Thank you for your kind comments, Bernie, it is always nice to know my work is appreciated, even though I do it solely in remembrance of a lovely lady. I will try to keep it simple, but it may take a long time to read it all!
Well, I started on this occasion by asking Ralph to let me know which five songs he would like to see on the Home Page, as I plan to re-use the Christmas Home Page and songs when December comes. Ralph gave me two lists, leaving the choice to me, and I chose the second one as they were all songs not featured before. They were also examples of good non-Irish songs, so I thought these would make a change.
The first thing I had to do was to get copies of the songs onto my computer. I used the EMI Golden Anniversary set for this, as they are the best quality CDs we have. This process is known as “ripping”, and I chose to have them in the highest quality on my computer for editing. Using my computer’s CD player, I played each song digitally at high speed and copied it to a file which I call “Work in Progress”. Using some professional sound-editing software, I removed the silence at the start then listened to each one several times in order to find a suitable point at which to fade out the music. I aim for about 1 minute, so as not to break the copyright rule – my aim is to get people to buy the CDs for themselves, not to just download the songs, and I always try to mention where the songs have come from.
It is not as simple as just fading out after 1 minute. I think it is important that the fade should come at an artistically important point, so I listen to each one repeatedly to get the right balance between keeping it short but wanting to let Ruby’s singing speak for itself. Once that point has been chosen, I then delete the remaining part of the song and ask the software to fade the level down to nothing over the last part of the song that is left. This also needs careful choosing, and I am often using the “Undo” button when I don’t like the way the fade occurs. If I fade over a short section, the music can stop rather abruptly. Too long, and it seems like it is going on for ever.
Once I had created the five shortened songs, I then used some more software to convert them into mp3 files. It is important to make the files as small as possible (while still retaining good quality) so that they do not take too long to download from the website. I have to remember that not everybody is using broadband for their connection. If the song is a mono recording, then I can tell the mp3 file this piece of information so that it does not have to have two channels unnecessarily, and this also helps to shorten the download time. After the conversion, another check is made of the sound quality for each song.
The next step was to modify the Home Page. You may have noticed that the position of the songs is slightly different from last time. This is because I wanted to draw attention to the change, and that meant bringing them higher up on the page to make them more visible. This was not a simple job! The home page is a complex structure of invisible tables with differing numbers of rows and columns, to ensure that no matter what size of screen and resolution people use to view it, it always manages to adjust itself so that it looks nice. I decided to keep the same pictures to make the task less demanding. Fortunately I have some professional web-editing software that helps me with this work, so that I can concentrate on what it looks like while the software converts it into computer code that all your computers will understand when they download it.
I typed in the introductory words saying that the songs were Ralph’s choice, and then the name of each one. Then I had to make these titles link to the song itself, to cause an automatic download and playing of the song chosen when you click on one with your cursor. For this, first I had to put the five songs into the Library. Some people have experience of this, but others must just wonder how it all happens, since it does not work for everyone! Let me just say that using my name and password, I just follow Timmer’s instructions for uploading them from my computer, and his software automatically gives them a library number. It is that number which I have to reference when I link it to the title of the song. At this point, my computer has on it a local version of what I want to eventually upload to the website, so I can test it out to make sure all the links work, and that it still looks nice on different resolutions. I have to keep changing my own screen settings, which are 1280 x 1024, to others including 800 x 600 to make sure it still looks OK, and make adjustments to the design if not.
Finally comes the moment which for me is the most nerve-racking! The Ruby Murray website is stored on a very large, and I should imagine very fast, computer known as a server which Timmer has in America. When I make a change, I must upload the new files to this computer. Of course, normally no-one is permitted to do this, but Timmer has very kindly given me the privilege of a name and password which allows me to gain access and upload the files. I said that the songs are stored in the Library, and these were already uploaded by me in order to get the new library number. However, when I make a change which involves pictures, I have to upload these separately to the server computer. So for example, when the Irish page first went live, I needed to upload all the LP covers in the size and angle that I wanted them at, and even the little shamrock that occurs in the background had to be put on the server. I then had to link to them in my editing software. I mention all this because, although on this occasion I did not need to upload them (because they were staying the same) something went badly wrong!
I uploaded the new home page with the new words and the new song titles, but when I came to test it by logging on to
www.rubymurray.org I found that there were no pictures and no little shamrocks – disaster! To cover for such emergencies I always keep a file on my computer called “Panic Home Page” and I store in there a copy of the old one that I am trying to change. So I very quickly uploaded that in place of my new one – and promptly found that it had no pictures either! Double disaster! If anyone was logged on at that moment, they would have seen a blank background with lots of empty squares and a little “X” in the corner of each one, which indicates to your computer a broken link. And for the moment, I had no way of putting it right.
After about an hour of palm-sweating work, I discovered that it was related to the hard drive crash that I experienced a few months ago. In reloading Windows XP and all my work onto the new hard drive, I had inadvertently changed the picture links on my copy of Timmer’s server. That meant that I did not have a true copy of the home page to put in my panic folder, and when I came to modify it for Ralph’s songs, that did not work either.
However, finally all was well, and I then proceeded to test each song to make sure that you get the correct one when you click on the link. I see from the Library figures that there have been already around 50 downloads of each song, with Scarlet Ribbons in the lead with 89 to date, so some people are enjoying the new songs.
Let’s hope that the next change goes more smoothly!
