inri003 is updated and tested

four more, and i'll be able to move on to inri015.

https://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/album/inrisampled

actually, i'd be more likely to argue that nothing changes on new year's day.

it's really a triviality. truly. it doesn't matter...

it's just an arbitrary way for us to measure time, and the universe doesn't care about our silly calendar; everything just keeps spinning, like nothing even happened at all.

we can't even agree when it even is.

nothing happens. nothing changes. nothing matters.

inri002 updated and tested

this one had some typos that i really needed soundcard access to in order to fix

the last five should all be quite quick.

https://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/album/inricycled

ok, let's get to work on this for the night.

inri001 updated and tested

2 down, 6 to go.

i need to take a nap.

https://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/album/inri-cassette-demo-2

inri000 updated and tested

that's step one.

there's only eight of them.

https://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/album/inri-cassette-demo-1

so, what have we got for the first half, at least?

1st - poppy + defiled. maybe. it's a good combo show, but we'll see how i feel on saturday.

3rd - shoegaze show @ ufo. probably not.

4th - prog show @ otus, ferndale or marching band show @ el club. maybe.

7th - django reinhardt tribute @cliff's bells. probably not.

14/15/16 - la mer @ dso. for sure.

this band has played in detroit frequently over the last few years, and i'm a little bit confused at the lack of a review. i'm sure i've listened to the record, and i'm sure i've written things about it.

i've wondered before if posts are disappearing, but why would somebody delete a review of a record? if some institution were to be removing posts, i would expect them to be political analyses, not artistic reviews.

i may have pulled back. i do that sometimes. i know i was strongly considering going back in september, but i think i decided it wouldn't really be any.....fun. i remember thinking the record was kind of haphazardly looped, although i'm not feeling that way right now.

and, i may have decided that i didn't have much to actually add to a review, or that posting about them wasn't worthwhile.

a show like this would be pretty brutal - cathartic and potentially sort of violent. it's curious to me that they keep coming back to hamtramck, as though they're looking to start a fight, and that's another angle to ponder about what they're doing. are they even aware that hamtramck is the only municipality in north america that is majority muslim? they're clearly standing for the rights of iranians, and the city is perhaps more full of porn shops and liquor stores and bars than anywhere else in metro detroit, but it's just as clear that there are people in that neighbourhood that would get very angry at them being there. it's a weird little place. do they know what they're doing, really, in repeatedly playing there?

i have a level of solidarity with what they're doing, though, even as i question if i'd enjoy it. i would definitely go see them play in the right circumstances, but it's a good distance to travel in february, and i know i wouldn't get as much out of it as i'd like, on it's own.

https://hide3.bandcamp.com/

this is the second half of that show, and manages to exist in a middle point between technical fusion and sci-fi style krautrock, a somewhat natural combination that should probably be more common, but actually isn't; nowadays, you tend to either get the towering synth throwbacks or the guitar hero workouts, you don't get the synthesis that was actually pretty normal back in the 70s.

https://tauk.bandcamp.com/album/

ok.

so, that minor change appears to have done exactly what i wanted it to do - it now loads flawlessly in both browsers.

now i have to fix it... 

to be clear, what i have to do is remove the codecs=CODEC section everywhere it exists.

i guess it was 2016 or 2017 that i noticed a spate of jam bands start playing around town, but it kind of dried up as soon as it started, and otherwise morphed into something a little less interesting - funk, country rock and other styles that appeal very specifically to a specific type of dude that i tend to avoid like the plague.

there's a bunch of this stuff happening here this weekend, all at once, meaning that a fan of the genre is likely to be both overwhelmed and perhaps somewhat disappointed by the scheduling conflicts. personally, i can't claim to be particularly interested in much of it, as most of it falls too far into that bro-rock category for me.

i mean, it's a fine line, i acknowledge that, and one that a lot of people might have a hard time discerning around. but, a general rule is that i'm going to want to avoid anything with vocals. even if the musicians in these bands all have similar viewpoints, it's actually only the ones that feel the need to share their opinions that are going to end up rubbing me the wrong way. if you don't tell me your outlook on life, i'm not going to get revolted by it.

i'm also going to want to lean more towards the psychedelic and try to distance myself from anything that's rootsy or folksy or country, as even the aesthetic can be grating. but, you have to remember: i'm fundamentally a composer. so, i'm going to find interest in a large variety of styles that are more abstract, and instrumental guitar rock can certainly be abstract and written enough to be interesting, but i kind of also demand that it actually is - i don't want to listen to repetitive or boring riffs, either..

there is one show happening on tuesday that has a couple of acts that strike me as more interesting.

this act here is very guitar-centric, and you could criticize them for really being little more than a vehicle for the guitar player. but, to me, that's the point of interest - and it's a feature, because it means i'm not forced to deal with pompous singers or other musicians competing for space in the track. it's one dimensional, but it avoids the pitfalls i mentioned, and i could very well find myself at the show.

https://consciouspilotofficial.bandcamp.com/album/autopilot

there are flac codecs in the system, but the version of the chrome browser that is installed on the 90s laptop is too old to be able to launch flac over html5, and it's picked for a reason - if i start using newer versions of the browser, the system won't run.

i'm a little concerned about that machine, though. i've been noticing for a while that every time i take it out of hibernation, it shuts off. this is actually primarily frustrating because it means i lose my place in the youtube video i'm watching and have to start over again. i don't have any interest in what's happening on that machine in general, but it was really overheating, and i'm concerned about the electrical, and it kind of defeats the point if i have to start the video over again every time i turn it on. so, it's now going to sit unplugged from the internet. there's no wireless in the device. and, let me check my electrical...

yeah, this is weird.

this is an example of my control:

<audio autoplay controls style="width:500px;height:50px" id="Player">
<source id=flac src="../inri - inrisampled - 02 war.flac" type='audio/flac; codecs="flac"'>
<source id=mp3 src="../inri - inrisampled - 02 war.mp3" type='audio/mpeg; codecs="mp3"'>
<source id=aac src="../inri - inrisampled - 02 war.m4a" type='audio/mp4'>
<source id=wav src="../inri - inrisampled - 02 war.wav" type='audio/wav'>
<source id=ogg src="../inri - inrisampled - 02 war.ogg" type='audio/ogg; codecs="vorbis"'>
</audio>

the controls work for all five types on firefox in windows, and for the last four types on chrome in the chrome os. i don't see any logical reason why flac breaks when mp3 doesn't, other than that chrome doesn't like being told to use that codec. so, i think that's more of a chrome-specific thing.

i want it to work, though....

i'm not even going to test on...they call ie "edge" now, right? whatever.

the fourth major browser is safari, and i don't have an apple device, so i don't do any testing with anything to do with apple - no apple lossless, no safari, none of it, because i just don't have access to it. sorry...

so, i can test with firefox and with chrome, on windows and on the chrome os, giving me four possible testing scenarios.

i'm going to then argue it's irrational to run firefox on the chrome os and rule out that possibility. so, the last thing i can try is the chrome browser in windows, and i do use chrome on the 90s laptop, because it's too old to launch a version of firefox that is new enough to run html5, which you now need for youtube. they forced me into it, basically. 

i just did a search to make sure i'm not missing anything, and firefox' share has sure declined recently, although it's actually safari's share that seems to have gone strangely up. chrome has been at 65% for a while, now - i'm not surprised by that. but, how did safari get to 25%? i thought iphones were losing badly to android? double-checked - yup. are apple pcs up, then? no, they're down. ??. so, how can safari have a 25% market share if the iphone is at 15% and apple pcs are at 10%?

the last version of safari for windows was in 2013, and you would bizarrely need to run it via wine to use it on linux, according to a cursory google search.

but, you can install safari on android devices. so, i guess that a lot of people have switched from iphone to android, but don't want to let go of safari just yet? even so, the numbers are still weird.

it may be closer to the truth that firefox' decline is tied more to the general decline of the desktop/laptop and it's increasing replacement with phones. it may be less that people are moving away from firefox, and more that people are moving away from computers altogether.

i'm going to continue to resist this, and when i do finally move past firefox, it's going to be to some kind of fork. i could end up migrating to linux, and using a linux fork of firefox. i don't know what's still kicking, it's been a long time.

i've just had issues with chrome being particularly invasive, in terms of spyware. i had it installed for a while, years ago, but i kept finding it dialing home, and every time i turned it off, it would install itself back into the startup menu. it was acting like a virus, basically, and i don't have a lot of patience for aggressive corporate spyware like that. so, i ripped it right out of my machine, and i've avoided it ever since. i don't intend to go back to it....

but, i should check to see how this thing behaves on the 90s laptop, first. if...does it even have flac codecs at all?

if it was funny over aac or ogg, i wouldn't mind so much, but i expect people to download in flac, so i want this to work on the chromebook. in the world of windows and linux, flac is the default lossless audio codec.