Copying Labels from Blogger to Substack

A long process is in progress as I migrate my 19 year, 3000+ post blog to Substack. Alas, this is not easy.

As first, it seemed that I managed to import all of the posts, but the labels were not there. So the first step was hand editing each post to add the labels.

This can be done relatively quickly with a few cheats, I say relatively meaning that it will still take many days, work, but not many months.

In Blogger, I searched using the 'index:xxx' feature to find a subset of posts to work on. I used 'sort:-published index:0' at first, to start with the oldest post. I need to use the index feature because I can't simply scroll on. It seems that 3000 posts makes Blogger (or Chrome) break eventually.

In another tab, I made Substack to display posts, sorted from older. Then ctrl-clicked each of the 25-per-page posts to open each post in a new tab and edit. The list always defaults to search from newest to oldest, so you need to preserve these first two tabs: one from Blogger, one from Substack.

This, however would be relatively easy, taking a mere 2 or 3 days, except that I discovered that about 150 posts were not imported - agh! This seemed to occur at random, yet there were clues, such as posts with the same title/name were excluded (foolish me for making more than one post entitled 'Dream' or 'Monday', for example).

This complicates things. When finding a lost post, I had to make a list of the missing ones, then add them as new posts in Substack, one at a time. Then, open the post, edit, and set the new correct (old!) date. This was not easy either because the date entry field is broken and takes (no joke) 5 or 6 times of typing the same number -every time- to set the actual date and time. It would have helped enormously to be able to set the publication date when first posting.

Yet, it is possible. The process will probably take me 5 machine-like days of constant action, and all because of a buggy Substack importer. So much work stems from badly programmed systems by other people! What can we do but sigh and do our best to correct, and stoically continue in our task.

It was, it is, a delight re-read my older posts. I must remember to delight and inspire with each new post.

At time of writing, about 750 of the 3000 posts have been edited. Onwards we roll the heavy rock of art.

Another Violet Night Videos Complete, Dowel Joints

A tedious day of computer chugging. Converted all of the new music videos to 8000kpbs and checked them. Some finished early or late, it's amazing how many small errors can creep in to any project, amazing how much proofing matters. I've noted to add a new feature to Argus to warn about events beyond the final render frame. For every error, some preventative action must be taken. Here's a shot from 'Smashing My House of Cards', which uses a card-like vertical flip for the video. I know that a true card flip is a 180 degree rotation, which I experimented with, but that looked ugly at the joint point.

I've also looked up gizmos to guide drill bits. There are one or two metal blocks with holes in made to ensure a perpendicular drill. I'd have liked one that fitted for 2.5mm bits, as I use this for screw pilot holes often. In the end I've ordered one for drilling for dowels, which is what I need this for, for the joint in the mantelpiece shelves. A screw is easier but the aesthetics matter. I considered another option of fitting a dowel haphazardly, then drilling a bigger socket, then to be filled with hot-melt glue. This may hold better than a conventional dowel joint and be simpler too. A plug which was cone shaped, zigzagged, perforated biscuit, or other holes may make a better joint still.

Most of the hours of the day were spent waiting for FFMpeg to build my 13 new videos, then proofing them all, uploading them to YouTube with the appropriate text, rebuilding in archive (lower) quality, and other such tedious tasks. I recall that in the 1990s, computers would often take hours to render and calculate things. The waiting gradually reduced so that rendering time was not at all a problem. Now, long waits for computers are back in vogue.

Thus, the videos are done. Only a few more jobs on this album left. How much work each release is, and I barely do any promotion or performances. Soon I can move on. Tree of Keys is perhaps next. I also need to fully update the sheet music distribution on itch, separating free and basic sheets with full and paid sheets, plus adding tags to this blog on Substack. 3000 posts mean 300 a day is still 10 days of solid work.

Onwards we hack at the rock face of culture, crawling forwards towards a better future.

Music Videos, Protests

A full day completing the music videos, plus new loops for Spotify Canvases. Charging though new videos for 'Daytime Teevee' and 'More', but everything was tweaked a little bit. 'More', like many of these, is something of an animated placeholder, like 'Breakfast Of Delight' or 'How Lonely', yet I've managed to add a few things to make them more interesting and linked to the song. At very least, the whole video should sing and dance.

I went out for more shelf supplies in the afternoon. Passing the railway station, a man was huddled in a corner, facing away and trying to dress his lower half in a Union Jack with all of the awkwardness and embarrassment of someone changing into a swimsuit in public. I thought that this was connected with the football match, the roar of the stadium and scattered police officers indicating that a match was on. Then, on the corner opposite the Crewe Arms hotel I wandered into a tiny far-right demonstration, with an equally sized counter protest opposite. There were perhaps 20 people on each side, and two blue-clad community police officers to 'keep order' on a protest which was Lilliputian in every sense. One counter-protest placard said 'DOWN WITH THIS SORT OF THING' - an amusing copy of a protest sign in a Father Ted episode. The real scene match the mood of that mock-scene exactly.

Still, the sentiment was concerning. It's a busy junction. Occasionally, rarely, a car would beep support for the proto-Nazis. As I walked home a car screamed its horn and the passenger shouted an expletive to us pedestrians about 'paki's'. I wondered what the 1930s was like in Germany, for ordinary and concerned citizens. I wondered about the rise of such anger, the trickles before a third world war. Trickles seen as valid and just, as though a forthcoming cataclysm is somehow a good thing. I have two sides to my personality, a full gamut of extreme emotions and ideas, and a narrow, controlled centre of logic and reason. Politically, I'm moderate to the core.

For me, all protest is violent. The very act of opposing is a tiny violence. Peace is to ignore, be passive, to go with the flow. This I gleaned from my meditative, Buddhist-like, years of my 20s. I grew tired of fighting, and became content with surrender. This is, perhaps, the message of Buddha, yet I was never quite convinced of the philosophical truth of it. Is the Dalai Lama content to have China now own his country? No, he protests. Without any protest, we are rocks tumbling in the void. My protestations are in art, and hopefully sharing ideas or revealing truths. Most protesters never change the world (have any?), their actions primarily serve to make them and their peers feel better.

At home I continued to work on the videos. All are now done in draft; excellent. I can now charge on.

Music Videos Continue

Another full day of music video work. I must scale back my ambitions a little. Patience is often seen as a virtue, but one of my flaws is that I'm too patient, and will doggedly and time-consumingly pursue something to its end, when my time might be better spent doing something else.

In the late 1990s I worked for two years on a game design, The Heart of Aorkhan, which would have been the world's biggest role playing game a the time, bigger in monsters and artefacts than even Final Fantasy VII, yet with an utterly boring plot, and just about unplayable on computers of the era. I perhaps completed half of it singlehandedly in two years, but gave up. This is one of very few projects I've given up on, I almost always finish everything. In this case, I should have given up earlier, its mountain was too high.

Here though, I can merely scale back. I can fairly easily make basic videos for each song, but of course, I want to add more, make them more artistic, human, better than basic. The eternal balance is between time spent on one project and time taken from a future one.

Today I compiled the new video for 'I Can Heal', 'Smashing My House Of Cards', and 'Fear is Everywhere'. Of the others, tweaks and small changes were made. 'How Lonely' is a simple lyric video. 'Breakfast of Delight' is similar, but I've added a few little bonus elements to match the mood changes in this joyous song, then again a related video for 'Walls (And How To Hit Them)' which uses Lego characters to augment a basic loop that mimics the album artwork.

'Tainted Pain' echoes the themes and look of 'The Parents in the Walls' and uses a healing cross (from 'I Can Heal') to match the drum beats; this is one way I can easily add to these. It's extremely simple but looks rather nice.

I also hurriedly made the Spotify Canvas animations for today's new releases, and quickly announced them. This album, and this single are my best mixed and mastered, I humbly think, than anything before. Hopefully, everything will get better and continue to do so.

In other news, I've worked out more of the cabinet designs. I'd thought about bolting the brackets onto the MDF, but I think that 4mm pan-head wood screws would be better, as strong, and look neater than trying to drill lots of holes for bolts. I tested rawl plug and screw sizes. I think plans there are complete.

Of the videos, 'Daytime Teevee' and 'More' are the only ones that are untouched. These will also be simple animations based on the album art I think, though I have a more complex idea for 'More'. I had always planned, I always plan, for future and more complex videos, should I ever have the time and incentive. An 'Official Video' doesn't have to be the only Official Video, there were two for George Harrison's 'Got My Mind Set on You'.

In culinary art, I'm making an experimental cross between Staffordshire Oatcakes and a famous New York breakfast pancake, a mix of yeast-batter and beaten egg for an ultimate light batter. I rarely mention food in public, but I love cooking and treat it like my other arts.

Onwards with joy.

Violet Night Video Work, Fireplace Shelves

A steady day of music video work. I started on the final edits of 'All Controlled By Someone', and, for some strange reason, everything was now one frame out! I don't know why, but it meant going through the film section by section and correcting it. One frame matters because it made the video part out of sync with the animations.

This made me think that life, life as an anti-entropic force, is about correcting errors. We are born. We work. We die. All life works tirelessly. Humans now perhaps work with the aspiration to make enough money, to earn enough social power, to afford to stop working, or to afford to work 'voluntarily'. Most animals (and plants!) don't, they merely keep working, for their social good (yes even plants work!) and their job is ordering that which is chaotic, because those beings which do not are destroyed by calamity, and those beings which are ordered can endure disasters due to informational resilience.

The video was fixed and the single version edit created, then work on other videos for the album. Most of these were half complete.

'Smashing My House Of Cards' is primarily an edit of falling playing cards, but I wanted to add more, so I did some filming of singing the verses. I had to do this without my darling Deborah to operate the camera, so it took longer than normal, but the results were adequate. This uses the simplest mix method of a mask with addition to layer the video with the animation.

'Violet Night' and 'What You Could Have Won' are wholly animated, and use a simple effect of flight over the sea. I recorded an initial startled face for 'Fear is Everywhere' but it didn't work, so I made it entirely from public domain stock footage from a film about preparations for nuclear war.

At 13:30 I went out for wood and brackets for more building projects. One is a cabinet integrated into the mantelpiece, making a shelf-rack where the fire used to be. It will feature Z-bend doors with a seamless wallpaper covering to make the cabinet appear invisible when the doors are closed. There are a few complicating factors. I don't want to permanently damage the mantelpiece, so it must be removable and have minimal effect, it will be fixed by two thin (but very long) screws. The shelves don't have to bear much weight, but enough so that it will need to rest on the floor, or else those two screws would hold all of the weight, because the shelves are fitted only into my section via slots; that way I can avoid adding shelf supports into the mantelpiece alcove. Finally, my frame will have to fit exactly, sub-millimetre accuracy, or it won't look pretty. As I work on the videos, I'm occasionally thinking about the challenges here.

Several music videos need work from scratch, but I can't spend long. I often have problems with what I think of as the 'best' songs. 'Style Guru Fashion Queen' from my last album was one of the best songs, with real hit potential, and I had really clear images in my mind of drag queens and Diana Dors-type glitz and glitter, and all sorts of things, but all of that is for the future. In the end, the video became a placeholder, almost a looping animation while it rests in the slumber of potentiality.

'More', 'Tainted Pain', 'Daytime Teevee', 'Breakfast of Delight', and 'Walls (And How To Hit Them)' remain to do. I may end up using simple animations.

So much other news. Three songs are now complete for the charity Christmas album 'Christmas Tails'. I noticed in the local news that Parveen Smith, who I interviewed on my radio programme, and she in turn interviewed me about my art and music on her radio station, has won a United Nations award for humanitarian causes. My sound effects set for SFXEngine, Army Sounds, has been released. Plans for Deb's poetry book launch on the 7th are moving ahead. So much to do. I must finish all of the music videos in 5 days.

Onwards we charge.

All Controlled By Someone Video, and Wardrobe Repair

An excellent day of productivity. I woke early and pulled my wardrobe drawer to cause it to collapse into a pile of wood with a 'Weetabix' texture. My ancient, and very cheap, wardrobe has been repaired so may times that it's more glue than the paper-like material it was made from.

I have plans for a new one, practical plans. Some artists make beautiful artworks as furniture, I err towards the practical. Still, this new piece of furniture is a year or more away for now for reasons of time and funds, so my first job of the day was to fix this drawer. It had fallen apart completely, the back was held in by nails (my nails, is was originally not held at all apart from the by plastic veneer which folded around it). I glued each joint and the base and clamped it all with my two brilliant Bessey Band Clamps.

Then, I needed to make a new drawer runner. The ultimate cause of the collapse was the lack of a runner, so I made some measurements, and glues two pieces of wood together to make a piece 10x15x300mm.

These glued, so I charged into work on the 'All Controlled By Someone' video. I'd assembled video clips up to and including the first verse. Yesterday, Deb filmed me singing those. One clips had string dangling from fingers. I thought that these needed to be in the sky, heaven, so I decided to set some parameters for the mix of video and animation; limits are always good for inspiration. The 'Cat Covid!' video had lots of layers, too many, so I decided on two; a video with mask, and global 'additive' layer of animation. I used the latter to add some sky to the strings, so went through the video to establish the edit points, and set some 'sky' in Argus to appear there. I animated some clouds too; this was actually a photo of the summer sky taken in Chester - I simply made the clouds gently move and gyre.

So, the video was now black areas, mostly actual film footage, and some blue sky when 'strings' were present.

I went back to the video. I added more edits of existing footage for the chorus, and went back and forth to check it all, then added the next verse, and final chorus, but things were too repetitive. I thought I needed more of a link with the words and hit upon the idea of myself, the protagonist, now becoming a string puller for a lower being, another puppet below; this is the main message of the song, so I filmed a lone hand pulling and matched it with earlier footage of Kasperle being pulled. Thus, the circle of the story was complete.

Then, some masking effects. The video alone was a bit too simple, so I had the idea of adding a clown/makeup mirror with lights, so photographed Deborah's 'Clown Face' performance mirror, and used this as a frame for my puppet-self. I kept thinking that there was something of a 1930s Charlie Chaplin link, perhaps because of my makeup, so added a silent-film style iris effect for the opening and piano playing parts.

Then, the wardrobe gluing was dry enough. Titebond states to wait 24-hours to set. It actually sets about twice as fast as PVA, and can clue cardboard well in 20 minutes. I temporarily fitted my new runner to the wardrobe, choosing hole locations that might be moveable, should disaster strike and the need to move the whole thing. The runner was in the right place, but too deep. I removed it, and planed off 2mm. This worked fine, so I fitted it, and fitted the drawer. All complete.

Then back to the video.

The final step was editing the video so that it could fit the album version (which is about a minute longer, and includes the much better intro) and the single version, which is identical after the intro, which makes thing a lot easier.

So, draft 1 is complete, but there now there's the final stages of proofing, small changes, things to consider.

All Controlled Filming, Jo Bell

A little filming today, one hour. I needed Deborah's excellent help and guidance as camera operator and cinematographer today, as my hands were strung to the ceiling. The verses are mouthed, I need something else for the chorus. So far, almost the entire video is 'simple' filmed sections, no overlays, no layers, effects or transitions. I'm unsure what I need yet.

The hour of work is short as it's Deb's last day of her annual holiday, so the last day of semi-holiday for me too. We went to Congleton Library in the glorious sun to attend a reading by Jo Bell, partly to see this place of many memories to prepare for Deb's book event in October. I know I should work more and focus more on videos, so will charge into it tomorrow. Sometimes a pause like this gives me needed thinking time.

Love Reliquary Preparations, All Controlled By Someone Video

Determined today to focus on the 'All Controlled By Someone' video today, and charged into filming Herr Kasperle, the star of the puppet sections. I'll play him in certain parts. Other parts will use Argus. I often feel frustrated at these videos, everything is an artistic compromise; too little time, too few resources, the argument is that any video is better than none. Pushing to limits in these circumstances can be good. I must make it the best I can.

Video lights work best in secondary colours; yellow, cyan, magenta; and the modern LED lights which essentially flicker between primaries to achieve this often look better because fragments of primary leak in at the fringes. A music video really needs cuts every 2 secs; but I rarely have that luxury, rarely have the resources. Still, thanks to Argus I can make objects appear for exact notes.

The next step will feature me as Kasperle. I may need to add more for the sake of variety, though Avisynth is already creaking with one minute of video.

The morning started, however, with weighing and preparations to list The Love Reliquary with Galleria Balmain. Hardly anyone has seen this artwork, one of my best. I can but hope that Colin will help me here.

Onwards I forge.