Due to some production delays I’ve pushed back the release of “digitalflood Pirate Radio Volume 6 Episode 3″until tomorrow night (1/20/10). I’m just over 30% into post production and there should be no issue getting it out by then. Sorry about that.
Atom Bomb Testing in 1951... yeah those are real troops. Can you say crispy?
You may have noticed we had a major outage to digitalflood.com from around 7 pm EST 12/8/09 into the early morning of 12/9/09 sometime. This was the result of a major spam attack against digitalflood.com. To prevent future attacks of this type against our site, yesterday afternoon I finished migrating email services from the same platform that serves our web page into burlier clustered email server solution. By splitting apart these services and using the web server to only serve web pages (a novel idea indeed) we should no longer see these type of spam attacks “downing” the web site.
While I was at it yesterday (12/9), I also did a whole bunch of OS updates, as well as, some plug in updates to df.com. This is too keep things up to date and secure, as well as, insure top notch delivery of the web site. As a result of all this work, we’re back in business and everything is loading pretty good on the site considering the recent spike in web page viewership. I’m still noticing some anomalies I’m trying to iron out, but ultimately it’s looking like I’m quickly outgrowing my current server. This is admittedly quicker than expected. I cannot complain about df.com being so popular so soon after it’s return– clearly that is a blessing. Therefore my only real long term solution will be to move to a beefier web server and I plan on doing that sometime early in 2010 if all goes right. I may have to “speed up” that new web server deployment though if things continue getting hairy during high volume hours.
Now onto the real bad news, that same night of 12/8/09 of the spam attack my computer’s main hard drive completely failed (it’s a total coincidence– but what bad timing for irony to strike). While I won’t lose any of my music or web cast recordings (including the still in production digitalflood Pirate Radio Vol. 5 Episode 4) it certainly stops production of Pirate Radio for this week. Thus I’m regrettably (but without choice) going to have to move the release of Vol. 5 Ep. 4 into next week. If things change and I somehow get my hard drive replaced/rebuilt faster I’ll let you know right here on df.com, but for the time being– consider this an unexpected week long hiatus in Pirate Radio production.
I’m finding that when it rains– it truly pours. *boom*
Green light means go!
The multimedia audio production applications are all updated and confirmed functional. The workstation is prepped. We are a go for recording to begin this evening on the first new digitalflood Pirate Radio in the last ten months. Reverend Baker will be here at my house in less than seven hours. It all happens from there. I plan on following up on Vol. 5 Episode 2 with at least two mix sessions, which judging from the very frequent plays we get on them are extremely popular with you the viewer. Since October 5, 2009 (the launch of df.com version 11) the following Pirate Radio shows form our top five by listens/downloads:
Feel free to familiarize yourself with those gems if you have not already and if you have– give them a listen again. You never know what you’ll find hidden in the background of a conversation or a sample that you say “Hey, I know where that’s from”.
My plan for this year is to up the ante on both our production value and overall presentation. You’ll notice improvements on audio quality and overall content. As always, we’ll be hitting you with the hardest beats and the most off the wall humor possible. All in the name of entertainment for you the viewer/listener.
Thank you as always for taking the ride with us. We hope you enjoy it as much as we do making it.
* After two years (since 2006) on hiatus and the first time since November 2007 any new sets have been released, DF PIrate Radio returned to the webcast scene in October 2008 with a brand new show.
* Chrissy is DJ digitalflood’s wife in real life. They were married in April of 2007.
* The current Pirate Radio studio is in the Welch household’s living room.
* The speaking interludes in Pirate Radio are actually recorded days before the show is engineered and produced. The playlist is one of the first pieces of Pirate Radio that is determined. From there a format is fleshed out. A general plot decided. Then recording takes place. The music and sound effects are added in later during production.
* Every live mix show has contained at least one track featuring Old Dirty Bastard. This is an homage to DJ digitalflood’s favorite rapper.
* Live mix shows take longer to actually make than the normal spoken format shows. On top of the normal four hour production time required to create an episode, a one hour recording session must be performed in real time. Normal shows only require about 30 minutes of recording to tape the voice interlude segments. Mixing then occurs in the production software and not in real time thus speeding the actual creation process.
* The lost episode (11/3/08) took some four months to be released. Production began in one version of Sony software and ended in another. Yes– we took long enough to go up a version during production.
I’ve been really busy with work and that’s slowed down production a bit, but I wanted to make sure everybody knows I’m not MIA or going on hiatus or something like that. I said a month or so back when we kicked into full production mode that we weren’t going to return to weekly segments and this type of situation is exactly why I didn’t want to over promise while under delivering. The good news though that soon I’ll be able to get back to doing what I do best– drop new tracks and shows right here on DF.com. MC Mary and myself did recently cut a new Pirate Radio that needs post-production still, but there is definitely going to be at least one more talk show Pirate Radio before the end of 2008. I also owe you both another Beat Feast mix tape and a little surprise before the end of year. Both will be delivered soon enough as well. I appreciate your patience and continued support– keep believing because we’ll deliver for sure!