EightyOne

It’s been aaaaages since my last update on the development of the new Left Hand Red Wordpress theme, and that’s because there hasn’t been much developing. Last week, however, I pushed myself to plow on.

The dark grey scheme wasn’t inspiring me much, so I’ve replaced it with a white/light grey scheme with red highlights, and ditched the single-column format with the addition of a second column for secondary navigation and blurb. I’ve only really been blocking things out, and it’s very much still ‘bare bones’, but once I’ve settled on a colour scheme and layout I will start introducing some graphics and styling touches.

I’m currently using a red background for hovered links (see below), which looks quite striking on the simple, monotone background.

I’m probably still going to use a single-column layout for single posts and pages. I’m also going to implement Gravatars for comments, which I have more recently added to the existing site.

Last night, Left Hand Red played an opening slot at the Hope & Anchor in Islington, London. The venue has quite a punk pedigree, with appearances by loads of famous bands dating back to the ‘Seventies, and it also serves as a ‘feeder’ venue for the Dublin Castle, so we were naturally quite excited to be playing there. Unfortunately, the reality didn’t really live up to the expectation.

Things didn’t get off to the best start when Russell, Jane and I ended up getting ourselves lost in East London, but in the end we were only about 15 minutes later than our prescribed sound-check time of 19:30. Being late for sound-check never creates a great impression, so we were relieved to see that the other bands were still sound-checking themselves when we arrived.

When our turn to sound-check came, we were told that we only had 10 minutes, so we hurriedly went about setting up. Disaster! My bass failed to produce any output at all! I tried a different lead, just in case, but going in to two amps and my tuner showed that I was in trouble. Fortunately, we were able to borrow a bass from another band, and did a rushed and very ropey sound-check through a couple of verses and choruses.

By the end of our sound-check, it was already time to start our set, so we didn’t even bother leaving the stage. We played through half-an-hour or so of our most gig-friendly stuff, and of course, gave it the usual gusto. The whole thing felt like a bit of an effort though. The monitoring made it difficult to hear what we were doing, and the tiny stage (and we’re only a four-piece) was cramped and difficult to move around. It wasn’t the ideal environment for getting in to a performance. The unfamiliar bass and an unusually mobile drum kit didn’t help matters, either!

In the end, I think we put in a reasonable performance, and there were some positive comments on how everything sounded. We’ve learned not to let setbacks get us down, and to put as much effort as possible whatever the venue, crowd or situation, and hopefully that helped the impression we left.

Russell had an exam the next morning, and Jane and I had to be up early for work, so we left shortly after finishing our set and speaking to some of the people who’d made the trip up from Sussex. It might have been nice to stay for the other bands, but I didn’t feel particularly compelled to hang around, either. So, after two-and-a-half hours of travelling, and just an hour-and-a-half in the venue, we were off!

We’re often told that we need to look outside of Brighton if we’re going to go further as a band, but I have to say that I’m not sure we’ve got much from our travels to the capital, either. The venues we’ve played in just don’t seem to match up to those in Brighton, and it doesn’t feel like we’ve achieved much extra exposure (but it’s always great to play to those who come to check us out or make the journey with us).

Maybe we’re spoiled for choice in Brighton, or maybe there’s so much competition in London that it’s hard to get in to the good venues. We are going to be looking outside of Brighton for future gigs, particularly in big Uni towns and cities like Southampton and Reading, and I’m sure we’ll keep trying London, too.

Apple boss, Steve Jobs, has publicly said he wants record labels to allow downloadable music without Digital Rights Management (DRM). Apple have been criticised (and even threatened with bans by several European countries) for the ‘Fairplay’ DRM on songs sold through the iTunes Music Store, which (deliberately or not) only allow the music to be played in the iTunes software or on an iPod music player.

However, I was always strongly under the impression that the inclusion of DRM was at the insistance of the record labels, which this request would seem to indicate. Without the DRM, they simply would not licence their music to Apple, so they have no choice but to include the ‘anti-piracy’ measures.

As well as limiting iTunes Music Store purchases to Apple software and hardware, the ‘Fairplay’ DRM restricts the number of computers a song can be played on, and also restricts things like how many times you can burn your legitimately-purchased music on to CD. Removing the DRM would mean that the files could be played on any software or hardware that supports the AAC format used by the iTunes Music Store, and copied, moved and, most importantly, played as the purchaser wishes.

Ideally, there would be no DRM in digitally distributed media, but if used it should be completely transparent to the user, and wouldn’t pose any restrictions to legitimate use. In reality, it does things like stop people watching high-definition versions of their legally-purchased Blu-ray discs on their legally-purchased players through their legally-purchased HD TVs, because one of the devices, even an AV cable, doesn’t support the required DRM.

I’ve personally had to register for licenses for content that I’ve created, heard pops in legally purchased, ‘copy-protected’ CDs that I’ve transferred to my iPod, and for some reason, my iTunes music library has four of the maximum five computers registered to it, even though we only have two. This hasn’t caused any problems yet, but could the next time I reinstall my OS or add a user to either computer.

Hopefully this is a significant step towards a DRM-free future.

Apple seeks online music shake-up [bbc.co.uk]

Update: A more detailed look at Jobs’ open letter, and further insight in to the Apple/DRM situation — Apple would “switch to selling only DRM-free music” if labels agree [arstechnica.com]

Progress is slow to non-existant because I’m suffering from creative block (AKA lazyness). So far I’ve done a little styling on a plain theme that I’ve applied to the ghost-blog of my chum, Dan Stevens.

So far, setting up the theme has been almost as easy as setting up a stylesheet. In addition to your stylesheet, though, you have to create at least one template file, which forms the markup. This is essentially setting up an XHTML file with added custom PHP tags to insert the blog posts and information. e.g.

the_title()

This template I’ve split in to three files — header.php, footer.php and index.php. This will allow me to re-use the header and footer, whilst providing customised versions of the main content to suit the front page, individual posts and archives, for example.

The most useful concept to get to grips with is the Wordpress ‘Loop‘. This is the portion of code responsible for looping through posts, and repeatedly inserting the desired markup.

This blog was my first foray in to the world of WordPress, and when a Left Hand Red site redesign was on the cards, I decided to implement Wordpress on there so that the other band members could post news easily (the original was a static, hand-coded affair), adapting the existing design for use as a template. At the same time, I knew that I could completely redesign the site without having to edit any of the content simply by creating another WordPress theme.

We decided some time ago that the existing design had served its purpose, and that it was time for a change to something that better fits the band’s current sound and the image we want to project. So, I’ll be developing a new theme from the ground up, and documenting some of the process on this site as I go.