Blog made by Hydlide

I had a little bit of a request coming from myrtorp. And it sounded like: "can you make a mix from your songs? and share it?" (in that context). Personally, I am not fond of mixing my own songs, since they aren't really mix worthy. Since most commercial songs have a lot of empty spaces inside their songs, while mine doesn't. So, thats a little bit of a technical issue there.

However, during the week I did have a little bit of a selection going on where I personally picked a series of songs that I made in the past.

Some of them are quite new (recently also uploaded to youtube), while others aren't. Most of the songs are house or trance related pieces.

Anyways. This was fun.

Ow yeah, I'll have to check if I can plug this soundcloud player into it ;)

Mix1 by hydlide24

Direct mp3 link: Podcast part 2
Shownotes

- The lack of Reason tutorials (uhuuuuh)
- Website related things (refill, blog etc)
- The Eve video I made, the parody and my thoughts on this
- What is happening, and what does the future bring
- vsts?!
- shoutouts (just one this time)
- Guruuuu... Ooooooooooohm!

Duration Aprox 1 minute and 5 minutes

So, yesterday evening, I have been uploading my first initial draft to youtube. And yes, even while it is just a midi file, I have been re-arranging it while progress has been going along with it.

My first 'problem' with it, is the name of all the tracks. I therefor have been putting the original file next to it and 'guess' what instruments would play at some parts. I think I have gotten close to it where I am at right now, the only difference is that I have a feeling that my current versions sounds a bit too bright, while the original sounds more 'dark'.

Another thing I have been doing is instrument layering. And this is a time consuming process to begin with. What most common people do, when they load up a midi file, is take the midi data, load it up, and it shows up all these combinator patches. They load up default patches inside the combinator and say 'done'.

This is a workflow that I personally don't do. I first start of with a subtractor, to figure out what notes are being triggered. Then I determine whether it a low snipper, mid snippet or high snippet. Just this part alone makes it really important to choose the instrumentation parts wisely.

Compare this to orchestral arrangements if you like: a Bassoon (low wooden flute) goes low, flutes on the other hand go high. Contra Bass goes low, Violins go mid/high.

All this makes sense to me, while normal people would just play a violin session on c3 and don't really care if it fits or not. That is part one of the whole process I went through. Because the instrumentation part is just one piece of the process. Positioning would be next.

For each individual combinator patch I always stick with adding a mixer panel in each and one of them. This will become handy later on in the mixing process per instrument section. I say section, because most of the orchestral arrangements are not just a single flute, nor a single violin, nor... I think you get the picture.

So eventually, it just comes down that each combinator patch will contain a section of different instruments attached to it. Even while they are mostly of the same 'type' (read, violins, flutes, trumpets etc), the orchestral sound bank of reason has a wide range for each type. Each type serves its purpose and emphasis on what they need to do. But that will eventually become more clearer during the whole process of layering the instruments.



Lets just take a 'simple' violin session to show it. This will probably make no sense at all right now. But, what I am trying to do here is to make the Marc Violin session go up front. There are 2 of them, differently layered. Then tere is a Marc violin with a bit of reverb which makes the sound 'hallways'. Then I use a Stacc up dwn_up twice. One has a reverb, the second has a delay. This makes the sound become trigger twice and makes it a huge difference between having just one single instrument being triggered. The amount of milliseconds is usually the tricky part in this case. Because if you put it too low, it sounds too much like a chorus effect kind of thing. If you put it too high, it sounds more like a regular multi tapping delay. So, I needed to find a right balance in between.

The last bit is the fatorchstring, which is a bit fake as solo, but this instrument give a nice after touch effect to the string session. Both the Marc and Dwn_Up sessions are short snapping violins. Reverb makes a tiny bit longer yet the fatorchstring gives it this nice 'longer' touch to it.

By now, you might understand right now why I just don't load up default patches to begin with. Because this is the kind of processing that isn't usually there in the standard patches. And the irony as always: I always use a different setup for each arrangement. It is a time consuming process but it makes the differences pretty clear between having just a patch or layering them each time differently.

Time to write a blog down on a 'side project' that I am doing right now. This weekend I will spin my head around a single song... just one song... and it will probably not even be finished by the time this weekend is passed.



This is the original soundtrack that came from Star Wars 5, the empire strikes back and is called "The imperial March" aka the Darth Vader theme. It is a famous theme song, and most people will probably have heard about it.

The current challenge I am willing to take at this point is to re-create the song (based of midi data), create a full blown orchestra in it and see if I can come close to the original. That is phase one.

Phase 2, which will probably take place somewhere in 2012 (just kidding), i will start see if I can rewrite the song and make an original approach on this theme.

But then again, when I do it... I want to do it right. That is also one of the reasons why I wanted to create a blog next to it, so that you can tag along while I am making progress in this thing while it advances.

First Analysis
So lets analyze the original theme first. The basic concept is devided into 4 different sections. First there is the large droning theme (intro), then you have the main theme (which most people can probably hum in their sleep... ta daaa daa daaaaa). Third there is the flute/horn intermezzo. And then we go back to part 2... and last there is the autro.

The main concept of the theme is driven by a lot of percussion, violins, trumpets and for the intermezzo it uses a flute and horns for the calm before the storm. The main problem I believe in this song to part is the lower sections of the trumpets and the stabbers. The main theme itself is pretty easy done by using a series of normal violins, trumpets or staccs (trompet stabbers). Personally I find most of the trompet sounds in the digital world pretty annoying (since they are often pretty 'sharp' and stand out in the mix). But i'll get to that in a later stage.

The original theme is 3 minutes and 2 seconds. The midi data I got, is the exact same amount. Sooo... that means I am good to go with this one. The only main issue I have right now is the sequence data naming.


The main issue I have right now is that all these tracks are unnamed tracks. So, I will need to figure out what is what and what goes where.

To be continued... ;)

Its been a while that I have posted a blog like this one. But then again, I should just write stuff down from time to time. After my 'renderish' gettaway things have been going in motion inside Reason and on the music front once again. Currently I am still rendering all the bits and pieces for that part 2 of that thingy thing no one really seems to care about. But I'll just finish it before I make something 'new' again.

On the bright side, things have been picking up lately on the music front on that matter. One might blaim the fact that I have the flu, but ironically, when I get ill the best comes out of me for some reason. The point is that I have been doing some live streams on the net in the last weeks. And this is probably something that I needed to do to get some 'ooomph' back in that feeling of making music at the same time. Perhaps.

I don't know.

But I do know that a lot of people appreciate the fact that I am willing to share the knowledge that I have. This happends on the website, happends on the forums, and that happends everywhere else. Problem was, I was feeling a bit 'fed up' with the idea of making tutorials and not get that much of feedback the last few months. After doing the live streams again, it started to hit me.

With internet pages like this one, it is often given that people read stuff, download stuff yet never leave a comment for the sake of it. Personally, I always felt it was 'important' at some point. And I think I am beginning to wonder why feedback from time to time is beginning to become an important factor for me. When there is none, it feels kind of like talking to an invisible crowd or wall or something like it. When the feedback comes, and it is 'constructive' or whatever... it feels more like I am doing my things for something.

The thing is, I don't need a feather up my ass every 24/7 or so to feel that way. However, at a certain point I got to see only the negative parts. That is probably when I decided to hide in my shell and said: "Fuck off!".

Slowly this moment is passed, and due to the whole things I have been doing with the sound design topics, it just feels like I found a topic somewhat that people feel happy with (even while it is not always visible on the comments part... but I just know it... Let me assure that).

The patch a day section that I later on added is probably not getting much attention at this point. However, I think that most people are not into 'patches' these days. I tried to do a similar experiment with loops and such... same drill.

Since the whole Sound design thing is unfolding itself right now, I felt the need to upload yet again a video tutorial (in a different style) on youtube once again. I am not sure on how often I will do it. But on the short term, I have about 7 or so to post. For the long term, I don't know yet... I am not going to make promises at this point because I don't want to disappoint people. But then again, the stuff I will be presenting is something I haven't seen many people post on YT. It's just stuff I know ;)

The forum seems to be picking up too lately. And I am happy to see that part. To keep things in motion, I am currently working (or preparing) a blog section for other people to post on. This does leave me with a mixed feeling at the same time, because I don't know what to do with my own blog yet..

The point is, there are 2 systems involved here. The first system is the whole 'website' gizmo. This one ties all the content pages together, has its own CMS (content management system) and this blog I am posting in is one of them. Then there is the forum board parts. These 2 are inner connected at some point yet on the other side they are not. I could for instance just delete the forumboard and this webpage will still function. The only thing that ties the 2 together is the user account. Nothing more.

The thing I want to try here is to make a blog system for the forum board. Which means I can use the management system from there and still keep the 2 pieces separated. However, this leads me with my own blog... It's not in the forum board, but in the different CMS. What I'll do about it, I don't know. Maybe I'll port it towards the new system, or just remove it or... whatever. I'll just have to think about this one.

Personally I am a big fan of blogging, and seeing other people blog along about similar topics, or just let other people show their own frustration. I mean, it is a part of the community. There's just one thing that's probably bugging me right now, and that is that I am probably slowly fading away in the background, kind of being swallowed up by the big mass. Maybe its just me... I don't know. But then again, time will tell.

In the mean time I'll work on this 'blog system' and integrate it inside the forum. I already have it layed out how I am going to build it technically. It will be like the forum posting system yet with a few differences. Only the user can post his own stuff inside his own thing and its going to keep most of the options like posting replies. Yet the replies are comments... thats the main difference.

So in theory: the topic is the blog owners post and the posts that come after it are comments. Simple as that. If this method works, then integrating it with the rest (like profile etc) is probably the next thing to look at.

But ok, lets take it one step at a time.

Make note, this article is based on my own experience. So, please keep that in mind when reading this blog.

For those who can remember, I made an entrance once at this community site called Reasonstation.net. The main difference between RS.net and all the others is that it had one unique concept that even Propellerheads themselves had to diminish at the time the props launched a new website: uploading your own tracks.

Uploading songs is still there on the propellerheads website, but they made it a bit too much hidden, hard to go through etc. I found the original concept on how the props arranged their songs much more pleasant at the time.

However, since the whole artist upload feature got 'destroyed' I found new ways to share my songs. Youtube would be on one of the easiest ways to share my toys, and later on I tried the same thing with it on Reasonstation.

By the time I got there, it was a big mess (I have also mentioned this on the forum board a few weeks later, so one might want to catch up on that thread while reading further). Problem at the time I came across with: egoistic selfish bastardo creepy kind of persons.

The main problem with a lot of music artists I find these days is that alot of them out there (please note: there are exceptions) have a thing with "being the best out there". The music industry is very competative, and people try to nock down their competition... it is an ongoing game.

For me on the otherhand, I prefer to see my fellow music artists as family at some point (again, with a few exceptions). With that in mind, I joined up on the site of Reasonstation and found a mess at the time I got there.

One thing I noticed the most is the bitchslapping amongst eachother. One thing I never could understand about it, however... it makes sense by the time I type this. Flaming people will love to flame on others, and it attracts a specific group of people while doing it. This is the part I have been having back in the days while doing admining on a gameserver, and that history goes pretty far.

Anyways, to get myself going with my thought process on where I want to head to.

Last night, I posted somewhere in a thread about making a new reason community etc on the Reasonstation forum, I felt the need to throw myself in that discussion. The main reason is simple: why need another community when there are already a few good once out there.

On the other hand, I do believe that having the split fraction amongst reasonstation users (the hardcore posters on there) are struggling with themselves at this point. They are 'scared' at some point, and frustrated at the same time. Why? Simply put: Reasonstation has been abandoned by the main administration.

In september 2009, the main founder of Reasonstation has setup his own company. the Company name: "myhive". When looking back at its profile, it tries to experiment with the 'hyped' thing called "SEO" (tada...). While doing its thing, it probably needed to have a stronghold to have to company survive. And around the same period of time, one could find a "support us" thingy on the same website while this was all happening at the same time.

People feel mugged, they feel let down, because at a certain point the website started to show fital signs. The fital signs would be mySQL errors what would either predict that the webserver is having problems of its own.

At some point, I believe that the webserver itself will crash. Reason why I think this is the case: the database grows... and so does the mySQL storage. Queries become harder to do, and takes more process over time. And thus the overhead increases and eventually it can't do a single query anymore.

While there hasn't been any maintanance since may 2009 (even the news topics of 2010 show a nice error page), it just shows that the main administration of the Reasonstation community has left the place to rott and die.

I believe this comes from the focus of the company. It focusses more on general website ideas (mario and rubik magic), so seeing the reason users just being not the majority of the common public, it makes sense that the founder of the site has basicly found new ways for funding his new company.

Makes sense... at some point.

This is where I think, the difference lies with me, and the rest of the communities out there. Most sites have an interest on gaining revenue for some reason. Having a website, makes people see dollar signs. Once they notice they get revenue by placing ads, they place more ads (ads is an ebreviation for: advertetisement).

The second problem I think reasonstation is facing is the following: it lacks the friendly kind of people. Most newbies get cursed at, either get insulted for some reason. And even while the newbies are leaving the place because of this, this leads into having a hardcore group of forumboard users that have nothing to do. So... they turn to eachother to curse at.

It just shows through out the complete forumboard on reasonstation.net. They insult eachother just for the sake of insulting eachother.

Like I said on the forums over here: this will be their strength, and their downfall at the same time.

To emphasize the thought here... once upon a time there was this link. It was placed on the reasonstation community and it was about the topic reason 5. The link goes directly towards this webpage and it has been there since beginning 2009. From that point on, no one ever complained about my website, nor me as a person.

Second, someone placed a link to the audio portal. People embrased the idea that Reasonstation should have one, but never came with the idea to insult me at that given time.

Third, I dropped a link to the tutorials section in the beginning of time when that thing was becoming pretty big. People liked it. And no complaints were made then... but that was.. "then".

Once the shit hits the fan, and I did post the whole thing that I have a website, some users started to bash me right there. One of those topics even got deleted by the original poster (i believe, can't confirm this since it is like everyone can alter posts there).

The idea about it is striking and it just confirms the thought that people are getting desperate at RS.net. Heck, I even had a bunch of spammers from the same community posting links to their site. Which I removed and added the website as a banned keyword at the same time.

Yet, one might think this is just a topic about promoting the website (since I am discussing it at the same time), I just feel like kicking a dead horse just one more time and get it over with.

The point is this, people at RS have NO idea on what I know. I am a webmaster myself. I know alot of stuff that is happening on the internet because that ladies and gents: is my core buisness. This is also my main profession which I do for a living, and this whole website is made out of love and caring for the reason community.

Because, at some point I believe that most of the reason websites are going to have the same deal with it. ReasonForum and Reasonfreaks are probably next to come. Why I think this is happening is because of the following:

when Propellerhead made a clear statement with Record not to continue with Reason what so ever, it makes the reason communities go like "wtf!". The main websites that run reason related stuff are not into record and they don't see the revenue comming in because Propellerheads Reason is simply... die-ing. I wouldn't say this in public. But it is a fact.

However, one thing that I do know is... due to the fact that most of the reason communities are not paying attention to most of the newer breed of reason users, and only care about themselves, this is where I personally going to make a difference here.
One good example would be the whole reason tutorials series I posted on Youtube. Everyday I get mails from newly reason users that start with it. Those are basicaly being abandoned by most of the reason communities out there. Except one...

I rest my case.

Edwin (being an arrogant ass) van der Heide

The Reason tutorial site: the sound of reason has been upgraded. Not visual wise, but technically speaking. This is not the first time I tried this, but... I really needed to do it. So I did it anyways. Just to give you some ideas about the what,why, and the rest.. I will just write things down a bit so you might have a feeling what is going through my head right now.

The original architecture of this website is based on the same principles when I started to make a website. Initially it was all a bunch of static pages, then I tried phpnuke, made my own CMS system based on some parts of phpnuke and moved on from there. Static webpages don't need much, just a single webserver that sends out webpages. CMS, also known as content management systems, need something more dynamic. They often are generated by scripting languages (.NET, .ASP, .PHP, .JSP etc) and they are often connected to some form of a database system (MySQL, MsSQL, XML feeds etc).

By the time I got into phpnuke, the main plateform to run websites was apache, PHP4 and MySQL. This was somewhere 2005 we are talking about. The reason why I prefered MySQL 3.23 over MySQL4 at the time was because of a program I developed that required some heavy query stuff. MySQL 3.23 can take 50% of the cpu usuage while MySQL was more limited (depends on the configuration I figured).

By then I was not into setting up a MySQL server from the ground up, so I choose the easy and quick approach. That is why the initial setup was Apache 1.3, PHP4 and MySQL 3.23 at the time.

Most of the system code is based on simplicity itself, it is just a big library of functions and each function does its specific thing. All this combined it leads into generating webpages as I am doing till this day on. It is just a matter of sending a bunch of arguments that is specified by the constuction on how the database is setup (type, category, articles) and then the functions determine what to do with it.

It has been working great so far, and I feel that it will probably remain the way I have set it up. It is darn fast, it does what it needs to do and there is no system like it. Since... it is based on the idea of 'simplicity'.

Then came the newly forumboard. Originally, the forumboard I had was based on phpBB2 (ported to phpNuke and later on ported to the CMS I made... lol). For that time, it worked. However, the forumboard never got much attention what so ever. I believe there are a few reasons why this is:
- there wasnt much content by the time i made it
- people didnt find the forum attractive enough (it looked ok... but still, it was different)
- SEO
- and a few other reasons that I can't think of right now

For phpBB3 I did it the other way, I took the loose end installation, made that the entrance of the system and basically added some functions to the system so the CMS could talk back and forth with phpBB3. It works the other way around, and was much easier to implement.

Since phpBB3 was launched and integrated on this website, I noticed its potential. There was a lot of stuff which I don't need, however most of the important once would be uploading stuff. Something I also experimented with on my own CMS, but it never got picked up for some reason.

The complete architecture of the webserver never did change.

Since the release of phpBB3, there have been alot of different plugins created for Php5, and these plugins are things that with no doubt have also been written inside php4. Difference is, that it is all integrated with the newer version. Things like rss, xml, writing pictures etc. These things have been improved over time.

Same thing with mySQL, even while the initial setup I was going for with the overal performance setup, I felt that it was more or less outdated. Something I often used for measuring statistics is select in select. Something that I can solve using a php script (loop through each record and fetch the info from there). However, it becomes more time consuming using that kind of script.

Overal, it came down, I had to upgrade, since if I would want to add new features to phpBB3, or the website overal, it was nescesarry. It opens up options to do, makes my life a bit easier, and I don't always have to do things with all kinds of different workarounds to make it work.

With that in the back of my head, I think that the whole website structure might get a facelift too. Coding wise that is. Not by design yet. Since it does open up a few options to play with. And I think it also makes coding again a bit more fun in a way. The stuff I will be working on is mostly server side at the moment, where I want to place a few pieces of the puzzle in place before making it visual.

Anyways, I am planning ahead alot lately... and I do have some 'big' ideas in the back of my head to play with. Other then writing all these tutorials and making music and such, I am also a coder and what not. Heck, I am multi functional.

SEO... Also known as Search engine optimization has been a hype for quite some time. Ask any online marketeer and they will have a few words and use this limited vocubalary all the time: SEO, Adwords, Linkbuilding

These are in most cases the first 3 things that alot of people in the online marketing will have to say. Next stop is Twitter, FaceBook and online videos... but I am not going to get into that part yet.

Problem is, what most people don't understand is how to use the online marketing tools. Most people say something like "this keyword is hot because the stats say so". I have a news flash for you people: NO! It ain't so.

Since recently I have discovered something that most likely will put the whole marketing industries upside down, because people... Lie... Marketeers don't understand jack crap about how the market works and the only thing they can say "the market is dumb". In my honest opinion, the marketeers are dumb. Because there is more then just 'conversion'. I'll show that in just a few minutes time.

Reason 5

First of all, let me start with the big 'overhyped' never released topic... Reason 5. It has been a topic discussed and debated on in the music industries in the last year. Even when a book 'was' supposed to come out (and was presented on Amazone to be released this month) the rumor even climbed up. However, it was only a rumor, and later we already know that Record would be that what nobody would have expected. The Sound of Reason (this website) posted an article about the rumor on Reason 5 to be released on the June 2008. That was one year before all the shit started to stirl about reason 5. It was retracted a week later after the first rumor came out.

The thing is, that this single topic has received over 15000 hits. Most coming from google. One might say that it is because it is one of the first links on the Search results. Which no doubt would say something about SEO in this case. However, what it has lead to is not that much.

Problem with seo, and I have been catching myself doing the same thing: people search for something, find a page, read it real quick and go back to google when they did not find what they are looking for.

So, in that way, SEO is a misleading concept. What does seo add to a site when you would just have a bunch of visitors that come to a website but yet have nothing to add to the website itself? Makes you wonder doesn't it.

Destination
So, this lead into the big discussion with myself. The conversion is probably not the thing where I would pay attention too, since I don't sell anything. However, I did have a debate with myself about "where do I want people to go to?". The forumboard would be the ideal place to be since I still want to build up some form of comunity. So... That is when I basicly decided to use the most visited page and redirect them to the frontpage. Which would eventually mean "people will have to look for it".

Stats
Then came the part of stats... To be honest, I used google analytics. However, I do have my own statistics program running in the background since day one I started. It just dumps all the information about a request inside a database. This can give me all kinds of different info that I could normally not get outside analytics, because a. They get deleted over time, and B they are limited visual graphs.

So, I have been looking around inside the whole statistics about the Reason 5 topic I posted and started to analyse it one step deeper. And what I find most interesting is that alot of people did not click through the next sections. This makes you wonder one how well the page was designed, or people were anxious to look for Reason 5 to be released but couldnt find the information there (yet no where else either).

But still... what does a page like that add.

Pear2Pear
Now to the juicy part... Because now I will eventually unfold the truth about why SEO is just a bunch of bullshit in a lot of cases. When the topic was posted in july 2008, it did not get much attention on it. I did run a second program that basicaly fetches keywords and looks up positions of somekind. Something that is illegal to do when it comes to google their user policy. Yet, I am doing such a thing... Fact is, from august 2008, this topic has remained solid on the first spot. Later followed by a topic posted by ReasonStation.net (since they just linked right towards the same topic). Other then that, there wasn't much Reason 5 related stuff inside the search results. When time flew by, it started to hit the fan on januari 2009. From this day on the amount of Reason 5 related hits started to increase.


Count
yearmonth

3	0	0
1	2008	6
13	2008	7
33	2008	8
20	2008	9
26	2008	10
19	2008	11
159	2008	12
601	2009	1
615	2009	2
646	2009	3
983	2009	4
1762	2009	5
1096	2009	6
1075	2009	7
1073	2009	8
1354	2009	9
1892	2009	10
1843	2009	11
1523	2009	12
79	2010	1

From this day one (january 2009) the amount of torrent sites started to increase the amount of Reason 5 torrent links (believe it or not...).Till this day,one can still find the same links everywhere. Just to give a fine example: torrentdownloads. At the same exact time period that this started to happen, the amount of "requests" on here started to increase on the subject. In first one might think they are users. I would think so too... But hold that tought there just for one second.

If you would look up the trend one step further, you will probably notice the increase of requests coming after april. No doubt, since that was the exact same period that Propellerhead record was light up. At least, in 9th of may 2009 propellerhead made that video about "something new". So that would only add to the speculation that Reason 5 would be released. Looking back at the comments, this was also the same month that the comments on the topic started to increase. So... that means, 4000 visitors on a page and no comments before that time.

Looking up all the link throughs coming to that page and all the page requests that came after it (eg, one click on a link inside the page after visiting the page), I may conclude that it is not discussable... there are none. Needless to say, the page has been requested over 15000 times, and not a single person clicks to the second page (ok, with the minor exception of a few... but I can trash them away I think).

So, with that part in mind, I made a discission. This shappened in December 2009. I deleted the topic about reason 5 is coming. And linked to the frontpage. This did lead into an increase of people looking for the reason 5 post (or clicked through the site and basicaly got lost while doing so). But still, I believe that alot of requests made on this single page are not done by mankind...

coming back to pear2pear
Coming back to the whole pear2pear related thing, I am a believer who thinks that p2p networks are not only spreading software. They are also responsable for the whole fake clicking thing. They are known as bots... and one of the things I find most frustrating about the part is that they often are simulating mankinds behaviour.

There are a few reasons why I think this is the case:
- the point that the article was launched and the time the torrent sites started to increase
- the amount of comments that started to increase by the time Record was announced
- the amount of fake posting that has taken place inside the same thread

Commercial sites
The next thing I am going to bring up is commercial sites. Just as a reference, I am going to name "Starcraft 2" right now. As you might know by now is that the frontpage I have made has nothing to do with StarCraft 2. There are some references inside the forumboard, but none are linked on the frontpage. What I find very strange of lately is that I am getting alot of requests coming from google where someone finds this site using the keywords  "star craft 2". And this is happening in the last month only.

I do know that blizzard plans to release starcraft 2 in this year (maybe!). Yet, the 40 requests don't add up. Just to show you on the fly here, here are 2 requests (literly copy/pasted from the requests):

http://www.google.com/search?q=Starcraft 2
http://www.google.com/search?q=starcraft 2 zerg

Both links don't show up anything related to this website. I even tried to use the result list on 100 and look there. Still no references. What I even found more interesting is the ip's where the parts are coming from. Namely: http://www.starcraft2strategy.com/

Also, I have noticed that a couple of times this website is linked as a referer. Which means a visitor comes to this webpage, and clicks on a link and eventually ends up here. However, there are ways to make a 'fake' request... but judging by the fact that they all land on the same page, yet have nothing to do with it just says something here. So when someone writes a bot like that, it could be the same thing with reason 5. And truth is... That is so.

To sum things up
Alot of times one could say that having hits from google are people. No doubt: this is not the case. When a keyword increases popularity so does the amount of fake users along with it. Nothing on the internet seems real to me as of this point, unless I know that I am dealing with real people here. This is also one of the reasons why I still have been trying to encourage people to leave comments or be a part of the forumboards... because the amount of page requests don't mean anything to me. It are a few factors that do: follow up clicks, returning visitors and people who contribute to the site.

It is 2010 right now, soo to start off with: I wish you all a happy new year.

Today I just want to take one last peak at last year. And focus mainly on what has happened with this website in general. I think I personally can cut this year into 2 different half years, where the first half year I was ranting alot about reason, and the second half I was focussing on the 'movie' projects. It was also a bit experimenting with the website while  I was doing it.

In first, the design, look and feel did not change much this year. I added a new forumboard that really picked up speed from day one I rebooted the whole forumboard (which I am really greatfull about). Second I focused more on the larger scale of tutorial wrting if it comes to the first half year of 2009. Take these really huge blobs of text and stack it all up, basicly debating some productions stuff when it comes to reason. The house tutorials was a result of that.

In the background I was also working on a new webpage about fruity loops, which I never finished. It only has 2 articles and I basicly stopped that whole thing because I didn't really like using fruity loops. I could write tons of pieces of text about it (since it is just a piece of music wwe are trying to create with it), but still... I was also afraid it would lead into more drama from other users. I do know that FL is more popular then others, however the more popular a tool is, the more visitors one might get yet it may also lead to more... negative feedback (see youtube ;))

Problem I have with most internet users is that a lot of people take online articles for granted. However, when I really look up stuff around the net, there isn't much written about Reason and such. For some reason, this never has stopped me from doing my thing, since I recently picked up the whole tutorial writing again at the end of this year. Only online parts I can think of is Propellerheads, Reasonfreaks, Reasonstation and some other france community I already forgot the name of it. But that somehow sums it all up. And to add, most of these sites focus mainly on a forum and the rest of the content has been stalled since 2005 orso (with the exception of Propellerheads main site, however I do believe that they will focus more on record now and call Reason a dead horse).

I did have been noticing that this site is taking off like a rocket since halfway this year. Ironicly, it was also the period I did not pay much time on the reason tutorials what so ever. When I look up most of the sources where they come from, Google would be number one, second would be Youtube and the rest is.. kind of like fading away very rapidly and not worth mentioning.

I do believe that most hits from google are somewhat discussable due to the release of Record and the speculation about Reason 5, however even when I would remove those keywords from the statistics, it still shows a nice upwards going graph from the unique visits and page views (where I have excluded my own network range since that does not count ;)).

The only reason why I can think of it why it has boosted up lately is 2 things: the release of Record and the way the site is being ranked inside Google. Even while I don't have a page rank (because it is subdomain under demon.nl, which is not related to the site what so ever), it has picked up speed because I have done alot of tweaking in the first few months to get the site to become more cleaner in a way.

Most of the websites use a lot of link farming (eg: wordpress related sites), even while link farming is good for getting keywords and getting bots to search their websites easier, I do believe that there is some 'hidden code' inside google where they prevent link farms to be at the top spots. Because I did a similar thing in the beginning. I had all the different articles inside one section linked, and when I removed most of them the amount of clicks I got from there on went sky high. (just as a snippet January: 2900 hits coming from google, June 3320 and December 5200). And it was around may that I made some changes to the core. It could be related... or it could be that I am having a weird way of thinking. I don't know. It could also be related to the idea that this part of the internet is just one of the few reason related websites that keeps on updating itself.

When it comes to the second half of this year, I did another experiment with the whole website. I replaced the front cover with the movie title "the pride of caldari" and tried to get the name out. Only sad part is, that alot of people that came towards those pages did either not understand what the heck was going on, clicked on the propellerhead reason tutorials link either did nothing what so ever.

The main problem I am facing right now is that the production I am working on is really time cosuming, but I do believe that it will fade away pretty fast, since I believe not many people are really interested in the work I am doing right now. People want me to create tutorials (obviously) and really don't care about the rest. So be it... If I would take for instance the first movie project (which is probably also the worst I ever made) did get the most attention around it. When I started to advertise around the second one and released it, it did get half of the amount of views compared to the previous movie. So, seeing what has happened with the new frontpage, and looking up stats and releasing yet another trailer for the third one... I can only conclude one thing: people just don't care ;)

This lead into the removal of the original page I had been running for 4 months, I removed most of the relationship with the movie related projects and only kept the blog entries (even while they are put somewhat all the way in the background) and I moved the original reason page back to becoming the front page.

I also believe that one of the main issues I am dealing with, when it comes to the avarage internet user coming from youtube, most of the huge flock is impulsive. They see something, at a short period of time (read a week or 2) it becomes something big, and then before you know it they lost interest in you and move on to the next 'person/page/forum' etc. This is something I have accepted, and there is no way to change this behavior. People don't really have much patience, but that is just the big issue I am dealing with here. The projects I am doing right now are huge, they are time consuming and I prefer not to just rattle things up just to get a video uploaded every 2 weeks. Heck, I could do it... but I am not gonna.

So with that whole 'negative' way of thinking I did take down the original page I had, and replaced it with the old one. Only thing that remains now is to focus more on the forumboard I guess. The website gets enough attention, that is without a doubt. But personally I would love to see the forumboard become more alive, have some descent discussions going on there, read user experiences, or help other people out and what not. Because everywhere I go, I do get the compliments about it is a nice site, and looks great, it is easy to navigate and so on. So what I am doing here is being cheered for. However, I constantly want to try new things... Keep things in motion. Since this webpage is kind of like my home and sometimes I just need to redecorate the place to keep myself happy with it.

So what does 2010 bring? Mainly I will focus on the sound design parts and try to keep that thing updated on a weekly basis. Next part is a patch a day topic I have recently picked up. I still need to add the navigation to the site, and I am also working on a different design just  for that specific section. Since I believe that the current webpages are not easy to use when you would have just a few patches to browse through.

Last part, I hope I am able to finish the pride of caldari part 1 (yeah, I am cutting it ;)). I want to see how this is going to be received and judge then if I am willing to continue the project or start something new.

Ok, time to bring you ladies up to speed... since I am burning steam as I type this... I am on a roll, and when I am on a roll, I burst on all sides like the Etna vulcano in Italy. Heck, they will even know by know in Italy what I am doing right now! Since it is trembling. I am an Earthquake, ready to pound some serious shit! So...

Here goes... Hydlide update in a nutshell:

- The pride of caldari is gone from the frontpage
- Movie is cancelled... NOT! (so that rumor is out of the way) It is just going slowly ;)
- working on yet another webdesign
- working on a new Sound design section (posted 6 or 7 topics already and the next one is already almost finished)
- Audio portal needs to be updated content wise

and...

the blog disappeared...

That is the nutshell. Let me try to explain in more detail what is happening over here. First of all the bits and pieces about the whole movie thing. Basicly, my initial idea was to focus a bit more on the rendering aspect and such. That is why it is my own website, and I can screw around with it as much as I can. However after looking at things on how it is all developing right now I can conclude 3 things:

A - People dont give a fuck
B - What the fuck is this I am making anyways?!
C - Most people click on the Reason Tutorials link

So... hence, I have a page which is a waste. Alot of people don't care about it (same as this blog), so I feel the need to focus on the things I think the crowd wants me to do... which I am totally not happy with at all, but that is a whole side step (I will explain that part later when I am still thinking about).

My blog is a similar story. It has been a thing that was always something in between. I keep this stuff to update people on what is happening with the site and what not. I could eventually write news topics about it what I am changing and all that jazz... But as I can remember in the late 2006 I had aprox 10 posts under eachother saying "Site update this", "Site update that". It is not amuzing at all, it adds to the confusion and people might think I am a loose cannon who can't think out straight and never can make any discissions... Which is actually: The Truth! (I won't get into that part... if you don't mind).

So, with the movie stalling, and it still rendering the crap out of it on my other computer, I have a crap load of time left. And recently (read: 2 months ago) I picked up Reason again... looked around at some statistics etc.. etc.. From my point of view: Reason is DEAD! Face it. When Propellerhead decided to pick up Record, they kind of killed Reason along with it. However, this leaves me with a chance. I could just simply add the DeathWish to Reason and kill the site (no problem typing del *.* here). However, I feel that alot of reason users are stranded without any guide, continueing support and updating their rack.

With that last part in mind, I almost tried to blow new stuff into the website. The sound design was one of the first topics to get myself started. Since this is a kind of topic which I can constantly upkeep for a long time. Next there is a new Patch section I have been creating TODAY. This patch section (Reason 4 patch a Day) is an idea which I basicly stole from another guy (who blogs every day on making patches). However, I feel it is a necessary addition to the site. I could throw in a sample section aswell, however one minor problem here: bandwidth! So, I am not going to start that one yet...

To get things rocking even more, I already updated the site a bit. Made some changes left and right. And yeah... the comment box is gone for now, but it will return in 2 weeks (I am just waiting for the holiday season is over since alot of script kiddies are trying to harras me at the moment).

With that part already fully underway, I have another idea coming. I will keep this one a bit hush hush, but one can expect certain 'parts' of this website to have its own look and feel someday. I am just seperating the blog, the pride of caldari bla bla etc ...etc.. from the Reason pages. Simply put: the guy who come here probably get scared on the amount of stuff I throw at them on one single page. And I want to make life just a little bit easier for them.

While being on the subject, I am also phasing out the subject called "Reason 5" while I am at it. Reason 5 is not coming any day soon. When it does come, I will throw in some huge announcement on the front page (Font-size 120px or so, Bold and Italic with underlines... 5 ,.. at least). But for the time being those visitors looking for Reason 5 are a waste of bandwidth to me aswell at this point.

So, in a nutshell.. Alot of stuff happening over here all at the same time. Now I got to get myself some rest since I am still having ADHD (is that even an english illness ;)).

Type to you later!