800 & Counting!

Ruthlessly putting to rest all zidsic references was the only way forward and, as extensive an activity as it was, at least it gave me incentive to improve the site again. Approaching my 800th release I was focused on audio concerns but soon after I turned to fixing the website. Two motivations to have a definitive '800-era' site were (a) enlarged webserver space in November finally allows my design some breathing room and (b) ZH27.net on cd rom [released first as ZH27 Story] needed updating.

My yearlong obsession with new and updated covers produced hundreds of fine replacements for outdated and ugly designs. 804 pages now exist with high resolution covers (usually under 400k) for every release with background information, reviews, contributor listings and details wherever possible.

Audio sections listing scores of releases have be redesigned using frames to make them friendlier to browse. You can click instead of scroll your way through the alphabetical and chronological listing of all 804 releases whose links have all been checked for accuracy. And at last the importance of the collaborators page is matched by improvements in design.

Some of these changes were made in the middle of writing this missive in fact as I was mulling over ways to improve perennially difficult but highly useful pages. Repeatedly going through the pages of my site has allowed me to apply consistency and uniformity to parts that were developed ad hoc. It's funny how I will intrinsically know for some time that I have problem pages or sections of my site and I'll do anything but fix them. Either I feel it will take of time and work or I cannot see for the life of me a way to solve the design problem.

I was left wondering recently what I might feel like if I have no work to do on my site. I'm not sure I can be uncritical enough to allow myself the luxury of finding out! At least having the feeling that I have my site in order will give me the frame of mind that I can open myself to other insane projects that are massive time sinks.

Recently I've been letting my friends and coworkers know of my productivity, the 800 and all, and after the shock wears off inevitably people will say "well you'll be at 1000 soon". Sure, I'll just go home and bake a quick 200 releases... be right back! I just remember how long it took to hit this landmark and think how much harder I work on my new stuff than before. It's some legitimate effort to get 50 releases out a year, so I'm clearly 4-5 years away from 1000 if I raced for it!

And I'm not convinced that there's any rush. I'm concerned about what I need to do and how I can learn new things in the process of doing new work. Productivity numbers are just signposts along the way - the journey is 27 years, not a specific number of releases. But the work not only includes audio and networking but just keeping up and doing work of some sort and keeping myself open to new options through networking and physical sound experimentation.

A world of thanks to everyone who has been sending me one minute collaborative wonders the last few years and keeping me busy! I'd like to do my next Zanstones solo Eurotour in January 2004 and hope to meet some excellent people I've only written then. Until then, I'm back to work in the ZH27 mines with a big 'ol smirk on my face.

November 2003