Album Coverart for the album "Excursions in Time & Space" is ready!

...and done! The last missing coverart for my album "Excursions in Time and Space" is ready. Again it is 3D Raytracing Art, this time done using the software "Cybermotion 3D Designer". Well, what to say? The album title demanded a picture of a time machine, and I did one. It took quite a time to create the 3D scene, but rendertime was again below 5 minutes.
Just as I said, this was the last missing coverart of all of my four albums and so it is time to release a new one. I have loads of songs in my archives, but not enough for an album which fit into one topic. So I first have to release some more songs. Well then: Let's work!

Album Coverart for the album "Early Xperiments in Dub" is ready

Ok, the album coverart for the album "Early Xperiments in Dub" is ready. The album, which was released quite a time ago, and which contains my first Dub Reggae songs from the years 2004 and 2005, had no coverart until now. Now I have finnished it. I created it, using the free 3D Raytracing Software "PovRay". I don't know how long exactly it took to create the scene, but it were quite some hours. I programmed the whole scene using the so called "Scene Description Language" SDL and did not use a PovRay modeller because I don't like the PovRay modellers and programming in the SDL is much easier for me as a programmer. The rendering took 4 minutes and 16 seconds on my little rendermonster. Every other Raytracer would have taken much longer to render the image. Clicking on the image will take you to a larger resolution which you can save to disk for printing your own CD-cover.

Sunny Sunday

It has been a while since the sun was shining upon the north of germany for a longer time. If I did not miss anything it was cold and grey all the time at least since the first of December. So I was glad to be able to take a walk in the bright sunlight with my girl today. Yeah, that did good!

Not much at the creative side has happened since my last blogging. This is still due to the game "Fallout 3", which is so great that most of the sparetime in the past days was spent playing it. But who cares? I did not play much in the past months, so I do it now ;-)


One thing must be urgently done: Many people ask, why I left the reggae scene. I do not owe any justification to anyone for what I am doing anyway, but I want to describe my decision in detail though. I have more than just little interest in that no wrong assumptions come to life about my decision out there. It is not that way, that I suddenly hate reggae music. It is also by far not that way, that I did not get enough attention/appreciation from the reggae crowd. I never wanted to be a reggae star. I never expected anything from the reggae crowd in that direction. So the attention/appreciation I got is far more than I ever could have expected. The reasons for my decision are too complex to describe them in this blogentry. Because of this, I'll soon publish an extensive article that will set everything straight. So please don't send any questions about that topic anymore.

While we are at "questions by mail": People often ask about my healthstate via mail recently. My answer is: I AM WELL! Yeah, indeed nearly everything is well now. From what everything looked and felt like until mid of december, I would have not thought myself, that everything would go that well so fast, but YES, aside of a few sideefeects of the past illness everything is as it should be. Thanks for all the positive thoughts, prayers and what else some of you did: You may believe that it worked ;-)

I close this posting by embedding a song from the soundtrack of "Fallout 3". I LOVE this song:

Well like I said...

my new favourite game "Fallout 3" has horrible effects. Last night I spent from 00:00 to 07:00am cleansing to post-apocalyptic Washington DC of Ghouls and Supermutants. Well, those Supermutants are fun. Ghouls & stuff became a bit boring after a time, but the Supermutants are REAL oponents. I use the minigun, which is in fact not so mini but rather a gattling, for the distance fight and the 44er magnum for close battle. That makes nice goulash out of those Mutantscam in the wink of an eye. Hehe, like I said: You do not really know that side of me ;-)

Because of all that I got out of bed late at 04:00pm and spent the last 3 hours working at my dayjob. Yeah, that's the advantage of being my own boss / freelancer :D But my sleep-awake-rythm is completely ruined...

Fallout 3

Since yesterday I am a proud owner of the game "Fallout 3". After having lots of fun with the two previous parts of the "Fallout"-Gameseries quite a time ago, I was very excited about what the first real 3D version will have to offer. "Fallout 2" was, for the time when it was released, a real gem, and when I read that "Fallout 3" is released by my favourite gameforge Bethesda Softworks, I couldn't wait to get the game. The result could only be one of the best games ever. And my expectations where more than satisfied. The graphics and gameplay are top notch and the game is one of the best I ever played. I can hardly keep away from playing it all the time. The only bad thing is, that the sound is often stuttering gruelsome and sometimes the audio device driver crashes, forcing me to restart the system completely. But I cannot blame Betesda for that, because my audio interface, a Edirol FA-66, is far from being a common one. The manufacturer Edirol created the driver very spartanic and doesn't release updates very often.

Ok, so you know, if you do not see much news from me in the next days, why this is. I am virtually wandering the wastelands of the post-apocalyptic Washington DC, shooting everything that comes too close and in front of the various gunbarrels. Yes, this is another side of the peacefull alionsonny-guy: I am a evil evil killergamer! Who cares, there are worse hobbies one can have. And now wish me good hunting. Today I am off to the center of that virtual post-apocalyptic hell. Bring 'em on!

The first Song for 2009 is OUT: "Follow me up to Carlow"

After a creative break of about two months it is done again: A new song was released. It is my very own interpretation of the old irish folk tune "Follow me up to Carlow". And before anybody asks I answer upfront: Yes the very prominent and intense bassdrums are intended. They shall give a punch right in the face. I thought, I'll start this year with something that really punches the dust out of the bones. I have chosen this song as the first for 2009 because of many reasons. If you read the Wikipedia Article for the original version, you will maybe know what I mean with this. ;-)

So the first alionsonny album made up completely of irish folksongs is slowly on it's way. Maybe you noticed that all four albums released so far have 13 tracks on them. So it will be with this upcomming album too. So there are still six songs missing. But I have five songs in production. So it is only a thing of a few months ;-).

Enough words! Here's the new song: "Follow me up to Carlow"! DIRECT MP3-LINK

alionsonny.com is complete so far

Done! The first version of my website is complete so far. This means, that there is no page of the site which shows a "under construction"-message anymore. The last missing part, the images section has just been finnished. First I wanted to implement that part, using a images widget from Sevenload. But I couldn't find how to do this on the Sevenload page and a question to the support was not answered for a couple of days. Because of this, I have now built it myself. The good thing at this is, that everything works without Flash. For now I have just put a small number of pictures there. More will follow as soon as possible.

Unfortunately I recognized, that the layout doesn't really work in the Internet Explorer (at least version 7) somehow. There's a not so nice space at the bottom of each page. I think that this is related to the "special way" in which the IE interprets the CSS boxmodel. I'll repair this sometime.

Next a donation link will be put on the site. This is, amongst other reasons, because of request by listener, who wanted to give something back. No, I am in no way against donations. They come more than handy. I too do not just live of the air I breathe and each cent that may come in from donators will leave me more time for making music, videos and other stuff. So you have a direct benefit from donating some cash.

I'll let you know when I implement the donate-link, more about why I give away my music for free instead of asking for money directly by selling my music. There's my special philosophy behind this. And I'll let you know more about this soon in the "about alionsonny"-section.

So, the website is finnished so far but not completely finnished. There is, for example, no way to download music and videos directly from my homepage currently. This was possible in the last version, and will work again soon. Also a complete list of my releases is missing currently . This will soon be there again. But one step after the other...

Not very much news

Well, currently I have a phase of serious lazyness. Who cares? At least I have finnished the "Links"-section of my homepage. Not really something great, but after all at least something. Additionally I made some progress at my new song. The thing is somehow more complicated to get done than I thought. The conceptual album I am working at since christmas also made some progress, but the is so top secret that I cannot tell anything more about it.

And hey, what means lazyness? I worked all the time hours in advance for my dayjob. If no creative stuff works currently, I earn at least money and create buffer-time for more creative days.

To close this post I embed a great video (german language) recommended by a Telepolis-Forum-Colleague:

A quiet day

Last night me and my girl watched all episodes of "Kalkofe" we didn't watch until now on YouTube. Because of that I got out of bed at noon. Fortunately I had worked in advance during the past days and so no stress was generated off this. After all I must say, that this Kalkofe-Session was a double edged sword. Of cause it was funny as hell like allways, but on the other side it is shocking for people who didn't watch TV for more than 8 years. What a bunch of bullshit is present on german TV is by far not imaginable if one doesn't see it with own eyes. Worst of it all is, that it seems, that people let themselves get fooled and bullshitted without end. Shows where people allow to get their relationship destroyed, teleshopping where total trash is sold and nightly astroshows, where people pretend to be shamans, mediums and astrological consultants where you see not just a but that they lack intelligence big time. I mean: Who takes advise of a person who has obviously the IQ of a piece of bread? Who would think that such a person may have spiritual superpowers? That's heavy!

Ok, let's get away from the overall bad state of the intelligence-state of the population of germany: Today, when I surfed the web, I found something that really puzzled me. I am a big fan of the works by Douglas Adams and among other stories I found the description of the Currency called "Ningi" allways very amusing. But I never thought that a currency like the Ningi existed. At least not on Earth. Well today I was taught a Lesson. Please view this Wikipediaarticle and be amazed.

Nut much else happened today. I just finnished working at my day job and now relax with a good cup of green tea. I don't know how the evening goes on. Currently I try to upload some missing music videos at Sevenload.de. Unfortunately this site seems to use the same technology as Youtube, because the problems are exactly the same. Let's hope the best. Meanwhile I maybe work a bit at my lastest song. We'll see...

I HATE YouTube!

It has to be said once again: I HATE YOUTUBE! Why? Because this site turns each and every video I upload into unviewable trash. Yesterday and today I uploaded two of my videos which the site refused to accept without problems until now. That's nothing new: Of about 5 uploads usually three do not work. One time there's only a still picture available and the other time the video stays in "processing"-mode forever. My personal favourite: There's only a short "Blidelip" left of the sound at the beginning of the video and then.. silence. This was also the case with the two videos I managed to upload now. I encoded the videos once more and this time the sound is there. BUT: The videoquality sucks. And I uploaded high quality source material. Especially at the first alionsonny musicvideo in HD the destruction, done by the YouTube encoder, is clearly viewable. Additionally the stereosound was mashed into a monaural recording. That's really great especially for a musician :(

I cannot understand, that the marketleader in video upload services offers the worst quality. Fortunately I am able to back up what I told you above with a clear evidence in this blog. Below I embedded both videos once from YouTube and once from my favourite video upload service Vimeo.com. Judge for yourself. I uploaded the same sourcefile for each of the videos on both plattforms. For the first video it was a 720x576 pixels resolution, for the second the resolution was 1280x720 pixels HD resolution. Both videos contained 320kbps MP3 stereosound.

First "Springtime 2008" in the malformed YouTube version:


and here the Vimeo.com-Version:

Springtime 2008 from alionsonny on Vimeo.

Now the HDTV-Video "Autumn" in the YouTube Version:


and the Vimeo Version:

alionsonny - Autum (HD Version) from alionsonny on Vimeo.

I think nothing more has to be said about this. If YouTube wasn't so damn popular, I wouldn't upload anything there at all.

A sunny day

Today I took a complete day off work. This is a somewhat rare, but the good weather didn't leave me a chance. So me and my girl wandered down the Wandse (a little river that gives Hamburg-Wandsbek its name) in the sunshine. And man, it was cold! Not really, because I covered myself in multiple layers of clothing, but it was still f*cking cold.
The only Teashop which sells our favourite teas is located in Hamburg-Wandsbek, quite a long way down the river Wandse. This was the main reason for the direction of our walk. Additionally I had a chair that is best described as a torturing tool or a back-detruction-device recently in which I sat when I was working. Because of this I made the decision to replace it with a better one. So I did this today too. After all a really nice day. Sun, a few beers (I was a bit afraid that my lips freeze at the bottle for multiple times :D ), friendly dogs and folks and right now I sit in a, the product description of the seller says so, "presidents chair". Well, so I am a president now!!! So I declare mysel the president of the world now and I demand the end of all wars worldwide right now. Wow, this would be great...

A lazy day

I planned quite a lot for today, but by far I couldn't get it all done. Well, anyway a bit of it is finished. alionsonny.com has finally a "About alionsonny" section with the basic facts. Some minor mistakes in the linking and HTML have been corrected. Yes, and that's it.
Then I set up some stuff in the german version of my blog AND ... oh yes: A new song is on its way. It is finally an Irish Traditional again, this time without any reggae influence. It is "Follow me down to Carlow." The melody is neckbreaking fast and anything but trivial. Well, at the end I got the melody done, a bassline and a harp accompaniment was created. So the basic structure is finnished. Now comes the hard work of the arrangement. Rythmwise I moved pretty far away from the original. Booming Bassdrums make the speakers bounce. If everything goes as planned, it will be a hell of a dancetrack! Irish folk for the dancehall, so to speak.

The rest of the day I spent fixing unfinished annoying things. My "favorite problem child" in the category of multimedia Web pages slowly makes me run Amok (<- Homeland Security Bot this is for you *LOL). For months, I tried in vain to upload a few of my music videos to YouTube, but the stupid page refuses to get them online. I really do not know what is so difficult at XVid MP4 videos in PAL resolution and 30fps with 320kbps MP3 sound to process! The videos are of 80 to 160 MB size. This SHOULD not be a problem ... But it is ... for YouTube. I think I'll try it one last time and if it still doesn't work, I'll give it up. *AARRGH*

But I while waiting for the video to upload, I found a great live video for my second favourite song of my favourite russian band:



...and while we are at it... I wrote above that the above video is my SECOND favourite song by this band. So what is my favourite? Ok, here it is:



Ok, and with those two masterpieces I want to end this excuse for a post. Tomorrow is another day...

...and off we go!

Since newyear my Homepage is available again, mainly as a construction site. Step by step I have inserted the basic elements (contact-data,music,video) into the new site. The layout is raw and unfinnished and the content was inserted in form of standard components from music- and videosites. But most important is, that something is on alionsonny.com at all.

Some folks will say "Why? The site was neat once?" Well, the reason for the current redesign is a rather long story. I built up a rather complex system, using php between 2005 and 2007, which became more and more complicated to handle. It was meant to become a full featured content management system. Then I became my own boss (freelancer) and because of this I had less time to work at the site. The solution seemed to be simple: Let's take a readymade free content management system! This was the time when I came across Joomla and at the first glance it seemed to be the perfect solution. Posting new articles was very simple. BUT: The whole thing was not very suitable for multimedia stuff at all and so I had to built quite a lot of custom mudules. Also not THE problem, because I was able to port modules from the old solution to Joomla. Well, someday the site was complete and I thought everything was finnished now. Icouldn't be more wrong...

I allready read at some sites that Joomla had a not just a few security gaps, which made it possible for badminded people to hack, change and deface websites or even turn them into virus distributers. But, so I thought, I have a good provider and all the biggest security issues like FTP-Access turned off. To make it short: At the end my website was hacked about 2 times a week, defaced and even passwords were changed so I had to fix it in the user-database to regain adminitrative access to my own website. That went badly on my nerves. When a hacker turned my site into a virus distributer it was the END! Joomla had to GO! No security measures were successfull. It couldn't go on like that.

What to do? Back to the old homegrown system? Just as I said: Not enough time for that. A old principle from my time as a software developer came to my mind: KISS -> Keep It Simple, Stupid! This means: No technical overkill if it can be done simple. Why using php for a simple website? Why a big content management system for a simple Homepage? I realized that all the time I was shooting with cannons at sparrows instead on focussing on the core work.

Because of THAT my new site is pure HTML, formatted with CSS, just like in the old days. Without php, using pure HTML hackers have NO chance to attack the site. Ok, everything is not so super-geeky now, but who cares aside of the own ego? You, dear visitors of my site , want to watch the site, listen to music, watch videos and most of you do not want to know how the sites internals work.

So I'll build up the rest of the site in the next days and that's it. That's it, well said: Enough words and off to work! There's a lot to be done and more and more folks ask for new music.

Sincerely

Sonny