Howdy, been a while.
No music in this post, although I do promise to share some pretty interesting stuff that I’ve found by the year’s end. Today I wanted to give an update on some projects I’ve been working on, and put out a call for help.
My Websites
This website, and my even more neglected other website, Mostly-Retro, are INCREDIBLY BROKEN.
A reminder, this website is old. Really old. It’s Web 2.0 old. I started this website in 2006. On Blogger. And then when it became clear that Blogger was cracking down on MP3 blogs, very hastily converted to WordPress and moved it to its own domain, with the MP3 files hosted on a separate domain.
(There was a reason for that at the time, but I forgot what it was).
The only update I have made to this website’s design in the past 18 years is changing the background of the text sections from black to white. That’s it. In this time, WordPress has changed a lot. Parts of the website are just broken now. I’m sure they are fixable, but my HTML knowledge stopped with WYSIWYG editors in 2007. I can’t fix it. Comments on this site became so overwhelmed with spam that I had to disable them outright. Comments on Mostly-Retro just don’t work anymore. I don’t know why. People can leave comments (I still get an angry Doug TenNaple fanboy comment about six times a year) but they don’t show up on the site proper.
I want to keep this site going, but it needs a complete and total overhaul.
I want to make LostTurnable more of a general blog/website where I can write whatever. Recently, I’ve been experimenting with other platforms like Medium and Ko-Fi to get my writing out there. I think they’re really good (especially Ko-Fi) but they’re just not for me. I like having my own site, my own playground, my own little corner of the internet. More specifically, I like having a place that is deliberately not social media. I don’t want my work to be part of “feed”. I like it being its own thing.
As for Mostly-Retro, I’m going to shut that site down in the near future. But don’t worry, nearly everything on there will be migrated over here. Then I might finally finish that Madonna Remix guide and update the Tokyo Record Store guide.
But I don’t know how to do any of the things I need to do to make this a viable website. I need help.
I’m looking for someone with web design experience to help me rebuild this site. It doesn’t have to be anything complex, just your basic blog with some categories. I will pay a fair rate for this work. I don’t accept handouts and I don’t pay in “exposure.” Repeat: I will pay for this work. If you want to make money working on my website, hit me up on Twitter or Blue Sky.
YouTube
I want to get back into videos at some point. But I probably won’t be doing any more record store videos. I definitely won’t be doing any more Hard-Off videos. They’re both a ton of work, and would be even more difficult with my current health problems (mobility issues related to fibromyalgia, nothing life-threatening).
I’m thinking about doing videos about my record collection and maybe some “what I bought this week” type stuff. The type of things that don’t require much editing or narration. Hopefully I can get started on those before the year is out.
Cinema Oblivia
I’m thinking of winding Cinema Oblivia down as well. It’s been a blast doing it, but I’m going to be honest with you: when I created that podcast, I was really hoping that it would be popular. I put a lot of effort into it, went after guests who I thought would help me get exposure, and tried to make it more than just yet another “me and my friends bullshit about movies” podcast.
I really enjoy doing it, but it’s not at a place where I’m happy with it, both in terms of popularity and quality. And I’m nearly 100 episodes in now. Podcasts like mine don’t suddenly become popular years into their run. I missed the boat.
But that’s okay! Because I have another idea for a movie podcast! This one is a bit more focused than “weird old movies.” I think I found a gimmick that will make it stand out at least a little bit. At some point, I’ll probably stop with Cinema Oblivia and launch this new one. My goal is to do that by the end of the winter. If that takes off with any modicum of success I’ll probably revive Cinema Oblivia as a “sometimes” thing where I can go off about weird movies that I really want to talk about, with people I really want to talk to.
So yeah, big plans for the future, assuming the world is still here in 12 months. I guess that’s a big assumption considering the state of things. Sigh.
Anyways, in the meantime, if you like my writing I’m gong to focus on posting things at Ko-Fi for the moment. That’s really just a place for me to let loose and write whatever the heck I feel like. And I write reviews for every movie I watch over on Letterboxd, so be sure to follow me there.
To the few people who will read this, thanks for sticking with me for all these years. I don’t know what I’ve done to deserve what few loyal fans I have left. You’re cool.