RD Xmas 2023 party remix

Dancing in a rave with redlights

For Xmas, like many workplaces we have a staff party. I gatecrashed into my previous teams Manchester xmas party and put my name down for 30mins djing. However I didn’t record the mix but I did keep the playlist and so recreated it twice (2nd time for another work event).

I won’t lie, this is less trancy but is a killer mix or as others have said to me… its a banger!

I am moving my mixes to peertube rather than my mixgarden (1) & (2) for now.

Enjoy and remember to turn it up loud.

  1. Thriller (Steve Aoki Midnight Hour Remix) – Michael Jackson
  2. Punk – Ferry Corsten
  3. Rock Your Body Rock (Mat Zo Extended Remix) – Ferry Corsten
  4. Echoes – Henrik B, Niklas Gustavsson & Peter Johansson
  5. Cafe Del Mar At Night (Beat Service’s Out Of Office Mashup) – Energy 52 Vs Shakedown
  6. Who Freaked Who (Electric Soulside Remix) – Dopefish
  7. Beat (Da Boxx) – Laurent Garnier
  8. Turn It Up (Extended Mix) – Armin van Buuren
  9. Freedom (Extended mix) – ARTY v Muvy
  10. Proper Education (club mix) – Eric Prydz vs. Floyd

My mix garden on the move again, hello peertube!

Digital Italics WebMix

I have been mixing away on the pacemaker device as usual. But noticed my mixgarden is having some troubles. I was using hyperaudio and webmonization to present my mixes. It was good however things changed over the last year.

Webmonization made a number of changes and hyperaudio seems to be slightly broken the configuration I currently have it in.

So with all this in mind and after looking at Peertube and Castopod, I decided to give peertube a try before running my own instance. Similar to what I had planned with Funkwhale a long time ago.

This has worked out well on rankett. Then I heard on podnews last week about music freediverse.

Music Freediverse is a new place for musicians to post their songs as an RSS feed, using PeerTube.

After a email with the sysadmin, about mixes and legality of them. They suggested I check out Split Kit if I have the metadata (which I do), this is something I looked into and now have a lightening address, which you can send sats to on my new mixgarden. I am also interested in the peer 2 peer tech

One of the good things about Peertube is the ability to sync videos over, which I took advantage of, it was a shame the metadata wasn’t copied over too but its fine, as I had it all.

In the short term I’ll keep using peertube but I have a plan to install a peertube instance myself and host it all locally. Then I could syndicate them out elsewhere. (Anyone can recommend a good docker container, do shout)

Another thing for the task list, but likely the best idea for now with lots of room to grow and expand.

Talking of which the next mix is a banger….

My mix garden is down for a while

Mixing live in the EMFCamp null sector

I only noticed today that my mixgarden is currently down. I know exactly why which means its been like that for a while (a couple of weeks).

I recently upgraded to Apache 82 from Nginx and my redirect hasn’t been updated but not only that, my process really needs my Dell XPS laptop which has a currently a bit broken battery. My chromebook is good but its a struggle when messing with SSH and content on the Dell not Chromebook. Being ill and loosing someone doesn’t really allow me the time either.

Fear not you can still get to most of the latest mixes on peertube.

Update 24th Oct 2023

I have fixed the problem, it does mean a slight change which I did plan to do a while ago.
Now the link for the mixes is

https://mixes.cubicgarden.info

not the old

https://www.cubicgarden.info/mixes.

I’m attempting to setup a redirect but currently ill and taking it easy…

Dying daylight in Utrecht mix

A street in Utrecht at sunset

I had the joy of going to Utrecht in the Netherlands for a Storyjam. On that plane ride I started a mix, which I thought was good. Then did it again during of the nights in the Airbnb recording it live to my external recorder. It was good but then on the plane ride back I let rip and the results is what you hear in the mix.

  1. Ayla (Veracocha mix) – Ayla
  2. Crazy for you – Greg Downey
  3. Daylight (Frainbreeze remix) – Saad Ayub & Cristina Soto
  4. Go Fast! – Orjan Nilsen
  5. Doppelganger – Niels van Gogh
  6. The Great Escape – Rank 1 Vs Jochen Miller
  7. Carte Blanche (David Gravell Remix) – Veracocha
  8. Apocalypse – Yuji Ono
  9. RAMsterdam (Jorn van Deynhoven remix) – RAM

You can hear the whole mix at full quality on my mixgarden or on peertube.

 

A beat that seems out of time (with the one you feel in the metronome of your mind) mix

Metronome in full swing
Metronome in full swing

Another mix using the Pacemaker device. However this time I have been experimenting with the later beta versions of the Pacemaker device firmware, which includes beat aware looping. It’s great but I find the native digital recording of the Pacemaker device unreliable when using it. I thought I had found the solution. But in the end I recorded the output directly using the analogue output.

The result is a completely unedited mix. Not quite as smooth with the cross fading but its just such a raw mix, I had to put it out.

First put together in Barcelona but the digital recording was all over the place, later I re-did the mix. This mix moves at a heavy pace and is fully of lovely progressive/tech beats with little lyrics. Perfect for hitting the treadmill, scooting down the motorway or what ever you fancy doing at a pace. Look out for the my beat into Inferno long mix, simply can’t stop bouncing my head to that section.

As always you can listen to it on my mixgarden or via peertube.

Here is the complete tracks used.

  1. [00:00] Fall to Pieces – Jonas Steur feat. Jennifer Rene
  2. [03:40] M.I.L.F. – Laurent Garnier
  3. [08:35] My Beat (Ambassador extended remix) – Blaze
  4. [11:10] Inferno – Carl Cox
  5. [16:18] Interlinked – Thomas Schumacher
  6. [23:02] Predator – Predator
  7. [26:40] Fiction (Extended Mix) – Jerome Isma-Ae & Alastor
  8. [31:04] Shnorkel (Thankyou City Remix) – Ido Ophir, Miki Litvak
  9. [35:42] Pǝsnɟuoɔ (Confused) – Laurent Garnier

Let the lyrics do the talking mix

Utopia's street art of a young woman with roses
Utopia’s street art of a young woman with roses (C) Utopia

A special anniversary mix for my partner, partly following the hearts in the clouds of Amsterdam mix. She loves vocals, while I tend to focus on the beats & rhythm. Looking through my collection of tunes, I was surprised how few had vocals.

With this, I started thinking about a mix using them and following a holiday in Lisbon. Tweaked an initial mix a few times to make it a better listen overall. The result is a mix which moves along at a higher speed of about 138bpm, matching the higher vocal trance and is a gift to my loving partner.

Of course enjoyable by all those who love vocal trance…

Enjoy it on my mixgarden or via Peertube!

The night life above and under Martim Moniz mix

The night life above and under Martim Moniz

Its a return to Lisbon’s Martim Moniz after the heights of Lisbon mix, always reminds me of how the square is being used by many different people. I learned the old city wall runs right through it and its interesting to sit and watch the different people come, go and gather.

Bit of a moody mix during a lovely holiday in Lisbon but its winter so wasn’t as warm. Leaning on the tech trance side, this mix has a large number of new tunes and some bold choices with the crossfader, which I kept in. Its a mix which gets you bopping that head up and down with some excellent tunes.

Enjoy on my mixgarden or on Peertube!

Twitter is all but dead for me now

Dead twitter bird

Twitter is all but dead for me now, I’ve been fed up and rarely even look at it. However over the last week, the API change just put the last nail in the coffin for me. Last time they did similar I was close to leaving back then.

Even then I did say one client for twitter is a bad idea and its time to double down on mastodon. I do wonder how much of this has changed too?

Now Twitter clients, Cawbird (linux), Plume (android) are facing problems and I’m seeing problems with Crossposter too.

Its clear the owner and business model has decimated this microblogging platform and its time to leave it alone. Decided not to leave only because like a few other web platform, I hold on to the user cubicgarden and ianforrester just incase.

So glad I joined Mastodon in 2017. I can be found on the fediverse on @cubicgarden@mas.to (general account, one I use the most)
@cubicgarden@twit.social (tech account)
@cubicgarden@scholar.social (academic account)
@cubicgarden@blacktwitter.io (music and lifestyle account)
@cubicgarden@bookwyrm.social (books I’m reading and have read)
@cubicgarden on Pixelfed (pictures I’m sharing around the fediverse)
@cubicgarden on Peertube (where I’m sharing new mixes, likely to move in the future)

Expect a lot less of me tweeting from now on… Reading about Twitter under a public remit is just super sad reading now.

Adding activitypub or switching to peertube?

Mixcloud warning: You've reached your limit for published shows

In my latest mix the interdimensional transmission mix, I went to mixcloud to find, I’ve reached my limit for published shows. So been thinking about what mixcloud does do for me. Mainly distribution and a bit of charting.

On the distribution side, it seems like the fediverse could easily do a better job. Originally I would love to use funkwhale but from previous experience it doesn’t really support mixes well compared to single tunes. Which is why I setup my own webmixgarden.

Currently I’m using a static site generator (pubili) which is great because I could add webmonitisation. Although I’m wondering if I should switch to one which supports activitypub? However I feel there is a way which combines both and its likely another platform on the fediverse? I can’t be the only one who is putting out mixes right?

I tooted and had some suggestions. But decided to look at peertube to see if that could work. After finding a instance, which had rules which worked for what I was doing. I starter experimenting here but i’m waiting for my mix to be moderated (its a one man instance, so expect it might take some time). If things work out I might just install peertube on my server.

Update

My mix is now up on peertube via rankett.net, thats the big news.
However I wanted to talk through what happened.

William who runs the rankett instance of peertube messaged me via email asking about copyright details of the mix. This was a surprise because we are all use to faceless entities moderating via machine learning.  We had a little chat over email and I explained what I was doing and shared this blog post. Happy with the explanation, my mix was unblacklisted and its now available for all to play.

I’m currently looking at ways to add chapters markers to the mix, by slightly abusing the captions feature. I can’t really see another way to do it.

Another update

LPS messaged me on mastodon and pointing out a undocumented feature of peertube.

I can easily add time points in the description and with the correct formatting will automatically turn into jump points into the mix.

Adding jump points in peertube

We also talked about setting up peertube using yunohost, which I’m already using. So theres little excuse now for me to just set it up one day soon.

The ActivityPub Ecosystem talk, some quick thoughts

I was watching Evan Prodromou giving a talk at the ActivityPub conference and jotted down a few rough thoughts along the way.

Slide 3 – We don’t need to do things the way commercial social networks do.
He’s right theres an opportunity for different types of business models but everybody keeps comparing it to the commercial business models. Heck even myself, I have been writing a presentation and have a slide with number of users.

Slide 5 – What kind of experience would you have with the provider of the software if it was trusted?
This is a good question, my experience with different software and systems is quite different because its under my control or is more trusted. It does change the way you use and what kind of data I’m willing to share?

Slide 8 – What kind of client apps? Evan talks a lot about the fun type of client events which would benefit from a good client API. Reminds me what ever happened to the poking or the old twitter nudge

Slide 9 – More free accounts.
Evan talks about many different local and small groups which could do with something more smaller and local. For example churches, neighbourhoods, cities, families, schools and universities. I would add teams, leagues, local committees, residents committees.. This is something which drives me bananas that we have to use facebook groups for a local residents group. Then have to protect it from external others. Most of the residents are sitting on high speed fiber. It should be super easy to run a local system. Slide 10 – Talking of running a local system, Evan is right, there is something good and powerful about simple self contained devices. I would happily buy a raspberry pi like system where I plug it into my network and I get a activitypub/fediverse server. Add the ability for zeroconf and zero-maintenance and you got something which could have a great user experience and that would be very welcomed. Its why I use Xbian for Kodi on my raspberry pi. Right now I’d happily install Funkwhale on a Raspberry Pi because trying to use docker has been a endless battle.

Slide 11 – Federation of things not internet of things.
Its something I’ve been thinking about a lot, in a recent project with Lancaster and Edinburgh University, I described a system which sucks up your personal data and just makes a copy of it but under your control.. That device (we ended up calling the pebble) is pretty much what Evan is talking about but at a larger scale and static within the home.
The pebble device was meant to copy your personal area network (PAN) communication like your phone, headphones, smartwatch, smart ring, steps, etc.

Slide 12 – Quantified Self
Perfectly timed Evan describes the project for the pebble system I just mentioned. Capturing, runs, food, heartbeats, etc.. But what for? Slide 13 – Lifestreaming! One of the reasons for is because of lifestreaming. If you haven’t heard this term for a long while, its something I and others use to talk about a lot. Iys lost its meaning a bit but also fell out of favour.I do collect a lot of data and maybe for the same reasons as Evan, some kind of digital legacy? The last 3 slides make this much more possible than currently requesting data or scraping it.

Slide 14 – We don’t have to get people hooked!
This goes without saying right?

Slide 15 – Optimize for happy
I like where this is going, always thought there is something in the long time de-funked happiest network. The network seemed to fail because of the weight of investors and the need for a business model. but if we take some examples from slide 16, like helping people, making things, getting enough sleep and wrap them up in a network which doesn’t need business model as such. Now that could be something.

Seeing feel gratitude, also got me thinking about a simple gratitude client which posts in activitypub. Feels like something I could write but surprised no one hasn’t already done it? Been also thinking about a mashup of happiest, gratitude status, google’s defunked schemer and the BBC R&D human values.

Slide 17 – Optimize for connection.
Yes indeed, right on the  human values train. The deepening of friendships and relationships can be massively powerful. And likewise…

Slide 18 – Optimize for meaning
Love the idea of Awesomescrolling oppose to doomscrolling! Not like Tiktok but something with substance which isn’t about entertaining you or being popular (what ever else the tiktok algorithm is optimised for).
Something which aids you in finding purpose and finding out whats really important to you, not just what advertisers want to put in front of you. Also love the idea of walking away with a sense of accomplishment not just happiness (not that this alone wouldn’t be enough of course).

Lastly Evan makes a good point about scaring people into the network. Important point made well…

Changes to the experience of mixcloud for free listeners

Rain clouds
Stormy rain clouds are coming?

As you may have noticed I use Mixcloud for uploading my DJ/Pacemaker device mixes. It works quite well because they upload the whole track with a few restrictions and you can listen to the lot anytime. I use to upload them to soundcloud but that didn’t work out too well.

Mixcloud has been pretty good to me but recently I noticed some changes coming into effect.

Some changes are coming to Mixcloud’s free playback experience. As a valued creator of the Mixcloud community, I’d like to personally notify you in advance about why we’re doing this.

We need to make some changes in order to keep running a legal platform in line with our licensing agreements, and a platform that is truly sustainable for the long term. Please read this open letter from myself and my co-founders to understand why and how these changes contribute to building a fair and sustainable streaming model that supports artists. I’ve summarized this for you below:

What’s changing?

Free listeners will only be able to seek forwards while listening to a show.

Free listeners will be able to listen to the same show maximum 3 times in a rolling two-week window.

Free listeners will not be able to listen to shows that feature more than 4 tracks by the same artist or more than 3 tracks from an album.

There more but its clear the pressure is on. Its nothing personal about mixcloud, they have to make money and its pretty fair. But I can’t help but  wondering about dataportability, because although I’m less concerned as I have all the mixes complete with track-listings and mix art on my machines backed up (The only thing I would like is the tags and some of the timings which I may not have directly).

I’m  wondering where I would go if I did move on?

The copyright filter would kill uploading to youtube and archive.org. I wonder if theres a decent alternative which is part of the dweb? The closest I can see is peertube, but its focused on video. To be fair I have enough bandwidth to host my own mixes on a instance of peertube…. Maybe something for a rainy weekend?