Sunday, June 19, 2011

Progress at alionsonny.com / alionsonny.de

Ok, not really much has happened. I fixed some stuff at the database backend which bothered me since quite a time. One of the most annoying things has been fixed also. I regularly got complaints, mostly by idiots who wanted to show how "smart" they think they are. Why I think this? Because those complains came mostly as replies to forum posts I wrote some idiots didn't like so much. They came like "hey, before you say anything, why not fix your buggy website" etc.
It was not really a big thing, because most people were able to view the website without a problem, including me. Still those folks showed me sometimes screenshots etc. and first I thought it was a browser specific problem, eventhough I wondered how a browser specific problem could cause PHP or MySQL errors. Yesterday a friendly person gave me a hint in the right direction. He said, that the trouble happens, if the site is browsed by entering ,for example, alionsonny.com without the www. part. From that moment on I pretty much knew where the error was caused. But seriously: I never browsed a website without entering the www. part. So to make it short: That strange error should be fixed now. If you find any more errors, glitches, bugs or other ugly stuff, please let me know.
I allready know about the trashed CSS layout on the song detail pages. I'll fix that next.

Friday, June 17, 2011

AlionLive Episode 2 is now completely online!

Oups, nearly I forgot to inform you about that here, Most of you probably know that there is a second episode of AlionLive and have viewed it more or less completely. Yeah, the editing and uploading took a while again. Well, it is 6 parts with a runtime of roughly 15 minutes each. So it is roughly 1 1/2 hours. Most of the time took the creation of the english subtitles.
I love it to see the number of viewers increasing slowly but steadily. This of cause encourages me to film more episodes and create new ideas for AlionLive. Many thanks to all of you again who let me know via mail, Facebook and Twitter, that they liked it. And here's the full second episode of AlionLive. Have Fun!






Tuesday, June 14, 2011

Musicians wanted for AlionLive!

Today I have something very different for you than usually. Many of you might know my new video format AlionLive. If not, then have a look at it now. Each part of an episode of AlionLive is due to the maximum upload size of Youtube just under 15 minutes long and so far I have always accompanied it with my own music. Yesterday I got the idea to now also offer the possibility to other musicians to get their music featured in AlionLive episodes, and gain additional people to get to know about the music of rather lesser-known artists. And if I know one, then it is that independent artists who do not have a major record deal, can not have enough, namely promotion. And this I would like to provide to you, dear reader, if you are a musician. If you are concerned that unscrupulous people then just steal the music from the video and may no longer buy your MP3s, I can reassure you. Since I more or less talk over the music, the whole would be more of a mixed blessing ;). So what are you waiting for? Your music could already be presented in the next AlionLive episode. On request, a link to your website is displayed or a purchase link to the MP3. So you can directly gain new customers from AlionLive. The whole thing is very simple: You send an email to alionsonny@alionsonny.com and possible high-quality version of the song you like to have presented at AlionLive. We will discuss everything else then. I look forward to your mail! Ah, and by the way: This is all for free!

Monday, June 13, 2011

Updates and work at alionsonny.com

First I want to apologize to the visitors and users of alionsonny.com for som inconviniences, which occured during the past weeks. Somehow the songlist was not updated correctly, and because of that my entry for the Leah Rosier Remix Contest aswell as my Teddybears cover "Punkrocker" did not appear. Somehow that had to do with some databasetable and I don't want to bore you with technical details. This should be fixed now. I took the opportunity to work a bit further at the website. Since quite a time there are some not so nice problems with the site, which are actually quite serious security leaks in conclusion with our all the time beloved hackers. I am not talking about real and serious hackers here, but rather about so called script kiddies who feel very cool, if they manage it to break into a private website and fuck something up. So I fixed some fat problems connected to the main database core classes, which caused at least some ugly PHP error messages.
Ok, and during the next weeks I will fix some minor problems, which for example fuck up the CSS regularly. And I will extend the website. Yes, right: There wil be NEW STUFF on alionsonny.com. I seriously think about implementing optional registration for user accounts, to supply, for example a newsletter for REAL fans. Let me surprise you!
I'll close this posting with apologies upfront for any inconviniences which may occur as result of the work at alionsonny.com. It is no "work at the open heart of the site", because I have a quite good development environment here, which allows me to test the modules before I put them online. But minor errors and bugs are allways possible. I ask you explicitly, to send me mails if you come across stuff which doesn't work or look like it should over a longer period of time. That way I eventually get to know about errors which I did not notice. Thanks in advance for your patience and help!

Wednesday, June 1, 2011

New song "Punkrocker (Teddybears Cover)" is out & more...

Well, my listeners really has to wait a long time since my last song release. But as some kind of a compensation for this, the new release is really something special. Some time ago a friend pointed me to the music of a swedish band, called Teddybears and I quickly learned to love their music. Especially I liked a song they had released with one of the founding fathers of Punkrock: Iggy Pop. It was a song titled "Punkrocker". If you dont know the original track and want to give it a listen, just go to Youtube and search for Teddybears and Punkrocker. I would have liked to embed a video here, but the last time I linked to a video of that song either the video had been taken down or there was that familiar message, that the video was not available in my country. So, go and search for yourself and you'll find.
Well, and because I liked that song SO much und I started to re-create the instrumental part in my sequencer software, I thought to myself "Hey, why not do a coverversion?". And if you think, that my version like most of my songs will be instrumental, i can and must surprise you. No, it is not an instrumental version, and now for the surprise: I sing it myself! Yes, this is quite a rare thing, and I'll do it again very soon. On can say that I found my vocalist voice once again.
The song is NO on-to-one copy of the original. It has the typical alionsonny sound & flavor. At least this is, what the first reactions by listeners told me and I think they are right. They said that this track has the typical alionsonny sound, just a bit "different".
Well and now enough words, here's the song:


and as allway the eternally working links at Archive.org:
Punkrocker (Teddybears Cover) - LISTEN
Punkrocker (Teddybears Cover) - DOWNLOAD

To celebrate the end I want to mention that the next episode of AlionLive has been allready filmed yesterday. It features a biketour to the Sachsenwald, a forest near Hamburg / Germany. Alltogether I filmed about four hours of video material. This is roughly 1/3 or 1/4 of the material filmed for episode one. However, I will NOT use the ful about four hours of material, but only the highlights. This will be a funny and lengthy video cutting session. The episode is, as announced in german language, but will have english subtitles.
Well, and that's it. I'm off for cutting video!