hairylarry's blog
Join us at Inspired Unreality open game chat tonight at 9:00 Central. Inspired Unreality is held in the gamerplus chat rooms at Tenkar's Tavern on Discord. More info and an invite here.
https://gamerplus.org/index
We had a good chat last week night at Inspired Unreality with both Alan and Datum joining Vivian and myself. As happens with those two we drifted off of games and into philosophy.
Next week Inspired Unreality will be about Science Fiction and Fantasy. We do this on the first Monday of the month. That's right, it's almost September already.
And tonight we're winging it. Vivian and I have a fallback plan where we work on our Milyagon locale. Or you may want to chat about something else. Bring your own topic. All gaming is on topic.
NEA Game Fest is in October and my kids are hard at work making preparations.
https://gamerplus.org/newsfeed/4230
Vivian and I had a little conversation about confidence that's almost a ditty.
All you need is confidence in what you already have and the ability to find what you need.
I have confidence that we can navigate this dungeon and find the treasure.
I have confidence that you can. It's me I'm not sure about.
I have confidence that I can. You have to find your own confidence.
https://gamerplus.org/newsfeed/4188
And I posted a chapter about checklists for my book in progress, "Setting Up A Twitch Studio, Using Tech Creatively".
https://gamerplus.org/blogs/post/817
Let us know what games you've been playing, what songs you've been singing, what stories you've been writing. Post to Gamer+, a social network for creative gamers. Or contact Hairy Larry below. See you tonight on Inspired Unreality.
Thanks,
Hairy Larry
https://gamerplus.org/user/hairylarry
hairylarry@deltaboogie.com
No Friendica listing today. One of my webservers is down. Sad face emoticon.
https://gamerplus.org/index
We had a good chat last week night at Inspired Unreality with both Alan and Datum joining Vivian and myself. As happens with those two we drifted off of games and into philosophy.
Next week Inspired Unreality will be about Science Fiction and Fantasy. We do this on the first Monday of the month. That's right, it's almost September already.
And tonight we're winging it. Vivian and I have a fallback plan where we work on our Milyagon locale. Or you may want to chat about something else. Bring your own topic. All gaming is on topic.
NEA Game Fest is in October and my kids are hard at work making preparations.
https://gamerplus.org/newsfeed/4230
Vivian and I had a little conversation about confidence that's almost a ditty.
All you need is confidence in what you already have and the ability to find what you need.
I have confidence that we can navigate this dungeon and find the treasure.
I have confidence that you can. It's me I'm not sure about.
I have confidence that I can. You have to find your own confidence.
https://gamerplus.org/newsfeed/4188
And I posted a chapter about checklists for my book in progress, "Setting Up A Twitch Studio, Using Tech Creatively".
https://gamerplus.org/blogs/post/817
Let us know what games you've been playing, what songs you've been singing, what stories you've been writing. Post to Gamer+, a social network for creative gamers. Or contact Hairy Larry below. See you tonight on Inspired Unreality.
Thanks,
Hairy Larry
https://gamerplus.org/user/hairylarry
hairylarry@deltaboogie.com
No Friendica listing today. One of my webservers is down. Sad face emoticon.
Checklists
A procedure document outlines in detail how to accomplish a task. In my career in office automation I wrote a lot of procedure documents. When you're at a workplace with turnover procedure documents provide continuity when personnel changes. They can be used to train new employees and then the new employees can refer to the procedure document until they learn how to do the task.
In your own technical creative projects you probably don't really need procedure documents. They are a lot of work to make, very detailed, and you are probably not going to be training new employees because you probably don't have employees.
A checklist is a different beast. Each item on a checklist reminds you of the next thing to do so you don't skip steps. You just start at the top and continue down the list until you're done.
On my checklist, some of the items, like uploading the videos to the Live Music Archive, take a long time. So after that checklist item I place an = (equal sign) to signify a multitasking opportunity.
I look down the list for an = in the left column and I can continue there, doing other items on the list until the upload is complete. After the upload is done I can finish the skipped part of the list. The part that needed the upload to be completed to continue.
If there's just an = without an = in the left column below, that means there is a multitacking opportunity here to do something entirely different like cook or take a nap. When I upload to Youtube it takes awhile but I can't really start the promotion without having the Youtube video ready. So, take a break, read some news on the internet, or whatever.
You can (and should) devise your own notation for your checklist. Your project and promotion will have different steps and needs. Different opportunities for multitasking. Figure out what works for you.
Checklists with actual check boxes are commonly used in manual procedures but you don't need check boxes on your checklist. I mean I know the task I just finished so I just do the next item on the list.
Production checklists soon become memorized, perhaps because when you skip a step it usually results in extra work. Promotion checklists, however, are really helpful, because most web promotion is a series of independent tasks and it's really easy to forget one and miss out on that promotion.
Your tasks will be different and your promotion will be different so your checklists will be different. Checklists are a useful tool in many endeavors but especially useful for tech creators.
Here's a sample checklist that I use after I produce the video excerpts from my twitch stream (the top item on the list). The first half is uploading and adding details to the upload sites. The second half is promotion of the uploaded content.
- edit and render videos in Openshot
- rename videos with an NN_ prefix in chronological order
- capture a screen shot
- scale the screen shot
- create list.txt listing the numbered songs
- copy and edit notes.txt changing the date and updating the list
- convert mp4 files to mp3s in VLC
- normalize the mp3s in mp3DirectCut
- rename mp3 files
- upload audio item to the Live Music Archive
- upload video item to the Live Music Archive =
- update metadata in audio item
- bookmark audio item
- add audio item to kgpl
- add audio item to mixremix radio in /radio/TWStream
=
- create playlist on peertube
- make public and assign to twitch.tv/hairylarryland
- copy playlist link
- refresh 2x
- use song.txt to create description
- change playlist link in song.txt
- change date in song.txt
- upload mp4 files to peertube, in order
- search and replace song title in song.txt
- fill out screen
- wait for publish button =
- copy the share link
- edit description adding share link
- save to playlist
- after all the files are uploaded check the playlist
- upload to Youtube
- use song text for description =
- promote youtube and peertube playlist
- allow several hours between promotions
- always use the peertube text for description
- share youtube on facebook and twitter from youtube share panel
- share youtube on friendica
- share to hairylarryland tumblr
- reblog that post everywhere
- share on reddit freeculture and creativecommons
- share on hairylarryland Discord
- share to MixRemix and Hairy Larry Rocks
- post to write.as - youtube link and text from peertube
- Add youtube to Hairy Larry Rocks Links
- Add playlist to Hairy Larry Rocks Links
A procedure document outlines in detail how to accomplish a task. In my career in office automation I wrote a lot of procedure documents. When you're at a workplace with turnover procedure documents provide continuity when personnel changes. They can be used to train new employees and then the new employees can refer to the procedure document until they learn how to do the task.
In your own technical creative projects you probably don't really need procedure documents. They are a lot of work to make, very detailed, and you are probably not going to be training new employees because you probably don't have employees.
A checklist is a different beast. Each item on a checklist reminds you of the next thing to do so you don't skip steps. You just start at the top and continue down the list until you're done.
On my checklist, some of the items, like uploading the videos to the Live Music Archive, take a long time. So after that checklist item I place an = (equal sign) to signify a multitasking opportunity.
I look down the list for an = in the left column and I can continue there, doing other items on the list until the upload is complete. After the upload is done I can finish the skipped part of the list. The part that needed the upload to be completed to continue.
If there's just an = without an = in the left column below, that means there is a multitacking opportunity here to do something entirely different like cook or take a nap. When I upload to Youtube it takes awhile but I can't really start the promotion without having the Youtube video ready. So, take a break, read some news on the internet, or whatever.
You can (and should) devise your own notation for your checklist. Your project and promotion will have different steps and needs. Different opportunities for multitasking. Figure out what works for you.
Checklists with actual check boxes are commonly used in manual procedures but you don't need check boxes on your checklist. I mean I know the task I just finished so I just do the next item on the list.
Production checklists soon become memorized, perhaps because when you skip a step it usually results in extra work. Promotion checklists, however, are really helpful, because most web promotion is a series of independent tasks and it's really easy to forget one and miss out on that promotion.
Your tasks will be different and your promotion will be different so your checklists will be different. Checklists are a useful tool in many endeavors but especially useful for tech creators.
Here's a sample checklist that I use after I produce the video excerpts from my twitch stream (the top item on the list). The first half is uploading and adding details to the upload sites. The second half is promotion of the uploaded content.
- edit and render videos in Openshot
- rename videos with an NN_ prefix in chronological order
- capture a screen shot
- scale the screen shot
- create list.txt listing the numbered songs
- copy and edit notes.txt changing the date and updating the list
- convert mp4 files to mp3s in VLC
- normalize the mp3s in mp3DirectCut
- rename mp3 files
- upload audio item to the Live Music Archive
- upload video item to the Live Music Archive =
- update metadata in audio item
- bookmark audio item
- add audio item to kgpl
- add audio item to mixremix radio in /radio/TWStream
=
- create playlist on peertube
- make public and assign to twitch.tv/hairylarryland
- copy playlist link
- refresh 2x
- use song.txt to create description
- change playlist link in song.txt
- change date in song.txt
- upload mp4 files to peertube, in order
- search and replace song title in song.txt
- fill out screen
- wait for publish button =
- copy the share link
- edit description adding share link
- save to playlist
- after all the files are uploaded check the playlist
- upload to Youtube
- use song text for description =
- promote youtube and peertube playlist
- allow several hours between promotions
- always use the peertube text for description
- share youtube on facebook and twitter from youtube share panel
- share youtube on friendica
- share to hairylarryland tumblr
- reblog that post everywhere
- share on reddit freeculture and creativecommons
- share on hairylarryland Discord
- share to MixRemix and Hairy Larry Rocks
- post to write.as - youtube link and text from peertube
- Add youtube to Hairy Larry Rocks Links
- Add playlist to Hairy Larry Rocks Links
Inspired Unreality open game chat is tonight at 9:00 PM Central. Lately we've been chatting with Bruce or Alan so Caper's Song Book is on the back burner. It is open game chat, after all, so if you want to help Ari and Caper write the song of reckless spending called "Wee Will" we would be glad to do that.
Or, whatever you want to talk about. All gaming is on topic. Inspired Unreality is held every Monday night in the gamerplus chatrooms at Tenkar's Tavern on Discord. Never been? We've got an invitation for you here.
https://gamerplus.org/index
So, let me give Alan a plug. He's got a game called The Chronicles of Ember. Here's his link. Reach out to him and he will be glad to let you know all about it.
https://gamerplus.org/user/Alan
My granddaughter Liz wants me to remind you that she's awesome. She also joins us sometimes on Inspired Unreality.
https://gamerplus.org/user/SearchingForGyphons
I've been working on promoting my twitch stream so here goes. If you're on twitch please Follow.
https://www.twitch.tv/hairylarryland
If you want to give my chill jazz piano a listen I have a page of playlists here.
https://peertube.hairylarry.rocks/video-channels/twitch/video-playlists
And I set up a blog inviting collaboration with songs and scripts that I think will help guest musicians. I have my videos available for download without recompression so twitch streamers can use them as backing tracks while they solo over them.
https://minizines.cc/collaborate/
I am thinking of moving this over to collaborate.hairylarryland.com if I can figure that out.
All of my songs are licensed Creative Commons Attribution so you can use them on your podcast, vlog, game, or movie.
Are you on twitch? Let me know. I love hearing from you.
Hairy Larry
https://gamerplus.org/user/hairylarry
hairylarry@curators.mixremix.cc
hairylarry@deltaboogie.com
Or, whatever you want to talk about. All gaming is on topic. Inspired Unreality is held every Monday night in the gamerplus chatrooms at Tenkar's Tavern on Discord. Never been? We've got an invitation for you here.
https://gamerplus.org/index
So, let me give Alan a plug. He's got a game called The Chronicles of Ember. Here's his link. Reach out to him and he will be glad to let you know all about it.
https://gamerplus.org/user/Alan
My granddaughter Liz wants me to remind you that she's awesome. She also joins us sometimes on Inspired Unreality.
https://gamerplus.org/user/SearchingForGyphons
I've been working on promoting my twitch stream so here goes. If you're on twitch please Follow.
https://www.twitch.tv/hairylarryland
If you want to give my chill jazz piano a listen I have a page of playlists here.
https://peertube.hairylarry.rocks/video-channels/twitch/video-playlists
And I set up a blog inviting collaboration with songs and scripts that I think will help guest musicians. I have my videos available for download without recompression so twitch streamers can use them as backing tracks while they solo over them.
https://minizines.cc/collaborate/
I am thinking of moving this over to collaborate.hairylarryland.com if I can figure that out.
All of my songs are licensed Creative Commons Attribution so you can use them on your podcast, vlog, game, or movie.
Are you on twitch? Let me know. I love hearing from you.
Hairy Larry
https://gamerplus.org/user/hairylarry
hairylarry@curators.mixremix.cc
hairylarry@deltaboogie.com
Tonight on Inspired Unreality Ari and Caper continue their work on Caper's Songbook. We have the opening verses for Caper's song of reckless spending called "Wee Will". Here we go.
Wee Will
Wee Will was born
with nary a coin
and his parents had naught neither
His Ma said
Will is gonna be rich
but no one would believe her.
But then one day
Around mid may
Will tripped and skint his knee.
And what did he see
buried under the tree?
'twas the shiny glint of gold.
Gold, gold, gold, gold, gold, gold, gold, gold,
Gold, gold, gold, gold, gold, gold, gold, gold.
Wee Will brought the coin
to his Ma at home
and they were rich as kings
with stars in his eyes
he looked to the skies
and dreamt of his favorite things.
His ma went to town
and the wheel goes round
she paid her bill and then she
loaded up on groceries
like she had no worries
and was left with just a penny.
Gold, gold, gold, gold, gold, gold, gold, gold,
Gold, gold, gold, gold, gold, gold, gold, gold.
Of course we need more tales of Wee Will getting alternately rich and poor.
So drop by tonight
And help us write
The song of reckless spending.
Inspired Unreality is held in the gamerplus chatrooms at Tenkar's Tavern on Discord. For more info go here.
https://gamerplus.org/index
Since we started on Caper we'll end on Caper.
In our 5e family game on Friday Caper the Giant Killer slew another Giant Beast or I should say Caper set the trap and the party beat the daylights out of him and his troll minion. It only cost Caper 5 gold to get a plaque hung in the inn with the giant's sword saying This Giant was killed by Caper the Giant Killer and Company. Caper is a halfling Bard and in the music business it's all hype.
https://gamerplus.org/newsfeed/4213
And that's the Gamer+ News of Caper, my favorite D&D character who I have played longer than the age of some of my grandkids playing in the game.
Let me know about your favorite D&D character.
Thanks,
Hairy Larry
https://gamerplus.org/user/hairylarry
hairylarry@curators.mixremix.cc
hairylarry@deltaboogie.com
Wee Will
Wee Will was born
with nary a coin
and his parents had naught neither
His Ma said
Will is gonna be rich
but no one would believe her.
But then one day
Around mid may
Will tripped and skint his knee.
And what did he see
buried under the tree?
'twas the shiny glint of gold.
Gold, gold, gold, gold, gold, gold, gold, gold,
Gold, gold, gold, gold, gold, gold, gold, gold.
Wee Will brought the coin
to his Ma at home
and they were rich as kings
with stars in his eyes
he looked to the skies
and dreamt of his favorite things.
His ma went to town
and the wheel goes round
she paid her bill and then she
loaded up on groceries
like she had no worries
and was left with just a penny.
Gold, gold, gold, gold, gold, gold, gold, gold,
Gold, gold, gold, gold, gold, gold, gold, gold.
Of course we need more tales of Wee Will getting alternately rich and poor.
So drop by tonight
And help us write
The song of reckless spending.
Inspired Unreality is held in the gamerplus chatrooms at Tenkar's Tavern on Discord. For more info go here.
https://gamerplus.org/index
Since we started on Caper we'll end on Caper.
In our 5e family game on Friday Caper the Giant Killer slew another Giant Beast or I should say Caper set the trap and the party beat the daylights out of him and his troll minion. It only cost Caper 5 gold to get a plaque hung in the inn with the giant's sword saying This Giant was killed by Caper the Giant Killer and Company. Caper is a halfling Bard and in the music business it's all hype.
https://gamerplus.org/newsfeed/4213
And that's the Gamer+ News of Caper, my favorite D&D character who I have played longer than the age of some of my grandkids playing in the game.
Let me know about your favorite D&D character.
Thanks,
Hairy Larry
https://gamerplus.org/user/hairylarry
hairylarry@curators.mixremix.cc
hairylarry@deltaboogie.com
Welcome to Inspired Unreality open game chat, tonight at 9:00 PM Central in the gamerplus chatrooms at Tenkar's Tavern on Discord. If you've never been to Tenkar's Tavern there's a link for you here.
https://gamerplus.org/index
First on the agenda tonight will be working on Caper's song of reckless spending, a favorite of proprietors in gambling houses everywhere Caper goes. So far I've got something about the wheel goes round but we're going to hammer it out tonight and I need your help.
Last week Alan joined us and we talked a bit about SF and Fantasy books and a bit about writing, discussing our current projects. Alan is working on his Ember module called "Mine". I have run it once at ARRPGCon and once online and it was fun both times.
https://gamerplus.org/user/Alan
He will tell you about The Chronicles of Ember here.
https://chroniclesofember.com/2018/04/10/welcome-to-ember/
I am reading Rebecca Roanhorse. Her novel, "Black Sun", is a Hugo finalist this year and deserves to win. (Although I haven't read any of the other finalists yet. They probably all deserve to win.) She also writes YA Fantasy stories based on Navajo mythology. More here.
https://gamerplus.org/newsfeed/4199
And I posted another chapter for my book, "Setting Up A Twitch Studio - Using Tech Creatively" called Backup Overview and Strategy. Yeah, I know. Boring. But essential!
https://gamerplus.org/blogs/post/806
Come to Inspired Unreality tonight to help Caper finish his song of reckless spending. One more page in Caper's Songbook, soon to be a minizine resource for bard's everywhere.
Spread the word.
Thanks,
Hairy Larry
https://gamerplus.org/user/hairylarry
hairylarry@curators.mixremix.cc
hairylarry@deltaboogie.com
https://gamerplus.org/index
First on the agenda tonight will be working on Caper's song of reckless spending, a favorite of proprietors in gambling houses everywhere Caper goes. So far I've got something about the wheel goes round but we're going to hammer it out tonight and I need your help.
Last week Alan joined us and we talked a bit about SF and Fantasy books and a bit about writing, discussing our current projects. Alan is working on his Ember module called "Mine". I have run it once at ARRPGCon and once online and it was fun both times.
https://gamerplus.org/user/Alan
He will tell you about The Chronicles of Ember here.
https://chroniclesofember.com/2018/04/10/welcome-to-ember/
I am reading Rebecca Roanhorse. Her novel, "Black Sun", is a Hugo finalist this year and deserves to win. (Although I haven't read any of the other finalists yet. They probably all deserve to win.) She also writes YA Fantasy stories based on Navajo mythology. More here.
https://gamerplus.org/newsfeed/4199
And I posted another chapter for my book, "Setting Up A Twitch Studio - Using Tech Creatively" called Backup Overview and Strategy. Yeah, I know. Boring. But essential!
https://gamerplus.org/blogs/post/806
Come to Inspired Unreality tonight to help Caper finish his song of reckless spending. One more page in Caper's Songbook, soon to be a minizine resource for bard's everywhere.
Spread the word.
Thanks,
Hairy Larry
https://gamerplus.org/user/hairylarry
hairylarry@curators.mixremix.cc
hairylarry@deltaboogie.com
There are two types of backups. File backups and system backups. File backups preserve a set of files, for instance my folder /Video/twitch/2021-08-08 which contains the original recording of my twitch stream, Openshot project folders and .osp files that allow me to reload the project into Openshot. Rendered videos that are the actual mp4 files that get uploaded to the internet. Audio files, mp3s extracted from the video files, normalized, and ready to be uploaded to the internet. And other assets, my screenshot, my web size screenshot, and a text file, notes.txt.
If I lose my data on my hard drive, whether the entire folder or just a screenshot, I can go to the backup and recover this file. That is the whole purpose of backups.
System backups allow you to restore your entire working environment, the OS, the drivers, the software installs, the data, etc. I don't do system backups. If I have a catastrophic failure I do a new install and then restore my data from backup.
Some businesses cannot live with the cash flow loss due to excessive downtime. They will have system backups and redundant sustems ready to be swapped in if necessary. Their hard drives will be mirrored and every time they write a bit it will be written to two drives. They will have daily, hourly, or real time offsite backups just in case the catastrophic data loss take the form of a tsunami or a tornado.
Needless to say this kind of full system backup is difficult to install and requires constant monitoring and maintenance. It is not really realistic for an artist's, writer's or gamer's creative project. So I am not going into system backups any further. There are software and hardware turnkey systems that perform both system backups and file backups. If this is what you need and you can afford it then this is what you should do.
Just like web promotion can take the other 100% of your time, backups can take the other 100% of your time. So try to be realistic.
File backups breakdown further into two different categories, active data sets and static data sets.
The data set described above is a static data set. The files are created in the course of a day or two and then it is unlikely they will ever be changed again.
My webdev folder and my Documents folder are active data sets. Each day, week, or other random interval I write to them. I change existing files and I create new files. It's a constant churn, hence active.
Backing up static data sets to optical discs like CDs, DVDs, or Blu-Ray works great. You work on a project. You finish the project. You write it to an optical disc. And you're good. I do this with my Something Blue radio production. When I'm done with each show I have three audio discs and a data disc. The data disc is my static backup.
I also have a backup server that is great for static data sets and not so good for active data sets. I use rsync, a command line file transfer program. I run it once a day on every home directory. If a file is new it gets copied to the backup server. If a file is changed it gets copied to the backup server. As long as this is working correctly I never lose a data file.
Which is great! But not so good for active data sets. Because if I have to recover an active data set and I go to this backup server I get all my files back. But I also get all my deleted files back. This is a feature, not a bug. This type of backup does not delete files so if I accidentally delete a file and I don't notice it right away I can still recover it from my backup server.
But it is also not so great. Because if I want to restore an active data set I want to restore all the files and none of the deleted files so I have the exact same data set that I lost.
The other thing not so great about my rsync data server is if I make a bad edit to a file and I don't notice it until tomorrow I then have two copies of the file with the bad edit and no copies the way the file was before I messed it up.
The solution to this problem is called versioning. A backup system that keeps older versions of the file as well as the current version. Computer geeks have been working this problem for a while and they are able to keep many versions of a file without using excessive disk space by keeping only the changed parts in what are called diff files. Computer programmers rely on versioning because computer programs are easy to break and sometimes a programmer needs to find the code that was in the program three versions back.
The most popular versioning program for computer programs is called git and was written by Linus Torvalds, the original author and maintainer of the Linux kernel. git can be used for other projects that require versioning as well.
I am installing a software called Restic on another backup server. This server will have mirrored drives in what is called RAID 1 so every bit will be written to two drives. Restic will handle both the exact mirroring of active data sets and the versioning. Perfect for active data sets.
Which is another thing about backups. As your projects change your backup needs change. So besides monitoring your backups to make sure they are working good and that you have plenty of disk space sometimes you have to reevaluate your backup needs and change or add to what you are already doing.
A moving target. Complicated. And tricky.
So, first line of defense. Include backups in your workflow.
After I perform a twitch stream there are two copies of the stream. One on the twitch website and one on the hard drive of the computer in my twitch studio. The first thing I do is create the folder for video post production on my primary work computer and then I copy the video file from my computer in my twitch studio onto my primary work computer. This is where I am going to do my video post production, where I have Openshot, VLC, GIMP, and other tools installed. So no matter how bad a mistake I make while extracting my videos from this file I do not mess up the original video file. I am working with a backup copy. As part of my workflow I make a backup copy. It's the first thing I do. And I never forget to do it or find out to late that my automated backup system jammed and didn't back it up.
If you only have one system, install another hard drive for your post production work so that you will have two copies of your original file on two different hard drives. So, your backup is integrated into your workflow and that drives equipment purchase. See how quickly we get back to the fun stuff.
Up above I talked about my optical backups for my Something Blue shows and I mentioned three audio CDs. My show is an hour long and the station needs it delivered in two parts so they can include a station break at the half hour. So I write Part 1 to a CD and I write Part 2 to another CD. I used to carry these CDs to the station but now I use Exact Audio Copy to turn each CD into a single mp3 file and I deliver these files to the station on the internet.
Then I create a CD with the whole show. I rip it with Exact Audio Copy to a single mp3 file that I upload to MixCloud. MixCloud has widgets so I can then embed the show on the Something Blue website, sbblues.com, or include it anywhere that I can post embeds. I also use this copy for syndication.
So these three CDs are audio backups of my finished product and they are made as part of the workflow. I also make three 29 second spots for KASU to air and to help promote the show on the internet. And I make my From The Archives Of Something Blue podcast that airs on Arkansas Roots on Wednesdays and Saturdays and that I also post to my funkwhale, my hairylarry.rocks blog, and to the Something Blue website.
There are, again, additional assets, a picture to promote the show and a picture to promote the podcast as well as the text files with all my spoken parts.
So after I'm done with all that and the show is done and uploaded and the podcast and promo spots are uploaded I make an optical backup of the folder to a CD or DVD. From this backup I could recreate the show or even change it if necessary, even if I lost the hard drive with the shows data.
And that brings me to synchronization, the third strategy. I have three systems with all the programs installed necessary to produce Something Blue. My main workstation, my office workstation, and our photo server. Network shares are great but they are not as quick and easy as working from the local hard drive so I use a program called SyncThing that works on Linux and Windows to synchronize my somethingblue folders on all three systems. So every time I make a change to a file or add a file it is automatically updated on three different systems. This is easy to set up and check, works in the background, and adds to my convenience as well as providing backup copies of my changes.
If I accidentally delete a file, synchronization will delete the file in all synchronized folders, so like all the other backup strategies discussed there are advantages and disadvantages. I think synchronization is best used along with some other file backup strategy. Since I installed SyncThing they have added versioning so If it works for you this should solve the problem of accidental deletions.
And the final strategy is cloud backup. There are companies, like Carbonite, that handle your backups for you over the internet. This is a one stop solution that handles file backups with versioning. There is a per computer monthly fee on their personal accounts that is not high for what they provide but if you are in a multi computer shop, like mine, these fees may add up. They also rely on your bandwidth instead of local hardware. So if you've got plenty of bandwidth, like most twitch streamers, and you have only one or two computers I recommend that you try them out. My brother works from a single laptop and uses Carbonite for his only backup strategy and he has recovered lost or damaged files with it. He also likes the fact that when he upgrades his computer all he has to do is install Carbonite and then let his computer churn away for a day or two while carbonite restores all of his work files in the correct folders and it's just like he's sitting down at his old computer, except faster.
So we have covered four strategies, system backup, file backup, synchronization, and cloud backup. The first three take work to setup and maintain. If cloud backup works for you it is the simplest solution. So if you do your production work on a single computer and you have good bandwidth start there.
If the cloud doesn't work for you start with optical backups of your production folders as part of your workflow. If you have an older computer it will work fine as a backup server using rsync or a file transer program with a GUI to backup your home folders daily. You will probably need to buy a hard drive. I buy 4TB HGST drives on ebay for about $65. It doesn't really matter if your backup drives are fast as long as they are reliable. So spend an extra few dollars for new drives even though I have had good luck with used HGST drives too.
And make sure that you don't have to spend too much time on your backups or they won't get done. Integrate manual backups to optical discs into your workflow and automate everything else.
After all, we're not here to make backups. We're here to create! Just don't forget that when it comes to computers failure is not if but when and make sure your backup strategies will allow you to recover your precious work.
If I lose my data on my hard drive, whether the entire folder or just a screenshot, I can go to the backup and recover this file. That is the whole purpose of backups.
System backups allow you to restore your entire working environment, the OS, the drivers, the software installs, the data, etc. I don't do system backups. If I have a catastrophic failure I do a new install and then restore my data from backup.
Some businesses cannot live with the cash flow loss due to excessive downtime. They will have system backups and redundant sustems ready to be swapped in if necessary. Their hard drives will be mirrored and every time they write a bit it will be written to two drives. They will have daily, hourly, or real time offsite backups just in case the catastrophic data loss take the form of a tsunami or a tornado.
Needless to say this kind of full system backup is difficult to install and requires constant monitoring and maintenance. It is not really realistic for an artist's, writer's or gamer's creative project. So I am not going into system backups any further. There are software and hardware turnkey systems that perform both system backups and file backups. If this is what you need and you can afford it then this is what you should do.
Just like web promotion can take the other 100% of your time, backups can take the other 100% of your time. So try to be realistic.
File backups breakdown further into two different categories, active data sets and static data sets.
The data set described above is a static data set. The files are created in the course of a day or two and then it is unlikely they will ever be changed again.
My webdev folder and my Documents folder are active data sets. Each day, week, or other random interval I write to them. I change existing files and I create new files. It's a constant churn, hence active.
Backing up static data sets to optical discs like CDs, DVDs, or Blu-Ray works great. You work on a project. You finish the project. You write it to an optical disc. And you're good. I do this with my Something Blue radio production. When I'm done with each show I have three audio discs and a data disc. The data disc is my static backup.
I also have a backup server that is great for static data sets and not so good for active data sets. I use rsync, a command line file transfer program. I run it once a day on every home directory. If a file is new it gets copied to the backup server. If a file is changed it gets copied to the backup server. As long as this is working correctly I never lose a data file.
Which is great! But not so good for active data sets. Because if I have to recover an active data set and I go to this backup server I get all my files back. But I also get all my deleted files back. This is a feature, not a bug. This type of backup does not delete files so if I accidentally delete a file and I don't notice it right away I can still recover it from my backup server.
But it is also not so great. Because if I want to restore an active data set I want to restore all the files and none of the deleted files so I have the exact same data set that I lost.
The other thing not so great about my rsync data server is if I make a bad edit to a file and I don't notice it until tomorrow I then have two copies of the file with the bad edit and no copies the way the file was before I messed it up.
The solution to this problem is called versioning. A backup system that keeps older versions of the file as well as the current version. Computer geeks have been working this problem for a while and they are able to keep many versions of a file without using excessive disk space by keeping only the changed parts in what are called diff files. Computer programmers rely on versioning because computer programs are easy to break and sometimes a programmer needs to find the code that was in the program three versions back.
The most popular versioning program for computer programs is called git and was written by Linus Torvalds, the original author and maintainer of the Linux kernel. git can be used for other projects that require versioning as well.
I am installing a software called Restic on another backup server. This server will have mirrored drives in what is called RAID 1 so every bit will be written to two drives. Restic will handle both the exact mirroring of active data sets and the versioning. Perfect for active data sets.
Which is another thing about backups. As your projects change your backup needs change. So besides monitoring your backups to make sure they are working good and that you have plenty of disk space sometimes you have to reevaluate your backup needs and change or add to what you are already doing.
A moving target. Complicated. And tricky.
So, first line of defense. Include backups in your workflow.
After I perform a twitch stream there are two copies of the stream. One on the twitch website and one on the hard drive of the computer in my twitch studio. The first thing I do is create the folder for video post production on my primary work computer and then I copy the video file from my computer in my twitch studio onto my primary work computer. This is where I am going to do my video post production, where I have Openshot, VLC, GIMP, and other tools installed. So no matter how bad a mistake I make while extracting my videos from this file I do not mess up the original video file. I am working with a backup copy. As part of my workflow I make a backup copy. It's the first thing I do. And I never forget to do it or find out to late that my automated backup system jammed and didn't back it up.
If you only have one system, install another hard drive for your post production work so that you will have two copies of your original file on two different hard drives. So, your backup is integrated into your workflow and that drives equipment purchase. See how quickly we get back to the fun stuff.
Up above I talked about my optical backups for my Something Blue shows and I mentioned three audio CDs. My show is an hour long and the station needs it delivered in two parts so they can include a station break at the half hour. So I write Part 1 to a CD and I write Part 2 to another CD. I used to carry these CDs to the station but now I use Exact Audio Copy to turn each CD into a single mp3 file and I deliver these files to the station on the internet.
Then I create a CD with the whole show. I rip it with Exact Audio Copy to a single mp3 file that I upload to MixCloud. MixCloud has widgets so I can then embed the show on the Something Blue website, sbblues.com, or include it anywhere that I can post embeds. I also use this copy for syndication.
So these three CDs are audio backups of my finished product and they are made as part of the workflow. I also make three 29 second spots for KASU to air and to help promote the show on the internet. And I make my From The Archives Of Something Blue podcast that airs on Arkansas Roots on Wednesdays and Saturdays and that I also post to my funkwhale, my hairylarry.rocks blog, and to the Something Blue website.
There are, again, additional assets, a picture to promote the show and a picture to promote the podcast as well as the text files with all my spoken parts.
So after I'm done with all that and the show is done and uploaded and the podcast and promo spots are uploaded I make an optical backup of the folder to a CD or DVD. From this backup I could recreate the show or even change it if necessary, even if I lost the hard drive with the shows data.
And that brings me to synchronization, the third strategy. I have three systems with all the programs installed necessary to produce Something Blue. My main workstation, my office workstation, and our photo server. Network shares are great but they are not as quick and easy as working from the local hard drive so I use a program called SyncThing that works on Linux and Windows to synchronize my somethingblue folders on all three systems. So every time I make a change to a file or add a file it is automatically updated on three different systems. This is easy to set up and check, works in the background, and adds to my convenience as well as providing backup copies of my changes.
If I accidentally delete a file, synchronization will delete the file in all synchronized folders, so like all the other backup strategies discussed there are advantages and disadvantages. I think synchronization is best used along with some other file backup strategy. Since I installed SyncThing they have added versioning so If it works for you this should solve the problem of accidental deletions.
And the final strategy is cloud backup. There are companies, like Carbonite, that handle your backups for you over the internet. This is a one stop solution that handles file backups with versioning. There is a per computer monthly fee on their personal accounts that is not high for what they provide but if you are in a multi computer shop, like mine, these fees may add up. They also rely on your bandwidth instead of local hardware. So if you've got plenty of bandwidth, like most twitch streamers, and you have only one or two computers I recommend that you try them out. My brother works from a single laptop and uses Carbonite for his only backup strategy and he has recovered lost or damaged files with it. He also likes the fact that when he upgrades his computer all he has to do is install Carbonite and then let his computer churn away for a day or two while carbonite restores all of his work files in the correct folders and it's just like he's sitting down at his old computer, except faster.
So we have covered four strategies, system backup, file backup, synchronization, and cloud backup. The first three take work to setup and maintain. If cloud backup works for you it is the simplest solution. So if you do your production work on a single computer and you have good bandwidth start there.
If the cloud doesn't work for you start with optical backups of your production folders as part of your workflow. If you have an older computer it will work fine as a backup server using rsync or a file transer program with a GUI to backup your home folders daily. You will probably need to buy a hard drive. I buy 4TB HGST drives on ebay for about $65. It doesn't really matter if your backup drives are fast as long as they are reliable. So spend an extra few dollars for new drives even though I have had good luck with used HGST drives too.
And make sure that you don't have to spend too much time on your backups or they won't get done. Integrate manual backups to optical discs into your workflow and automate everything else.
After all, we're not here to make backups. We're here to create! Just don't forget that when it comes to computers failure is not if but when and make sure your backup strategies will allow you to recover your precious work.
Tonight on Inspired Unreality we are talking about books and stories. The opening topic will be The Origins Of Fantasy. Fantasy is the well spring that D&D grew out of. Do fantasy stories predate civilization? Or is there an era in literature when fantasy was born?
Inspired Unreality is held every Monday night in the gamerplus chatrooms at Tenkar's Tavern on Discord. For more info go here.
https://gamerplus.org/index
Last week Ari and Caper worked on Caper's Song Book. And we started on a list of songs for the book. Then we wrote this.
Song of perception
tin tin aree tin tin aroo
look about look about could be you
jump about jump about one and two
tin tin aree tin tin aroo
To be sung by the whole party twice through to increases alertness and perception.
Here's a link to my post about Caper's Song Book.
https://gamerplus.org/blogs/post/798
Carl Heyl linked to the Conan Artbook Kickstarter from the Troll Lords!
https://gamerplus.org/newsfeed/4186
I added a chapter to my book in progress, Setting Up A Twitch Studio - Using Tech Creatively. The new chapter is about Web Promotion.
https://gamerplus.org/blogs/post/801
What have you been reading? Join us tonight on Inspired Unreality and let us know. What have you been writing? Post a link. Do you use tech creatively? Comment on my post.
Please share this newsletter with your gaming friends.
Thanks,
Hairy Larry
https://gamerplus.org/user/hairylarry
hairylarry@curators.mixremix.cc
hairylarry@deltaboogie.com
Inspired Unreality is held every Monday night in the gamerplus chatrooms at Tenkar's Tavern on Discord. For more info go here.
https://gamerplus.org/index
Last week Ari and Caper worked on Caper's Song Book. And we started on a list of songs for the book. Then we wrote this.
Song of perception
tin tin aree tin tin aroo
look about look about could be you
jump about jump about one and two
tin tin aree tin tin aroo
To be sung by the whole party twice through to increases alertness and perception.
Here's a link to my post about Caper's Song Book.
https://gamerplus.org/blogs/post/798
Carl Heyl linked to the Conan Artbook Kickstarter from the Troll Lords!
https://gamerplus.org/newsfeed/4186
I added a chapter to my book in progress, Setting Up A Twitch Studio - Using Tech Creatively. The new chapter is about Web Promotion.
https://gamerplus.org/blogs/post/801
What have you been reading? Join us tonight on Inspired Unreality and let us know. What have you been writing? Post a link. Do you use tech creatively? Comment on my post.
Please share this newsletter with your gaming friends.
Thanks,
Hairy Larry
https://gamerplus.org/user/hairylarry
hairylarry@curators.mixremix.cc
hairylarry@deltaboogie.com
The problem with promoting your art on the web is that the internet is a bottomless bucket that will swallow whatever amount of promotion you can throw at it in an attempt to make you spend all your time on web promotion and no time making art.
But I can't do that! I have a performance schedule and I have a production schedule and they take time.
What works for me is flowing out of performance into production and then into promotion as an integrated workflow. My performance takes production realities into account. The production work keeps the promotion in mind. And the promotion is designed to be easy to do. Because, believe me, you can spend endless hours typing descriptions into text boxes and it will keep you up all night if you let it.
So, health first.
And to explain further, when I wrote "My performance takes production realities into account." I meant, I really don't want to start the song with poorly played music so if I muffed it the first time around maybe I ought to play it again. And I mean that I work to keep my intros and outtros clean and editable so they don't give me a problem when I'm trimming that clip.
And for you it means something different, depending on your project. But whatever your project there will always be preparation, performance, and production cycles and thinking of prep and performance in terms of production helps you streamline your production workflow.
And tailoring your production to your promotion will also make your posting easier and better. Write your text so that it can be pasted into the description field of any social network and make sense. It should include all the links to your homepages where you initially upload and where information about you and your projects can be found. It should include license info so everyone knows when it's ok to share and what is not ok.
Video is great because it comes with it's own still, the paused video, but not all projects are video and not all websites handle video well so it's a good idea to prepare screen captures or other still photos as assets to help you with your promotion. I do one screen capture for each performance date and then I scale that same image down to web friendly sizes, in the hundreds of pixels high and wide instead of in the thousands.
I think of my servers as the trunk of the tree and posts to Youtube and other social networks as leaves that reveal a little bit about the tree and provide links to the trunk where everything is happening.
So the trunk of my tree is on two different servers, one of them sitting here to my right, as I type, running Yunohost web server software and peertube video sharing software. The other is the Live Music Archive at archive.org, the Internet Library. So two servers, one directly under my control and the other a library web service dedicated to preserving live music performances. That works for me.
The trunk of your tree may be anchor.fm and Youtube. It doesn't have to be your own server. It could be a free blog at wordpress.com and an account at Etsy. It depends on you and your project and your desires and requirements.
When the work is finished and ready to distribute post it to your trunk or your servers first. This should be part of your production workflow making the content available while you prepare your promotional text and other assets that go with each production.
So I post to the Live Music Archive first, audio and then video. By the time the video is uploaded, which can take a long time, the audio item is ready for some metadata tweaks so the mp3 versions of the songs carry the correct info right in the file.
Then I upload to peertube. My goal here is a playlist so part of my production workflow includes numbering the sets in order. I upload to peertube in performance order and create the playlist at the same time so it will also be in performance order. I add the link to the playlist into the text description. I also add the link to this peertube video to the text because this is the same text I will use everywhere and I want it to link back to me. That is to peertube.hairylarry.rocks.
Uploading to peertube goes really fast because I'm uploading to my own server right in my house. So the bits really fly across the LAN going possibly as far as my ISP and back but no farther.
I also have a nextcloud file backup and sharing service installed on my other server at the hairylarryland.com domain. I upload all of my assets, audio, video, screenshots, and text to a dated folder there. But it's not really part of the trunk because I don't build my promotion from there. It's more like a backup server than a promotional website.
Backing up all my files to the nextcloud server is also part of my production and promotion workflow. If you do your backups as a separate job sometimes they won't get done. Integrate your backups into your workflow where they are another important part of the whole process. Don't think of them as a separate chore.
I use a star system. 1 star means good enough for video production. 3 stars marks a song for extra promotion. So, if I have a three star song in the performance I upload it to Youtube. Otherwise I usually upload the first song in the playlist.
And when I get to the description field I copy and paste the text I already have on peertube. This includes a link to the playlist and to the video on my peertube. It also includes a link to the nextcloud files so potential collaborators can download best quality video files without having to deal with the Youtube or peertube processing.
You see, I haven't done any web collaboration with other musicians playing over my piano trio tracks yet but it is already built into the production workflow and the promotion because it's something I would like to do in the future.
And then I post the Youtube page everywhere because everyone is familiar with Youtube and all the websites work with Youtube videos.
Facebook sucks. I don't use it. You really shouldn't use it. That's a rant for another article. There are a large number of your fans that only use facebook and they never go anywhere else. There are a large number of your fans, like me, who never use facebook because facebook sucks.
So I post to facebook. From an earlier era I have a Hairy Larry facebook and I have a Delta Boogie facebook. When I'm done posting to Youtube they have a nice share screen which allows me to share my videos on facebook without actually going on facebook. So I post to Hairy Larry and then I post to a friends timeline to get Delta Boogie and I try to get out of there without any of the facebook stuff rubbing off on me.
I also use the Youtube share screen to post to the @hairylarryland twitter.
I also have a Friendica instance that puts me in the Mastodon Fediverse and I post the Youtube there because I have trouble embedding the peertube on Friendica. This shouldn't be the way it is because both peertube and Friendica reside in the same share space and can actually share messages with each other. So, when doing your promotion let pragmatism rule and do what works so you can get it done because you can also spend all night dealing with the intricacies of peer to peer social networks. Which you should do, if that's your thing. But I'm warning you, it's hard. Like Calculus. You have to learn how to think in a different way.
You also want to hope that you get all this done before your next scheduled performance. Because after you go through another production cycle and you have new work to promote you should spend your time promoting that.
But I can't do that! I have a performance schedule and I have a production schedule and they take time.
What works for me is flowing out of performance into production and then into promotion as an integrated workflow. My performance takes production realities into account. The production work keeps the promotion in mind. And the promotion is designed to be easy to do. Because, believe me, you can spend endless hours typing descriptions into text boxes and it will keep you up all night if you let it.
So, health first.
And to explain further, when I wrote "My performance takes production realities into account." I meant, I really don't want to start the song with poorly played music so if I muffed it the first time around maybe I ought to play it again. And I mean that I work to keep my intros and outtros clean and editable so they don't give me a problem when I'm trimming that clip.
And for you it means something different, depending on your project. But whatever your project there will always be preparation, performance, and production cycles and thinking of prep and performance in terms of production helps you streamline your production workflow.
And tailoring your production to your promotion will also make your posting easier and better. Write your text so that it can be pasted into the description field of any social network and make sense. It should include all the links to your homepages where you initially upload and where information about you and your projects can be found. It should include license info so everyone knows when it's ok to share and what is not ok.
Video is great because it comes with it's own still, the paused video, but not all projects are video and not all websites handle video well so it's a good idea to prepare screen captures or other still photos as assets to help you with your promotion. I do one screen capture for each performance date and then I scale that same image down to web friendly sizes, in the hundreds of pixels high and wide instead of in the thousands.
I think of my servers as the trunk of the tree and posts to Youtube and other social networks as leaves that reveal a little bit about the tree and provide links to the trunk where everything is happening.
So the trunk of my tree is on two different servers, one of them sitting here to my right, as I type, running Yunohost web server software and peertube video sharing software. The other is the Live Music Archive at archive.org, the Internet Library. So two servers, one directly under my control and the other a library web service dedicated to preserving live music performances. That works for me.
The trunk of your tree may be anchor.fm and Youtube. It doesn't have to be your own server. It could be a free blog at wordpress.com and an account at Etsy. It depends on you and your project and your desires and requirements.
When the work is finished and ready to distribute post it to your trunk or your servers first. This should be part of your production workflow making the content available while you prepare your promotional text and other assets that go with each production.
So I post to the Live Music Archive first, audio and then video. By the time the video is uploaded, which can take a long time, the audio item is ready for some metadata tweaks so the mp3 versions of the songs carry the correct info right in the file.
Then I upload to peertube. My goal here is a playlist so part of my production workflow includes numbering the sets in order. I upload to peertube in performance order and create the playlist at the same time so it will also be in performance order. I add the link to the playlist into the text description. I also add the link to this peertube video to the text because this is the same text I will use everywhere and I want it to link back to me. That is to peertube.hairylarry.rocks.
Uploading to peertube goes really fast because I'm uploading to my own server right in my house. So the bits really fly across the LAN going possibly as far as my ISP and back but no farther.
I also have a nextcloud file backup and sharing service installed on my other server at the hairylarryland.com domain. I upload all of my assets, audio, video, screenshots, and text to a dated folder there. But it's not really part of the trunk because I don't build my promotion from there. It's more like a backup server than a promotional website.
Backing up all my files to the nextcloud server is also part of my production and promotion workflow. If you do your backups as a separate job sometimes they won't get done. Integrate your backups into your workflow where they are another important part of the whole process. Don't think of them as a separate chore.
I use a star system. 1 star means good enough for video production. 3 stars marks a song for extra promotion. So, if I have a three star song in the performance I upload it to Youtube. Otherwise I usually upload the first song in the playlist.
And when I get to the description field I copy and paste the text I already have on peertube. This includes a link to the playlist and to the video on my peertube. It also includes a link to the nextcloud files so potential collaborators can download best quality video files without having to deal with the Youtube or peertube processing.
You see, I haven't done any web collaboration with other musicians playing over my piano trio tracks yet but it is already built into the production workflow and the promotion because it's something I would like to do in the future.
And then I post the Youtube page everywhere because everyone is familiar with Youtube and all the websites work with Youtube videos.
Facebook sucks. I don't use it. You really shouldn't use it. That's a rant for another article. There are a large number of your fans that only use facebook and they never go anywhere else. There are a large number of your fans, like me, who never use facebook because facebook sucks.
So I post to facebook. From an earlier era I have a Hairy Larry facebook and I have a Delta Boogie facebook. When I'm done posting to Youtube they have a nice share screen which allows me to share my videos on facebook without actually going on facebook. So I post to Hairy Larry and then I post to a friends timeline to get Delta Boogie and I try to get out of there without any of the facebook stuff rubbing off on me.
I also use the Youtube share screen to post to the @hairylarryland twitter.
I also have a Friendica instance that puts me in the Mastodon Fediverse and I post the Youtube there because I have trouble embedding the peertube on Friendica. This shouldn't be the way it is because both peertube and Friendica reside in the same share space and can actually share messages with each other. So, when doing your promotion let pragmatism rule and do what works so you can get it done because you can also spend all night dealing with the intricacies of peer to peer social networks. Which you should do, if that's your thing. But I'm warning you, it's hard. Like Calculus. You have to learn how to think in a different way.
You also want to hope that you get all this done before your next scheduled performance. Because after you go through another production cycle and you have new work to promote you should spend your time promoting that.
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