Happy New Year everyone!
One of my personal promises for 2022 is to become better at posting about my music and other stuff. The nice image, by Ivan Filipov, is a little teaser for a future release. It’s a remix EP with remixes by me and John Keding. Can you guess which track? A little hint, it’s from 2020 and It’s a fan favorite.
I was browsing through this years’ Wrapped for Artists on Spotify. As usual, it was a depressing read, once again highlighting my obvious lack of self-promotion and releasing new music to keep the fans interested. Listening rates going steadily down. That sort of stuff.
One interesting thing came out of that ordeal, however. Some plays of my 2005 track Gravitons came from a relatively new playlist called Club Penguin Original Soundtrack. I investigated further and soon found out that apparently Gravitons was used in a hugely popular online game called Club Penguin, back in the mid-2000, and more recently in Club Penguin 3D (CP3D).
I think that is the third game my music has been licensed to so far, as I know of anyway. Maybe I should add ‘Game musician’ to my Linkedin Profile. ;)
Haven’t posted anything here in three months. So what’s up? Well.. I’m still alive and kicking. After I finished and published my Game Boy modding book I kind of went into low energy, low inspiration mode, or something. It’s probably because of the pandemic, with the working from home, not being able to travel, go clubbing etc. I’m putting most of my available life force into my day job. Once in a while, if I’m lucky there is enough of it left for making music and other creative stuff. I’m still working on my next album, but it’s a slow process. Grinding away one tune at a time.
Over and out.
My new book is out on Amazon. Game Boy Modding and Repairs is something I have been working on for about five months, one of my secret projects during the Covid Lockdown.
It’s an e-book for anybody that wants to learn how to modify and repair the classic Nintendo Game Boy handheld console, with no-nonsense, illustrated detailed guides to the most common mods for improved video and sound. Also lots of solutions to the most common problems for the old DMG-01.
Check it out if you want to learn just about everything I know about modding Game Boys. All the do’s and don’ts, all the little tips and tricks I wished I knew when I started out five or so years ago.
Everything covered in my book:
Game Boy Overview
Tools & Supplies
Sourcing a Game Boy
Resources
How To Clean a Game Boy
Retrobrighting
Modding Without Soldering
How To Solder a Game Boy
The Backlight Mod
The Bivert Mod
The Decoupling Capacitor Mod
The Pro Sound Mod
The Bass Mod
Aftermarket Clear Shell Mod
Other Mods
Modding Lingo
Repairs:
Game Boy won’t start
The logo is scrambled
Game Boy starts but the screen is blank
Battery leaks and other corrosion
Screen flickers when turning the contrast wheel
Screen is weak, lacks contrast, or flickers sometimes
Vertical lines
Horizontal lines
Black spots on the screen
Small faded spots in the screen
Scratches on the screen or the screen cover
Sound crackles when adjusting the volume
Sound is distorted or weak
No sound when using headphones
The D-pad or buttons doesn’t work
D-pad and buttons are hard to press
Capacitors
Problems after installing a backlight:
Broken screen
Areas with different brightness
Graphics doesn’t look sharp
Graphics looks inverted
Screen doesn’t work or is flickering a lot
One or several air bubbles
Bivert chip problems
When nothing else works
I have done some more WordPress tweaking on Fogelberg.com. The loading time for the images had become somewhat unbearable, which shouldn’t really happen since I was using plugins to handle that: The W3 Total Cache to cache everything, Shortpixel Image Optimizer for optimizing images and putting them on their CDN, and finally, the Autoptimize plugin for, among other things lazyloading images and fetching them from the Shortpixel CDN.
Especially the Photos page took forever to load. It seemed that none of the images was really cached. Using a cache plugin should speed up showing a page, images included. Now, all of the images seemed to be fetched from the CDN every time I reloaded a page. The result was a much slower website. Just loading the start page could take 14-15 seconds. That shouldn’t happen with a cache plugin installed.
I tried a lot of things to fix it. I cleared all the caches. Checked that all settings in the plugins seemed right. I changed a few plugin settings. I disabled the Image Optimizer plugin. No difference. I tried to use Shortpixel Adaptive Images, Shortpixel’s own plugin for fetching images from their CDN. No difference. As a last resort, I uninstalled all three plugins. Everything looked and worked exactly as before, i.e., badly.
Then, I had a look at the HTML code, specifically for how the images were shown, using a browser with a completely wiped history (nothing cached). The HTML code showed my pages were still cached and fetched images from the Shortpixel CDN, even though I had uninstalled all three plugins for that. They shouldn’t fetch images from the CDN, they should fetch them from my WordPress installation. WTH? I had a look inside the Cache folder in my WordPress installation. Surprisingly, it was full of stuff, cached pages that shouldn’t be there. This should all be deleted automatically when uninstalling the plugins.
I removed all the files in the Cache folder. Reloaded the website in a browser, and wow, low and behold, it was now showing the correct, uncached version. No more CDN URLs. Seems it was some sort of cache problem all along.
I don’t know if it was caused by Autoptimize or Total Cache, but I did some research and decided not to reinstall them. Instead, I now use WP Rocket. Yes, it’s not a free plugin, but finally, everything works as it should, and my site is quicker to load than before.
I’m happy again.
I just realized I hadn’t written anything in my blog since August. OK, here we go. A little update of what I have been up to for the last four months.
We all know what a horrible year 2020 was. I won’t delve any deeper into that shit show. Apart from working from home and not seeing anybody but the closest family, I’m doing fine. I got a steady income, the family is fine, no-one has been sick.
Apart from watching movies and playing games, I’ve spent most of my spare time on three major projects. Making new music for my next album, modding Game Boys, and writing a book.
The music-making has been going slower than I anticipated, I admit. So far, I got five tunes finished for the next album. I want to do five or six more before that project is done and ready for release, hopefully sometime in 2021.
Modding Game Boys has been an ongoing project for a while. The feeling I have right now when writing this is that the next five will be the last ones I do for a long time. Maybe forever. Let us see how that develops. Contact me if you are interested in obtaining one of the last.
And finally, the book I’m writing. I can’t tell you much about it yet. It’s 80% finished, and it’s not fiction. More about that later.
And that’s that. A happy New Year to you all, and let us all hope 2021 turns out better. I’m confident it will.
We’re in the mids of a world wide pandemic but there is still so much great music coming out. Here are the top three new albums that I have found myself listening to recently. Music that inspires me.
I recently spent a few days servicing my trusty old Roland SH-09, an analog monophonic synthesizer that has been with me since forever. Afterwards I was so astounded with how good it sounded now. The not so simple task of cleaning and re-lubing all the carbon sliders actually improved the sound A LOT. Since I also did the so called noise mod I can now blend in a selectable level of noise along with VCO saw or pulse (and sub osc). This is not possible on an un-modded SH-09. Check out my video and hear for yourself. I suggest using headphones or a good pair of speakers to enjoy the rumbling bassness.
My official Facebook page has grown quite a bit lately. Today it passed 1000 followers.
Head on over there and follow me, if you have not already.
Check it out. My latest single has been released. If you like it, please don’t forget to click the Follow button on Spotify profile. That way all my future releases will be added to your Release Radar.