Stop Standing Still - BETA

As you’ve probably noticed, this site has been kind of dead for the past couple of weeks. I wanted to apologies for that and offer an explanation as well as a little hope for the future of the site. This project isn’t abandoned, it has just been moved to the back burner as real life issues take precedence.

This past fall has been pretty crazy both in how busy I’ve been and how much stress I’ve been dealing with. I’m keeping things together, but the site has suffered because of it.

The story begins back in the beginning of October when I started a new job. My day job is as a database programmer and it’s a job that I thoroughly enjoy doing. The new job has been fun so far, but it has also been busy since we’re a little short handed right now. On top of this there are several large databases that I’m trying to wrap my brain around. So that’s been good part of the stress and lack of time that I’ve been dealing with.

On top of this, right around the time that I launched this site, I started the process of buying my first house. Things have happened pretty quickly in that regard and I’m now waiting to find out when I’m going to settle on a nice little house in central MD. It is going to be cool once I own the house and have moved in, but getting there has been a comedy of false starts and hurrying up to wait. I was originally hoping to close at the end of November, but now will be happy if I own the place before New Years.

Alone, any of these three things (job, site, house) would leave me with my hands full. I came up with the bright idea to do all three at once though. On the plus side, this sets me up for 2008 to be a pretty kick ass year. On the minus side, it turned out to be more then I could handle on my own. As a result, I blew the launch of this site pretty hard. I apologies for that.

Now all of this isn’t to say I’ve been completely neglecting the site. Instead of working on entering dates, I’ve been focusing on the back end for the site. I’ve built what I hope will be some nice tools to make finding shows easier for people. I’m currently working on trying to make entering dates into the system a little easier for me, which will make it easier to keep this site up to date. I’m also contemplating how best to handle giving bands/artists/promoters access to the back end so that they can enter their own dates into the system.

With everything going on, I’ve decided to cut my loses and just let the site lay fallow for the next couple of weeks while I focus on other things. After I’ve moved into my house and gotten set up, I am going to relaunch the site with the new tools and possibly a new look. Assuming that I do settle on the house by the end of the month, this will probably happen in mid to late January (I need to paint and replacing carpeting before I can move in). Those of you who have linked directly to the calendar application will probably want to change your bookmarks/links to the main page so that you know when things have switched over to the new application.

So, that’s the state of Stop Standing Still at the moment. Again, I apologies for dropping the ball here. Especially to all the folks who have been cool enough to send me information on dates or helped to spread the word. I really do appreciate what you’ve done for me and the site. I also promise that the site will be back in early ‘08 and will be even better then before.

While the site is still in Beta mode, I’m going to be making various tweaks to make the site easier to use and navigate. If you have any comments or ideas, please don’t hesitate to drop me a note. You’ll find my address in the side bar under Contact.

While I won’t be mentioning every change I make, I’ve just finished making two changes that I think are fairly substantial and I wanted to draw attention to them. Both of these changes can be found in the side bar.

The first change I wanted to mention are the links under the Calendar heading. I realize that, while I’d love the site to help expose people to different scenes, most people probably only care about finding dates that pertain to their own scene. To help facilitate this, I’ve set up these links. Each link leads to the calendar application, but puts a filter on the dates that are shown. The dates themselves are the same dates that you would normally see, just filtered to only show a certain scene. As before, you can click on the Calendar link, either in the side bar or the header, and you will be shown all of the dates.

The second change is similar. One of the nice things with Wordpress (the blogging tool I’m using) is that you can provide RSS feeds that are filtered based on the tags that are attached to a post. I’ve decided to use this feature to let people choose what news they want to hear about.

Now that the site has been around for a week or so and people have had a chance to visit and see the Welcome message, I’m going to start posting more on this blog. The posts will include site news like this post, notices when I’ve added or updated dates, late breaking news on shows already in the database, and special shows that I want to draw attention to. The different feeds will allow users to stay up to date on information about shows they care about, while being able to ignore information that they don’t care about.

As with the Calendar link, you can click on the RSS link and get the unfiltered feed, or you can grab one or more of the sub links and only get information on that scene. I’ll warn you though that I will sometimes combine information about various scenes in a single post, especially when I’m updating people on shows that I’ve loaded into the system. So, if the post doesn’t look like something you care about, keep reading.

Beyond the four “scenes” that are also listed under the calendar heading, you will also find the Site News link. This will be posts like this one, telling you about things that are happening with the site itself.

Even if you are subscribed to one of the filtered feeds, you can always come back and look at this page to see all the posts that I have made. You may also notice the Categories and Recent Post sections in the side bar, which will also allow you to filter through what I’ve posted to the site.

That’s it. Again, if you have any comments or suggestions about how I can make this site easier to use, please do not hesitate to email me.

Welcome to Stop Standing Still!

So, you may be asking, what exactly is Stop Standing Still?

The short answer is that SSS is a listing of geek music concerts from all over the world. By clicking the Calendar link, either in the heading or over on the side bar, you’ll see all the listings that we currently have for geeky shows in the near future. The pickings are a little thin at the moment since I’ve primarily been focused on getting the overall site up and running. Over the next couple of weeks though, I plan to continue to flesh out tour dates for other artists.

The longer answer is that SSS is a site dedicated to promoting geek culture as a separate and distinct entity equal to the Mainstream and Underground cultures that dominate our world. Geek culture is not a new idea, but it has gained in popularity over the last several years and it is now time for it to get the recognition that it deserves. While the site is currently focused on only concerts and musical gatherings, my goal is to expand it to include listings for all kinds of various geek gatherings.

One thing you’ll notice when you click on the calendar listings is that I’m using a third party application, called Easy PHP Calendar, to handle the listings. This is a stop gap measure that I’m using to get the site up and running. My current plan is to split the next several months or so between updating listings as I find them and developing a more robust application that will give you a greater ability to find shows that interest you. If there are any features that you would like to see in the new application, please email me at the address in the side bar.

Which brings me to the next topic. If there is anyone currently reading this site that would like to lend a hand to the endeavor, I would love to hear from you. It can be as simple as dropping me an email when you come across tour dates telling me where I can find them, offering to help actually input tour dates into the system, or even helping me design and create the new application that will power the site (seriously, I’m dying for a web designer to help me with UI) I’m more then grateful for any help you can offer.

Also, to artists out there who would like to have their shows listed on the site, please feel free to drop me a line. While we are still in beta mode I would like to keep the artists listed confined to groups that are actively promoting geek culture so users aren’t overwhelmed with information. If you’re not sure if this qualifies you, feel free to drop me a line and we can talk about it.

Finally, while an acknowledgment page will be going up in the next day or two where I can thank folks who are going above and beyond the call, there is one person that I’d like to mention in this post. That person is a woman that I had the great pleasure of befriending years and years ago, Becky, of Becky’s Schedule of Cool Music Stuff. CMS was a show listing service that Becky ran for 10 years letting people know about various shows that were coming to their area. It is also the primary inspiration for this site. The reason that I have been busting my ass over the last couple of days to go live tonight is because Becky just announced over the weekend that she is bringing CMS to a close and I felt compelled to get this site up in the same month that she stopped updating hers.

Anyways, that’s about it. Please let me know what you think either in the comments below or through email.