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Stephen Pickering

Category: Tech

  • How to Fix a Spotify Embed That’s Too Tall or Stretches Too Far Down the Page

    I just released a new single last week, and when I created a new post about it, which included a Spotify embed of the single, even though the embed only contained two songs it stretched all the way down the page. When I google searched for a solution, I came to this page: Spotify embeds have large blank space at bottom on WordPress.org, but their solution, a bit of CSS code added to your Appearance >> Themes >> Customize >> Additional CSS didn’t work for me. As of this writing I’m using the TwentyTwenty WordPress theme.

    At first I thought I found the answer simply by adding px after the height number the Spotify gives you for the code. In their code it’s just the number 180 in parentheses. I added a px at the end of that number, and that seemed to solve it, at least as an individual post, but on the main page of the blog at the domain level (as of this writing it is my most recent post), the problem still persisted.

    Somewhere along the line of my search, I found someone had wrapped the <iframe> tag that Spotify gives you in a <figure> tag which I had never heard of, but that didn’t help either. What finally worked (at least it seems so at this moment, is keeping that px addition (to the height not the width) and then wrapping the whole thing in a div tag. Here’s what the final code looks like:

    <div><figure><iframe src="https://open.spotify.com/embed/album/5r5zBUsuM7tsJtDC3x0AE9" width="300" height="180px" frameborder="0" allowtransparency="true" allow="encrypted-media"></iframe></figure></div>

    You can see I went ahead and left the figure tag in there. I don’t know if that makes any difference or not. But the above code seems to have solved my problem as of this writing at least in WordPress and the particular TwentyTwenty theme I’m using at the moment. Just replace your own Spotify code within this nest and add px at the end of the height value and see if it works for you.

  • Changing My Mind About Publishing in Today’s Media Landscape

    I pulled into Kroger’s tonight, and what I felt was a good poetic line seemed to flash into me —like so many do that don’t necessarily have a direct meaning consciously, but feel like they came from another place and I am just the receiver and feel like they are pointing towards something that is deep and true.

    Normally I’d put the line in Notes like I’ve done hundreds if not thousands of times before and that’d be the last I’d see of it. Today I said, “Screw it, let’s post it.” And there from my car, from my Chrome browser on my iPhone 7+ I opened up my WordPress, created a new post and typed in the line. After I hit save, another line came to me that I added, and while I was in the store a third.

    We’ll see how this experiment goes, but my point is, something keeps calling me toward this way of doing things in “real time” as the phrase goes.

    Here’s another example with music. A few months ago, I had a somber tune (sweet sad) come to my head on a Saturday night about like this one, and right here in front of this iMac I propped my iPhone, opened up Garageband and recorded it, knowing it would be my next single.

    But then a case of the “perfections” came in, and I still haven’t published it. I feel now like I should have gotten it out there, if not that night, for sure within the next week, even if it had a bracket of (Demo) beside it on Spotify. Now so many months later, the tune has sort of lost its “spark” inside of me, and even if I could lay down a technically better performance from taking my time, it would have lost its emotional spark that getting it at the moment or close to the moment would give.

    Of course ten years ago, much less twenty or thirty, this would have been a ludicrous approach, but as an example, I was just listening to Rick Beato talking about the B-Side Police single “Murder by Numbers” and as much as I love Synchronicity. I would just absolutely love as much a sort of “B-Side” album of the band recording the whole album live in the same mode of “Murder by Numbers” — mistakes and all.

    The great Carver Mead said “Listen to the Technology.” My gut is telling me that the technology, offering itself like this with its focus on immediacy, is telling us to publish, even in the formal arts of poetry and music, with the same immediacy that social media does.

  • Twitter Should Take Some Notes from Peach

    I think Twitter should take notes: Instead of thinking how to make it easier to use, think of how to make Twitter more Fun, Creative, and Useful alà Peach and Google Now. Twitter feels stale, like it has hardly innovated since 2006, and it feels like its catering to brands and celebrities instead of the user. I wouldn’t accuse Google of having Social and Fun in their DNA, but one does feel like they are constantly innovating, in the name of the user, trying to make themselves more useful. Peach also has a personal, interested in the user first, mentality. They’re coming at if from the fun, creative side, but there are seeds of service popping up like the “move” and “song” magic buttons. I’m having fun in Peach, which keeps me in there, and going back more often, and in this attention economy, that quality is hard to overestimate. Twitter should be thinking in terms of pushing into “personal digital assistant” in as much as being a public message bus.

  • How to Delete All Songs from iPhone Quickly

    “Connect your iPhone to iTunes, go to the Music tab and uncheck Sync Music and press Apply to resync.” – from “Randers4 on the Apple Support Forums. (This worked for me and took only a couple minutes, even with 2000 songs, to complete).

    Man, iTunes is just crazy, and drives me crazy.  But anyway, the reason I needed to do this: My old iPhone 4 was filled up to where I couldn’t update anything, and in this age of Spotify, I’m not listening to any of the music on my phone’s library. Now my photos and videos are taking up as much space, but my trust in iPhoto is just as weak, so I’m afraid to delete all photos at once, because I’m just sure there’ll be some in there that I have only one copy of. Ugh!

    At first when I googled it said to “Uncheck” the unwanted songs and then Re-Sync. But you have to do that one by one! I’m not going to sit there and uncheck 2000 songs! Well actually I started to, and then realized the insanity and futility. Then something weird happened. I Googled some more to see if there was a way to Uncheck all the songs at once. One guy said to, within iTunes, click Edit>Select All, as if that was a way to mass uncheck all the songs. But that didn’t work. It scared me because, after I did that, and again started “re-unchecking” songs, the songs would disappear as I unchecked them. I thought, “OMG, am I deleting them from my computer or phone or both!?!?!?!?!”
    Turns out, luckily, I wasn’t. For whatever reason the “Unchecked” songs, as I unchecked them were being moved to the bottom of the page, automatically. Phew! But still crazy. Now, I just went back and clicked Edit>Select All, clicked around the left side of the iTunes window, to the left of the check boxes, and the display seems returned to normal, with the Unchecked and Checked songs together in their normal order.

    OK, so finally I found the simple answer on how to delete all my songs at once. It’s the 8th response down, from “Randers4” on this page in the Apple Support Forums: https://discussions.apple.com/thread/3593697?start=0&tstart=0

    He simply states: “Connect your iPhone to iTunes, go to the Music tab and uncheck Sync Music and press Apply to resync.”

    Boom! And that was it. Did the trick. They were all deleted in seconds, and I freed up space to do my iOS update as well as app updates.

    Now, as to how to go in there and selectively add back songs, perhaps things I can’t get on Spotify, or for when I’m out of connectivity range, I don’t know what the best practice is. I saw somewhere that using Playlists was the best way, you add the things you want on the phone to a certain playlist, and when you connect your phone there’s an option to only Sync certain “selected” playlists.

    But I’m not worried about that now. I just wanted to free up space so that I could update. And I really appreciate Randers4 plain English, one sentence response. Why can’t Apple explain things so that a human being can understand? I mean, do you know if you go into “Help” within iTunes that there is utterly no topic on deleting songs from your phone? The craziness stupefies me.

  • Song of the Day: Ain’t Even Done With the Night – John Mellencamp

    Update 9/26/20 — Hey Friends! I will eventually get around to posting a video me performing this song, but I have to admit my vocals are too weak. I have been since last summer taking singing lessons, practicing exercises, and they do work! I believe anyone can learn to sing as long as their ear is hearing the right pitch, but at the same time there are varying degrees of success, and I, even though maybe softly,  I still can’t sing this song at full volume anywhere near the ability of John. I’m getting better everyday, so I’m sure I’ll release something within the next 6 months even if it’s not as good (how could it be?).

    But in the meantime, I wanted to introduce you to something even more exciting. You’ve probably already heard of it: Chordify. It’s an app on your mobile devices and a website on your desktop. But especially for learning covers, it’s amazing! It analyzes every song and spits out a chord chart! From the standpoint of learning covers, nothing could be more easy and fun. I have no financial interest and so far I have not paid anything for it. They do have a premium offer but I’m not sure what that gets you. Let me know in the comments what you think! Anyway, you can find it yourself, but here is the Chordify representation of “Ain’t Even Done with the Night.” Hit this link. You’ll have a lot of fun, especially if you’re wanting to learn covers. It’s amazing!

    Original Post:

    Well, every once in a while I start making lists of songs that I could actually play live. I always have this romantic notion of being a troubadour, traveling the world with just his guitar, serenading everywhere he goes. Never gonna happen. Well, at the very least it is fun to have a repertoire, so that you can just play, spontaneously, out of exuberance, enjoyment, and to tell you the truth, even in your own house, when you actually get the mics out, the stool, and the PA system, and you play a collection of songs for an hour or so, it really gives you the physical and psychological release do I call it? Therapy? Whatever, like a work out, or going to “Yoga” or a “Spin” Class.

    At any rate, I thought last night that, you know, if I made a certain song off one of my lists a “Song of the Day” and spent the time learning it, actually playing it with a mic an PA as if I were performing live, that you know, after a month or a few months, certainly a year (and we know how fast these years go by) I’d have a pretty decent little setlist, repertoire, whatever you want to call it, that I could play for myself or for others.

    So hear goes: Last night I suddenly had the urge to listen to John Mellencamp on Spotify. So I listened to his top hits. Really almost any of them I could have chosen. This one was about 5th or 6th down on the list.

    So I came home and picked out the chords pretty fast. I mean it’s not a hard song, musically, but I’d like to think that that’s one of the benefits of learning covers: you start to see similar patterns, and the more you learn, the easier and more fun it seems to be to learn new ones. It’s kind of fun,  like figuring out a puzzle.

    (An hour or so later)

    Well, if nothing else, I’ve managed to drag out all the chords and mics and re hook up my PA system, along with a spot and a stool to simulate playing live in a small room. I went through this song a few times. I think I about have it. I don’t think I would be too impressive in front of a real crowd. It felt like my already weak voice was even weaker than usual. That bummed me out. But I know that at least in part some of that has to do with being able to hear yourself and the monitoring system, of which I have none.

    And then some other songs that I knew well enough came up, along with some original riffs sort “popping” out of the guitar. That’s another benefit of playing and learning cover songs: Gets your “juices” flowing and you’ll start spontaneously “hearing” and playing your own riffs and progressions that could become original songs.

    I guessed that a few years ago and had it confirmed by different “real” artists that I’ve read in interviews: For instance, if you want to be a poet, the best thing you can do is constantly be reading new poetry. Same with fiction, and I suppose with other arts.

    Well back to the subject at hand. I don’t know if I’ll keep this up. Knowing me, probably not. But anyway at least I have an official “Song of the Day” for May 8th, 2013, and it’s John “Cougar” Mellencamp’s “Ain’t Even Done with the Night.”

  • Why Netflix Inc (NFLX) Won’t Raise Prices and What Their Real Endgame Is.

    I don’t think Netflix is interested in raising their subscription price or tiered pricing. I think they look at the subscription like Magazines and Newspapers in the pre-digital days looked at subscriptions: a validation of intent and also to show the content creators the legitimacy of their audience. I think Netflix’s endgame is to become the “de-facto” global distribution network for digital motion pictures, tv, and entertainment. When that happens, then so many other options for revenue enhancement open up. Paid placement at the top of the page when you sign in, al lá “House of Cards,” for instance, and then also one can imagine theaters dying altogether, and Netflix being THE place the next big James Cameron or Ridley Scott release. That kind of thing is what I envision, and I think* that’s what they are shooting for.

    If one wants to dream hard, since we are on the heels of it, wouldn’t a Global audience paying a modest but fair price, not only sufficiently finance the Super Bowl, but perhaps bring the NFL even more money and exposure, in a more satisfying and efficient way for both the content creators and the audience?

    I think so.

    The CEO of Citigroup at Davos said that the main economic themes right now are Globalization, Digitization, and Urbanization. It would seem to me that a company like Netflix is not only the beneficiary of, but leading the charge in at least two of the three of those trends.

    Addendum: In Response to the article:  What if Netflix, Inc. (NFLX) Is Wrong? from InsiderMonkey.com

    I think it makes the medium better and more enduring overall. It can be consumed more like a novel. And if the medium is strengthened that gives more leverage and incentive to make a better product. At the end of the day I think it comes down to whether the show or movie is good or not. That’s the value proposition. What this is, is an innovation in the distribution proposition. All business comes down to two variables: Value + Distribution. This new model is, of course, aimed at greater viewer satisfaction, which of course leads to subscriber growth and more distribution leverage. But is also interesting to think how innovation in Distribution could possibly also affect, in a positive way, the quality, i.e. ‘value’, of the content, the product itself.