Today’s show was rather uneventful… the temperatures were not high enough to stress the encoder, we only had some very short off-camera visits by The New Cat™, and then my intended raid target (@mayor_dj) finished his stream right before I did!

The next Top of the Week show will be on next Wednesday, September 14, at 19:00 CEST/UTC+2. In three weeks, on September 28, I will play a special show from a hotel at the Baltic Sea because it’s my wife’s birthday and we’re making a short holiday. I still need to work out a reduced setup because I have no intention of taking a 48-channel digital mixer with me, a multichannel USB audio card should really be enough…

The extremely high temperatures of the last week seem to be over (for now), neither the video encode nor myself actually needed extra cooling today!

And we had one of the cats visiting today; Die Katze took her rightful place on my chair and napped like a champion while I was playing tunes for you. The other, new cat also made a short appearance, jumping on the couch and then exiting the room to the other side. Still a bit shy but he’ll come around, I’m sure. He is getting more and more cuddly, too!

The next Top of the Week show will be on next Wednesday, September 7, at 19:00 CEST/UTC+2.

Today the weather was slightly more appropriate for streaming so this week the video encoder had to work again after all. And it did so quite admirably and without any faults. I’m proud of you, video encoder!

Otherwise today was a fresh show, the oldest track has been with us for a mere seven weeks, and the second-oldest only four weeks. I’d say that is quite an improvement!

The next Top of the Week show will be on next Wednesday, August 31, at 19:00 CEST/UTC+2.

It was so incredibly warm today that I again had to deactivate all video sources that would put any strain on the video encoder, i.e. no background video, no live cams, just a black screen and some text.

The next Top of the Week show will be on next Wednesday, August 24, at 19:00 CEST/UTC+2.

After last week’s unexpected break I was very much looking forward to this week’s show because The Algorithm™ began to be applied to other tracks as well! The current remix of Above & Beyond’s “Can’t Sleep” has been with us for 10 weeks now which is more than 60 days so we can expect to see it heading out of the charts, every week a bit more. Exciting! And fresh!

The next Top of the Week show will be on next Wednesday, August 17, at 19:00 CEST/UTC+2.

Changes have been made!

Well, one change only, really, but an important one: the scoring algorithm of the tool I use to create the playlist for my shows. For every day, every tracks get a certain amount of points depending on its placement, and for the final charts all those points are added up and the top 100 tracks are chosen. At least that’s what The Algorithm™ has done before this week, and it didn’t really change much but in a very significant way… because now time (or rather, time in chart) is also being considered! So if a track has been in the charts for quite a long time (and I think we all know which one I’m talking about) its daily score is now reduced by quite the amount and I must say I am happy with the results. All the other tracks around that one track are completely unchanged, only that one track has disappeared. Perfect!

The next Top of the Week show will be on next Wednesday, August 3, at 19:00 CEST/UTC+2.

Holy moly, I did not forget to record this week’s show!

I will have to do something about old tracks popping back up, though… not only did Tinlicker climb again (because it’s still in the Top 15 – almost 100 weeks after the release! Madness!) but no, Ben Nicky also made an appearance again and that will not stand. So I will develop something that will weaken the impact of tracks that have in the charts more often than other tracks and I hope I’ll have it ready by next week.

The next Top of the Week show will be on next Wednesday, July 27, at 19:00 CEST/UTC+2.

The most unusual about this week’s show was its length: 3h 55m. That’s 10 minutes more than normal! One reason for that is that I don’t remember a single track that was shorter than 5 minutes which is awesome. I like my trance long!

A great thing that happened was the raid by @funwithJapi, a Finnish streamer. They brought more than 20 people with them but unfortunately most of them didn’t stay very long. Didn’t stop me, though!

Also unstoppable: motherfricking Tinlicker! After last week’s drop to #35 they were back up at #18 this week, much to @untermnsch’s chagrin. As soon as they will reach their 100th week they will probably break my spreadsheet…

I will play another Top of the Month show on next Friday, in two days, June 10th, at CEST/UTC+2. Don’t miss that!

And if you did miss it, the next Top of the Week show will be on next Wednesday, June 15th, at 19:00 CEST/UTC+2.

Not much to tell this week, there were about a dozen new entries, we had a new remix of a Ben Nicky track, Tinlicker dropped a bit to #35, and we got a new #1 with Ben Gold’s “Rest of Our Lives.”

The next Top of the Week show will be on next Wednesday, June 8th, at 19:00 CEST/UTC+2.

I rewrote my chart generator tool and the code is now leaner, better to understand, and faster than before.

It also generates charts that are identical to last week’s charts… which left me puzzling for a bit until I realized what’s wrong and that the previous version of the code probably didn’t have an actual error. The three missing tracks were caused by a change in the algorithm, yes; however, the tool only ever uses a single algorithm for all charts it calculates, including the ones it uses to determine whether a track is a new entry. And because I have changed that algorithm before last week’s show, it didn’t tell me about the missing tracks because according to the new algorithm those tracks were already part of the week before!

Okay, mystery solved, code better than before, I guess that is a great success!

I initially started messing around with the code because I wanted to know how Tinlicker is still in the charts and basically the answer is “because the track never really drops below place 31.” Well, if you’re consistently in the top third of a daily Top 100 you have kind of earned the right to be in a weekly Top 50.

Because there is a bank holiday tomorrow I have taken Friday off, and I will be playing a Top of the Month show! It will start at the usual time of 11:00 UTC+2/CEST to accompany you during lunch and maybe the last hours of your work week (in case you didn’t take the Friday off or don’t actually have this holiday).

The next Top of the Week show will then be on next Wednesday, June 1st, at 19:00 CEST/UTC+2.