about victor

My name is Victor Stone, you can reach me using this form. (It really works, I really get mail there and I'm pretty good about getting back to people, although I gather they aren't always happy with what I say.)

About this site

I started this site in 2001 because I assumed no one would pay me or otherwise sponsor me posting whatever I wanted to the web. So far I haven't gotten a lot of evidence this assumption was wrong.

I ended this site exactly 10 years later.

About Me: Private

I don't have a permanent residence right now although I've been hovering around Brooklyn, NY, USA for a while now. This transience is by choice. I don't know where the journey ends and don't want to know. (I mean, I know where it ultimately ends, I was just talking about the parts I, persumably, have control over.)

About Me: Public

Since late 2004, I authored and ran the ccMixter site and being its admin. The project was funded by Creative Commons which I happily associate myself with, even if the feelings are (understandably) not always reciprocated. CC released the entire source to the site under a project called ccHost (download the code here. This site is using it.) I used to post music there.

For several years, I released DIY produced albums of remixes and original music with an online label called Magnatune. My album pages are here and here.

Before all that I spent 15 years as a software programmer with other fancy titles at MagnaType, Norton, Borland, Microsoft and still do programming. While at Microsoft, I contributed a fictional series to MSDN called "The Corporate Runs" that was very popular amongst the Dilbert-y nerds that relied on Microsoft technology to make a living. A copy of that series is here.

For the real nitty gritty on my involvement at ccMixter and Magnatune you can read a long and involved Q&A I gave over at the eMXR blog or if your eyes are hurting listen to a podcast interview I gave in 2007 with BSWC.

In 2004, I was interviewed for the film "Digital Tipping Point" and the raw footage of that interview is here.

Previous to that I played in many bands of many varieties, playing casuals, clubs and even putting out a record of alternative folk in the 1980's with "The Beef Sisters." (Although I had little to do with beef or the sisters at the time.)

Working our way back I worked 12 years before, through and after school as a gopher and PR flak for ABC Records, Columbia Records, Epic Records, Rhino Records and Sierra Records and ended up consulting for Fishbone. (Although my job at these places had nothing to do with records. Plus I should probably mention that I was fired from most of those jobs. In Rhino's case after only a week of working there. And more than once from Columbia. Also Epic. Sierra wish they could have fired me twice or more, alas they only got around to firing me once. Fishbone didn't fire me so much as stop paying me.)

Higher education for me was a four year program at a private music conservatory where I learned how much I had to learn about arranging, composing and conducting for small combos, big bands and up to 80 piece orchestras. The rest of my graduating class went on to do jingles for car companies and TV shows, getting staff composing positions at major movie studios and landing seats in symphony orchestras. A year after graduation my job was cleaning up the hypodermic needles off the bathroom floor at the Lhasa Club on Santa Monica Blvd. after closing