I'm really glad it's going to an ilx0r, to be honest. I've said it before but it's one of my favourite projects, it was realised so well and I was so happy to be a small part of it.
― emil.y, Thursday, 8 July 2021 23:38 (two years ago) link
Please sticky a "brought to you by Yogurtland" banner in the bottom right corner and insert an audio squarespace ad read every 20s.
― butyrate humbucker bobbins (Sufjan Grafton), Friday, 9 July 2021 02:00 (two years ago) link
i feel guilty making so many jokes about litigating and suing people for using it and all sorts of things. i swear that was all part of another plan that involved more of a pronounced fake "battle" between Zach Scott and Zach TBD at the moment that Z_S was about to truly destroy conferencecall.biz.
i actually think that whole approach would have been amazing AND that no one would have ever figured out what i was trying to do. so probably a very good thing for silby to get in there earlier with a serious bid. sometimes a good friend saves you from yourself. :)
― Z_TBD (Karl Malone), Friday, 9 July 2021 02:31 (two years ago) link
out of interest KM, just how large is the website i.e. in webspace requirements, and what sort of traffic does it generate
― mark e, Friday, 9 July 2021 08:25 (two years ago) link
Cosign emil.y's sentiments above entirely, am proud to have made the cut in a small way :)
― Maresn3st, Friday, 9 July 2021 09:51 (two years ago) link
thank you emil.y and maresn3st!
mark e, i'll get you some vital stats, one sec
― Z_TBD (Karl Malone), Friday, 9 July 2021 15:35 (two years ago) link
traffic these days (post-2014) fluctuates between two states. normally, very little traffic. 20-30 people a day.
this is the daily traffic for the year of 2020. You can see that on Jan 20, 2020, something happened. every once in a while it will either get a small mention in some media outlet and that drives traffic for a bit, or someone on facebook will post about it and it revives. not sure what happened that day!
https://i.imgur.com/V8cedkt.png
― Z_TBD (Karl Malone), Friday, 9 July 2021 15:46 (two years ago) link
here's another fun one. 2018:
https://i.imgur.com/JBtVCz5.png
what happened in late august 2018 to suddenly cause all that?
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17850902
― Z_TBD (Karl Malone), Friday, 9 July 2021 15:51 (two years ago) link
after the first wave of one-time, weird-ass things when it first came out in jan 2014 - slate and marketplace especially - that's how it has been. it settles into a rhythm of 20-30 people a day (used to be more like 50-100, back in 2015), and then every once in a while someone like the stack overflow guy will find it and tweet about it and it's off to the races for 4 hours.
ok, now let me take a look at the size of the assets
― Z_TBD (Karl Malone), Friday, 9 July 2021 15:53 (two years ago) link
lol, i just remembered that for a long time i was getting steady traffic from Russia, and finally realized it was because it made the front page of Esquire Russia for weeks in a row! there was no write-up or info about it, only this, at the bottom:
https://i.imgur.com/rmAM3do.jpg
― Z_TBD (Karl Malone), Friday, 9 July 2021 16:00 (two years ago) link
"Useless site"
― Clara Lemlich stan account (silby), Friday, 9 July 2021 16:03 (two years ago) link
all fascinating stuff, ta.reason i ask, is i was wondering re hosting and the levels of service are needed to run such a site.
― mark e, Friday, 9 July 2021 16:06 (two years ago) link
Oh my god, I remember "useless site". Hilarious.
― emil.y, Friday, 9 July 2021 16:14 (two years ago) link
i've always done it through AWS. all of the GIFs and MP3s come out to 29.4MB total, which is kind of wild.
there are 79 mp3s, all of which are less 500kb. the biggest is the background music loop, which is 1.0MB.
i remember that originally there were, purposefully, 77 audio clips. but then i talked to kai and was trying to make him be my friend and he contributed 2 additional audio clips, bringing the total to an unhappy 79.
for the images, there are 29 GIFs. somehow, they're all under 150kb, and most are under 100kb. lean and mean!
at the time it was made i think i was still in aftershock from the infamous Tumblr filesize limit on GIFs. for a long time, you had to make your GIF less than 1 MB or it wouldn't work. later they expanded that to 2MB. it was awesome, unintentionally, because it forced people to be more efficient with frames and color and lossy choices. when that ceiling was raised, people just started making GIFs that were video clips and it died (imo)
― Z_TBD (Karl Malone), Friday, 9 July 2021 16:22 (two years ago) link
that's very impressive.as i tweeted, the whole look/sound etc, totally remind of the early releases by Scanner.eg. Scanner 1 : https://www.discogs.com/Scanner-Scanner/master/1767734
― mark e, Friday, 9 July 2021 16:42 (two years ago) link
that's beautiful stuff. discogs includes it in the "non-music" tag, but it is music to my ears at least :)
― Z_TBD (Karl Malone), Friday, 9 July 2021 16:46 (two years ago) link
upload the tracks and a master gif to spotify. then make a podcast where you interview each contributor about the biz before playing their contribution at the end.
― butyrate humbucker bobbins (Sufjan Grafton), Friday, 9 July 2021 17:35 (two years ago) link
i think that would be listened to by...people in this thread. :)
it would be kind of fun to have a zoom call with all the original participants (including those whose clips i didn't end up using!) and then just have it go really, really poorly
― Z_TBD (Karl Malone), Friday, 9 July 2021 17:38 (two years ago) link
Karl I'll make sure I do a "gallery opening" conference call someday when I fulfill my vision of having a little exhibit to go alongside the site itself.
― Clara Lemlich stan account (silby), Friday, 9 July 2021 17:46 (two years ago) link
i will definitely put that on my calendar!
*checks calendar*
yep, completely empty! :)
― Z_TBD (Karl Malone), Friday, 9 July 2021 18:00 (two years ago) link
you know what would be fun for that? have as many OG participants as possible fill all the roles, and then fill in the others with other ilxors. then, we sit there and do conferencecall.biz as long as possible (probably 15 minutes), but the trick would be that we'll all have applebee's like buzzer/triggers to let us all know that the clip we originally recorded has been triggered and we have to do it. there would be no way to know what was coming next, for anyone. could be cool!
― Z_TBD (Karl Malone), Friday, 9 July 2021 20:50 (two years ago) link
if we did that i'd have someone else be me and then i would play the live drone and be really high
that was zach scott, anyway. ok, all of that, plus we put someone in a zach scott corpse suit, just looking like shit, but they read my lines as me
― Z_TBD (Karl Malone), Friday, 9 July 2021 20:51 (two years ago) link
karl havoc could do it
― butyrate humbucker bobbins (Sufjan Grafton), Friday, 9 July 2021 21:14 (two years ago) link
i highly encourage everyone to make as much profit as possible off of conferencecall.biz and then use it for as many anticapitalist ends as possible
― Z_TBD (Karl Malone), Friday, 9 July 2021 21:22 (two years ago) link
tbh I was shocked and confused to be called an “old school” ilxor by Zach on Twitter because I’ve only been on here 10 or 11 years
― Clara Lemlich stan account (silby), Saturday, 10 July 2021 00:40 (two years ago) link
The only people who started posting after me are frogbs and treeship I think
― Clara Lemlich stan account (silby), Saturday, 10 July 2021 00:41 (two years ago) link
Me
― fix up luke shawp (darraghmac), Saturday, 10 July 2021 01:04 (two years ago) link
dmac is old schooltreesh is old schoolsilby is old school
― Z_TBD (Karl Malone), Saturday, 10 July 2021 01:11 (two years ago) link
anyone after me is old school, and i made my first post in...2006? it was bad
people before that were the golden age of ilx, in my mind. they're like legolas and gandalf and the rest. some of them were like gollum. there were a bunch of good characters
― Z_TBD (Karl Malone), Saturday, 10 July 2021 01:12 (two years ago) link
in my mind dmac treesh and silby have always been there. so, personally, to me, old school
if you fight intuition with facts, i will throw ideas at logic
― Z_TBD (Karl Malone), Saturday, 10 July 2021 01:13 (two years ago) link
please sign me up for conference call dot biz conference call party!
― she started dancing to that (Finefinemusic), Saturday, 10 July 2021 15:20 (two years ago) link
^^old schooler^^
― Z_TBD (Karl Malone), Saturday, 10 July 2021 15:53 (two years ago) link
Had to look myself up: 2004, happy to recreate my obvious magic again. :)
― Maresn3st, Saturday, 10 July 2021 16:25 (two years ago) link
Think of me like an old school ghost, always present, often silent ❤️👻
― she started dancing to that (Finefinemusic), Saturday, 10 July 2021 16:43 (two years ago) link
I used to post as 'sonicdeath' - 06 - mostly not a heavy poster, but enjoy the discourse. Miss conference call biz, which I think I was introduced to via lumpen.
― BlackIronPrison, Saturday, 10 July 2021 20:28 (two years ago) link
it's still alive!
also, i just thought of a way to trick ted cruz supporters into supporting me, this covid group i work with, and mutual aid
fuck yeah
― Z_TBD (Karl Malone), Saturday, 10 July 2021 20:33 (two years ago) link
xp
via lumpen? really? the chicago area group?
― Z_TBD (Karl Malone), Saturday, 10 July 2021 20:34 (two years ago) link
The zine, enjoyed the internet/radio stuff a bit, & maybe went to a few space related things, but mostly just read and enjoyed zine at Quimby's etc.
― BlackIronPrison, Saturday, 10 July 2021 20:53 (two years ago) link
dang, that's awesome! i used to hang out a small bit with the lumpen crew back in 2006 (not very much at all, but a little) and i'd love to see what they said.
― Z_TBD (Karl Malone), Saturday, 10 July 2021 20:55 (two years ago) link
plus i'm currently concocting a plan to get a zine into Quimby's, full circle.
like, just Quimby's
― Z_TBD (Karl Malone), Saturday, 10 July 2021 20:56 (two years ago) link
att: karl malone
https://zenodo.org/record/4008297#.YRPvgy1Q3_Q
― Tracer Hand, Thursday, 12 August 2021 11:45 (two years ago) link
lol! what a cool database! it must have been hard to know when they had "enough" meows
― Read between the lines Zach (Karl Malone), Thursday, 12 August 2021 15:46 (two years ago) link