One semester left
Tags: life, tweekly.fm, twimemachine
It’s been a while since I made proper blog post to update on my life and what’s going down.
Study Study
The topic says it all. I have one semester left, until I graduate (if all goes smoothly) with a degree in Socio-Informatics and Marketing. My plans are up in the air for next year. I’m kinda ‘over’ studying. If the honours program in Socio-Informatics turn out to be super interesting, it might become an option to continue with my studies at Stellenbosch. But the problem with Stellenbosch, is that the longer you stay here, the greater the comfort zone and bubble it becomes. Something might happen with Tweekly.fm that sees me jump full-time into that after I get my degree. So far my default option is going to be to head to Melbourne next year. I have temp visa, so why not take the option?
Tweekly.fm
It is growing. And growing well. We are pushing a lot of tweets a day (as much as the whole of Twitter did a day back in 2007). And by the nature of our service, it will keep growing. A new server that sits at last.fm (thanks guys!) is also doing wonders for both the respective API’s (last.fm and twitter), making it faster and better. A host of new features will be rolled out later this year, making discovering new music much easier. So in that regard, it is going good. Now we still need to figure out that business model…
TwimeMachine
My TwimeMachine is also doing really well. A new design was made by Misha Kvakin. It gets these random ’spikes’ of traffic when some ’social media expert’ tweets about it. Always great to see. It is also win to know that apparently it was mentioned at Mesh Conference in Toronto. I don’t know in what capacity, just that it was.
Music
I have a soundcloud profile now for my new moniker, Simon Segfault. I’ve been making some dubstep. So go have a listen. I’ve decided that the next album/music I release must be top-notch. In that past when I had 10 songs, I just said, ‘k lets release it’, but this time I’m taking a different approach. And damn me for my big musical influences. I just don’t know what it will end up like. Might be dubstep/drum and bass album, or it might be lyrically inspired, blues, guitar electronica. Just don’t know. Might also do something with my brother that could turn into a vocal chiptune album. Maybe I’ll just all the above genres? Drum-blues-and-chip-step rock?
So I have one semester left to figure what happens next year? The options are so varied… For now, I’m just going to enjoy my holiday.
Tweekly.fm: Going donationware
Tags: tweeklyfm
Hello.
Given the incredible growth of Tweekly.fm, it has really been struggling under its current hosting. From this coming Wednesday, you will only be able to sign up with Tweekly.fm if you make a donation.
This is only temporary. As a full-time student (sitting with my textbook beside my laptop: writing exams next week), I just don’t have the time to research servers, optimise the code and work on Tweekly.fm.
When the holidays arrive (sweet glorious 2 months of freedom), I will do everything in my power to upgrade the Tweekly.fm experience, move onto new servers, etc.
SHORT FAQ:
1) Service will continue as usual. Old users won’t have to do anything. Just sit back as usual and enjoy the tweets roll by.
2) Any new users from Wednesday will have to pay a donation to sign up until Tweekly.fm can handle the growth.
3) This is only temporary. A new server will most likely appear in the beginning of December, when I will switch it back to its current state.
———–
This coming wednesday, Tweekly.fm will probably hit 15 000 users. So, this is just another BIG thank you to all you music lovers! If you are current user, donations are also welcome! Just go to Tweekly.fm (it is on the front page).
I will keep you posted.
Keep listening.
Tweekly.fm struggling
Tags: last.fm, tweeklyfm, twitter
So, there has been interesting developments lately in the Tweekly.fm stable. Stable is actually the wrong word, because it is exactly what it is not.
It has been growing way too fast to keep it contained. It now has 13 000 users. My hosting company has been on my back for quite some time now, because I’m overloading the servers each time the tweets send. Thanks to the helpful @igitur, I have a pretty solid way of optimising the code/script. Unfortunately, as it is primarily the process of fetching data from last.fm that is slow, it is a losing battle. Inevitable down the line, I’ll keep running into optimisation problems.
I am not entirely sure where to go with Tweekly.fm at the moment. If I continue the service, I’ll have to upgrade, get its own server, get advertisers, et al in order to keep it running as it is running now. The problem with this method is that 1) I’m a full-time student. I don’t have a lot of time to spend on Tweekly.fm (which is why I haven’t actually optimised the script at all) and 2) Tweekly.fm is a mashup after all. I didn’t start it in the beginning to make money from it. It was purely a service I wanted, and thought other people would maybe enjoy. Monetising a mashup is a very iffy thing. I’m totally at mercy of Twitter and Last.fm (especially last.fm).
At the end of the day, I’m providing a service based off of last.fm. They could easily implement the Tweekly.fm feature and then I have to shut down everything. I don’t own any of the data, etc. I also don’t really have any right to this “IP” if you understand what I mean. I merely provide the conduit for the flow of data.
Which brings me to the question: do I want this? I don’t want to make a full fledged enterprise mashup. Should I go ahead with monetising and upgrading everything? Is there a way I can keep it “small” without incurring too much server problems?
Should I change the way Tweekly.fm works (less bandwidth)? There are still more social-twitter side features I can add (which I want to). Should I perhaps move it to manual tweeting? and then pay for automatic tweeting? Or spread it out across the week (user can choose when to send it)?
All these questions are plaguing me, and I don’t know where to go. After my university exams (starting next week), I’ll probably have to switch Tweekly.fm temporarily off, think about what I want to do with it, fix whatever needs fixing and take it from there.
What do you say?
Changing Times
Tags: tweeklyfm
So last.fm is performing upgrades this weekend, which means I have to push Tweekly.fm to another time.
Tweekly.fm currently starts at 11PM (GMT +2) which means that its 9PM GMT and 5PM in New York and and 2PM in San Francisco. United States currently constitutes 90% of my traffic (yes that much). I wonder if it is because USA has the greatest cross section of twitter and last.fm users? I think it is mainly because the tweets have been sending in their “twitter” time, if you know what I mean…
So as an experiment, I’m going to run Tweekly.fm on Monday (because of the upgrade) on 12:00 GMT to see what Europe does.
Will be interesting to see the traffic changes. I think it will probably drop (more traffic from USA, means even more traffic from USA). Who knows, maybe it doesn’t change at all?
In the future, I guess I’ll have to make it so that each user can send theirs on their own time for maximum exposure… That is further down the development roadmap. But first, I’ll have to finish my currently new planned features for Tweekly.fm.
Tweekly.fm hits 7500 users
Tags: imsonerdy, Music, tweeklyfm
I just actually needed a cool blog-title.
This blog is more just an update on the state of things.
Firstly, yes: Tweekly.fm has of this blog post hit 7500 users. It is also now under 500 00 on alexa ranking. It has grown tremendously the past few months. I am very happy about it! What started as just a simple service I wanted to use on my own in January of this year, is now supporting itself through ad revenue! That is not all though. I am going to upgrading and overhauling the Twitter side of the mashup in the coming month if university work isn’t bogging me down too much. Expect awesome features!
Twindie.net run by me and my bro (well my bro does more work atm) got a redesign and launched its first T-shirt range! It’s dry and lame.
I’m So Nerdy is going slowly at the moment. I’m sensing a redesign possibly and the eventual implementation of categories (and better sharing), but it is a bit low on the priority list. Too much other web and study-related things we are busy with. But please, don’t stop submitting hilarious nerdyness.
We also have a new website in the pipeline that should launch in the coming weeks. We love it.
In music-related news, we are busy with an EP for our project, called Dapper Jump. Expect it to sound like indie alternative rock with electro.
Yes, me and my brother are trying to take over the world.
Dapper Jump
Tags: dapper jump, Music, myspace
I keep forgetting that this blog is also about my music endeavours! I just keep posting about my websites and such.
Me and brother, who each have our own music projects (see pages above for my stuff and Sparkyboy on MySpace for my bro’s 8-bit music), has decided to finally put something together with vocals.
We didn’t go out to make it a live band. We just want to make music because we like doing it. If that means adding loads of electronic stuff, then so be it. We also don’t try to subscribe to any genre, rather just make music when it sounds cool.
Considering that my bro is in China, we could only make about 3 tunes so far. “We Are In Space” is what I like to call ghetto, space synth. “Bears” is indie dance rock-y and “Sands of Tide” is an ambient electro tune.
Go check us out on MySpace. More songs are coming eventually! 
The Grand Underground (new album)
Tags: drum and bass
I present my new album! The Grand Underground.
You can get it at the “page” at the top.
I feel this is a more focused album than any of previous albums. One of my favourite songs was Crag. It was a high quality track. I feel I’ve definitely upped my game with at least 3 songs on the new album that equal Crag in quality.
There are a few more songs that I made, but didn’t make the cut. Because I have no pressure and time, I feel the music I’m going to release must become better and better. Let’s hope it does.
I really hope you enjoy it! If you do, review it, send it around, let your dog listen to it. Have fun!
New song – Asteroid
Tags: drum and bass, last.fm, shotbeak
So after Undergrand and Tots, I decided to play around with different styles. I have loads of Work-in-progress sitting on my PC. Then when my older brother came from London to visit our family, he introduced me to Justice and Boys Noize. Needless to say, it’s awesome and I decided to try my own hand at making a more solid dancey track with a great underlying bassline.
As Asteroid developed, it kept that core slightly dancey vibe and yet retains what I like to call my signature ambient drum and bass. I like it.
Get it here on my last.fm.
Enjoy!
Muse Lyrics
I was looking for an application to display lyrics from my favourite band, Muse, on my Facebook profile. There wasn’t one, so I made one.
So, if you have Facebook and like Muse, get the application here. It is still in beta phase, so there might be a bug or 2.
Add it.
2 years and still going.
So, I’ve been blogging now for 2 years. On 9 January 2007 I created this blog (which then resided on shotbeakgames.za.net) to detail my blabberings on indie game development. 2007 was full of that. I was heavily into indie game development. 2008 was the year I started university and thus I neglected my game dev and found a new passion, web development. Most of 2008’s blogging was about not blogging.
If you read my 1st post many of the ideas I had regarding indie game dev holds true to web development too in this age.
I was talking about how you get two types of developers. Those who do market research and develop a massive money munching website and people like me who at the moment just develop what I want. I made Roach Toaster years back because it was a game I wanted to play. I made TWAT (a last.fm and twitter mashup), because it is something I want.
And the last lines still hold true. Why should I cater for an audience when I can create my own?
–
So, what do I plan to do in 2009? I’m loving the opportunity that mashups provide. You create an application/service that has an instant userbase. It provides functionality. So 2009 will probably be year for more mashups from my side.
On the music side, I still want to know why I’m getting so much hits for my song Crag from Baidu… If only I knew Chinese and could get into Baidu. >_<
Social
Personals
My electronic music
Tweekly.fm - my last.fm/twitter mashup
My twitter babblings
My Last.FM top weekly artists.
