While I do not tend to make resolutions (and certainly have never successfully kept any) I do use the start of a New Year to launch projects and start new ideas.
2017 sees the start of a number of new projects, a commitment to try and maintain others and of course the refusal to accept that some projects have finished.
Intended 2017 Projects
WebDigest
This year sees the launch of a new personal website project entitled the WebDigest. The WebDigest is three daily links; one which is fun, one which is an extended examination of a topic and the final link, a news item from the previous day. The purpose of the site is to help me expand my news reading beyond the echo chamber of my own social media feeds as I seek to include links from a deliberately wide range of sites. You may find it useful as well and I am looking for recommendation for more unusual news sources.
For those interested in such things, WebDigest.co.uk is a Jekyll static site sourcing data from a custom RSS feed being generated from a TinyRssReader install.
BoardGame Project
Inspired by a recent game of Dead of Winter I have started developing an expansion series for other popular modern board games. The expansions seek to expand replay-ability of games by adding a narrative element and temporarily adjust the turn of an individual player based on chance and causality. I am looking for a few alpha testers for an expansion to Carcassonne, let me know if your interested.
Writing
I have a number of text book writing projects underway regarding audio production which I also intend to complete this year. Ideally they will all get finished and be realised as a series though I am not certain this will be possible. Having explored a variety of options I am opting to self publish via print on demand and ePub. Though I am currently exploring the iBook format options as well. I plan to offer these texts with Creative Commons licenses and pay as you wish models.
Ongoing Project Status
The following projects continue on in various forms.
Ableton Human Drummer
The Ableton Human Drummer project continues exploring ways of creating contemporary drum patterns within Ableton housed systems. Early experiment outcomes are online on YouTube.
Dialling in a Dial Project
The Max 4 Live device project, Dialling in a Dial should also see further development and should see a first release later this year. A little silly considering this project was first presented early in 2016 Dialling in A Dial - more than just a’round @ Interactions 2016 but I must confessed that I just got a little bored of working on it so I just stopped.
The Podcasts
I am not willing to accept that my personal podcast and the AudioPodcast are dead, you can judge for yourself how much life is still in them. The Music Tech Chronicle (http://musictechchronicle.co.uk) still sees updates and I hope to have time to prepare the site for public contributions in the near future.
Christmas Movie Reviews
Friday Night Films became the Christmas Movie Review at the end of 2016 and had a successful festive season. This project in now back burned until August 2017.
Dead Projects
The following URLs were cancelled and projects declared dead.
- experimentallaptoporchestra.co.uk
- creativereport.co.uk
- theimprovsession.co.uk
- laptopprom.co.uk
- classicportrait.co.uk
These are listed here as an acknowledgement that I once owned them.
Inclusive Improv Special Mention
The 4th of August this year marks the 10th anniversary of the establishment of the Inclusive Improv. Perhaps that might be marked more significantly.