Re: future of Looper's Delight (long)

[Jim Goodin <jimgoodinmusic@gmail.com>]

Violet that's powerful and intensely felt and I know how difficult it is for you to even deal with this now or anything so close to Kim however maybe it helps to restore a sense of 'normalcy' by focusing on the things that were important to him.  As others have echo'd I too and am touched/taken by your dedicated plans.  If I can be of any production and or maintenance help I'm happy to offer.  As many here I'm pretty comfortable with HTML and graphics and other.

One thing I"ve wondered about that you didn't reference unless I missed it but I gather Kim was paying for the hosting/domain as a labor of love.  Are you going to need help from the community in maintaining that expense?  I know the shirts were to generate some capital for that and though I've not yet purchased I'm going to.  If need be I would chip in to the site costs.

Okay time heals and hang in there.

Jim

On Tue, Jun 29, 2010 at 11:18 AM, Andreas Antoniou <e.a.antoniou@gmail.com> wrote:

I just realised what happened here.. I joined the list today.

With deepest sympathy

Andreas

On Tue, Jun 29, 2010 at 4:45 PM, Massimo Liverani <mas.liv@libero.it> wrote:

So i dind't personally know Kim, and i joined the list only one year ago, also
if i know some persons involved.
I'm from Italy, and i'll be very happy if the spirit of Kim will survive also
in this list that is made by fantastic people.
So a dont't really know what to say to you...you have all my understanding,
your word let me belive that this world,
if there are people like you, is a better place and kim will surely survive...
so let's go on!

ps: excuse for my 'not perfect' english

Massimo

>----Messaggio originale----
>Da: violet@missviolet.com
>Data: 29/06/2010 7.27
>A: <Loopers-Delight@loopers-delight.com>
>Ogg: future of Looper&#39;s Delight (long)
>
>I've been trying to write something about this all week, but finding time
>and strength has been hard.  It's difficult to write this even now, but I
>feel compelled.  I don't know how eloquent it will be, since I don't feel
>particularly coherent right now, so bear with me.
>
>I know many of you are reeling right now and worrying about what's going to
>happen with Looper's Delight.  Will it fall apart?  Will it be abandoned?
>I know it's hard not to fret, but please try to have faith.  I need
>everyone to, because...
>
>What's going to happen now is exactly what was going to happen anyway.  For
>a long time Kim had been frustrated that the site was such a mess and he
>had no time to work on it.  Even the times he did update it, he had a tough
>time because he didn't know much about HTML; adding even the simplest thing
>was hard for him, which is why the site is so jumbled and inconsistent.
>
>He'd been begging me for more than 10 years to help him clean it up.  Every
>now and then, I'd make graphics for him and help with layout on the site
>using my awesomely bad circa 1998 web skills (the CD ad banners, the
>navigational buttons ... ugh, please don't hurt me!  They were cool at the
>time, I swear!).  But the main reason I never fixed the site for him was
>because it needed to be switched over to CSS, and *I* didn't really have
>the skill to do what needed to be done, either.  But it was something we
>talked about many, many times.
>
>I've worked on several sites since then and I know much more about site
>development than I used to.
>
>Two days before Kim died, I told him I had finally begun site restructuring
>for Looper's Delight.  He was SO HAPPY!  I can't even tell you how excited
>he was.  For anyone who doubts that Kim still had a passion for LD, I can
>tell you that the passion never left.  The fire I saw in his eyes that
>night, the joy ... I will never forget that and I wish you could have seen
>it.  He was simply stretched thin and his job at Nvidia was so stressful,
>there wasn't enough time for him to do everything he wanted. I watched him
>wrestle with that for so many years.  You have no idea how frustrated he
>was that he couldn't do everything he wanted to do.
>
>In the past I had added an interface to the site to make updating the news
>section easier for him, but he never had time to learn how to use it.
>(Currently, you'll notice the news page is giving a server error; that's a
>result of my moving the interface UNDERNEATH the running site when
>restructuring began in order to hide it so that the existing site can still
>viewable while I work on the re-org.)  I told Kim that since I already knew
>he probably wouldn't have time to give me much input or work on the site
>even with the interface added, I was also going to join the list so I could
>get input from the community directly and get you involved.  He laughed and
>said yeah, that was probably a good idea!
>
>So the upshot is, Kim and I had already agreed that I was going to take
>over the day-to-day management of the site and seek input/help from the
>community.  I had hoped he would be here to guide me because I don't really
>know the sorts of things that are of interest to you, but sadly, well, we
>see how that went.  But I was going to rely on the community for much of
>that anyway.
>
>So together we can do this.  You know the sorts of things that are of
>interest to loop artists.  I know what Kim's vision was, I know the
>principles that were important to him, because they're the same principles
>by which I run my OWN sites and mailing lists.  We were in absolute
>agreement on how mailing lists should be run - and as you've seen for
>years, he took great pains to structure the list so that it would be able
>to run without him personally babysitting it - and we also had many
>wonderful discussions on how we felt news sites should be operated.  I will
>miss those discussions so much.
>
>You may not have Kim any more, but I hope you'll find that his spirit lives
>on in me.  We were two halves of the same whole.  (Although I am,
>admittedly, the more verbose half.)  I hope you can trust that I will take
>the site in the direction Kim would want it to go, because I watched him
>care about it for the past 14 years and I know how much it meant to him.
>
>The trouble for me at the moment is that having lost Kim now, I won't be
>able to get to the actual redesign as quickly as I'd wanted to.  I was
>working on it, and now I'm reeling and life as I knew it has come to a
>screeching halt.  Not only am I too heartsick to focus on much of anything
>right now, but I'm also going to have to work on keeping Kim's personal
>sites - KimFlint.com and Annihilist.com - alive in his name.  This is on
>top of the work I have to do for other sites on our server and dealing with
>my own website, Undented.com.
>
>I haven't given much thought yet to how I'm going to keep up with it all,
>but I do have people to help me through this, and I have all of you to give
>me input when I'm sorting out the LD stuff.
>
>But for now, things are going continue the way they were and would have if
>Kim were still here: the list will continue running the way it has been,
>and I will be reorganizing the site behind the scenes and getting some of
>you involved when I'm ready.
>
>I hope this gives you some hope for the future during this painful time.
>
>Oh!  I nearly forgot ... although the way the site is physically run is
>going to change dramatically (in that it will be able to be updated
>regularly when I'm done with the re-org, yay!) the overall look probably
>won't change much.  Originally I had wanted to come up with a new design -
>nothing overly flashy, but something better than what's there now - but now
>that Kim has gone, his mother has asked if we can at least keep the entry
>page similar to what it's been all these years because it comforts her and
>makes her think of Kim, so we're going to do that.  But it will also
>feature a prominent memoriam to Kim.  I don't think anyone would argue that
>that's the way it should be.  So it isn't the overall look that will
>change, but the way the content is organized and updated, which will make
>it much more exciting and interesting for everyone.  I'll be relying
>heavily on the community to help with that.
>
>And I'm going to clean up the archives.  When I looked at those, I was
>shocked by all the spam!  I wish Kim had told me that was happening - I
>could have cleaned that up.  Eesh!
>
>So the site isn't going to suddenly turn all crazy, just be more coherent
>and easier to navigate and update.
>
>Okay, I'm done now, and very tired, and I may not have the energy to
>respond to replies, but I *am* here and will be reading as much as I can.
>
>Violet
>xoxox
>
>

-- 
From Brooklyn To Glindran, a new World/Free Jazz recording by Jim Goodin & Peter Thörn.  Proceeds
from the sale of this CD will benefit JDRF International.  jimgoodinpeterthorn.bandcamp.com.

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