11/28/2003 - The more I've worked on the site the smaller my goals have become. Or is that just called getting old?
My original design was too time consuming to update, heck, this one still takes far too much of my time. I have integrated a dynamic back end, which is in fact a FileMaker database on my Mac - this now provides most of the text on the site. Scrolling was ultimately essential. I hope it looks O.K. to you. It is actually the aspect of the site I'm now happiest with. The all encompassing database idea almost ruined my life, and thank heavens, there are now more sensible options. I am, as I write, outsourcing for the first time - I have hired a tech to design a weblog. This should go live 2nd quarter 2004. Here's what I wrote in 2000 - My original goals have proven unrealistic. What's new? I had wanted this site to be a complete resource of everything ever written about, every photo of, every piece of music written or performed by the artist previously known as Lloyd Cole. What I have found, since I began the design and construction process, is that the nature of this medium is so transient, the technology and the tools are changing so quickly, that any large independent undertaking is going to be out of date before it is finished. I am now resigned to the fact that lloydcole.com will always be ongoing. Never finished. I have come to a point at which the basic structure is working and so I'm putting it out there. I will update and upgrade as often as my time permits. I had wanted the site to be black and white and to look like a book, to have a textured paper like look behind the type. This proved, if not impossible, prohibitively expensive, in terms of the resulting file sizes, and pure white hurts my eyes, coming from a computer screen.. What I have ended up with is a colour scheme that I came across accidentally, when compressing a photo image to a 4 colour gif, and a site which feels like a book, even if it doesn't look like one. Why is reading so much more enjoyable from a book than from a website? Paper is easier on the eye, than gamma rays, for sure, but also there is nothing else there on the page; what you are reading is all you see. How Zen is that? There is no table of contents on every page, and when you want to turn the page, you don't have to go back to the bookshelf to do so. I have tried to build a site which is as minimalist as possible, without sacrificing functionality. From the page you are reading, with a couple of clicks, you could go anywhere within the site. Or you could use the keyboard .. All the pages on this site are the same size, so if you resize your browser window on the way in, you can have a little scroll free time. Some of the areas are quite large and the files may take while to get into your system, but when they are in, they are completely in, and you won't need to go back to the bookshelf for a while. While you are waiting, you will not be asked to view a 3D animation, but you can read a poem, if you'd like. Banners are tacky, they are distracting and often insulting. They have become a fact of internet life, and provide the only lifeline to many sites. They have given us the 'eyeball'. There has to be a better way. lloydcole.com is not self righteous about it's absence of banners, to have them would simply contradict the entire philosophy of the site. 11/28/2003 Update. Nothing to report . Here's what I wrote when I first built the site. I guess I was feeling rather pleased with myself having designed a website.. It was not my intention to sound so pompous. There may eventually be some video on the site, you never know. The musicplayer still works in it's own quirky way.. Quote - late 2000 - The huge majority of internet users get it through telephone lines. As long as that is the case, streaming audio and video is mostly rubbish. If you like the idea of a mini screen playing jerky lo res video to a soundtrack of tinny lisping singers, there are plenty of places for you to go.. The reason that there is so much animation out there is because it works. There will be some streaming audio at this site soon, but it will only work if you have a superfast connection and a modern computer.. for the rest of us, I have designed an interim solution. The musicplayer takes a while to load the music into your system, but it does so in the background, and when it's there, it actually sounds pretty good. Video will have to wait. From my point of view, that's fine, it is the least interesting medium that I have worked in. All the interesting ideas I had went into the first one we made, and then I thought "uh, oh.." There are television performances that would be nice to archive, and the Commotions at the Marquee video, that Polygram made, is pretty good, but I'm sure you're not holding your breath.
____end of item. 11/28/2003 This text is a little embarrassing to read these days. I hope I didn't disillusion anyone. The communal dream proved very difficult and time consuming to actually live. However there were successful exceptions and the ask lloyd area was one of those. This area will return within the new weblog. You may even be able to ask Beth too.. The weblog will be set up so that you can actually upload data, and I hope you will. Reviews, news, photographs anything which is news rather than chat room, is welcome. Here's the 2000 text - That's you. I have this hippy idealist dream, it's very uncharacteristic.. Wouldn't it be great if this site was self sufficient and supported by it's own community? There is a lot of crap written, these days, about the internet bringing the artist closer to the audience, or vice versa. I make no such claims. That is just new code for selling stuff in new ways and getting you to spend more than you used to.. and the people making these claims are the usual suspects and they have have 'Budweiser' flashing above their message.. it's nonsense. It's about shopping. Everything here is free. There will be no banners. The site will go under first. If some multinational wants to make a donation, I won't refuse, but all we have here is a roll of honour to salute those who have helped. It's already a substantial list and thanks again, everyone. Well, if you'd like to contribute to the latent hippy vibe here, all you'd need to do would be to buy a t-shirt every now and then, encourage your friends to join the mailing list, or you could submit reviews or articles, and help me out with the typing. I'm going to take a typing course this year, but right now, I'm pathetic, glacial. Go to the 'Fan Base', if you'd like; your options are all there. Update 05/00 Well, it's happening. People are volunteering. It's exciting. I'll keep you posted. Update 06/00 I'm meeting with some of the folk who ran the unofficial sites in Seattle early next month.. lloydcole.com stage 2 coming soon. Update 02/01 lloydcole.com/html - an html only parallel site is coming soon. Initial design is now complete. Browsers which do not support Flash will soon be able to access much of the information at lloydcole.com, and regular visitors will have a faster option for checking the news.
11/27/2003 I became fluent in Flash for a while, I should be thankful that it has become such a standard as I can still barely write any code.. I am pleased that much of the opposition to Flash seems to have diminished, at the same time, I sympathize with this opposition more. Who wants to go to a site and have to click the skip intro button every time? I always skip intro so it is no surprise that I axed my own. I am pleased that the design purity I was going for still appeals to me and I have just tried to simplify the site over the last couple of years, still a lot to do, but I'm happy with the Songs area, and the News area now. I hope they are OK for you. 2000 text - Everything, right now, in lloydcole.com is a Flash file, there is no HTML except the pages which house the Flash files. HTML today is a further example of a medium evolved into something which it was never intended to be. Which was, I think, simple, cross platform transport of data. Creating page layout in HTML is like mowing the lawn with a kitchen knife attached to a broomstick with special Netscape and Microsoft string and rubber gloves holding the contraption together. It is tedious, and thankfully, only really dedicated professional people have to do it.. Flash is now in most internet users' systems, and if it is not, it is easy to get, and it is free. It makes no sense for independent amateurs, like myself, to design convoluted HTML anymore. Flash is not 'cutting edge', it is just sensible. I am not sponsored by Macromedia. Update 06/00 and 02/01- Hell Freezes Over - There will be an HTML only area - lloydcole.com/html. html handles text intensive pages more efficiently than Flash, there is a new Flash Player (version 5) which, I am hoping, will give the best of both worlds. Next to nobody has Flash Player 5 yet and so I'm not going to waste time redesigning to accommodate it just yet, but that is the goal for 2001. I have long subscribed to the 'Microsoft is the Evil Empire' school of thought, but I'm using one of their fonts; 'Verdana' was designed specifically for internet use. I like it. And the latest version of Internet explorer is a huge improvement, so I'll take back my complaints. Still, I hope they get chopped in half.. |
