comments repeat themselves every time I post this way. I think it’s actually another Facebook bug, but in this one instance it at least saves me from having to re-type the comment. Even more strange is the fact that a fan page will post it correctly, but the regular interface will not… At least they are consistent… Follow these links to see a fan page example:Fan Page ).
TIP: When posting by email using Mozilla Thunderbird, make sure you remember to select “Rich Text” (HTML) only under “Options” before you hit send. If you forget and send the message with mixed plain and rich text, your post formatting gets all squirrelly.
Some things like emoticons (if you are into that sort of thing) are more hit-and-miss. (typed in) :-$ (pre-formatted by email client). It usually works best for me to write the post in Microsoft Word, images and all, then paste into Thunderbird (Pics, YouTube links, regular links and visual formatting).
However, there is one particularly annoying quirk that I would like to overcome.
Unfortunately, the way Posterous handles tags only works with Posterous. Everything else may post perfectly on other platforms, but none of them will have tags or categories other whatever your defaults are set to. This problem makes search engines useless unless you go back and add them in… Which, of course, wastes time and defeats the purpose of posting across multiple platforms. So, when formatting the title, the email subject is the title. This is how you format the tags in Posterous: Title of Your Post ((tag: tag, post, blog, tips, wordpress, post+by+email))
Whatever you do, DON’T FORGET THE OPENING OR CLOSING PARENTHESIS which look like this: (( )) If you do forget, your post title will include a long list of tags. Very unsightly. The thing is, if you are posting across multiple platforms, as I do, mistakes can be VERY time consuming to fix. Overall, I don’t have too many issues… This problem can be easily prevented, if you just remember to give it a quick glance before hitting send.
Making tags post on other platforms, however, is a different story… So this post will itself be a test of a work around. You can tell Posterous not to post anything beyond a pound sign followed by the word end (look for an explanation under “What Else Can Posterous Do?” I would show you of course, but then nothing else would post afterward… Annoyingly enough, I think you will see the shortcut at the bottom of this post… BEFORE that shortcut, I will put in just a couple shortcuts that WordPress recognizes to see what happens. Normally, I suppose I would put these just before the end of the post, so as not to make them too distracting, but for example I’ll put them here. Also, I’ll put a duplicate set using asterisks instead of brackets for the WordPress sites so you can still see them:
NON WORDPRESS SITES SHOULD STILL BE ABLE TO SEE THESE UNLESS CONFUSED WITH SOME OTHER KIND OF SHORTCUT, I SUPPOSE [category Blogging, internet, posted by email, reviews, websites, technology, online utilities, tips, wordpress] [tags test post, formatting, post+by+email, posterous, wordpress, tips]
DUPLICATE SET FOR WORDPRESS SITES: *category Blogging, internet, posted by email, reviews, websites, technology, online utilities, tips, wordpress* *tags test post, formatting, post+by+email, posterous, wordpress, tips*
These are specifically WordPress.com shortcuts. I don’t know how the self-hosted version of WP will handle them. As I said, this is a live experiment. If you want to see if this worked, here are the appropriate links: Main Blog (self-hosted WordPress); WordPress.com Version
In case you are wondering, I post simultaneously to over 15 platforms including several blog and social networking services. Why, you ask? Because I can… And because, it’s an interesting way to try out multiple features and services at the same time. Some of them are better at getting search engine placement, others have better templates or better interfaces. Other than that, it’s just good, clean fun.
People seem to have a lot of preconceptions about taking classes online. I was no different.
First of all, how can anyone get a “real” degree by attending class online?
Isn’t that tantamount to finding a miniature diploma in a Cracker Jack box? So, I waited and waited and searched and searched and found nothing worth considering. …At least nothing related to music. I wrote a couple of Universities and asked if they wouldn’t consider a distance program for music composition. After all, the music is always written down and can be reproduced on the other end. In many ways, it seemed like a better fit for a class at a distance than most other degrees. During my endless process of searching, I realized that unless I was an education major, I was not going to have many options available. It is limiting enough when searching for an online degree with the word “music” in the title.
It wasn’t just a degree I was looking for; it was a real education and educational experience.
I wanted to make the experience as much like being in a physical classroom as possible. I would have attended in residence, had that option been available. Fortunately, I ran across the Master of Science in Music Technology degree at Indiana University Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI). After researching the option for a while, I determined that it was the best chance for me to get a real education in a music-related (non-ed) subject. In 2009, Forbes ranked IUPUI in the top ten universities in the midwest. The more I looked into it, the more I realized that putting music and technology together would be a perfect fit for my interests.
I love music. I love technology. Perfect.
…But this post is about the online classroom experience. So, no matter what program you choose or which school you attend, your primary concern is going to be the experience. Recently, I completed a survey from the Purdue half of IUPUI asking about some of my experiences. Overall, I rated IUPUI very high. One of the things the survey touched on was the difference in an education that offers close peer relationships and one that does not. There were a lot of questions on the subject. I suppose the best part of my undergraduate degree was the peer interaction, which is sort of expected as a music major. Now, however, I was not expecting to be performing in a bunch of ensembles, so the peer interaction was not as much of a requirement. Additionally,
taking the course online perfectly complements the concept of music, education and technology working in concert.
As a graduate student, my goals are a little different than they used to be. My primary focus is to squeeze every little bit out of this degree as possible. I want an education, and I am prepared to go to great lengths to get it. I think such an approach will take you far in any graduate program, but can prove especially beneficial when taking a course at a distance. Of the courses I have taken so far, here are a few commonalities:
1. AN ADJUSTMENT PERIOD – Initially, there is a bit of a learning curve for students and faculty. Each instructor seems to prefer a different interface for the class. Thus, students have to iron out the bugs with audio, chat and the live video stream. All of this sounds fairly complicated, but surprisingly, it’s not really. Most of it involves knowing what link to click on, what the course number is, and how to turn on your speakers. I do recommend a fast internet connection, a decent computer and at least the willingness to deal with technology. Usually, that’s not such a big issue for Music Tech students. That’s kinda why they are there in the first place.
2. VIRTUAL ATTENDANCE – The next adjustment is getting the class (and the professor) used to the idea that there are students attending class virtually. It’s a cool concept, if you think about it… People from across the country and the world attending the same class at the same time with live video & audio feeds. Naturally, the first class or two, you feel a little ignored. The professor forgets to look at the chat window and students forget to talk loud enough for the online people to hear. …BUT ENOUGH TYPING IN ALL CAPS and statements like: “HELP! THE ONLINE STUDENTS HAVE A QUESTION! SOMEONE IN CLASS PLEASE TELL THE PROFESSOR” go a long way. In no time, not only do the online students begin to integrate into the classroom environment, we begin to fully participate in discussions. On several occasions, I have been able to make the entire class laugh or introduce a new topic for discussion by just typing. Eventually, the class begins to expect full interaction from online students and someone will usually designate themselves as online liaison, monitoring our chat when other screens are up and presenting our questions if we are temporarily not being “heard.”
3. MULTI-TASKING – Once the ball is rolling, the online experience is very cool. I can fully participate in class while drinking tea in my pajamas and bunny slippers, if I wish. I can also Google anything that comes up in lecture, provide links to information, work on homework and even compose music during class. It becomes the multi-tasker’s dream. Often, I would work on a string quartet while constantly chatting in class and listening to the lecture. The thing is, you can pick up nearly 100% of the class by just listening. Visually, only 20-25% of any class requires that I look at the live stream. It is an exercise in extreme efficiency, and I love efficiency. Not to mention the fact that every class is archived. Miss a class? No problem. Just watch it at your convenience… With that being said…
CAUTION: I do NOT recommend just skipping class and watching the archived versions. Class interaction is KEY.
4. PARTICIPATION – It really is a live, interactive environment. Missing the live class is not recommended, because it is a lot harder to get your questions answered after the fact when they are out-of-context. Plus, you can get left out of a lot of decision making and planning. For example, for my last class we planned, produced and performed a graduate recital. Not being on campus, I very much wanted to participate and wished that I could have been on stage for the performance. That is an obvious downside to online classes. However, I was determined to be a part of the show and the process, so I was extra persistent and managed to get one of my pieces on the recital (Haven’t posted that recording to Bandcamp yet, but I’ll get around to it). Not only that, I arranged to have a live performer play along with the recorded part. I attempted to also have a live performer on this end stream their performance, but that part fell through. Besides recitals, I have given several live presentations in class via streaming video and a telephone. It actually works quite well. In some ways, I feel like I participate more in the classes at IUPUI than I ever did actually sitting in them at UNO.
5. HOMEWORK – Homework is always an important part of class, and there is no shortage of that. I think I have already written a short novel’s worth of papers in addition to several scores, recordings and mini-productions. I have an insatiable appetite for A+ performance and put my absolute best into every assignment. This is a polarity switch from my approach to a lot of my undergraduate degree (not counting the music-related classes), which was to get by with as little effort or attendance as possible. …But that’s because the degree deals with only what I am interested in learning. Graduate school just eliminates all those classes that I would have skipped anyway. The bottom line is, they say you get out of your degree what you put into it, and I have very high expectations for IUPUI.
I recommend setting your preconceptions about online degrees aside and just concentrate on looking for a good school. The school and the effort you are willing to put into your education will be the most important factors in determining the success or failure of your academic pursuits.
This post has been revised to reflect a better way to ensure formatting translates via Posterous. Notes on how this was accomplished are at the bottom of this post (previous version of this post demonstrates what happens if you don’t send it the way described below)… Read more »
OK, Here are the various headers that worked and didn’t work. I’m not sure if it was the length of the tags or the plus signs, but it wasn’t the parenthesis b/c the one I messed up posted with them (third posted example). I’ll try to avoid this issue in the future. Read more »
*The export/import process from Wordpress.com to the Self-Hosted Version of WordPress is rather simple.*
…But it doesn’t do everything for you. It actually worked a lot better to transfer from Blogger to Wordpress.com, but that’s another post. Here’s /my take/ on what you have to do (general summary): Read more »
So, here’s the deal. The tags actually worked using this format in the subject line: ((tag: tags, blogging, posterous))
However, they only worked for Posterous itself. For now, I’ll just have to go back and manually put them in via WordPress later. Oh, well. Everything else seems to work amazingly well!
At the risk of not having a list of features to compare before I start, I’ll just shoot from the hip. We (the greater blogging collective) know this gets me into trouble…
A quote from Lorelle’s comment:
“What I expected to find was a step-by-step cost calculation of how much it costs to host your own compared to WordPress.com, feature by feature. Now, that would be interesting.” Read more »
Well, I decided to go ahead with the transition. I waffled for a while, but came to the conclusion that I would really enjoy learning how to work with the PHP and CSS scripts. There are some definite differences (and similarities) between the two platforms, so I’ll try to break down some of the details for you. Read more »
I decided that I wanted to give the CSS upgrade feature on Wordpress a try, because I didn’t like the size of the tiny default font… And I am interested in changing a few other things on the site in general. I managed to change the font to a reasonable size and reduce the size of the “posted by:” and date stamp text to make room for the larger titles.
I am completely experimenting with the process, so my first action was to download and save the a template of the original CSS for the theme I am currently using. I saved it to a text editor and used it for reference. When I located a line of code that I wanted to change, I pasted ONLY that line into the CSS editor in Wordpress. That way, I could always tell what I was editing, and I was fairly certain that I wouldn’t mess up anything else.
I just couldn’t stand some of the import issues I found after transferring my blog from Blogger to Wordpress, so I am in the process of fixing them. Initially, I thought I could ignore them. I discovered a few new types of problems and made my best effort to begin fixing all of them. Here are a couple issues addressed:
Let’s face it, all of at some point or another question whether they are really getting the download speeds that they paying for. Especially at the premium prices bandwidth is going for today, you might want to check.
I have Comcast’s 12Mb/s download speed using a cable modem. That does the job pretty well and http://www.speedtest.net/ confirms this. However, it also revealed a pretty pathetic upload speed. They get away with this because most people are using a lot more download speed than upload. The problem is that interfaces like eJamming.com need a heck of a lot of both. In fact, we have had to come up with alternate means to stream our live performance of my new hip-hop beat for our grad recital partly due to this fact… However, I will say that decision was made mostly due to the fact the eJamming seems to be designed with a Mac in mind, not a PC. It’s just way too buggy.
It is important to run the tests several times, as your speeds are constantly changing.
You might want to try peak and off-peak hours too. Here are the results from a few of my tests within minutes of each other:
Upload: 16.3Mb/s; 14.63Mb/s; 11.69Mb/s (I tend to like this since I am paying for 12Mb/s)
Download: 3.6Mb/s; 2.05Mb/s; 2.08Mb/s (I tend to think this kinda sucks)
Here’s what speedtest.net thinks:
I can live with this.
What?! Below Average?!
OK, if that wasn’t enough fun for you, you’ll want to check out http://www.pingtest.net/ also. This one actually tests the quality of your internet connection, not just your speed. Both are vitally important. How does Comcast rate here?
Not another bad grade. Come on, I want nothing less than an A+!
Some online games won’t perform well? That just won’t do. Oh, wait… I never have time to play those anymore. Too much music writing and blogging, I guess (those are only done with free time anyway).
Speaking of which, I’ve got other things I need to be doing right now, so you’ll have to go and test your internet speeds while I take a little break and re-group.
My class is giving a graduate recital Nov 30th that will be streamed live on the internet. To further compliment the concept of music used with technology, a few of us are trying to work out combined performances from remote locations. At least one of the students is planning on using Internet2. Here is an official definition:
Internet2 is a collaborative project by over 120 U.S. research universities, working with partners in industry and government, to develop a new family of advanced applications to meet emerging academic requirements in research, teaching, and learning. This collaboration is addressing the major challenges facing the next generation of university networks by:
• First and most importantly, creating and sustaining a leading edge network capability for the national research community,
• Second, directing network development efforts to enable a new generation of applications to fully exploit the capabilities of broadband networks, and
• Third, working to rapidly transfer new network services and applications to all levels of educational use and to the broader Internet community, both nationally and internationally.
Here’s what it really means: It’s really fast. As much as 6.63 gigabits per second (Gbps)!
That’s equivalent to transferring a full-length DVD movie in four seconds.
Why do we need these kinds of speeds? The Tim the Toolman Taylor theory would simply be, “We need more Power!” And really, that’s not too far from the truth. Scientists and Universities are ecstatic, because it takes that kind of computing power to come up with crazy quantum equations and to stream live video and audio from around the world with near zero latency (delay).
For example, scientists keep building fun things like $10 billion particle accelerators, such as the Large Hadron Collider (LHC). This bad boy will produce 15 petabytes of data per year for scientists to analyze. Here’s how the math works (to simplify things a bit [ha,ha] I am using an extra fast 10Mbps home download speed for my example):
First, you should know that 8 bits = 1 byte.
A megabit (data transfer) is a mere 1,000,000 bits.
A petabit (data transfer) is 1,000,000,000,000,000 bits (1Pb = 10^15 bits). That’s 1 Quadrillion folks (I.e. million, billion, trillion, quadrillion…).In other words, a petabit is 1 billion times greater than a megabit!1Pb/1Mb = 1,000,000,000 bits. A petabyte (data transfer) is 1Pb/8 = 125,000,000,000,000 Bytes (1PB = 125^12 Bytes). So, 1Pb x 1/8 = 1PB.
The LHC is supposed to create 15 petabytes of info a year!
“For comparison, every word spoken worldwide in one year, converted into text, would amount to 2–3 petabytes of data.”
With those kinds of mammoth numbers in mind, it is easy to see why there is an endless need for speed. A fairly fast home internet connection (cable modem) will offer about 8 megabits per second (Mbps) or 8,000,000 bits per second download speed. I’ll be honest, I tried to do all the detailed math on this and was never 100% sure I had the right numbers… There quite a few digits to deal with here, and one slight miscalculation throws the whole thing way off. …But it looked like to me it would takes hundreds of years to transmit the same amount of data the LHC can produce versus only several months at about 10Gbps. Lets just say, I wouldn’t hold up any other plans waiting for it to download right now. If anyone out there is a math geek, feel free to drop me some real calculations… I just do music.
On a sort-of-related topic, this gargantuan amount of information that will be produced by the LHC will be delayed at the very least. While I was researching the LHC, I discovered that while it came online in September 2008, it had to be shut down due to a problem with two superconducting bending magnets. It is scheduled to come online again in November. But here’s the weird part… Though no connection has been made or suggested, a researcher and his brother working on the project were just arrested on charges of terr*rism. They are suspected of passing information to al-Q*eda. It kinda makes you wonder, doesn’t it?
I have used hostmonster.com as my web hosting service for several years now. From day one, they have demonstrated excellent customer service and service reliability. HostMonster (HM) offers many services from email to ecommerce. For me, I am interested in the basic services and a reliable, affordable way to host my website.
I researched several web hosting sites, but settled on HM based on reviews. I also discovered that Bluehost (BH) is pretty much the same company/service as HM. A BH forum states it this way:
“all of us know that hostmonster is a bluehost subsidiary with same plan features except for: *unlimited domains”
You will note their ratings are almost head-to-head, with only a few differences. BH is rumored to be on better servers, but costs a bit more monthly. HM seems to have slightly better opinions about their customer service.
But enough comparison. Let’s talk about HM.
Reliability – I have had no significant issues with HM. Once or twice over a few years I have had brief service interruptions. Average customer ratings, according to webhostinggeeks.com, are 2.9 stars out of 5. Currently, I would give HM around 4.5 out of 5 stars overall.
Email – I am very pleased with the versatility of the email filtering system. I have created several different accounts and filter individually, as well as globally. This allows me to use them for very specific purposes, eliminating nearly all spam from my inbox when used in combination with a few filters on Thunderbird (a free Mozilla email application which I happen to also be very happy with). By using addresses other than my default, I can avoid a lot of spam.
Tip: Never use “webmaster,” or your default username as your email address. You will just be asking for junk traffic. In fact, I would avoid common addresses like “orders,” or “customerservice” as well. Personalize them instead by adding something like company initials (advice that I have not yet taken myself but might soon). For example “DMGOrders” or “DMGWebmaster.” Once you’ve done that, avoid using any of your addresses for account registrations or anything other than official correspondence.
I redirect email incoming to my new main address, then to other categorized addresses. So if I get order inquiries, they go to a specific address. The specific addresses, however, allow no other types of traffic. So, I get only the inquiries that I want to receive. To further eliminate the chance for spam, I use Postini, an email filtering service offered through HM’s control panel. This service comes with a small fee, but is nice because it prevents bad messages from ever reaching my computer. It also sends me an email summary of blocked messages each day, so I can deliver mis-flagged mail or permanently ban addresses. I don’t know about you, but I am always convinced filters are deleting, mis-delivering or incorrectly flagging my email. With the nice Quarantine Summary emails, that is never an issue. I use Postini for my main address only,allowing my filters to redirect and eliminate any remaining unsolicited emails.
Price, Web Space, Bandwidth and Domains – The price is reasonable for the services offered. I cannot afford to put a lot of money into a web host, and HM offers enough stability, bandwidth and space for expansion in the future. Currently, I use such an infinitesimal amount of the available bandwidth and space, I should start hosting other sites on the unused portion…
Tech Support – HM has helped me iron out a few tech issues along the way. They were responsive, friendly and helpful. So far, my problems have all been solvable.
Customer Support – Again HM’s support staff is very courteous, sympathetic and generally helpful. I really never have to wait long periods of time for help or response to my questions. I have used their live chat feature and find it to be very helpful when facing problems that might require me to look a few things up and report result. …Particularly when it concerns messages or computer lingo that I can just cut and paste into the chat interface.
Overall, I am very pleased with HostMonster. It has allowed me to affordably set-up my website and not really have to worry about it. I can set up my account to pay automatically or simply notify me when things come due. I can easily configure my email accounts and filter-out unwanted mail. It is low cost and low hassle. That’s exactly what I am looking for in a web host right now.
My work is published through D. M. Gardner Music in an effort to distribute it in a more personal manner. Any music purchased directly supports the creation of new music.
I enjoy collaborating with ensembles to tailor music to their specific needs, a very rewarding experience for both composer and performer. While I sometimes find myself doing arrangements at special request, I prefer to compose completely original music. Occasionally, I will also compose original texts. I enjoy writing for many different types of ensembles and am always looking for ways to expand my horizons.
If you have questions about my work or are interested in collaborating on a new composition, please contact me directly at composer@dmgardnermusic.com. I look forward to working with you and your ensemble.
The Music of Jeff Harrington
Music that is tonal and intensely contrapuntal inspired by New Orleans and classical music traditions.
Think Denk
(the glamorous life and thoughts of a classical pianist)
Torley Lives
Excellent resource for information on music technology, software/hardware reviews and creative thinking.
My Little Disclaimer
The links on my blog exist because, at one time or another, I found them useful or interesting in some way. My linking to theses sites does not necessarily mean that I endorse their subject matter or content, and I do not want to limit my exploration of the creative aspects of music.
Other Sites & Links
Lorelle on Wordpress
Want to know something about how Wordpress works? Try looking here.
The Lost Book
This is a great find… A collectively written (and scored) story!
Blogging, Composition, D. M. Gardner, D. M. Gardner Music, Misc, Music Technology, Music-Related, New Music, Online Utilities, Posted by Email, Reviews, Software, TIPS, Technology, Utilities, Websites, internet | Music Tech Talk | 
April 9, 2010 | 
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