On the content side, now I can continue to expand the music collection as opportunity presents itself without running out of storage space. I had been backing up all the music to the 2TB external drive. That drive was 90% full. Now I've arranged the files on the external drives differently so free space will not be a problem for awhile. For the first time OtC viewers/listeners will be able to select from a pool of more than 240,000 locally-stored tracks. But still no Supreme Love Gods or White Zombie.
PC hardware updates are complete (finally!). The new Seagate 4TB NAS drive is installed and designated as the primary data drive. It's quieter and faster. It's really nice. The old suspect Western Digital 4TB drive has been relegated to backup status. The external drives remain in use, now as secondary backup. If a drive fails now, I won't be on pins and needles until I get a replacement. Yes, I know I'm still vulnerable by having everything in one physical place (natural disaster or theft could get me) and attached to the one PC (risk of a cryptolocker-style event), but I'm better off than I was before.
On the content side, now I can continue to expand the music collection as opportunity presents itself without running out of storage space. I had been backing up all the music to the 2TB external drive. That drive was 90% full. Now I've arranged the files on the external drives differently so free space will not be a problem for awhile. For the first time OtC viewers/listeners will be able to select from a pool of more than 240,000 locally-stored tracks. But still no Supreme Love Gods or White Zombie. We have a real good group of visitors/chatters that come to the Monday night Off the Charts. It's probably what I'm most proud of: the high quality of people that are attracted to the channel and participate in chat. As one viewer said, "Damn Gil, even the guests and trolls in here are polite." Well, it's not ALWAYS that way, but most of the time, yes. After Monday's cast, I captured and annotated some of the final chat of the show. If you weren't there Monday, here's a taste of what you missed (click to enlarge): Oh yeah, and we had some good tunes, too.
What drives a troll? I think most of them are some combination of one or more of the following, in no particular order:
#1 - They are self-centered and/or narcissists. It's all about them. They enjoy attention. Other people and their opinions or feelings are less important. #2 - They have poor or no manners. They believe manners don't apply online, or apply differently. Or they simply don't know any better, having never learned decent manners in the first place. #3 - They enjoy creating conflict. They don't know how to relate to someone else respectfully or cooperatively. #4 - They are emotionally underdeveloped, i.e., juvenile. They enjoy making fun of someone else. #5 - They are substance abusers. Or they may simply be intoxicated at the time. #6 - They are angry, jealous, unhappy, and/or empty. The only way they know how to deal with their own feelings is to spread their own misery. They don't feel good about themselves, so they try to make someone else feel bad also. #7 - They are bored. #8 - They are lazy, especially intellectually lazy. #9 - They don't have a firm grip on reality. For them, an online person is something less than someone in their physical presence. #10 - They are anonymous, or nearly so. There is seldom any consequence for bad behavior. #11 - There is no peer pressure to behave well. In fact, there is often peer reinforcement to behave badly, and they want to impress someone else. #12 - They feel slighted and want to "get back" at that person. #13 - They have a need to exert control. They can do so by being disruptive. #14 - They are socially maladroit. They don't realize they are behaving trollishly in a particular setting. #15 - They have no moral compass. Trolling doesn't seem wrong to them. I can't think of anymore right now. Did I miss any? Feel free to add you own. It looks like no one from "our group" elected to cast tonight in Jake's vacated time slot. Just for fun, I visited the top 12 channels in the VL directory from 11:35-11:50pm my time tonight (Saturday night). Here's what was going on when I looked in. As you know, the rankings and viewer counts change from moment to moment. I'm listing the channels in the order they appear in my screen cap, but with the info I recorded when I visited the channel, which might have been as much as 15 minutes before the screen cap was made. The top 12 channels as a group were pretty consistent for the entire 15 minute time span. #1 - The Dog Pound, 46 viewers. DJ'ing, playing Rufus ft. Chaka Khan "Tell Me Something Good". #2 - Third Party, 130 viewers. David talking politics, as usual. #3 - Totally 70s, 46 viewers. DJ'ing, playing: Gary Wright "Dream Weaver". #4 - 82mako20, 13 viewers. DJ'ing, playing Randy Travis "For Ever and Ever, Amen". #5 - AppleCandyFruity, 41 viewers. Talk. #6 - Hank & Jim, 35 viewers. DJ'ing, playing Dean Martin "Ain't That a Kick in the Head". #7 - thorfinn, 12 viewers. Music videos, playing Gus Gus "Over".
#8 - paquet90, 21 viewers. Talk while watching some spectator event (wrestling?). #9 - Horrorshow3000, 15 viewers. Group Skype. #10 - Radio Memories, 9 viewers. DJ'ing, playing Rolling Stones "Sympathy for the Devil". #11 - Gamer Girl, 18 viewers. Talk, skype. #12 - Joe Dutch, 100 viewers. Talk, skype. No further comment. A feature of this site is the References section that you can see on the right-hand side of this the Tidbits page. "References" contains links to sites I've found to be useful in researching and tagging the music in my collection.
A new entry is a site called Bullfrogs Pond. Bullfrogs Pond is a database-driven site having information on Billboard-charting songs from the 50s to present times. You can find all charting songs by a selected artist, the #1 song on a selected date, and a list of charting songs by year, ordered from most to least popular. All very good stuff. Unfortunately, Bullfrogs Pond seems to have drawn the ire of Billboard magazine, and the author had to essentially shut down the main page. However, and happily, a lot of the underlying site seems to remain intact. You just have to know how to get to it. Google site search revealed the URL for each of the three Pond sections. My References links will take you to the appropriate areas of the site. Kudos to the author for putting up the Bullfrogs Pond. I hope he will be able to have full functionality on his site again in the near future. Two weeks ago, I upped the OtC video bit rate from 600 kbps to around 800 kbps. I've been diversifying my video content and thought it would benefit from better resolution. The audio bit rate remained unchanged at 160 kbps. However, it's possible this might have caused problems for a few viewers, as there were more reports than usual of reception problems. I try to be considerate of those of you who have a slower internet connection. For next week's cast, I'm going to back off to just over 700 kbps for video. Hopefully this will help those who were having problems while still giving everyone a sharper picture than previously.
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AuthorGil is the host of the "Gil's Channel" webcast on Vaughnlive.tv. References
These sites are particularly helpful when it comes to learning about and tagging music. Some are blogs. Others are labors-of-love reference sites. And to be complete, I'm including the well-known sites I use often.
45 RPM Records of the Ohio River Valley 45cat (7" vinyl database) 45worlds (non-7" singles db) The "A" Side (informative blog) Album Liner Notes (reference) Allmusic ASCAP Repertory Search (db) The "B" Side (informative blog) Billboard Hot 100 (historical) Blues & Rhythm (magazine) BMI Repertoire Search (db) Both Sides Now Publications British Dance Band Encycl'p'a Bullfrogs Pond - #1s by Date. Bullfrogs Pond - Artists. Bullfrogs Pond - Yearly Chart. Classic Jazz Online. Classic Urban Harmony. The Cosimo Code. The Database of Popular Music. Dave's Music Database. The Dead Rock Stars Club. Discogs (database). Donald Clarke's Music Box. The Doo Wop Society of So Cal FAU Recorded Sound Archives. Garage Hangover (60s 45's) HeyPally's 78 rpm Page. It's Psychedelic Baby (blog) The Jazz Archive Site. JazzBiographies.com Jazz Discography Jazz Downloads (1917-1955) JazzStandards.com Jeff's 78 Labels Label Discographies Lyrics.net (searchable lyrics) Marv Goldberg's R&B Notebook Music VF (US & UK hits db) Noal Cohen's Jazz History The Online (78) Discog. Project Rhythm & Blues 50s Oldies Man Rock & Country Encycl & Discog Second Hand Songs SESAC Repertory Search (db) Sir Shambling's Deep Soul Hvn So Many Records, So Little Time Songbook (Doc's Songbook) Soulful Kinda Music Spectropop Express Spirit of Rock Webzine Tony's Rock & Roll Links Traditional Music Library (ref) Tredwells Music Centre The Vocal Group Harmony Site Wikipedia YouTube Archives
October 2020
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