site news

Apologies to anyone waiting for their set to be moderated, and the rest of you for the slow release of people’s uploads.

It’s a combination of me being very short of time, quite a few sets appearing, and quite a few of them needing a few minutes of attention to get them ready for publishing.

I should get caught up tomorrow morning, so hang tight for a bit.

If you want to help though, as always, please take a few minutes to smarten up your uploads. This mainly means:

• Reasonably decent grammar, punctuation, formatting. I’m not trying to get all school teacher on you, I just want listings to be reasonable and not look like text message from a teenager.
• Cleaned up tracklists – separate titles and artists with dashes (and spaces around the dash), one track per line, etc – I quite often get stuff that’s copied and pasted directly off pages and they always need manual updating.

If everyone can put a couple of minutes extra into making their uploads look good it’ll save me a hell of a lot of effort and get your set approved faster.

Cheers,

Jon

Quick heads up.

Gonna be away and supposedly without internet access from about an hour’s time until Monday afternoon, so any new sets that come in won’t be seen until then.

Cheers,

Jon

Sorry no posts for a while, just wanted to put a shout out so you know I’ve not abandoned the site or anything like that.

Last time I worked on the site I got about 1/2 way through some major changes and decided to put them out sooner rather than later, thinking they’d be complete in the next week or two. Well, that’s a good few weeks ago now and I’ve barely had a chance to sort things and I’m looking like I won’t get to for a few weeks still.

So, just wanted to ask you to bear with me as I know there’s a good few things that people need but are missing (editing your sets, uploading additional links, etc). If you need to do anything that’s now missing, drop me a pm and I’ll sort it for you.

I’m also doing all the moderation myself atm, as I asked Gee and Ryan to hold back on taking part until I’ve got the moderation system working 100%, so mixes are sometimes taking over a day to be seen. Again, bear with me and hopefully it’ll be ok in a few weeks when all three of us are able to look after it.

Anyway, other than that just wanted to say congrats to our man Gee and his other half Sara who just got hitched over in Vegas (complete with Elvis priest from what he told me he was planning).

Happy days.

OK, gotta get back to work. Give me a shout about anything you need and I’ll hopefully have things back on track here soon.

Cheers,

Jon

Yo peeps.

Just rolled out some pretty significant changes involving a big rework of the upload process.

From now on all mixes are going to be moderated, with an aim to produce not only an awesome collection of mixes, but also a comprehensive and well sorted set of data to go with it.

The upload process is now multi step so I can make it more comprehensive, and I’ll be adding an extra stage to formally link sets to artist, radio show and venue profiles.

And as mentioned before, you can now upload your sets for hosting here :-)

Less significant is a small new feature aimed towards giving people a way to show appreciation to uploaders when you’re not ready to vote or have anything to say in a comment. You can now click a link and add a ‘thank you’ to the set.

OK, that’s it for now.

Cheers,

Jon

Seems bronte didn’t get the memo about the picker of the Mix o’ the Week having to nominate the next one up so after a day or two without hearing from him we decided to have the last person pick instead. And that ended up being me!

My choice was The Psycho Soul Mixes by Pablo Clements from the Psychonauts, originally posted by bronte.

You know the drill – have a listen and come tell us what you think, or if it’s a more attractive proposition just join in the celebration of profanity that the thread turned into.

Time for MOTW #5 (well, ’twas a day ago).

This one’s been picked by bronte, PearsonTowers’ answer to Yoda – been here since the beginning, a man of few words and great wisdom shown by an amazing selection of sets he’s bestowed on us over the years.

His choice is Boca 45’s Solid Steel set from 10 November 2006.

Come drink it in and enjoy the lovely beats.

MOTW #4 is up, Basstronix Bassbreaks Volume 2 picked by dunfyboy.

If you like the set, vote, comment, and come tell him how awesome he is for picking it.

And if you don’t, well, come tell us too as it’s all good conversation….

This week’s mix o’ the week has been picked by his nibs and is a bit of classic Fatboy Slim from back in his hey day, a cover disc off the front of NME in 1997 – Beat Up The NME .

If you’ve heard it already maybe come tell us what you think and if not, well, give it a click and have a listen.

Oops, a day late. Sorry ’bout that.

Make sure you check out the second Mix o’ the Week, picked by geepeetee33.

Have a listen, and please try and find a second to come back and vote and comment or chat about it in the forum.

Don’t be afraid, we’re all nice people :-)

Hey y’all.

Been meaning to set something like this up for a while, but it was sorta dependent on having a forum, etc, so now that’s here, it’s all on.

The way we’re doing it is someone picks a set, announces it on a Monday, we all download and listen and discuss, then that person gets to nominate who goes next.

Sorta like a book group but way cooler.

Ryan kicked it all off picking the first one. I won’t spoil it and tell you all the details, instead go check it out here.

And don’t forget, the idea is to try and encourage more participation so whatever you think of it, don’t be afraid to vote and comment to express your opinion.

Cheers,

Jon

Sorted some niggling little issues and also improved a good few bits of usablitity here and there today.

Most importantly though, I’ve added follow buttons on user profile and mix pages, so you can now to pick and choose where the news that appears in your feed comes from.

I’m pretty happy with the news gathering now, so I just need to try and sort out a bit of aggregation to reduce the tidal wave of information for any of you who are following more sets / people and getting more news.

As usual, if you got any problems come tell me in the forums.

Cheers,

Jon

Ryan started an interesting discussion on the topic of what music should be posted here which raises a few interesting points on how the site’s future is going to pan out.

Come have a read, give us your opinion and have your own say.

You ever had problems with images (avatars, etc) not always loading?

Well, hopefully that should be fixed now.

And it had the added side effect of just generally slowing the site down in other ways but for me at least, the site is responding a hell of a lot quicker.

Anyway, as usual, if you’ve got any other problems let me know (preferably in the forum)

Cheers,

Jon

So, after going on about it for quite some time I’ve finally got the new news system in place. Bear in mind though it’s not 100% complete – I think the download data could be captured / presented better, and I still need to add rss feeds, integration to twitter, etc – but it’s still pretty useable and better than the old one.

It works on a system of following sets and users. If you’re following someone, you see in your home news feed whenever they download, comment, vote, etc. At the moment you only start following a set whenever you comment or vote on it, but I’ll be adding the ability to pick and choose mixes and other users to follow soon.

The sets and users you’ve been setup to follow at the moment have been put together based on comment, vote and (old) friendship data.

In addition to the news you might also have noticed a new link in the menu bar linking to a pt community. The site had forums a while back but there was such a small user base at the time I didn’t bother with them when I did the rewrite. It looks like there might be some use for them now so I figured I’d knock some up to give them another go.

Ummm, what else…. Oh yeah, I should also mention that email notifications are gone for the time being. I’ll be writing a better solution that works with the new news before long.

One other thing, my machine’s chugging away creating the news for the last few years worth of data and It’s gonna take a good day or two to get through, so some data for old activity won’t be visible for a bit.

Anyway, let me know what you reckon.

Cheers,

Jon

EDIT: I’ve setup a thread in the forums keeping track of any problems, so if you see anything funny come let me know here

Yo mix tape lovers,

I got some invites from Nico who’s part of a new London mix tape startup, mixcloud.com, who are old Uni mates of a guy I work with on my day job.

If you fancy giving them a try, head over to mixcloud.com and sign up with the invite code “pearsontowerscloud”.

Big updates coming over the weekend – expect a little down time but some pretty cool changes by Monday.

Cheers,

Jon

Afternoon campers.

If anyone’s on twitter, pearsontowers has an account at twitter.com/pearsontowers if you want to do the follow thing.

There’s not much on there atm but when the new news system is up and running it’ll be being filled with activity generated from the site so will be a pretty good way to keep up.

Re: the new news system – it’s gonna be absolutely fucking awesome and will definitely be here in the next few weeks (well, might be around a month or so). I’m working on it at my day job so when that’s finished I’ll just be able to reuse it here.

Cheers,

Jon

I’ve not been able to keep as close an eye on things as I used to do, but a few people have given me a heads up about some commercial sets that have been posted on the site recently.

Until now there’s been no official notice about what should and shouldn’t be posted here, and I’ve been able to just give people a nudge whenever anything that shouldn’t be appears, but such is the nature of the site growing that I guess it’s time to start to put down some ground rules.

So with that said, I’ve now added a notice about this on a pre-upload page. To summarise what it says, it basically explains that the site is for sharing of non commercial mixes only. If you can buy it in your local record store or you know the artist still expects to make money from it then it shouldn’t be being posted.

I think most people realise this and for those that who have posted it have done it quite innocently (youtube generation and all that). If however all you’re here for is free music, then I politely suggest you f**ck off to the p2p networks – this community is about supporting the artists and not screwing them.

Like I said though, I’m sure that’s not the case ;-)

Cheers,

Jon

P.S. If you’re one of the ones that has posted something commercial over the last few weeks don’t worry, you can’t be blamed for posting anything wrong when there were no rules set out.

But I will be looking for them and taking them offline over the next few days.

Hey folks,

So, welcome to the new look pearsontowers. Hope you like it.

It’s just the first draft so there might well be a few display issues to iron out over the next couple of weeks, but it should for the most part be working ok. Though if you’re unfortunate / unwise enough to still be using IE6…. well… sorry, it’s time for me to let you go.

It’s the start of a heavy phase of development to the site which I’m planning on over the next few months. I got this design sorted way back in October last year but it’s taken me until now to get it in place as, well, to be honest I hate doing the front end stuff involved with it and kept avoiding it. Now that I’ve got it out of the way (and solved all the problems that made me dread it so much) it’s gonna make things really easy from now on.

Another thing, you may well find the site’s a bit slower than ususal – it’s just because I’ve had to clear out the caching mechanism I had in place before. I’m going with a new strategy which I should get in place in the next couple of weeks which should get things back up to speed.

That’s about it.

Jon

Slightly late on the Xmas part, but hey!

Not much of an Xmas person myself but hope those of you who are are having a good holiday.

All the best for 2009 – it should be a good one for pearsontowers. Stay tuned :-)

Jon

My hosting provider had a power cut a few hours ago.

Not normally a problem but somehow it completely trashed my databases and I had to roll them all back to the last backup which was about 17 hours old so any activity from today will have been lost.

Sorry ’bout that.

Jon

I had a well geeky one last weekend and took part in this 48 hour coding competition.

The result is my site prickt.com, a social gallery for sharing pix of your tats (and soon piercings). The idea is you post your pix, then link them to the artist and studio, so when people see some work they can click through see loads more work by the same person and studio.

Judging’s going on atm and I imagine the site’ll look a hell of a lot better with a few users! It’s just me atm and I’ve still got to try and get hold of some pix for it!

So, if tattoo’s are your bag maybe head over and check it out.

Cheers,

Jon

OK, first of the improvements is out – more comprehensive and personalised news feeds. It’s a bit raw and ugly, but it’s just a starting point and should shape up over the next couple of weeks as I refine it.

The main homepage effectively shows pretty much the same info it did before, except it’s all mashed into a single well ordered feed. The main bit though is in your own profile page where you’ll see records not only of your own downloads, but for any activity on any of your own sets.

Anyway, got another day dedicated to working on more features tomorrow so hopefully there should be more cool shit appearing before the start of the next week.

Cheers,

Jon

Hey all.

Atm my image processing libraries are in a bit of a state so it’s broken things like uploading new images, so if you try and change your avatar or something like that you’ll get various errors. EDIT should be working now

I’ve also seen a problem with the search so with some queries you’ll get an error too.

I’ll try and get to them soon.

Cheers,

Jon

OK, I’ve learnt a few new thing to make my life a bit easier when it comes to jumping from project to project, so you should start seeing new stuff appearing on the site quite regularly now.

First of these is the search which has been broken for, well, ever. It now, well, works…..

Jon

Just giving a new bit of software a trial behind the scenes, so anything funny goes on then it’d be a real help if you drop me a quick message.

Cheers,

Jon

I’m working on a ton of new functionality but I’ve found it hard to work out where to draw the line, so I’ve ended up just doing the lot and it’s turning out to be a hell of a task. It’ll be worth it tho.

Just wanted to give a quick thanks to all the new posters who’ve shown up in the last couple of months. I’m seeing new users comment, rate and post sets every day – it gives me a real buzz and it’s awesome for everyone. It’s getting seriously hard to keep up with everything that’s being posted too.

On another note, I’ve noticed a problem I just had when adding a link to a set. I don’t think it’s across the board as so far I’ve only noticed it with megaupload. I’ve not had a chance to look into it properly, but I will do soon. If you’ve noticed it yourself, I’d appreciate if you could drop me a message to help me with my investigations.

Cheers,

Jon

New feature – you can now subscribe to any of the sets and get a short mail whenever it gets a comment (or vote, if it’s one of your sets).

To use it, just look in the menu on the left when you’re on the page for any set and there’ll be a “subscribe” link. You can also turn it on by checking a box that’ll be on the form whenever you post a comment. If you want to subscribe to all of your sets drop me a message and I’ll do it for you as it’ll be a lot quicker than you going through them all yourself.

The only other thing to mention is that you should hopefully find the site a bit quicker now as I’ve implemented some caching here and there.

L8rz, Jon.

Evening campers.

Just spent the last day or two tidying up loads of little things that needed doing so you might notice a few things here and there working a bit better.

The next couple of days should hopefully bring some cool new features so I’ll keep you posted here on those. It might however introduce some bugs so as always, if anything doesn’t work properly make sure you drop me a message.

Cheers,

Jon

Just adding a few quick(ish) features before I get started on the collections which will take me a fair while to get through (sorting 1500 sets manually – fun!).

New for today is the first of the notification system – you can now get sent a mail whenever you get a message posted in your guest book or a private message arrives in your inbox. They’re inactive by default so if you want to make use of them, activate them by going to the same page where you update the rest of your profile info (link is on your profile page in the bottom left corner of the box with all your personal info in it).

Cheers,

Jon

OK, so here it is, the new site.

While it may look largely the same on the surface it’s had a complete rewrite underneath and other than clearing up all the little annoyances it’s now in a great state to build on and improve.

The old site was based on this system called Drupal and while that’s a great piece of work, it just wasn’t meant to do what I was trying to do with it. Over the last few months I’ve got pretty nifty with this other framework, Rails and so rewrote it in that.

So what do we have?

Well, I think maybe about 80% of the old site’s functionality has been recreated, except they’re, well, better designed and easier / nicer to use now. At the core there’s the mix database of course, which is pretty much identical – mixes, comments, ratings, download tracking, etc. Categorisation’s been swapped for tagging which will be a bit more flexible for us.

A few things are gone too. The blogs were never used so I didn’t bother with them, as have the user galleries. It’s much easier for me to implement galleries in other parts of the site so I plan to provide places for you to upload pix in more appropriate places.

What the future holds

First on the list is ‘The Collections’, which I gave up on making before. In a few weeks I hope to have every single Essential Mix and a good wedge of Solid Steel available which I’ll offer for download in return for people just interacting on the site – commenting, reviewing, uploading new sets, etc.

Another thing I need to do (which I might just slip in before the collections) is notifications, that way you’ll be able to get daily emails telling you about what’s been uploaded in the previous 24 hours.

If you run into any problems…
In most situations I should be made aware of it by an automated mail, but hopefully you shouldn’t have any. The only problem I know of so far is to do with avatars. I haven’t worked it out but in certain situations the site barfs when you try to update your avatar.

Update: think I’ve fixed that now, and that the problem was a bit more than just avatars.

Anyway, if there are problems please bear with me while I sort them out, though I’m pretty confident there shouldn’t be any big issues.

Cheers,

Jon