Dear Lathe Trolls.
It may seem poetic that I am launching the annual Lathe Trolls fundraiser on USA's Black Friday Record Store Day.
But it is a coincidence: The rent is due on our domains and hosting. I am also in the midst of an urgent upgrade of our forum software, so that it will continue to run... period. I'm using that opportunity to relaunch the site's old blog as a new magazine.
Details further down the page! But I'll cut to the chase:
Please contribute now to keep this Lathe Trolls site running.
If this site has been life-enriching to you, please take a minute right now and contribute: Clicking the golden PayPal "Contribute" button at the top of this page will allow you to enter an amount you'd like to give (one time, or monthly). Or, PayPal to: lathetrolls@gmail.com. Please email or include a note to help me credit your username correctly on the “Our Sponsors” page.
Have you used the site for months or years, for free? It is an appropriate hour to make a first-time contribution of $16.66 USD. Smaller amounts ($7.80, for example) add up, as long as everyone pulls their weight. If your business income or most meaningful hobby depends on the site, please consider more: $33.33 USD is a magic number. For donations of $45 or more, you can customize your link, and also have it connect to a webpage outside the Lathe Trolls site. Banner ads are available for $78 on up--email me for details, or read this link. A checkmark at the Paypal page gives you the option of making a monthly contribution, too.
Your giving will keep this community, and this vital database of record-cutting knowledge, alive.
Pictured: May C. Hyers and Hattie Nevada, along with promos for Kansas City Talking Machine Company
The current fundraiser is named for May C. Hyers and Hattie Nevada. May C. Hyers was the first female African American recording artist, circa 1898. None of her recordings, while commercially available at the time, are known to exist in any surviving copies. Hattie Nevada was a songwriter (whose songs were recorded by Hyers), in an era when few women were involved in the (very new) recording industry. (Both are profiled in this fascinating Tim Gracyk article: https://www.gracyk.com/kansas.shtml.)
All current contributions will soon be acknowledged on the front "Our Sponsors" page. Fundraisers from the Tainter and Bell fundraisers will be moved to the archive page. (If you contributed rather recently and you have not yet appeared on the Sponsor page, fear not! You are about to appear on the new page.)
Here’s an update on your fave chat forum devoted to the making of records:
Blog/Magazine: MakingRecords.org
I'm using the site revamp to relaunch an idea that many have asked for: An outwards-facing blog/magazine, aimed at those who are consumers of vinyl records, and/or potentially of the services that our forums' users offer. Updated technology has finally made this feasible. Please check out the prototype!
https://makingrecords.org
Temporarily, most content is from 2014: placeholders, from the old blog/magazine that had technical limitations. Time and technology have caught up. It is my hope that many of you will submit new content to it. I am sure there will be growing pains, but I am excited at the possibilities.
Site revamp
You may have noticed lots of error messages on the site last month. It turned out that, unannounced, our hosting service had updated its server software, and our chat forum software was barely functioning. I was able to get their techs to roll it backwards temporarily, and the site is more stable. But the writing is on the wall--if I don't do a total overhaul of the chat forum software now, it will become impossible to convert it later. This has been my volunteer full-time job this month.
This isn't simple. Over the years, I had introduced several plug-ins that gave the site extra functionality. I had worked to make its interface readable in 22 different languages and dialects. A very nice modified third-party skin gave the site a distinctive, soft look. Lots of pages (especially blogs entries and sponsor pages) were built on this old software. All of this has to be replaced with modern counterparts (when possible) or scrapped. I am manually converting a bunch of content to get it to work in the new environment. I am still in the middle of this. It must be completed in this month or so, or the conversion won't be possible. (I'm having to do much of this as a trial-and-error rehearsal on a test site).
Warnings along these lines:
1) The site is about to look different. You may find it more readable. You may miss the soft edges.
2) Some of the languages are going away, frustratingly: Magyar/Hungarian, Svenska/Swedish. In addition: עברית/Hebrew, Čeština/Czech, and Suomi/Finnish ....will have language packs that are out of date. So they may function, but they may have some problems for now. It is my hope that all of these will come back soon. It is out of my control.
3) You may have to manually change back to your language of choice. I'm trying to keep this confusing thing from happening. I may be unable avoid it.
4). There will be glitches. The site will be down at intervals.
All I can say is: It is all necessary. Please bear with me. Let me know if you notice anything wacky or wonky. And please support the site expenses and my emergency full-time volunteer labor.
Thanks for your patience. And thanks for your support.
Yours in peaceful revolution,
Steve E.
