Saturday, March 28, 2009

It is done!

I have fixed the last obvious flaws at the Homepage and some things that looked not so good were also fixed. It all looks much more like cut from one piece now. The layout problems when using the Internet Exploder seem to be fixed too. The site looks allmost the same on Mozilla and IE now. This is it I think, regarding the work at alionsonny.com. Now it is time to do something different.

What else? Somehow LastFM managed to fix the bug in the video uploads that prevented me from uploading my videos there. In the past two days I uploaded all released videos so far to LastFM. The quality is somewhat suboptimal because of the ugly compression but that's not my fault. Anyway: My videos are now available on my LastFM page also.

Some time ago I created an account at the musicsite Aimestreet.com. Somehow I forgot it, but recently rediscovered it. So I took the opportunity to upload my four albums there. So they are available on my Aimestreet page also. Please don't give my songs a recommendation there. A recommendation is to tell other folks on Aimestreet that they should listen to the song too because it is great. However, I want to keep my songs as free downloads available for everyone. But if you give my songs recommendations, they are no longer free after a certain ammount of recommendations. The price of a song at Aimestreet rises with the number of recommendations it gets. So the only way to keep my music free there is, that it gets NO recommendations. thanks in advance for NOT recommending!

Ok, that's it. Nothing more to tell yet. I'll be back once something important happens ;-)

Wednesday, March 25, 2009

New Video for the song "Paddy Cronin's Reel" is online!

Well, I was quite puzzled, when I saw in the Web Buzz of my Reverbnation Page, that my name was mentioned in conclusion with a video at YouTube which was not uploaded by me. First I thought it was because of the well known and hated YouTube keyword spam again, but when I visited the videos page, I realized that I was wrong. Somebody had done something I would have never thought about doing: Filming a video in SecondLife and using my music as a soundtrack. This is completely ok with me as I encourage people to use my music for such purposes, as long as the resulting works are non commercial.

Well, and the video is a good piece of artwork as you can see in the video embedded below. The topic, a virtual St. Patricks Day Party, is also suitable for the soundtrack. Sometimes one thinks, the avatars are dancing along to the soundtrack, right on the beat. Even though I do not like SecondLife too much, I love this work. Thanks again to the creator of this video. And here's the video:


Sunday, March 22, 2009

Big progress at alionsonny.com

Maybe you allready noticed it. Many things have changed today on alionsonny.com. This is the reason why there were no news in this blog during the past days. It was neccessary to implement some changes in one go, instead of doing them one by one and keep you updated about what was going on. It can be said, that alionsonny.com is complete now. It is true that there is one or the other flaw in the layout. But this is not that important and will be fixed soon. But the most important thing is, that all modules have been finnished and placeholders have been removed for the real things.

I must ask especially the users of the Internet Explorer for patience. I do not use this browser very often and because of this users of the site had to tell me about the fact that there are some serious layout issues, especially in the video- and image-galleries with this browser. But this is not my fault. It is because the nice people at Microsoft refuse to implement the standard for the cascading stylesheets (CSS) properly. The site is optimized for browsers which implement webdesign standards properly. And because of that the site looks not so well in the trashy Internet Explorer. I'll see how and what I can fix at this soon.

Well, so what's new on alionsonny.com in detail? First thing that run inside the website and are therefore not very obvious for the usual websurfer, for that example the way how particular pages are generated was completely changed. I also optimized some stuff at the handling of the small database which is used for the sites content and I made it more difficult for hackers to attack the site. I would never say that everything is absolutely bullet proof, but I did something.. that's it. Let's name the bigger and viewable improvements:
  • A completely new startpage now shows the lates entry from this blog as News. I have done this by using the RSS-Stream of this blog. So each time something new is written here, you can now see it instantly on the frontpage of alionsonny.com. Below the news, the latest song and album are shown and can be played and downloaded there. Below that, the latest video is embedded. So the startpage is a real newspage for alionsonny.com.
  • The image section now has multiple pages and categories for images.
  • The links got a new layout and structure.
  • The album section was completely reworked and on the details page for each album you can view and download the fullsize coverart by clicking on the cover image.
  • Some issues with the language selection have been repaired and places where everything was allways shown in english or german now work according to the selected language.
Well, that's it so far... I think. What's next? As I said some layout issues have to be fixed, especially for the Internet Exploder. And then it is finally time for a new song and video. A concept for a brandnew album is also ready.

Tuesday, March 10, 2009

...and done: The videosection is online!

Well, something went not as it should have, but who cares? Now it is ready: The fantastic new videosection of alionsonny.com. From now on all videos can be viewed again on the site, selectable from a nice thumbnail gallery. Additionally, the soundtrack for each video can be downloaded directly from the details page of the video. I'm a bit proud of me and what I've done ;-)

But no rest, it goes on and on. The picture gallery looks quite nice now, but it is not like I want it to be. This means: The picture gallery is next! Because I have built all components needed allready in the process of building the previous sections, this will be quite easy.

But because I caught a bad flu while walking in the rain yesterday, I better promise nothing. I fight with full force against getting sick, but who knows how it all will come in the end. Let's hope the best.

Sunday, March 8, 2009

Videosection is making progress

There's nothing to see here. Move on! ;-) Today there's nothing new I can show you. Just the promise, that the new videosection of alionsonny.com is on it's way. Today I fooled myself for 4 hours by not recognizing a logical error in a PHP-class which should show a grid of things (albums,videos,pictures). Those who have nothing to do with programming will most probably not know what I mean with this. It's just one of those thingies that run in the background of many websites, causing grey hair for the webdesigners, eating years of a lifetime and causing pain in the stomach. Just the kind of stuff for freaks like me. Well, today I played a bit hide & seek with my own logic. But the core stuff of the whole thingie is working now perfectly. And tomorrow (if nothing unexpected happens), the ne videosection will go online in all it's shiny glory.

Oh yeah: Some folks ask, if I am doing no music no more. Well, sorry, at this thing I have a nice little creative blockade currently. Nothing serious, but still it will take some time until new music from me will hit your ears. Additionally financial problems force me to put more time into my dayjob. Rent doesn't pay itself here and so it is for the online connection and other stuff. Well, you can click on the "Donate"-button on alionsonny.com and donate some time-providing ca$h ;-) This may help a lot to get me back to the studio and make some music.

Saturday, March 7, 2009

The Albums-Section is online!

Yepp, one day later as expected, the new albums section and everything related to it goes online. Why the delay? Well I just needed a bit time for myself, and so I didn't work at alionsonny.com yesterday. Hey, but what's a day? As announced there's a music overview page now which is shown if one clicks on the "Music" menuitem. The menu now has two submenuitems: "Songs" which takes you to the list of all songs released so far and, brandnew, "Albums", which takes you to a list of all 4 albums released so far. Here you see shrinked versions of the abumcovers, which take you to the deatails page for the album on which iage you clicked.
A few things have not been implemented yet and they will be finnished once I want to do so. Currently only single songs from the albums can be streamed or downloaded. One day there will be a possibility to stream complete albums or download them in a ZIP-file. Clicking on the coverart image should take you to the coverart in full size in the future to allow downloading it. Just as I said -> this is a future feature.
Currently I find it more important to get the other sections of alionsonny.com done and get rid of the ugly placeholders. Next is the videos section which will look much nicer and deserves a more logical navigation.
Well, that's it with my (allmost) daily status report. I wanna say goodbye with a little song:

Thursday, March 5, 2009

Albums section of alionsonny.com is allmost ready!

Today I spent some time finnishing the part of alionsonny.com, where the albums released so far will be available. The section is allmost ready and should be available tomorrow. Additionally I finnished a new music startpage, where the latest 3 songs and albums are listed. The menuitem "Music" now has a submenu which contains the items "Songs" and "Albums". If you klick on the "Music"-item in the future, it will take you to the music startpage mentioned above. But don't go to alionsonny.com right now to check it out. Nothing of it all is currently online. All will be available tomorrow when it is finnished. And now I'll stop working for today. Enough is enough is enough :D

Wednesday, March 4, 2009

The new music section of alionsonny.com is online!

It is done! Formerly the musicsection of alionsonny.com consisted of an embedded player from Soundclick, which looked more than awfull with it's blue color on the green background of the site. Additionally there used to be no possibility to download music, except from going to the Soundclick page. This is over now. All 112 alionsonny songs released so far are now streamable and downloadable online. Just take a look at the new music section. Currently it consists just of a paged list of songs. But in the next days I'll add an album-mode, which will contain the 4 alionsonny albums released so far. Of cause there will be the coverart graphics available for download also in printable size. Well, and now I think I can be proud of what I've done and end my working day.

Sunday, March 1, 2009

Donations are welcome!

The construction site, that alionsonny.com was for the last two months after the massive hacker attacks of December 2008, finally turned into a real website again. During the implementation of the enhancements, I also added something I was asked to add by several visitors in the past: A posssibility to donate. It is a fact that I provide all my music for free on the web. But there are, as I got to know, some people who would like to give something back, and if it is just a small ammount of money. For that reason I added a donate-link at a prominent position on alionsonny.com. Using that link, one has the possibility to donate via Paypal or direct bank transfer. I am fine with both ways and I thank upfront for each and every donation.
As some of you may know, I am a freelancer (my own boss) and I am free to chose the time I work at my dayjob as I like. Each donation that comes in gives me more time to create music and other stuff for you, because I am not a greedy moneysack and usually work just enough to make a living for my girl and me. So if donations come in, I have to work less at my dayjob and have more time to work at creative things. Pure logic, isn't it? So here, for you who overlooked the donation link so far, is it:



What's new else? Like I said, alionsonny.com was a bit changed. From now on you don't have to visit the site anymore thru the nice, but for some uncomfortable, language selection startpage. From now on, the language set as prefered language in your browser will be used automatically. Some magic *LOL*. No it is just technology. If, however, you should land on the wrong language version, there's also no problem. On a prominent position on the right side of each page of the site, there's a gadget to change the language on the fly. This works whether you have Javascript activated or not. If Javascript is not activated, there's a little button below the language selection gadget, on which you have to click after selecting your prefered language. If Javascript is activated it works by just selecting the prefered language from the drop down list. If you like, just try it with Javascript turned on and off.

And now I am off to do some more stuff. Much work to do!