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This blog has been on holiday

By
Andy Best
on August 22, 2010 2:55 PM | | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)
putuoshan
Hello everyone. Sorry. Last weekend, on very short notice, I buggered off to the place you can see in the photo for a week on the beach. 

You should be able to click on the pic for a massive version. I took that one on the trip.

It was great.

That's one of the two beaches with swimming and chair/beach-umbrella rentals on China's famous Putuoshan: an island national park by the Hangzhou Bay. Back to gigging next weekend. See ya all there.

andy temple

evening view

Indie Everything live

By
Andy Best
on April 30, 2010 4:04 AM | | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)
by Wee Ling
Some Kungfuology site news.

I recently posted some updates and mentioned I was thinking of doing a blog called Indie Everything. Here's what I said:

I'm thinking of adding to Kungfuology with a new blog called Indie Everything where i'll document all projects i'm involved in from blogging to the Pod to music to whatever and just drop all secrecy or whatever and list all the costs or equipment or facilities or methods we use ... or whatever. Then people who read it can have a real and practical stepping off point to do the same themselves. It's sort of our endowment as humans to be aware and express ourselves. The idea that we shouldn't do it if it doesn't lead to financial gain needs to be swept away for a while. Well, forever.
Well it's up and running now,


It's still in it's formative stages but I'm happy with how it's starting off. I have a massive backlog of posts and ideas for it so it's going to come out all random at first, sorry. There will eventually be a disproportionate amount of music and band related posts as that's what I do the most. 

If anyone has ideas or requests for issues covered/discussed in the indie thought posts, do drop me a line or a comment.

Where's Jake / Indie Everything

By
Andy Best
on April 12, 2010 5:15 PM | | Comments (6) | TrackBacks (0)
Thumbnail image for by Wee Ling
About time for some general updates. 

So where's Jake. Poor Jake works very very hard for the nice people at Time Out magazine, of which he represents 25% But, he still blogs because that's how much he loves us all. Currently he's having a bit of a holiday with his dear old mum. Seriously. 

So, once he's back we'll start planning the next series of Podcasts and blog posts will flow again. Just remember we have the two blogs and one will always have something each week. 

Also, the stuff we've been doing has made me think a lot. There's the blogs and the pod, there was some events and some music and, as yet behind the scenes, there's long form writing too and even IF games. There was even a video about the 3 Million RMB Douchebag at one point.

I was also re-reading No Media Kings lately.

Why not watch Jim's slideshow Time management For Anarchists

So, I'm often reflecting on being at the edges of the global arts industry which itself is crumbling and being redefined by the net. I moan about how it's becoming a wild west for Ad People and PR but also heap praise on those who build communities and succeed on their own terms. 

We've reflected a bit on how much we've been able to do in our spare time with very little effort and funding and how it's based on helping each other and just doing it without expectation and letting momentum build naturally. It would only take a small step up to start putting out some really good stuff. Blah blah blah ...

... jump cut to ...

I'm thinking of adding to Kungfuology with a new blog called Indie Everything where i'll document all projects i'm involved in from blogging to the Pod to music to whatever and just drop all secrecy or whatever and list all the costs or equipment or facilities or methods we use ... or whatever. Then people who read it can have a real and practical stepping off point to do the same themselves. It's sort of our endowment as humans to be aware and express ourselves. The idea that we shouldn't do it if it doesn't lead to financial gain needs to be swept away for a while. Well, forever.

Why am I telling you all about this? I just wanted a chat. And, I think the blog should be open for everyone to share/post. 

More to come.

Geek stuff: clickthrough on my site

By
Andy Best
on February 12, 2010 2:05 AM | | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (0)
templegatesandycam
Photo: Andy and Cam at Kungfuology HQ prior to hiring Jake Newby and beefing up our image a bit.

Here's something of interest to the geeks among our readers. But first, in the interests of scientific method and disclosure: the stats quoted here come from the Google Webmaster Tools tool. In order to know the method, parameters and limitations of these stats, you should first go there and check. 

So, obviously, more people search the net for Brad Pitt than they do for stuff like Shanghai rock or bands like Little Nature. So, if you have a tag or high incidence of something like Brad Pitt, you are going to come up in more searches.

However, you may be way down in that search and you might not even be seen let alone clicked on. So, using Webmaster Tools I had a look at clickthrough. That is, what searches I came up in where people saw it and then clicked in.

Most of the results are low incidence and featuring obvious stuff like Yuyintang, but the top three separate themselves.

1: Query: low shoulder  %: 17  Position: 43
2: Query: simon pegg  %: 15  Position: 63
3: Query: low shoulder band  %: 10  Position: 7

Low Shoulder is the fictional indie band from the movie Jennifer's Body. If you combine one and three then that's 27%, assuming it's proportional, of all Google searches that threw up my blog and were then clicked into. 

This is the post that would have been thrown up: Thoughts on Indie Rock

Position 43 potentially puts it onto the third page too. All the other clickthrough stats represent about 2% of queries each. 

Further down the top 20 we also have Low Shoulder pictures and Low Shoulder Adam Brody. The next significant group, taking up a 10% chunk between them is Misandao, Skinheads, skinheads england and division skinheads. Misandao are the Beijing based skinhead band. Rounding out the list of top clickthroughs are more obvious terms like Brad Ferguson, Boys Climbing Ropes, Yuyintang live and Jackson Guitars. 

To end on a triumphant note, a Google search of Shanghai music scene throws up me and Jake at number one.

New Frontpage

By
Andy Best
on September 30, 2009 12:47 AM | | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)
Frank
I was looking at the latest edition of a mag I had officially sworn off giving any mentions to on this blog as I had been tipped off that it featured China Music Radar.

That was a bad sentence.

In the article, CMR main blogger Archie Hamilton was nice enough to recommend this site. However, the mag only showed the pure domain address. I suddenly realised that I had never got around to throwing up a placeholder there that leads people into the blogs themselves. Ooppppsss.

So now there is. It's super minimalist without making a point of it and it features some link love too.

Uh-oh ....

By
Andy Best
on July 16, 2009 6:19 PM | | Comments (11) | TrackBacks (0)

by Wee LingI'll get right to the point. Due to constant aggravation of a long standing health problem I have to bite the bullet and cut out all non essential computer use for at least three months.

So it's bye bye blog for the immediate future and ... perhaps for longer.

The site mail will still be active for anyone who wants to get in touch and tour the scene or go to a gig or get advice ... or whatever.

Laters.

 

 

Andy B.

News/notice

By
Andy Best
on June 17, 2009 7:21 PM | | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)
Hi all, quick note to say that my blog server has been down lately hence the lack of posts. They made a back up so the site could be viewed but I have been unable to write to the database (ie make new posts) for a bit. This was due to power outages and maintenance. 

So, I'll try to be bothered to go back over the seven posts I would have done, had I been able to get in. I may well fail and just continue from this weekend. Let's have a try. 

Andy.

Site Update: Channel embed

By
Andy Best
on January 17, 2009 1:42 AM | | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)
new gadget
As we all know, Youtube was bought by Google but up until now we didn't see much product crossover.

I was just uploading some Jue Festival videos when I noticed that some ready to use code was added to my channel under the heading embed this channel. I tried it out and it's a Google Gadget that displays your channel name and subscribe button while allowing you to scroll through the videos. 

So. Go to the My Youtube Channel page to see what it's like. That's the update. The channel page is now the gadget of the channel.

Bye for now.

Bug fixed: Blog theme music

By
Andy Best
on September 19, 2008 6:44 PM | | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)
Just a quick note to tell you all that I fixed the bug in the mp3 player for the theme music page. It works now. Did I say bug? Maybe I meant that I went into the code view and saw the stupid mistake I had made myself ... and then I fixed that.

So now it works.

So, when you come to the blog you should first go to the sidebar link for 'Blog Theme Music' and open it in a new page or tab or whatever. Then, select one of the two songs there. Then ...leave it playing as you read the blog. Done.


Open comments enabled

By
Andy Best
on August 15, 2008 1:45 PM | | Comments (4) | TrackBacks (0)

Aeriola JrWe interrupt your usual programming with a service announcement.

After a bit of consideration, I've decided to open up commenting on the posts. So, you no longer need to register. Select 'comment anonymously' and the usual form will appear with spaces for name, e-mail and an optional link to your own blog.

I haven't really promoted the site much aside from posting to my facebook page but now, in month three, i'm getting close to 800 individual visitors per month. I think some of you might comment if you didn't have to register. Also, I think it's not enough readers to include a bunch of bigot type commenters. Well, I hope not. To keep things in perspective, when I posted music reviews at Shanghaiist, they had 200 000 individual IPs on a bad month. To be fair, Gothamist is just a tad more established than a three month old personal blog.

In other site news, the kungfuology main site has been very slow lately. This is unfortunately down to the well documented ex-pat woes this summer. My partner in crime for that site has been jumping through hoops for weeks and making vids about kung fu has been way down on the priority list. Hope you all understand. Talking of ex-pat woes, let's finish with this disturbing update on the previous post ... gulp.  

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