So the other day, I was playing around with an entirely different UI paradigm for my music site, and got pretty far along, and then I hit a snag.

I searched and scoured the slop-riddled Web and didn’t find answers to my questions.

After a while, that duck.ai link started tugging at my willpower... And then I did the unthinkable and clicked on it. I asked whatever “AI” DDG is using how to do the thing I was trying to do, and it spat out an answer that worked.

It was the first time since the early days of 2022 that I had used an LLM, but I still felt dirty and ashamed. I tried to justify what I had done by the fact that I had really tried to find the solution on my own. And by the fact that I had already decided I had no intention of releasing the version I was trying to finish.

I also justified my lapse by telling myself I could understand the code the LLM had plagiarized. A couple of javascript functions, maybe 15 lines of code.

I went on doing other stuff, and at one point I realized I wanted the LLM code to do something slightly different, and so I thought no problem, I should be able to easily modify it.

And that’s when I realized that I absolutely could not. I stumbled in the dark for a while, to no avail.

In the end:

• I trashed the LLM functions, and did manage to work everything out following examples on W3Schools and MDN docs, etc.
• While doing so, and despite the fact that I had tried and failed to modify the LLM code for a lengthy amount of time, I realized that I couldn’t remember precisely any of the LLM code and logic. I hadn’t learned anything. In fact, as I’m writing this, I realize I can’t even remember what that code was meant to do.
• And despite being over-informed on LLMs and how they can fuck with your brain, I grossly overestimated my degree of control of the situation and understanding of the generated code.

All in all, an eye-opening and brain-deadening experience and experiment.

And just to be clear, I will never, ever release anything done with the help of generative “AI”, be it code, art or music. Simply as a matter of principle, morals, ethics, whatever you want to call it. If I do, I am probably being held hostage, or having a stroke.

In the first post in this series, I explained why I used PHP to generate the playlist of my new hand-crafted music site from a large-ish XML file, instead of doing it locally like I used to (damn you Chrome and Firefox for dropping XSLT support!)

Thing is, depending on the speed of your device and your internet connection, it takes a few short seconds for PHP to do it’s thing on the server, before sending the result in one go to your browser.

And this slight delay has been nagging at me since day one. So I’ve been thinking of ways to load the very lightweight page skeleton, and then retrieve the rendered playlist from the server.

And I finally took the time to figure out how to do it, using the javascript Fetch API to fetch the PHP code in a separate file once the skeleton loads. Which meant rethinking a bit of code for everything to keep working like before (basically making sure the data is loaded before calling anything critical).

After ironing out the kinks, I’m pretty sure I have a version that works!

The question now is, do I actually like it better? It does have the following advantages:

• The site loads instantly, even on a slow device.
• There’s a fun little loading animation. I went with an austere design after years of visual excess, so the animation reintroduces a touch of whimsy.
• When you click on a link to an album or a song from somewhere else like here (or your Mastodon feed), you get a bit of visual context before the page scrolls down to the target album or song.

I did a quick poll on Mastodon, which came out in favor of NOT going this route. Still, if you’re reading this, it probably means I decided to roll it out anyway.

It’ll be easy enough to roll back if I change my mind or if it proves to be troublesome or unpopular.

So, thanks to @limebar@mastodon.social and @scy@chaos.social who implemented this feature for TIBR and TIBtv, I discovered how to send metadata to the system media player when you play my music on my site (using the Media Session API).

What this means is that you can now see the title, artist and artwork in your system player when you play a song on sknob.fr/music.

It could have ended there, but that’s when things got out of hand... In the following image, you’ll notice you can’t skip to the previous or next track.

But it turns out you can handle these actions with the mediaSession API, provided you have your own functions to do the actual work.

This revealed a different paradigm between what I had implemented on the site, and how a system media player works.

• On my site, you could keep skipping tracks, including the last track of an album.
• Whereas the mediaSession API sensibly assumes you have “go to the previous/next track” buttons, and if you are on the first or the last track of a playlist, well you can’t go back or forward, respectively.

Which means that in the end, I had to:

• Rethink my “skip” function as a “next track” function
• Write a “previous track” function
• Add a “previous track” button to my weird UI (and to my keyboard shortcuts (available in “about”)
• Grey out and deactivate the previous and next buttons in my weird UI when there is no previous or next track (which is what took me the longest to figure out; funny how it’s often the simple things that trip you up)
• Add the appropriate calls in the mediaSession function to go to the previous/next track, including code to grey out the previous/next buttons in the system player when there is no previous or next track
• This all seemed to work everywhere it was supposed to, until I noticed that the play/pause button was disabled in the media player on my old iPhone 7! So I had to add the appropriate calls in the mediaSession function to call my play/pause function.

Phew... I told you things got out of hand! All this probably deserves more than a 0.0.1 version bump...

Hopefully, it’s all sorted out now. But before you complain, according to the spec, this is supported pretty much everywhere except in the Android WebView!

Media player on the Mac:

Greyed-out buttons in my UI and in the iPhone 7 media player:

Hot on the heels of my smash hit Ukulele Bonk video (and my sleeper hit Bercée d’illusions video), I am pleased and proud to present a new, hand-animated video for my 2024 track Driven By Desire about making art in the age of slop machines.

If you’re curious (and since some people asked), here’s how it was made. CW: probably TMI!

Animation

Since the launch of The Indie Beat Television, I thought it would be fun and appropriate to make a crude, hand-animated video for this track about the slopapocalypse. Then version 2.0 of Procreate Dreams, an animation program for iPad based on the acclaimed Procreate drawing app, came out, and I figured I would try that.

I started creating short animations in Procreate Dreams on my iPad mini, usually while sipping coffee in bed in the mornings. As the days rolled by, I settled more or less consciously on a few arbitrary rules for the video:

• I selected a single, silly photo of myself and decided I wouldn’t use any others
• All the drawing animations would be done by hand, one image at a time, the old-fashioned way
• I would only draw using thick, rough, dirty brushes
• Keyframe animations would only be used to animate the photo and the backgrounds (and to cycle through colors)

The cool thing about Procreate Dreams, is that you can layer and group and mix flipbook animations and keyframe animations. And each flipbook animation can have multiple tracks, plus use drawing layers. I only scratched the surface of what this program can do!

It also has a lot of export options, so that simplified things a lot.

Once I had a fairly decent bunch of snippets, I started thinking about how to assemble them.

Final Assembly

Then, as luck would have it, a new version of Final Cut Pro was released, which added beat detection to audio files (in order to be able to snap video clips to the beat), a huge potential time server! But I first had to upgrade my macOS to install the new version, and it turned out the beat detection feature has a nasty crash bug which I had to figure out how to circumvent.

• importing audio snippets back into some Procreate Dreams animations, and adjusting the animations to match the tempo as best as I could
• having to tediously stretch or shorten certain clips a little in FCP to snap them more or less to the bars and beats

I tried to use FCP as little as possible to animate things, even though it has a keyframing system. I ended up doing cut animations when I zoom in or out of a clip, and animating the 2 small flying heads that float up behind the big flying head. I also used a couple of FCP plugins to shake certain clips (the second part of the Love me 2 clip for example).

One thing I did use though, was green-screen keying. I modified certain animations in Procreate Dreams to add a green screen background so I could composite them into the video (the bouncing sound wave in part 2 for example).

Finally, to answer another question I got in the chat when the video premiered on The Indie Beat Television, the assembly phase in FCP (and going back and forth into Procreate Dreams to tweak things) took a couple of days.

I ended up making more animations than I actually used (see the one below), and had to make a few hard choices, but it is precisely the accumulation of countless choices, big and small, conscious and unconscious, logical or arbitrary and driven by desire that is missing in slop, which is one of the many reasons it is so utterly soulless.

Thank…

Hot on the heels of my Ukulele Bonk video, which went kind of viral for a few days among my followers on Mastodon, comes a simpler, more subdued video for Bercée d’illusions, a song from my last EP that I’m particularly fond of. Like the previous video, it premiered on The Indie Beat Television, during the new Friday Fresh hour, and the lovely people in the chat seemed to like it.

All shots in the video are 100% real and in real-time, which seems worth mentioning in a world choking on slop.

Well that escalated quickly.

I made a video for Ukulele Bonk, my contribution to The Four Seasons of Bonk Wave: A Midsummer Bonk’s Dream 1, in a single cold winter day, and barely a week after the launch of The Indie Beat Television.

This is actually the first real video that I’ve made since... 2018!

As a seasoned person, I was alive when MTV launched, and part of me has always lamented the indisputable fact that video killed the radio star. In my experience, many people confuse watching and listening to music, and have lost the ability to separate the two and actually develop a decent ear for what is happening in the music alone.

Nevertheless...

I was part of the small group of musicians corralled by @limebar@mastodon.social to prepare the launch of #TIBtv, and seeing the excitement before, during, and after the launch was, well, an eye-opener. And contagious. Not only that, but the variety and quality and originality and ingenuity of the videos blew my mind.

(I also contributed some old videos to the channel and the associated songs found a new public, which was a nice bonus.)

Anyway, stimulated by such an amazing display of unbridled creativity, my brain started racing with ideas for new videos, and this is the first one to see the light of day. Others may or may not follow, time will tell, but be that as it may:

Creativity x Community = Inspiration!

Long live #TIBtv!

Another banner year, spread across multiple projects, ranging from #bonkwave to #RFFF25 to #NHAM to #TIBtv, to a little solo stuff. I don’t know how long any of this will last, but I’m relishing it while I can. Skip to Design | Community

Music

In more or less chronological order, I think:

• I co-wrote You Are Not Alone with @CCirco@ravenation.club for the Comfy Collaborations #RadioFreeFedi tribute album organized by @futzle@old.mermaid.town
• I released a couple of extra tracks based on You Are Not Alone.
• I released a new song, Cities
• I wrote jingles for NHAM Mixtape Radio and Not What I Call Radio Bonk Wave
• 2 of my bonkwave songs were delightfully remixed
• I released The Rite of Bonk for the Four Seasons of Bonk Wave-Bonks of Spring 1 album
• I collaborated on Hi It’s Spring (production) with Sam (@ethicalrevolution@climatejustice.social) for the Four Seasons of Bonk Wave Spring album
• I gave a few related songs a common home by releasing the Cities EP (which got a lovely review on NHAM by @babumenos@sunny.garden)
• I performed the sknob bonks cities live livestream for Radio Free Fedi Fest 2025 #RFFF25 (and covered other fedi musicians)
• I contributed some vocals to Happy Bonk Day 2025 as part of a great lineup of BonkWave Allstars herded by @axwax@chaos.social
• I released Ukulele Bonk on the Four Seasons of Bonk Wave-A Midsummer Bonk’s Dream 1 album
• I released Wannawadda on the Four Seasons of Bonk Wave-A Midsummer Bonk’s Dream 2 album, part of the first ever Bonk Wave Sample Challenge
• I produced (and played on) Better Than That by Sam, which was also released on the Bonk Wave summer album (and I also make a guest appearance on the fantastic video Sam made for the track)
• I wrote and recorded a song I’m quite proud of for the upcoming Four Seasons of Bonk Wave fall album (which should come out this winter or next spring, in typical #bonkwave fashion)
• I released a new song, Choo-Choo Train
• I wrote 4 new songs for an upcoming concept album or EP, and have been chronicling my progress on Mastodon. We’ll see how far it goes and how long I can resist the urge to release them...

Design

I used to do quite a bit of UI and web design back in the day, experience which I put to good use this year:

• I designed album covers for the Four Seasons of Bonk Wave album series, with real-time feedback from the bonkwave community, and essential contributions from @Traiken@mastodon.social
• I designed web and fedi assets (and the NHAM RFFF25 LiveStream graphics) for NHAM
• And I did the version 1.0 redesign of the NHAM website (CSS mockup, Sam had to actually implement it)
• Which gave me the impetus to finally recode and redesign my antiquated music site from scratch, which I’d been meaning to do for about a decade ; check out the new sknob/music, and read all about the redesign in a series of posts right here
• I made a bunch of hand-drawn NHAM animations for the NHAM program slots on The Indie Beat Television (#TIBtv)
• I made a bunch of more general NHAM promo videos for #TIBtv

Community

On top of the musical collaborations with @CCirco@ravenation.club, the bonkwave community and Sam mentioned above, I participated in the following initiatives to promote music and musicians on the #fediverse:

• I did some virtual leg work vetting artists and asking for their consent to be listed in the Indie Art Support Community (IASC) directory which is built on the shoulders of @radiofreefedi@musician.social (and you can apply by pinging @hello@fedi.indieart.support on fedi)
• I was involved in prepping the launch of the NHAM fedi music discovery site, and I’m also an admin of the site (for which I wrote a few posts too, like The Best Spotify Alternative and Imposter Syndrome)
• I handled the technical plumbing for and co-hosted a NHAM Mixtape livestream for Radio Free Fedi Fest 25 #RFFF25
• Last but certainly not least, I was part of the group of fedi musicians corralled by @limebar@mastodon.social to prep the launch of The Indie Beat Television, a 24x7 “Fedi MTV” (brainstorming, transcoding and tagging a ton of videos, pixel-pushing, and contributing a few musical snippets to station IDs and such). Don’t forget to follow @TIBtv@tv.theindiebeat.fm on the fediverse!

As I said in a mid-year progress report:

I can’t believe how lucky I am to be part of the incredible fedi music community and to have met and collaborated with so many delightful, open-minded, super-creative people, who have opened my eyes and ears in so many ways.

All in all a fine way to keep my head above water in these troubled times, and a constant and much-needed reminder that there is plenty of good, and good people in the world, and that we have agency.

Thank you everyone ❤️

Bitcher et s’indigner sur les RS, ça fait du bien, ça soulage, mais si ça pouvait freiner notre descente aux enfers, ça se saurait depuis le temps.

Je parle souvent de tous les trucs qu’il faudrait cesser de faire, par éthique, ou par souci du bien commun, ou par #oisivetéRadicale, mais aujourd’hui, je vais prêcher le contraire : Si vous avez les cuillères, faites quelque chose !

Dessinez, peignez, graphiquez, fabriquez, sculptez, pâteàmodelez, écrivez, racontez, bloguez, poétisez, pianotez, gratouillez, ukulélez, synthétisez, beatboxez, chantez, composez, podcastez, documentez, potagez, brodez, tricotez, macramez, HTMLez, CSSez, programmez, photographiez, filmez, scénarisez, etcétérez…

L’important, c’est le faire, pas le résultat. Même quand on a beaucoup d’expérience et de pratique et dans le meilleur des cas, on n’en est jamais tout à fait satisfait. Il n’ira qu’en s’améliorant.

Et bonus, plus il est bancal, plus il est idiosyncratique, plus il est singulier, plus il dit merde aux IA génératives.

Sauf cas exceptionnel, on en est toustes capables dans l’absolu, puisqu’on l’a toustes fait quand on était enfants, avant qu’on nous somme de cesser nos enfantillages.

Vous irez mieux, vous retrouverez de l’agentivité, vous changerez littéralement le monde (à votre échelle, qui est la seule échelle accessible en réalité) au lieu de seulement le subir, et vous irez encore mieux.

Ou doomcréez au lieu de doomscroller, si vous préférez une version plus désespérée de ce conseil non sollicité mais bienveillant du dimanche matin.

A song that I wrote and recorded before overthinking it. The idea (and the key to the song) came from a dream, which says a lot. You can listen to Choo-Choo Train on:

• my brand-new hand-crafted music site
• my trusty Faircamp site

When you can’t choose between two options, choose both? In the release notes for the initial version of the new sknob.fr/music site, I wrote:

Feature-wise, the main addition is a filter/search function. I’m not sure how useful it is, but it’s there. After waffling some, I opted to only search through the titles and the on-screen metadata, not including the lyrics and other background info.

It later dawned on me that I had basically just duplicated the search function built into the browser. Duh!

Then again, on tablets and phones, the built-in search isn’t as easily accessible as in desktop browsers.

And the reason I didn’t go with full-text search is that the site contains a lot of lyrics and a lot of background info text, which means full-text searches don’t filter out a lot of songs...

Still, this arbitrary choice kept gnawing at me in the background, so yesterday, I decided to do something about it.

• The search field now includes a button on the right that toggles full-text search on and off.
• Clicking on the button reinitializes the search (and places the cursor in the search field).
• Hit f to activate full-text search (if you’re not already inside the search field, naturally).
• It works in both album mode and radio mode.
• Behind the scenes, all it took was filtering based on innerText for simple searches and innerHTML for full-text searches.

So now, you can just hit s and search for bits of song titles you remember, or if you’re looking for that underground sknob hit that uses the word “monkey”, you can switch to full-text search and find it instantly (the background info for that song is worth the read 😇).