Tag: tumblr

2024 RPM Challenge Day 1/29

Every February I try to post daily RPM Challenge updates on a Tumblr page that I set up a thousand years ago and only ever use to try and track daily updates of music projects. Why? Why do I do this? Why do I even keep this Tumblr account? What the hell is wrong with me? 

I find that I post to that page for a week or two and then I fall off and eventually forget all about it. It’s lame. I am lame. You could probably tell that by all the lame posts though, so I don’t expect anyone to be surprised.

Anyway, I posted the day one summary this morning even though I have already done some work on day two today. Whatever. Since I am a content whore I will quote the Tumblr post here because… ya know… reasons. I guess.

The RPM Challenge is underway once again. Will I manage to post daily updates here? Probably not. Oh well.

Day one went really well. I managed to start four songs before I punched into work for the day. Three of them were multiple riffs/changes that I noodled out on guitar. The fourth was just a bass/drum groove that I worked out on my iPhone.

After work I added bass and drum parts (MIDI) and a song form to two of the three ideas that started on guitar. I started adding bass and drums to the third but was unable to finish.

And that is my wrap up for day one. I’ve already done a little work on day two.

Musical Meanderings

There you go. There is my day one summary. I mentioned the morning stuff here yesterday but the after work stuff should be new news.

As for today? I put rhythm guitars (two guitars through two amps each for a total of four tracks) onto song idea number one. I didn’t have time to add them to song idea number two too. Maybe this evening. We’ll see.

155/365
155/365 – The two amps are a Fender Bassbreaker 15 and a Vox MV50 Clean. Both are running direct into my USB audio interface.

48 Days (I think)

I often start my lunch break with a visit to Google News where I just pick a handful of articles to read. I saw one today that talked about Tumblr and how, while it seems to be a dead platform, lots of younger people are starting to use it. The implication was that many of the younger people who are ignoring Facebook and Twitter are ending up there. That’s nice. I always like Tumblr, but they made the same fatal mistake that Flickr made when they let Yahoo buy them out. That mistake was, of course, letting Yahoo buy them out.

I think I had two Tumblr accounts and I am pretty sure they are both active… pretty sure. One is just a copy of this blog. Anything I post here gets cross posted there. I would tell you what the address is, but I can’t remember. I just know that when I look at this account’s dashboard there is a reference to it. The second account sometimes gets used when I work on a music project like RPM. I post daily (mostly) progress that are pretty much meaningless to anyone who isn’t me, and after a few days they all look exactly the same.

This post, however, is not about Tumblr. It’s about Facebook.

Reading that article made me ask myself how long it had been since I logged in to Facebook. Turns out it’s been 48 days. December 2, 2021. That’s nice, huh? I’ve only received one notifications email from them over that time and I just trashed it. I don’t think I ever considered my boycott to be permanent, but it’s pretty nice the way I haven’t felt any need to check in for as long as it’s been. I imagine that there is a magic number of days that the boycott will last that will fully satisfy my need to stay away and once I hit that number I won’t get pissed off at myself if I go back.

Something like that.

Yahoo Buys Tumblr

Well… now Tumblr users wait and see, I guess.  Meanwhile Flickr users sigh and say, been there.

Yahoo purchased Tumblr for 1.1 Billion dollars in cash. 

Yahoo’s press release stated that part of the deal was a promise not to screw it up.  Yeah.  Flickr sure coulda used a promise like that.  It’s actually a good sign as they say that Tumblr will remain a separate division, or whatever they call it, and will remain independent.  They are not making any changes in Tumblr’s management.  That’s probably good news for Tumblr.  Let them keep to themselves and continue to grow up as they see fit.  Yahoo needs to be hands off.  From what I’ve heard, they did the opposite with Flickr.  They took a hot product and folded it into their corporate structure which alienated a lot of original users, and then Yahoo seemed to lose interest and the hot product became the stagnant product that everyone forgot about.

Yahoo’s current management seems to be trying to do the right thing by Flickr, or at least they are trying to give us that impression.  I’m buying it so far, but I am hoping for more.  It sounds like they are just going to leave Tumblr alone to do their own thing.  Let’s hope that that is the case.  Let’s also hope that it remains the case as time goes on.