Mr Mars' Blog - 2025
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Changing Webhosts Again
How To Arrange A Piano Accompaniment

Changing Webhosts Again

3:00pm, Thursday, January 17, 2025
Current mood: numb Wave

Having to change webhosts is not a fun experience. I have had to do it a bunch of times and it's stressful, time consuming and, in a perfect world, shouldn't be necessary. Sadly we don't live in a perfect world, the capitalist model needs fixing, and from time to time it IS necessary. This was one of those times... Emoticon

About 6 months ago I realised that my webhost: HostGator had crossed the line into garbage-land and were no longer suitable for my needs. In fact they had become actively hostile to their customers. This is sad, because 6 years ago, when I signed up with them, they were fine!

HostGator Are Now Garbage!


Newfold Digital are EVIL!


HostGator were fine when I joined them 6 years prior so how did they go so wrong? Emoticon Well it's quite a story, so let's go back to the beginning:

Back in 2006 I needed a new webhost so I switched to BlueHost and I was happy with them for many years before their service and support went downhill and I finally left them in 2018.

So why did BlueHost go bad? Well in 2010 they were acquired by the Endurance International Group (EIG) and their CEO and founder was replaced. Then, in 2012 EIG acquired HostGator and their CEO and founder was replaced. It takes some years for an amoral juggernaut like EIG to destroy a company, so HostGator still seemed ok in 2019 when I joined them, although I'm sure the rot was already deep, even though I couldn't see it at that point.

If I'd done my research a little more carefully and suspiciously I might have seen differently though, as in August 2018, EIG's CEO and CFO were fined US$8 million for fraud by the Securities and Exchange Commission for misrepresenting company subscriber numbers. Emoticon

In November 2020, Clearlake Capital, the world's 14th largest private equity firm, (as of 2023), announced that it would acquire Endurance International Group for around $3 billion.

Following the acquisition in 2021, Clearlake combined EIG's Web Presence division, including Domain.com, Bluehost, and HostGator with Web.com to form "Newfold Digital", a global web presence and domain name registration market leader. Newfold Digital is a joint venture between Clearlake Capital and Siris Capital Group, owner of Web.com since 2018. Emoticon

According to Wikipedia: "In recent years Clearlake has become the biggest user of "General partner-led Private-equity secondary markets". It is a technique where Clearlake will find another private equity firm to buy a large portion of one of its existing investments and then offer investors a chance to sell at a new valuation or roll their stake into a new fund that will hold the investment for a few more years."

This kind of thing may be technically legal but it is surely amoral and is just a sliver of the sort of rubbish that is destroying the world as we speak and tarnishing the previously good name of capitalism. Emoticon

We all know how these huge investment houses work: They buy a good company without permission and take control of it. Then they strip its assets, sack its workforce and boast of their achievement. The company shows a HUGE windfall in the short term and the owner can then either sell it for more profit or let it rot.

This is a case study in much of what is currently wrong with capitalism. This is NOT how capitalism is supposed to work and the rules need to be changed before the world is destroyed. One of the things that MUST be stopped is allowing investment houses to run companies. It is no different to allowing wolves to run the sheep pen. In the end you have no sheep and the wolves starve. In the long term it benefits nobody. Of course the filth that are the investment houses don't care about the long term. They are making money NOW!

In my opinion the CEOs and CFOs of these investment houses should be swinging from a scaffold by the neck, right in front of the Wall Street Exchange. And this goes right across the board for virtually every large company operating in the world today. They have ALL been ruined by investment houses who are run exclusively by amoral, loophole-exploiting criminals. They don't care about the companies they buy, only about the money they can rape from them. Emoticon

This all needs to change. You can read my in-depth soap-box article on the subject here.

DreamIT Host


no support 2
DreamIT logos.

So I cast around to find a host that was NOT owned by a large investment house and I eventually settled on DreamIT Host, based in Melbourne. They had very good reviews on Product Review so I thought I'd give them a try.

It's early days, so I don't want to be too definite but they DO offer support via online chat or email tickets which has been quite helpful so far. My website loads more rapidly than it did with HostGator and I can get straight into cPanel with one click. I'm limited to 5GB on the basic plan but this is enough, (just). Normal FTP won't work but SFTP will. Everything is ok at the moment although doing the migration was not without its problems. We'll see how things shape out over the next few months...

Google are EVIL and stupid


Years ago I moved my domain name registrations to Google Domains. Go Daddy are yet another example of what is wrong with capitalism today and they made the simple process of maintaining the registration of a domain name into a serious pain. They were always trying to rape me of more money using every sly-arsed trick in the book and I walked. Emoticon

Initially Google Domains were everything I would want from a registrar: Plain, simple, easy and cheap. But then of course, they went and sold it off without my permission to SquareSpace who's main line of work was in creating websites, NOT in registering domains for the wider world.

Do you remember 12 years ago when Google were the best company on Earth? Remember when they had a motto "Do no evil" up high on their wall? Remember when they were owned and run by Sergey Brin and Larry Page? Remember when they had wonderful products like Google Reader, Picasa, Google Play Music etc? Remember when Google Maps used to be easy to use? Remember when the top results of Google Search were NOT limited to paying companies? Those were the days...

Google is no longer run by Page & Brin and the "Do no evil" motto is long gone. I'm not accusing the current leaders of Google of anything illegal at the moment but it is clear that Google is NOT the morally upright company it once was. Emoticon

Yes, it's another sad story of how modern amoral capitalism destroys all the good in the world. Let's have a look at who actually IS running Google now. Sundatr Pichai (CEO) may have been an engineer that came up through the ranks at Google but Ruth Porat (President and CIO) was a banker at Morgan-Stanley, Anat Ashkenazi (CFO) was a finance head from BIG Pharma (Eli Lily) and Thomas Kurian (CEO of Google Cloud) was President of Product Development at Oracle, none of these are exactly nice companies, in fact they are down there with the WORST! The EVIL BLIGHT has infected the company and the quality of product and service has gone far downhill from its halcyon days a decade and more ago.

The EVIL BLIGHT doesn't just make a company mean and nasty though, it also makes it STUPID! And so it was that in 2023 the perfectly viable "Google Domains" was sold off. STUPID! and also ANNOYING! I was happy storing my domains with Google. Why should I be inconvenienced because a bunch of evil rapists think they can make a buck by selling the company I use? Pffft! Give me a shotgun and put the arseholes in a row and I'll show them what I think of them! Emoticon

Square Space should NOT be a general domain registrar


So now we come to the point, which is that SquareSpace made it VERY CONFUSING to update the name servers correctly so that my migrated website would work. Normal registrars simply give you 2 or more fields to fill with the nameserver URLs or IPAs which you get from your new web host and you are GOLDEN! SquareSpace are a bit different... Emoticon

When you go to your SquareSpace DomainNameservers page you are warned NOT to change them!

SquareSpace warning
Don't go changing your nameservers so they point to your webhost... Nooooooo!

This is FUCKING GARBAGE SquareSpace! Go to hell you bunch of disingenuous arseholes! The fact is that changing these nameservers IS the thing that you SHOULD be doing! The only exception is if you are using SquareSpace to design your website. Emoticon

This brings us to the reason why Square Space should NOT be a general domain registrar: They have a conflict of interest! They are primarily concerned with their web design customers and their nameserver instructions are for them, NOT for people just using SS as a domain name registrar.

I am not an internet specialist. I know a bit about it but I'm by no means a guru and I was confused by this warning and I wasn't sure what to do. Ideally I should have simply seen that SS were talking out of their arse and ignored them BUT I thought I would ask for help to clarify the matter. So I opened the chat box with SS help.

SquareSpace help chat
Call that help?

In this chat you can see that Maria is advising me to do the nameserver migration from my webhost's end. This is NOT the way to do it. She also says that nothing entered into SS will propagate. This is wrong! Once I changed the SS nameserver URLs to those specified by my webhost everything DID propagate! Garbage, confusing and incorrect advice from Maria at SquareSpace help. Emoticon

What she SHOULD have said is: "Are you using SquareSpace for your web design? If not then go ahead and update our nameservers according to your webhost's specifications. Just ignore all our stupid warnings. They don't apply to you."

If she'd done that or if SquareSpace hadn't had all its scary warnings I would have made the changes the same way I had with other registrars and all would have been sweet. Instead I was subject to 2 hours of doubt and my website went down. I also made a change on my webhost which I possibly shouldn't have...

Damn SquareSpace! I never wanted you in the first place! Emoticon

Anyway, it's all resolved now and you can all see my site and my emails work so "All's well that ends well!" as they say...

Whew! I finally finished this epic 3,000 word blog post. It took a good 8 hours! I could have used that time to finish my latest piano arrangement... Now you can see why I don't do many blog posts. Emoticon

Currently watching: machining & welding vids by Cutting Edge Engineering Australia. Go Kurtis!

Round Australia Trip - Attempt 2

H:MMpm, Weekday, Month DayOfMonth, 2025
Current mood: calm Wave

Paragraph text Emoticon

Image 1 Image 2
A bunch of blurb about these images.

Currently doing: Book/CD/Movie/TVShow Title by Author/Group

Damn Thieves

H:MMpm, Weekday, Month DayOfMonth, 2025
Current mood: calm Wave

Paragraph text Emoticon

Image 1 Image 2
A bunch of blurb about these images.

Currently doing: Book/CD/Movie/TVShow Title by Author/Group

How To Arrange A Piano Accompaniment

4:40pm, Monday, September 8, 2025
Current mood: calm Wave

Writing A Piano Accompaniment Part 1
My YouTube video: "Writing A Piano Accompaniment Part 1" - click to watch

I am a musician AND a scientist! And, believe it or not, that is a rare thing. Certainly I am not the only one though. For example: Brian May, Queen's guitarist, and one of it's main songwriters, is an astrophysicist. However we are rare cases. Most musicians from popular bands are from an arts background or simply knockabouts with no higher education at all. Classical musicians tend to come from the conservatory pipeline and know nothing other than music.

The same is true for poets and consequently lyricists. They are very rarely trained scientists or mathematicians. So it is that very few songs are written accurately about maths, science or engineering. There are songs about love, heartbreak, war, work, drinking, pets, aspirations, religion and drugs but where are the songs about Hilbert Space, integration by parts, quantum electrodynamics and thermodynamics? The only person that I can think of that touched on such subjects was Tom Lehrer and even he only did a handful of such songs and even then he didn't dive in deep. Emoticon

But it is not only that this vast area is so under-represented in song, the converse analog is also true: ie, there are precious few musicians working on the mathematics of music theory. Yes, there are numerous musicians who study music theory, but that is from the viewpoint of music, NOT from the viewpoint of physics or maths. There are also physicists working on acoustic theory as it impinges on music but such studies are from the viewpoint of physics, NOT from the viewpoint of music.

What is needed in order to properly establish the foundations of music theory is a view from both sides at once. But since people are nearly always from one side or the other, this has not really been possible until now. You can read the Wikipedia articles on various aspects of music theory which can be mathematically rigorous but they miss the essential point of such things which can only been seen from the side of a musician. Likewise you can read numerous articles on musical theory from the musicians' side but they miss the mathematical point.

I am the one to fix all that and bring it all together into one cohesive and cogent package. I have been working on it off and on over the past 30 years and I'm fairly close to publishing my thesis on the subject. However: Not quite ready yet...

My intention is to release a series of YouTube videos on the subject with graphics, where I will talk about why western music is the way it is and why any other form is inherently inferior. It will be a deep dive that will be rooted in harmonic theory and will contain many spreadsheets embodying much mathematics.

Writing A Piano Accompaniment Part 2
My YouTube video: "Writing A Piano Accompaniment Part 2" - click to watch

As a precursor to this I thought I would produce a series of vids demonstrating how I do arrangements, which would, of necessity, dive into harmonic theory and counterpoint. I have been doing piano accompaniments of certain of my songs for years now and I figured that all I would need to do was wait for the next one and just film the process, talking the viewer through it as it went. Not only would the viewer see me at my work but they would also learn something about the theory behind it all.

This I have done, and I at least, am happy with the result. It is not dumbed down for my audience whom I assume are musicians. It is long and detailed, (not as long as the full job though), comprising 3 parts, each of 1 to 2 hours. I cover the rationale behind choosing a "feel" to follow for each verse. I show the happy discovery of unintended musical lines. I show how I work at the piano. I also show how imperfect my brain and sightreading skills are, (although this doesn't prevent me from doing quality composition.) I show how I enter the notation at the computer and the host of problems that brings. I show how I bring the work together as a whole. Finally, I discuss the underlying music theory and my principles of arrangement and show how they work in practice and how to get around the problems that inevitably occur. Emoticon

It is not the only the only way to do such arrangements but it is the way the I do it and I believe that it is a tried and proven way to get good results. It is a set of principles perhaps, but they can all be broken when necessary and it leaves room for the natural individuality of the composer to assert itself so that they can create work with their unique personality.

Having said that, it is the way I work, which is responsible for a good chunk of my own style, custom forged and honed by myself over the decades, so some of my style will likely bleed over into anyone following my school. I hesitated to reveal my methodology for this reason. After all, I don't really want a host of composers generating music that sounds like me, but, in the end, I'm an open guy and I want people to know how I think. Let the chips fall where they may.

Writing A Piano Accompaniment Part 3
My YouTube video: "Writing A Piano Accompaniment Part 3" - click to watch

I used my song "Too Much Wheat", which I wrote in 2023, as the source material for this arrangement. It is a simple song in the major, (or Ionian), mode of the diatonic scale, containing no accidentals in either the melody or the harmony. Staying true to the folk provenance of the leadsheet I did not use any accidentals but the harmony of my arrangement became far more complex than that of the original. Emoticon

I needed to consider the relationship between the melody for the bass voice and the contrabass in the piano making sure to avoid discords there. I also needed to consider how to achieve suitable contrast between verses. In the second verse I left the contrabass out altogether and consequently needed to pay special attention to the relationship between the bass melody and the line directly above it. All through I needed to pay attention to the rules of counterpoint, avoiding direct 4ths, 5ths and octaves and maximising all notes of the triad. I did not follow these principles slavishly though and explained why and where such rules can and should be broken.

I haven't read any book on counterpoint, nor done any "official" study, but I have done a lot of SATB arrangement, including works where each line goes off on its own improvisation and I have done piano arrangements of works by Beethoven and Bach that feature detailed, non block, harmonic lines, so I feel I am qualified to speak on the subject. People who want to question my bona fides need only look at those arrangements to satisfy them themselves as to the veracity of this assertion.

The reaction of my audience to these unique and revealing videos has, so far, been underwhelming. The few people that started to watch were mostly gone after a couple of minutes and so far NO ONE has watched any of them all the way through... A waste of my time perhaps, certainly for the time being... I can only hope that after I am dead, people will find value in them... Emoticon

Here is the score of the final result. Go ahead and try it out on your piano.

Emoticon

Currently reading: Solo Leveling by Chugong & Jang Sung-rak