I am exceptionally pleased to announce the official launch of The Magnificent Playlist Producer — a program that helps you create podcasts and mixtapes.
The inspiration to write this software came to me in May. The prolific writer and occasional podcaster, Warren Ellis, lamented that his podcast was difficult to assemble because the program he was using had many limitations and wasn't working right.
Being quite a fan of his podcast, I quickly leapt to action, looking for better software that I could recommend to him. To my surprise, there wasn't any. Seriously, if you want to join a set of individual music files into one MP3, your options are nonexistent, short of learning a professional-grade multitrack editor.
Showing lots of enthusiasm and a substantial lack of foresight, I left a comment indicating that creating a better program would be a nice weekend project. A day or two later, I started coding... and then I looked up and it was December 1st!
A Simple Program To Do A Simple Thing
Playlist Producer fills a fairly specific niche: Combine multiple songs into one MP3. That's it. Really! But don't let the simplicity fool you — unlike so much other Windows shareware, it's well-designed, really easy to use, and Doesn't Suck™.
The vast majority of the aforementioned 6 months of programming was spent making sure the interface is intuitive and the software is stable. I think I've succeeded, and I'm really rather proud of this little application.
Make Some Playlists
If you're interested in podcasting, or just enjoy making mixtapes for your friends, I invite you to download Playlist Producer Lite, the free shareware edition of the software. It runs on Windows XP, Windows Vista and Windows 7.
Currently knee-deep in web design for a soon-to-be-announced project, and I'm easing the HTML-induced pain with some happy hardcore.
Once upon a time I was an enthusiastic — if not frequent — raver. Hullabaloo was my home, the venue of several of the best nights of my youth.
Hullabaloo, circa 1998. I might actually be in this crowd somewhere...
For those not in the know, happy hardcore is “a genre of music typified by a very fast tempo (usually around 160–180 BPM), often coupled with solo vocals and sentimental lyrics” (wikipedia.org) and Hullabaloo was a series of Toronto raves that became the global centre of the happy hardcore scene.
Anabolic Frolic is the DJ/promoter behind the Hullabaloo parties. He also produced a few happy hardcore tracks, including Feels So Right.
Anabolic Frolic
Anabolic Frolic's story doesn't quite make sense until you factor in that he and his fellow frolickers are stricken with the love that dare not speak its name: happy hardcore. An aptly dubbed brand of electronic music that makes S Club 7 sound like Black Sabbath in comparison, happy hardcore's bubble-gum buoyancy makes it the black licorice of techno — those who don't like it really loathe it, but those who do like it just can't get enough.
From the 2004 album Likes.... This track builds ever so slowly — by the time the groove has revealed itself you've been surrounded by it; enveloped and mesmerized with its haunting vocal repetition.
If you walk around with the idea that there are some people who are so gifted – they have these wonderful things in their head but you're not one of them, you're just a normal sort of person, you could never do anything like that – then you live a different kind of life. You could have another kind of life, where you say, well, I know that things come from nothing very much and start from unpromising beginnings. And I'm an unpromising beginning, and I could start something.
Technology is a transmission vector through time. Humanity is carried upon it, from fire-building past to atomic-powered present to unforeseeable future. A spreading infection in the chronology of the universe.
