Welcome to STRAECLOPEDIA
STRAECLOPEDIA is an effort to combine encyclopedia, review-database, and personal CD collection in to one harmonous entity.
What you'll find inside is numerous album reviews, band bio's, random information about musicians, instruments, genres, gigs and anything even remotely related to music. In fact, you might stumble upon information that doesn't seem to relate to music in any way, this is fine, because this online database deals in things I know, and thus it is somewhat eclectic.
Note:
Hello, do you know that Straeclopedia is an old abandoned project? There hasn't been much activity here since 2006, except some rare sporadic updates & fixes in the last few years. I've left it online with few reviews because of certain pages (wikipedia, f.e.) link to certain reviews here, since it doesn't cost me anything to leave it like this.
Some of the things you will find within:
- Album Reviews, only positive ones. I am not here to diss anyone's work, so if I don't like something I simply will not review it. I am also rather loose when it comes to defining exact genres of music. It is intentional, don't complain about it. I won't give a shit.
- Sound Samples : I post only OGG sound samples or sound samples that the record label/band have released online, they are in stereo format and usually full songs, but contain extra sounds and are of much lower quality than the CD. I am not trying to breach anyone's copyrights, but I've found it necessary to bend them a little, in order to give an accurate image of the music. Where possible, I have linked (or host) songs (or clips) that the record company has published online.
- Gig Reviews : I don't visit too many gigs, but whenever I do I might post a short review of it, usually accompanied by photos (which are actually the point of the review).
Other Noteworthy things
- You can view the Recent Changes of any page or category at Recent Changes link at the bottom of every page, same goes for Page History which shows the changes made to that page.
- You can browse by Mood, Style, or Genre, there are about 100 tags that can apply to any album or band.
- Each band's biography will list all their albums, and each album review has a link to the band's bio-page.
- I do my best to include with each review contains at least one, most likely two, sound samples. They are either external links - or hosted files if nothing else works.
(Redundantly) About The Site
Since no one will read this much text (a well researched fact), I am rather safe in writing whatever I want here. But I think I'll actually talk a little about the system. The webpage is based on wiki-system, namely
pmwiki. However, since I have no intention to make this public playground, I've more or less removed all public rights (other than reading the pages).
I've also struggled with the problem that all Wiki's have.
While I have somewhat selfish goals to make this website (more about that later on) I still want people to be able to navigate even somewhat intuitively. Since there is little I can do to counterweight the jungle-like mess of pages any Wiki is bound to get, I've tried to keep the pages
extensively cross-linked, so that you would have greater chance of stumbling upon something useful.
I've also added a lot of redundant information, repeating several lists and links in different pages so that they are easier to find. I think I've managed decently to reign in the growth of the weeds, so to speak. It also helps that there is only one single contributor and administrator, which keeps the website much more cohesive than a public wiki is likely to be.
My initial reason to create this website was to keep track of my 1000+ CD collection, but eventually I got sidetracked. Indeed, you might notice that this website does nothing to help me keep track of my CD's...
Anyway, now this website is a tool for me to do what I've always wanted to do. Introduce people to new music. I'm always on the prowl for a suitable victim to take a listen to band I know he/she would like. Of course, I never do it to people whose music taste I do not know accurately enough to guess if they'd like it or not.
But nevertheless, this website's purpose is to educate you about music, both rare and well known. My wish is that at least one person who browses this site will find a good band that they have never heard of.
Enjoy your visit, traveller.
