Website

Progress Update

Alan — Sun, 01 Jun 2008 15:23:38 +0100

Wow, I knew I've been busy on other tasks for a week or so, but I hadn't realised it had been over 4 weeks since my last post. That's the first time I've had a gap of this size since I started out with this site.

Screening

One of the projects I'm involved in had a screening of its pilot episode in the main cinema complex in Manchester last week. Unlike other projects where I'd had more control of the timing and placement of audio, this was a project where I had only provided musical intro, outro, stings and a few themes, and some of that was in collaboration with another musician. I was interested to see how the director had chosen to place the music in the episode, how it had been mixed (e.g. forward or placed back in the mix) and I was also interested in watching the episode. Up until that point, I hadn't seen the episode.

Business Change, Process Mapping and BPR

I'm working on a long-term transformation project at the moment. As I'm doing so, I'm keeping an eye out for the common pitfalls of process mapping. I don't think there's much I want to change in the process-mapping series, what I've already written is still valid. There are a few points that I think could make it easier to understand. Plus I want to continue the series, it's only a few articles long so far and there's so much more to write. One of the main points I'll discuss is the time it takes to do full As-Is and To-Be models and how other tools and processes such as those found in Lean can be more beneficial, depending on the context.

This is actually the reason why there hasn't been much other activity on this site. The demands of a full-time client plus travel there and back is leaving little time for the updating. It does however leave me with time to write, just not time to research and upload the texts.

So what now?

The good side is that I've been writing some articles off-line for the musical creativity series. I'll publish those soon. Some will take longer than others as it will take time to prepare samples.

Status of the Musical Instrument Retail Industry

I've been watching the failure of Sound Control/Turnkey/Soho Soundhouse with interest. Over the last few years, I'd only buy from one or two named individuals in that chain to the point that I'd drive past 2 of my local shops and purchase from the shop in another city a couple of hours away for better service. Add to that the fact that the sales stock was getting progressively more budget-based for the items I'd want to buy meant that I was looking around for a better store.

New Kit

The failure of Sound Control comes at an odd time. I am looking for a new hardware compressor to complement what I already use. Sound Control didn't really sell much pro outboard beyond the SSL range, so I was already wondering how to broach this with them or to branch off to other companies such as KMR.

Indie Filmmaking

venn is still progressing. Shooting was completed a couple of weeks ago for a few scenes. Means I should have some rough edits to write to soon.

Space Opera

I've also watched a few independent sci-fi projects collapse over the last month or so. One or two appear to have collapsed outright, others have been delayed as the respective teams understand more about what's involved

Stuffed

My own short-movie project, Stuffed, is on hold while I think about what background I want. When I started out with Stuffed, I wasn't thinking about the background. That's not an oversight, just that I hadn't noticed the opportunity. One day I was looking at the footage and the idea hit me. I've had a few short attempts using Public Domain footage from archive.org but that hasn't proved sufficient quality. I'm not on the look-out for a good background which will convert well to PAL-I resolution - this isn't a HD project. I'd like to get it finished soon.

Slight change of focus

Alan — Fri, 28 Mar 2008 20:15:51 +0000

I've just booked in a time-consuming consultancy role for a few months, so there won't be as many updates on certain areas of this site. Here's how I see the site changing:

I am still aiming to publish the articles on Musical Creativity every week.

I will still continue to post articles in the Music and Audio section, especially for any projects that Award Sounds is involved in.

I still want to continue with the Fundamentals of Process Mapping series that I've recently started. I think it's a really valuable piece of work that should come in useful with a number of clients. There's a lot more I want to write there, we've barely scratched the surface of the fundamentals. It will be interesting for me to look back after the role and see if my perspective has changed.

The side-project will probably suffer most, it's been great while I've had the time even if only from being able to understand what others have to go through, but it's not a priority. I will still post relevant articles, but I can't imagine getting involved in the 3D/Blender side of things as much as I had wanted to.

Thank you

Alan

Planned Upgrade to Drupal 6.x

Alan — Thu, 28 Feb 2008 13:01:50 +0000

I'll be updating the underlying content management system of this website in the next week or so. I'll be moving it to Drupal 6.1. I know there will be a few features missing such as Similar Entries.

You'll also come back to a new look - ok, I'm cheating there, I'll be using on of the default themes while I'm waiting for contributed themes to catch up. That suits me, I wanted to change from this theme since it was looking a bit too busy.

I'll leave a maintenance message up, hopefully for only an hour or so.

Edit - I was going to upgrade today, but there's one feature I still want to have confirmed for Drupal 6.1, it's the ability to integrate with Feedburner. Currently I'm using the Feedburner module, but I've been looking at using the Path Redirect module instead. I'll probably hold off upgrade until I can happily integrate with Feedburner.

Improving the speed of a Drupal Site

Alan — Fri, 08 Feb 2008 17:58:30 +0000

I've had to look at a few options for improving performance on this site. I noticed that the introduction of the Feedburner module and moving the RSS feeds across to Feedburner had caused some performance issues.

As I write this, I'm making some changes to the site based on the Essential Steps to Speed up a Drupal Web Site series of articles.

The current change is to implement the Block Cache Module, so you may see a couple of pieces of content duplicated while I switch from dynamic to cached content.

Adding Feedburner

Alan — Fri, 08 Feb 2008 14:18:29 +0000

I'm in the process of swapping this site's RSS feeds over to Feedburner. It allows me to manage the feeds better and understand what readers use the feeds for. For a start, I had no idea how many of you subscribe to this site or which parts of it.

One of the many good points about Drupal is that it allows you (as readers) to subscribe to any category that you want to. You don't have to subscribe to the whole site. Currently I've only got the main site-wide RSS configured. If you want any of the others configured that way, then let me know. I don't believe readers will actually notice much difference in delivery, but if you do, again feel free to let me know.

One odd point is that the time for the initial load seems to have increased since changing to Feedburner. That is odd. Even weirder is that adverts have started appearing in the content. That's something I've avoided so far.

Looking for a New Comments Form

Alan — Fri, 08 Feb 2008 13:42:33 +0000

Leaving comments may be a little awkward for a while. I've had TinyMCE on since I started this site, but as a writer I've stopped using it. I can imagine it being awkward for users who aren't used to it and a lot of the features never seemed to work. It was never number one on my priority since readers can always leave basic messages - just don't try to do anything complicated.....yet.

Easy-to-use

I value easy-to-use above lots of functionality in this case. So I'm on the search for something better. I'll post back when I've installed something.

Suggestions

If you've any suggestions for a Drupal WYSIWYG editor, then please let me know - although that does mean you'll have to tackle the comment form :-)

Checklist module

Alan — Fri, 18 Jan 2008 23:24:18 +0000

I've been implementing the SEO Checklist from SpryDev SEO. Whether it will help with ratings is partly besides the point for me. I like the idea that it's helped me organise the site so that it's now a better, more easily, accessible site.

The checklist is a module you install within Drupal that then points to other modules that you should install. It also helps you navigate your way around the site to the configuration options. I'd recommend you try installing it.

One piece of advice, if you install the Trackback module as it states, then ensure that you enable the "One-way trackbacks" otherwise you'll end up with a lot of trackback spam, even for a small, but growing site such as this. Up to you if you moderate trackbacks or not. I suppose it depends on how you want to work.

Sister Site

Alan — Sun, 06 Jan 2008 14:05:09 +0000

Rather than just having a test site on a home server, I've been playing with different Drupal features over at this site's sister site at www.alancward.co.uk. I'm also using that site to host less professional articles than at this site. There may be some overlap as I put articles that may be of interest at both sites, but by and large I'll keep the articles and the sites separate with the odd article present on both sites.

Currently the two main content areas are the Cover Trail which started off as a practice place for the book module, but looks like it may live longer and articles on a linux HTPC.

Adding a new book

Alan — Sun, 06 Jan 2008 13:11:50 +0000

I've added the Book module to this site. It allows for easy navigation between related pages. The first book is going to be the Musical Creativity series.

I'm going through the articles assigning them to the book's outline. Unfortunately it does mean that some of the earlier articles may appear again on the front page.

Even after grouping a few pages together, I'm beginning to see how much easier it will make navigating the articles.

A few extra modules

Alan — Fri, 04 Jan 2008 21:02:51 +0000

I've added a few extra modules over the last couple of months in addition to those that I installed shortly after the initial build. I've just got round to installing:

- Technorati module

- Digg This

and have been using the following for a while:

- HTML Corrector - this has solved a lot of problems

- Search 404 - so you get friendlier 404 messages

- Theme Settings API - so themes can add settings