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Meanwhile, backstage...

29 Jan 2021Meanwhile, backstage...

You would be forgiven for thinking that nothing is happening on Lemonrock.

But, like many good things, most of the work goes unnoticed because it is taking place behind the scenes.

So, a quick summary of what's new, and what's coming soon:

* January 2020 : Development began of Lemonrock's own payment system for bands, called BandPay. Originally designed in anticipation of the rapidly declining use of cash in venues, BandPay allows venues to pay bands through Lemonrock, using a debit or credit card. This is a fully PCI-compliant scheme, meaning that it is 100% secure. Initially we had hoped to bring this out in Summer 2020, but the COVID-19 lockdown made this pointless.

* April - August 2020 : Improvements were made to gig diaries and calendars, including plain text and iCalendar import from existing calendars, to save time when adding gigs to Lemonrock.

* August - November 2020 : Lemonrock was modified to become a Progressive Web App (PWA), meaning that you can easily add it to your home screen, and that the icon fits in neatly with the rest of your Apps. This also paves the way for Web Push alerts (see below).

* November - December 2020 : Server software was upgraded to the newest version of PHP, our main programming language. This involved hundreds of changes to our own software, including the database interface to MySQL. Development and testing of BandPay continued. We started development of Web Push alerts for gigs, which will mean that our members can get instant alerts on their Lemonrock App about newly posted gigs for their favourites, without having to check their email inbox. A new version of our favourites system was released, making it much simpler to add, remove and track favourite bands and venues. Our password security was strengthened to industry standard.

* December 2020 - January 2021 : Development of Web Push continued, with beta testing underway. BandPay is in the final stages of extended testing with our payment partner, Stripe. Both new systems - instant alerts and online band payment - will be ready for deployment by the end of February 2021. Many improvements have been made to the gig guide, including an integrated week-by-week menu that first appeared on the mobile site many years ago. Improvements to the user interface make the Mobile App much easier to use, including gig posting for Band and Venue members, and clearer menu options for everyone.

We know that things are still very difficult for bands and venues, so we have continued to run our server with many lapsed pages still active. We have modified our clean-up system so that, until things are back to normal, no data is automatically removed from our site. This means that photos, blogs, audio tracks, as well as band and venue descriptions, contact details and previous gig listings, will remain on the site, and cannot be adopted by anyone else.

So, if you don't hear from us, don't worry. We're working hard in the wings of this quiet theatre, to make gig promotion and gig-going easier, more fun, and more effective than ever.

And don't forget QuizMaster - Lemonrock's new daily online pop quiz - great fun for 4 minutes, every day at 7.30pm!

Mac

Christmas Gremlins

29 Dec 2020Christmas Gremlins

For some of our members, Lemonrock went eerily quiet for a day.

No, it wasn't because of Christmas, or lockdown.

A software upgrade caused many older Apple devices - iPads, iMacs and iPhones - to crash when accessing our site. The main pages that were affected were the home page (gig guide) and the page to reset your password.

The Elf in charge of these changes says he's very sorry but what with all the extra workload this Christmas and sanitising every bit of every byte in the computer, including the parity and sanity bits, some things just didn't get tested properly. A likely story. I reckon said elf was seen with his own big bag of booze slinking out of Tesco when he should have been running regression tests back in the grotto. Can't get the staff.

The 'ead of Elves

Photo courtesy of TripAdvisor

Surprise Yourself

21 Dec 2020Surprise Yourself

Nothing pleases me more than finding a new band or singer who rocks my world.

A few years ago, I bought Francis Rossi's (Status Quo) album, "One Step at a Time". One backing singer stood out for me, and I re-listen to the album often, just to hear her voice. Absolutely captivating. Spine-tingling. Alive. Special.

Her name is Amy Smith. She's from Liverpool, which says a lot already.

If you can't afford the luxury of buying Rossi's excellent album, then listen to Amy on this Pink Floyd track on YouTube:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ac_DWFHfQPI

Happy Discoveries Everyone.

Mac

https://smile.amazon.co.uk/One-Step-Time-Francis-Rossi/dp/B0037M5XE6

You what?

17 Dec 2020You what?

Coronavirus Pandemic, Brexit? Forget that trivia. This is the rubbish that I have to put up with in order to do my job:

"The Promise.resolve() method returns a Promise object that is resolved with a given value. If the value is a promise, that promise is returned; if the value is a thenable (i.e. has a "then" method), the returned promise will "follow" that thenable, adopting its eventual state; otherwise the returned promise will be fulfilled with the value. This function flattens nested layers of promise-like objects (e.g. a promise that resolves to a promise that resolves to something) into a single layer."

https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/JavaScript/Reference/Global_Objects/Promise/resolve

(You see, I wasn't making it up.)

God help us all. Real Programming is dead. Long live Smoke, Mirrors, and Inadequate Explanations of Re-invented Wheels.

If anyone can reduce (or, perhaps expand) this pathetic attempt at a description of JavaScript Promises, please get in touch via my local pub, where I shall be twitching in the left-hand corner*, gibbering about 3-letter assembly-language mnemonics.

"But," I hear you say, "can young American software engineers grow vegetables?"

Ah, there's room for all of us here.

The Other (Very Bemused) Mac

* as of 0.01am on Saturday 19 December, this will take place outside the pub.

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