Blog: Hibbfact 2000

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Over the past few days I've been tinkering with and on the HIBBFACT 2000, the super advanced (hem hem) COMPUTER BRANE that powers most of these webpages and will probably one day end up gaining consciousness and taking over the satellites, nuclear weapons systems etc ect. Don't worry though - I have programmed it specifically NOT to understand this human emotion we call "love", so just giving it a hug should sort things out if/when that DOES happen.

I built the whole thing from SCRATCH a few years ago when Blogger changed/closed/went a bit funny (i can't remember exactly) - I thought it might be FUN to build my own blogging system that I could control myself and, while I was at it, automate the webpages in general. It turned out to be a BIG PROJECT, largely because it WAS such fun, and I ended up tying it all together with an automated system not just for blogs but also for GIGS, songs, all releases, newsletters, articles and pretty much EVERYTHING. It was TOTALLY worth all the effort though, as now I can, for instance, add new gigs from my PHONE and know they'll pop up in all the right places. It's lovely!

One thing I never got around to however was sorting out COVER VERSIONS. I'd done a bit of a BODGE FIX by setting a rule that the system THINKS a song is a cover version if there's no lyrics, and so doesn't show it on the list of new/unreleased songs and doesn't say "Published by Wipeout" when you get to it. This didn't really work though - for instance, I didn't put any of the lyrics for the Total Hero Team songs in the database, so they didn't show up, but on the other hand SOME cover versions DID show up because I'd put the original authors in instead of lyrics.

It was MOST unsatisfactory but I lived with it by mostly forgetting it worked that way. However, this week I noticed it again while tidying up all the various songs from the last couple of years. I've added LOTS of lyrics and notes (though I still have a few to do) for odd songs I've written for various purposes, and while doing so thought "I really ought to FIX this". Thus at 10pm last night I found myself sat PROGRAMMING... for about half an hour, by which time I'd DONE it. It was VERY SATISFYING INDEED, not least because it means (for various de-bodging reasons) you can now see information about nearly ALL the songs I've ever played at gigs and, for instance, see every time I've played Boom Shake The Room over the past ten years. SPOILERS: it is a LOT of times!

As I say, I'm trying to get ALL the spare lyrics in there now, though I can't promise they'll necessarily be the FINAL lyrics for all the songs. One of the several Nice Things about the run of solo gigs I'm doing at the moment is that I'm trying out NEW SONGS as I go, so the words may change. Still, at least I'll be able to check them on my phone if I forget them now!

posted 11/10/2013 by MJ Hibbett

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Comments:

and I can tell you that in addition to that long list, 'Boom Shake The Room' was definitely played at the Winchester Railway Inn in 2002 as well. I knows cos that nice bloke from Vanity Project fanzine said so in his review.
posted 14/10/2013 by skif

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