# I'm really looking forward to the listening party for the new album tomorrow: 8pm UK time, 28th Nov.
I'll be making it fully live at around 7:30 (it's currently in pre-order) which is when the chat opens for the party.
24/11/2025
# I spent some time looking at the database queries triggered by the blog page and how I could optimise them. I know, exciting stuff!
There were some similar queries which I was able to condense by only running the larger and processing the results to get the relevant subset rather than making separate queries. By moving a couple, I was able to avoid repeated calls and use the same result in multiple places.
The way the code was structure very much reflected the way it was built — piecemeal, focusing on each function as a separate process, instead of holistically. I'm surprised it's taken nearly five years for me to address this.
With some help from ChatGPT and bashing my head against the wall, I also managed to streamline the way comments (and replies to comments) into a single query with a bit of logic to separate them out for display.
Much better.
23/11/2025
# As we rush towards the end of November, I had largely intended (or, at least, expected) the new album to be my last creative output for the year.
This weekend, however, has seen something new emerging from the post-completion lull.
When I won my copy of the Roland Cloud TB-303 plugin, I said that it gave me the option of messing about in the DAW and transferring patterns to hardware later. That's exactly what I've done.
Having focused on the LM Drum recently, I just started playing with a couple of instances of the 303 and Ableton's core 909 kit — getting back to the techno basics. Something quickly formed and I put a quick loop on Bluesky.
This evening saw the start of the transition to hardware. While it doesn't have the exact same sound, I'm really liking it and have added some extra elements.
It's still in the development phase but definitely heading in the right direction.
I don't know if this will see the light of day before the end of the year. Maybe I'll keep working on more tracks ready for a release in January.
