I’m now part of Interchill Records

Some DJs might not find switching labels as such a big deal but it took me about two weeks to go through with the decision. But as of yesterday I am part of the Canadian based label Interchill Records. Sofa Beats has been my first and only label so far, I haven't done a whole lot apart from my own compilation and helping out with an album from Krusseldorf and some other EPs. But the fact that I come from a country that has a very small scene and that I still consider my DJing career to be very short I always thought highly of them for letting me be part of the team.

Posted on February 14th at 17:00 by DovlaContinue reading

The chill gig that felt like a trance one

I’ve had my share of bizarre situations during DJ sets but the one I had last night takes the cake. Usually when I play downbeat music there’s never a swarming crowd of people, it’s just the way it is with chill out floors on trance parties and festivals. In general they are always neglected and most people just come to dance. Even most friends you talk to that say they will come and listen to you usually don’t show up. It never bothered me really nor does it offend me, I just got used to it and I always prefer to play for a smaller audience. I’ve never felt the same kind of feedback in my trance sets that I get in my chill out sets. It’s that special moment that usually happens when there are 2-3 people during your set, you begin to wonder if it’s all worth it and then one of them walks up to you, asks for the name of the track you’re playing, or just says that he/she is enjoying it. In that moment you know that there’s no bullshit behind that comment. Their opinion of your set isn’t based on anything else but their taste in music whereas on trance it can be anything from alcohol, drugs or worse, the opinion that the current DJ playing is a god no matter what he does. I’m not saying the same thing doesn’t happen on chill out but it surely happens on a less frequent basis.

Posted on February 8th at 16:33 by DovlaContinue reading

Chrono Trigger DS, and some other stuff

When I was a kid my first console was the SNES and one of the things that was very limiting at the time was the fact that there was no store in my city where you could get games for it. Of course piracy didn't exist back then and the only option was having my dad pick up a game every month when he went to the Netherlands. Now being a kid who just got into the whole gaming thing I relied on his taste, which was surprisingly always spot on. Mind you games were very expensive at the time especially for our standards. It was about one game per month for me and every time when he came back it was filled with anticipation and expectation. My only touch with the entire gaming world was the official Nintendo magazine and naturally they were a pretty biased news source. We didn't have internet access at the time so I was pretty much kept in the blank about most things. Despite all of this I have maybe 2-3 SNES games that actually suck and many times he would go out and buy some game that he didn't know anything about. One particular game I like to remember was Illusion of Time (Illusion of Gaia in the US). This was one of those risky titles that he picked up and didn't really know what it was about, other than the fact that it was a hit. And it sure as hell was. Up until that point apart from the Zelda games I never played any other action RPGs and I like to come back to this particular game because of the compelling story it told.

Posted on January 14th at 12:57 by DovlaContinue reading

On ems and why I gave up on them

One of the things I found interesting when I started writing code for this website was the possibility of using em sizing instead of regular pixel sizing. I won't bother explaining what it is that ems are, instead just read this fine article on clagnut. When I realized that I could make my website (or any other website for that matter) scalable I was very excited. The problem nowadays is that when you increase text size in the browser the whole thing falls apart. So I used this cool method described on clagnut and started doing all widths and all heights in ems. It worked for a long time actually and I did manage to get most of my site to look the same in all browsers. I also had this cool idea to have a background image in the header that would be sized in pixels but have the header itself sized in ems so that when you'd increase the text size you would reveal more of the background image. I thought about hiding some text messages in these images and overall it worked. But three things occurred to me in the process.

Posted on January 7th at 08:32 by DovlaContinue reading

Welcome to my new website!

Hello everyone and welcome to my new website, this one I promise you is gonna stick around for a very very looong time. It's been almost 3 years since I first decided to start making a new website for myself, as with all my previous personal websites I chose to face another challenge and learn something along the way. I also decided to not limit myself creatively. The biggest problem was to make something that I would like after a longer period and something that I would actually get around to updating. Since I first started tinkering around with html and started making websites for people my biggest issue was developing a CMS that would simply work.

I'm not a programmer and never will be so finding something that would give me the flexibility I need and the simplicity of developing was the goal. And I'm very happy to say that I've found the ideal CMS that does just that, Expression Engine. I'm also excited and happy that this never ending nightmare of coding is over for me. I now have a website that I'm happy with, that I've been slowly developing for the last 2 years in between other projects. As I said this one is here to stay, I have no intention of making another project for myself anytime soon that's why I took extra care to make sure I really like this design, that I can always come back to it and that I can actually write a proper blog that people will find interesting to read as well as properly update all my sections.

Posted on January 4th at 01:35 by DovlaContinue reading

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