On Sunday, Dave Winer wrote about having to switch the links for his blog images to HTTPS so they would show correctly in Feedland.
I found myself nodding along when he said "They almost certainly have been showing up broken in other feed reading software, for years."
When I built /reader I added a feature especially for this – it parses the post content for images addressed as HTTP, saves a temporary copy to my server then replaces it with that new one but over HTTPS. Although it was scripting.com that prompted me to add this, I've found it coming in useful for other sites that (presumably) accidentally serve the odd image over HTTP.
Dave may have updated his image links but it's still a nice feature to keep for those "just in case" moments.
It's been almost forever since I did one of these. Well, that is if by 'almost forever' we actually mean about 7 months.
I don't know why. Maybe I just haven't felt that there was anything to say in this format (the RSS newsletter) that wasn't already in a blog post.
Still, a couple of RSS Club posts by other folks has got me wanting to write one again and get back in the habit.
It was good to get some new music released recently. My brain had been doing its "one thing at a time" thing for a while which, for the past couple of months, had been working on the site. I couldn't focus on anything else. Being able to get back among the machines and make some noise was good.
I've been playing around with DALL-E 3 via Bing Image Creator and am loving it. I've generated a lot of images that could be used as E.P. covers. Some I've further modified but in most cases I've been pretty happy with what it's come up with. Stuff like "Socrates and Plato deep in conversation in a Greek Forum, they have speech bubbles over their heads with 'acid house' smiley faces in" – fun times.
On that topic...
I know it's because I listen to my own tracks too much (both during and after completion) but I am bored of almost everything I've released so far. That's not to say I don't like it or am not proud of it, just bored. I have a constant need for new and different, interesting and exciting, that likely goes much further than the music I make. It is probably a metaphor for a lot of things.
There are sounds I want to make but don't know how; styles I want to explore but don't have the patience to dig deep to unearth real gems. I get stuck in a rut that wheels gouged from the creative path in about 1992.
When I stopped DJing in 93/94 I stopped buying and listening to new music. By the time Napster came on the scene I had no idea what direction techno and club culture had taken so retreated to the safe haven of my old mixtapes. Not to mention that drum & bass and dubstep seemed to have taken over everything. It felt like being left out of a conversation with no real idea of the topic and with no way to interject without making a fool out of myself.
While there's nothing inherently wrong with sticking to what you know (or, at least, know best) it is currently limiting and unfulfilling. Even the old styles could excite 1 if I had the time to devote, to learn, experiment and truly understand what is in my head and how to express it.
Taking the time required puts me right back where we started: bored having listened to stuff too much, especially while it is still being created.
As someone I watch on YouTube says in one of his videos, the more you listen to something the more it gets fixed in your brain. It gets to a point where you can't see a way forward as though it is already finished. I am so guilty of this but (because I can't read music, play an instrument, and am not an accomplished synth sound designer) can't truly explore without spending that time. It's a bit self-defeating.
By the time I come up with something interesting I am so fed up of hearing it that I'll scrap it and start again.
This mirrors my writing, and more. As I have said so many times: if I don't finish something in one go I usually can't go back to it as the mood, moment and emotion is lost. I rely on the vibe; lose that and I'm done.
With music, and so much else, I need to change my approach. I need to start working in fragments rather than trying to do things as a whole. Explore individual sounds and feelings instead of aiming for the end game. Allow myself the freedom of play and accept that it doesn't always have to lead to something.
Had to fix a bug in my RSS feed generation under a specific circumstance – a circumstance that hasn't arisen in over 7 months. It's something I must have fixed before but accidentally reintroduced at some point.
