andreasviklund.com

After a day with several travel hours and a long and incredibly interesting meeting, I am now taking a short break to post this blog entry and write a couple of e-mails. I didn't write very much about the meeting that I was going to attend, but I will write more about it later for sure. This is just a short status report, I'll post photos and reflections later.

As mentioned in the previous post, I was invited to a national blogger meeting about with a small number of selected bloggers from different parts of Sweden. The meeting was hosted by Telia who are the main sponsors of the Swedish national qualifying contests for the Eurovision Song Contest. The national contest is a major event, one of the most viewed TV-shows in Sweden. It gets massive attention in national media, but it is also a hot topic in the blogosphere. The meeting took place in the TeliaSonera headquarter in Stockholm, located at Stureplan. It was really interesting in many ways, and it also gave us a chance to meet some of the contestants from the different qualifying contests. It was really fun to meet these young artists, full of dreams and expecations, heading into this major frenzy with all their heart. I still haven't heard their songs, but after meeting the artists I am looking forward to the contest in a way that I haven't done before.

Here is a view over Stureplan, Stockholm, taken from the meeting room:

To be continued…

While playing around with a music project I am working on, I got the idea to try a few things one of the songs I made for Lagoona many years ago, a FastTracker-based song called "Parterial Enfino" (which it is just a made-up nonsense title that doesn't mean anything). I wanted to make the song a little longer and let it start and end with drums so that I could put it in a non-stop music mix. I fired up the music programs and started playing around, but it all went a bit further than I had planned… In the following couple of hours, I basically recorded a new version of the song!

When I was done, I realized that it was a long time since I had that kind of inspiration, and that I should celebrate that in some way. While this song is not really the style I plan to work with, I will let "Parterial Enfino (2008 edit)" represent my return to the world of music. I have uploaded the song as a demo to Swedish online music site Allears.se, and I would like to invite you all to check it out. Feel free to post a comment here, feedback is always appreciated. Don't judge me too hard from this song, it is just the first step in an adventure that will hopefully go far…

On my Allears.se artist page you'll also see the artist name I will use for the upcoming music project. It may be somewhat familiar to frequent visitors and friends, since it represents my creative work with newer templates and themes as well. I will adopt Daleri as my artist name, and the old testing site Daleri.com will soon be re-launched as a separate artist site while this site will continue to focus more on web design and my everyday life.

Edit: I have removed my music from Allears, it was definitely not the right place for my music. I have tried a whole lot of music sites over the last ten years, and it is always interesting to see that the ones that are owned or sponsored by big record labels are the ones that gives the worst member experience… Anyway, my music is now located on PureVolume.com - I hope it will work a bit better!

The snowball is rolling, I'm back at work and feeling great. And I am actually getting things done which is a relief. Thanks for your patience and for all encouraging and friendly comments! It has been a great support…

Right now I am working on fixing a lot of things that are not really broken - just not very good. I'm working with template updates, site updates, layout re-structuring, advertisement management, music management, writing the FAQ… It is a whole lot of stuff to do, but I am actually moving forward now. I'm planning to make a major site reboot on January 1st, and then get back into doing good things again. If something on this site would not work or be missing or looking strange at some point, then it is probably only because I am turning the code upside-down as a part of this work.

There will be a few changes to the general site structure, some that I have written about before and some that are new ideas. For example, you will be able to download latest template release and the latest song directly from the frontpage - and then click into either the templates section or the music section where you will find more material - well categorized and organized unlike the mess I have today. The blog will be cleaned up and completely outdated information will either be updated, marked or removed. Categories will be refreshed, tags will be added and it will be easier to post comments on older posts.

On top of the wishlist: A site sponsor!

I will also add one or two new advertising options where a highlighted advertiser will finally be able to put a well-placed advertisement banner on all pages of this site. The interest from advertisers has been huge over the last year, and now that I will take the step into being a full-time template designer I will need the support of advertisers and sponsors in order to keep this site online and updated with new content in the future. With this post, I would like to ask anyone who may be interested in becoming a sponsor or advertising on this site to contact me - and do it as soon as possible since the interest will be high. And also, to be honest, since I would want to have everything set up before the holidays…

New wild number - new inspiration boost

Just for the fun of it, I went through the download statistics for my templates just to see what the numbers were. I found out that on OSWD.org, OWD, Open Designs and on my own free website templates page, I now have more than 1,5 million template downloads (wp-themes and modified blog/cms templates are not included). Now, I have stopped keeping track of all the wild numbers long ago, but the numbers are still a huge source of inspiration at times. I'm writing it here just to have the number documented…

And finally…

While I'm writing about the future, I would like to ask for some directions. I've started writing and recording music again, and I have noticed that the interest for older songs is getting higher. "Riders, Unite!" is getting attention from the Pump It Up PRO feature, and I may even be able to make one or two guest appearences at a eurodance party tour in southern Sweden soon. More about that later, I'll skip to the point for now.

I would want to make a music video for "Riders, Unite!" and possibly also for some other song. It doesn't need to be special, but it must be a bit better than the boring auto-generated photo slideshows that my limited skills would let me do. I have no video editing skills, but I do have some nice material from old musical adventures that could be used.If there is anyone out there who would be interested in giving me a push in the right direction (or maybe even help creating a video), then let me know! I would be happy to learn more, but I have no idea where to start and what tools to get. It is just a huge world of interesting possibilities - and knowing how long it took me to learn how to make music, I am almost ready to give up before I have even tried… Any help or tips would be great!

During the last two weeks, I have felt much better than I have in a long time. I've been able to do much more, to be more creative and actually get things done. All in a way that has reminded me about how I used to work years ago. I have felt that the energy has slowly started to return, and it has been a great feeling.

Today, I called my doctor to get an update on the latest blood tests that was made last week. Even before I explained why I called, he could tell that I should probably feel better than in a long time. The tests revealed that the anemia treatment has been very effective: The blood is completely restored to a perfectly healthy level. I still don't know what was causing it from the start, so I need to continue the treatment for yet a while to keep the levels up. But some clues have been found and I've been told that I should not worry too much about it.

In other words, the boosts of inspiration and the ability to spend all night long working on some crazy idea that I got from nowhere, was not a co-incidence. I have been slow, tired and lazy for years, all for a reason. Having found the error and a way to restore it, I should be able to do a lot of exciting things that I've avoided for a long time. Perhaps it is time to bring back the music again?

Many months ago, I was contacted about having a couple of my songs included in a new release of a popular arcade/console dance game, In The Groove 3. It sounded really interesting since it would be a way of getting my music out to new listeners, a promo opportunity that I didn't even knew existed.

I agreed without thinking very much about it. Months passed without any news, until I suddenly learned that the game project had been closed down. It was sad news, but appearently another project would be launched and the team wanted to include my music there instead. Once again, I agreed. But this time I didn't have any special expectations about it. In fact, after a while I almost forgot about it all since I didn't expect anything to happen.

But it sure did. A couple of months ago I got an e-mail asking me why I had not posted anything on my blog about having my music included in "the new Pump", and a quick Google search helped me find the name of the new game: Pump It Up PRO. After a quick read-up, I learned that three songs from my music collection were selected for the game - which was going through extensive live testing in arcade halls already. The songs are:

• Andreas Viklund - Riders, unite!
• Lagoona - Into my dream (Kaveh Azizi remix)
• Lagoona - Be my friend (2001 edit)

Right now, the music download links on both my own music page and the Lagoona page have been removed since I am re-organizing the music pages. Once the site update is complete and the new music pages are online I will update this post with download links to the songs. Until then you can go to my artist page on purevolume.com where you can download "Riders, unite!" and other songs by me, along with some of the most popular Lagoona songs. For free, of course (no registration required).

Getting into the world of videos

While learning more about Pump It Up PRO, I found a lot of dance step videos on different video sites, including several that include my music. For example, check out this clip showing "Riders, unite!" on the "Crazy" level, or this one that shows "Into my dream" being cleared on the 10-pad Nightmare level. I was happy to see that the songs often get nice feedback in the video comments, it was a happy surprise. I also discovered several artists that I had never heard of before when I looked at other Pump It Up PRO videos, so it is definitely a working platform for music promotion…

This is a new world for me so I don't know much about dance games yet. But I'm hoping to learn more about it through the music and through the people who dance to it. Just days ago, Lagoona classic "The promised land" appeared on the frontpage of StepMania.com as an entry in the StepMix 3 Contest - giving me even more good reasons to learn more about dance games, and even try the freeware game StepMania myself.

I will return to this topic in future posts for sure. This project is already giving me lots of inspiration for making new music, and with some luck it may perhaps also give me the inspiration to make that music video for "Riders, unite!" that I have wanted to do for years now. It would be a really fun project to do. If anyone out there would be interested in taking part of a music video project based, just let me know!