Ochre

I realise I haven’t posted for quite a while, so rather than simply ignore my blog until my current undertaking is complete, I thought I’d quickly let you know what I’ve been doing all this time.

This month is basically the culmination of the past four years of work towards a music PhD, so I’m very much in thrall to completing my thesis, which sits alongside the musical component of my submission. I always felt a little self-conscious about doing a practical music PhD, as I was unsure whether my music was original enough, or my writing quality good enough, to be of any use at such an academic level. Although it’s a bit late now (to say the least) to worry about these things, typically, these fears have helpfully bubbled up at the least opportune moment. Great.

Anyway, I’ll be quietly having a nervous breakdown here while I write this thing up. In true testament to my procrastinatory prowess, I’ve managed to fiddle with my site some more, moving the physical music releases that I had for sale, over from the shop to the music page. Didn’t seem much point in keeping the two separate, really, seeing as they only link to my Bandcamp page, and especially when I had third-party store links on the music page anyway. So that just leaves merch on the shop page.

Which reminds me: does the number of shirts on offer induce a bit of choice paralysis, or is having that many to choose from just fine? I think I originally went along and explicitly specified several shirt colours and styles through an overblown sense of my own stylistic judgement, pairing design colours with suitable shirt colours. Would it have been better if I simply did a white design, a black design, and let you choose what colour shirt you want yourself? See, these are the kind of dilemmas solitary musicians have to deal with.

I also helped Facebook take over the internets, in my own very small way, by installing some ‘like’ buttons on these posts, as well as a ‘recommend’ button on the music page. You’re probably thinking why I’m bothering, as don’t I already have a ‘like’ thingy at the top right of my site? Aren’t I getting a little like-happy? Perhaps a little, though there is a different between the new buttons I’ve added and the ‘like’ box in the top corner. While the box pertains to my Ochre Facebook page (which I’m sure you’re aware of, being a fan and all), these new buttons will actually allow you to share these posts and pages easily to your friends on Facebook; each time you click on it, it’ll show up in your activity feed. Much easier than faffing around with ‘add to’ widgets (which I’ve only kept as I’m starting to get nostalgic about the early optimistic days of Web 2.0, before Facebook made it clear that it intends to own it).

Anywho, there’s a thesis I need to get back to, as well as some pizza dough that needs making, so I’ll have to wrap this up. Sorry for the lack of activity; hopefully I’ll be back on the map this time next month.

This entry was posted on Thursday, September 2nd, 2010 at 4:23 pm and is filed under Ochre, Ramblings. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.