RasterWeb!

Bandwagon.fm Music

If you saw my previous post about Bandcamp you might know that it’s a good place for people to put their music. Of course Bandcamp has issues, so we still need alternatives, or at least additional outlets/options.

Take a look at Bandwagon.fm now. It’s “Better Social for Musicians” and “Connect to Your Fans on the Fediverse” which might be confusing if you don’t know what the Fediverse is. Read the About page for the full version, but the short version is that it’s a way to be free of the corporate media sites like Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, etc. But how can I trust these Bandwagon.fm folks to run a reliable web site? Well, you can run your own site if you want, it’s all open source.

So you can just put your music up on Bandwagon.fm, but what about the Fediverse part and connecting with fans? Okay, my site is at bandwagon.fm/@rasterweb and my account is @rasterweb@bandwagon.fm and you can follow that account with any Fediverse account. Mastodon, Pixelfed, or any site that uses the ActivityPub protocol.

For my masotodon.social account I can follow myself here: https://mastodon.social/@rasterweb@bandwagon.fm

When I (@rasterweb@bandwagon.fm) release new music or post a news update I (@rasterweb@mastodon.social) can see it in my Mastodon feed.

But maybe you’re like “ActivityPub sucks! I just use RSS!” and that’s okay… we got you covered because like other ActivityPub sites they provide an RSS feed. Here’s mine: https://bandwagon.fm/@69847667e6ff0fb4436fb821/feed?format=rss

Pop that URL in your feed reader (I like NetNewsWire paired with FreshRSS) and you can follow along and see all the updates.

And RSS is powerful! You can transform it into an email newsletter or do other weird things.

Basically if you are a musician, a band, or put music online, I think it’s worth looking at what Bandwagon.fm is doing. It’s interesting stuff and could be the way out of corporate social media with all the evil shit their platforms give us. Imagine connecting directly with your fans and cutting out the advertisements, the algorithms, and the bullshit.

This is the IndieWeb we all need to build, together.

Tags bandwagonfm, indieweb, music, web

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Bandcamp Music

I finally got around to getting all of my recent (meaning since 2008) albums onto Bandcamp. You can find it all at peteprodoehl.bandcamp.com

If you’re a fan of the weird stuff I make, check it out! The music I create is nothing amazing, but I have fun doing it.

Bandcamp seems okay right now, though they’ve had a few issues in the past. It’s a site I use to find and purchase music. It’s probably my number one choice right now for supporting artists by buying their music, Bandcamp Fridays are still a thing (for now):

Bandcamp Fridays—on which we waive our revenue share and pass the funds directly to artists & labels—has resulted in millions of fans paying over $120 million directly to labels and musicians they love.

2026 has these dates scheduled:

March 6th, 2026
May 1st, 2026
August 7th, 2026
September 4th, 2026
October 2nd, 2026
November 6th, 2026
December 4th, 2026

While Bandcamp is pretty good, I get the feeling they may not be around forever, or may not be “pretty good” forever. So it’s not the only place I’ve put my music. I’ll explore that more in future posts.

Tags bandcamp, music

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The Return of RPM

Back in 2012 I figured I would take a year off from the RPM Challenge but it ended up being 14 years… Oops. We’ll, we’re back! If you’re keeping track I did it in 2008, 2009, 2011, and now in 2026. Oh, the RPM Challenge is to record and album in one month. February, to be exact.

Here’s my 2026 entry, titled Space Farts. The title comes from about 10 years ago when I was driving somewhere listening to WMSE and hearing music I could only describe as, well… Space Farts! So I used that for the title.

Wanna listen? You can hear the whole thing on Bandcamp, Bandwagon.fm, or under music.

I’ve been in pain for months now but sometimes the product of pain is art. I’ve also watched a lot of Star Trek lately, so song titles like “Eject the Warp Core”, “Shields Holding”, and “The Prime Directive” were obvious choices.

I recorded the entire album over the course of two days, with another day for cleaning up and converting files and getting it all uploaded.I used a Korg Monotron Duo going through a Korg Monotron Delay going through a Korg NTS-1. That’s it. Three tiny and cheap Korg synths chained together. Limitations are meant to push creativity, right?

I haven’t been not making music since 2011. I took a little break but in 2021/2022 I was doing DAWless Jams and Pocket Operator stuff. And it was fun. I mostly stopped because I got too busy with paying work and took over my music space with client projects.

I have no delusions this is amazing music. I mostly make it for fun and occasionally some other weirdo or insane person tells me they like it. Cool. I’ll probably keep going. See you next year!

Tags music, rpm2026, rpmchallenge

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Megalodon (No) Macro Pad

Back in 2023 I got this Megalodon Macro Pad for a potential client project. The project never panned out but I’ve still got the macropad so I figured I would put it to use.

My plan was to assign a key combo to each key, something like command-option-shift-Q, or key commands that would not conflict with other things on my computer. I started making a few macros using Via Desktop (which was probably my first mistake) and things were fine until I got to the fourth macro, at which point it lost all the macros and showed a “Firmware doesn’t support macros” error. Other people had similar issues.

I tried reflashing the firmware, I tried flashing firmware random people made, I tried using Windows, I tried using Chrome. I think the whole “corrupt EEPROM” theory someone posted about was on the right track…

Anyway, after doing all that multiple times and using Chromium and usevia.app it seemed like I got macros back, but they didn’t work because they did not save and just disappeared after they were created.

The Macro Pad that cannot Macro!

Luckily, I have Keyboard Maestro…

My first idea was to set the keys to send F16 through F24, but then I found out Keyboard Maestro only handles F-Keys up to 20. Argh… But wait! You can set Keyboard Maestro to recognize input from a specific device. So that worked and I used F16 through F24.

The Basic screen just has the normal boring keys… not as useful for a macropad.

The Special screen is where you’ll find the fancy keys. After I used all the F-Keys I started using International, Japanese, and “non-US” keys, as there is very little chance I will type those on my main keyboard.

I was able to save the JSON config file and it wasn’t zero bytes like in some previous attempts.

I should also mention there is one troublesome key on the pad. On the bottom row, the third key from the left side stopped working. I removed the keycap and pressed hard on it repeatedly with a small screwdriver handle and eventually it started working again. Weird.

Would I recommend a Megalodon Macro Pad? Hmmm, I don’t know. I got mine for $50 USD and I think it’s quite a bit more than that now, though there may be sales now and then. I had started building my own macropad but never quite finished it, so for now the Megalodon will find some use. It is very well built. It’s solid, metal, and looks nice. Whatever I build will probably be boring looking but get the job done with less fuss.

The Megalodon does run QMK Firmware, which I am still interested in using and learning more about. We’ll see what the future holds I guess!

Tags keyboard

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Bambu Lab A1 mini Gets Messy

Post author By Pete Prodoehl
Post date 2026-01-31
No Comments on Bambu Lab A1 mini Gets Messy

The Bambu Lab A1 mini I got in June 2024 hasn’t had and real failures until now, in January 2026, which is pretty darn good. Occasionally a print would fail, but I’d say over 98% of the time it just prints without issue.

The other day I hit print, walked away, and came back to… no print. Weird. I hit print again, or maybe I forgot to hit print the first time? I figured I forgot, and it was user error. Ah, no. I came back to the blob you see above.

In the old days this would have been disastrous, perhaps needing quite a bit of teardown, maybe requiring a heat gun or torch, and I was ready for that, but… I didn’t really need any special tools at all! (I used a needle nose pliers and some small forceps.)

I heated up the extruder and managed to get the blob off, and then allowed the machine to cool and got the hotend off. It was actually too easy. Is this printers in 2026!? There’s a mess, but hey, not too bad…

The area where the hotend clips in had some filament as well, which had to be cleaned up and removed.

It was just too easy! It’s like they added a non-stick surface to the thing. I suppose that shiny metal is exactly that, a surface that filament will not stick to.

And cleaning up the hotend was again, almost too easy! Hell, I fought in the Printer Wars back in the 2010s and it was nothing like the world we have today. I put almost no effort into getting the filament mess off of things. Damn.

Up and running, printing again, after like 15 minutes, and half of that was probably heating up the extruder and then letting it cool down.

The world may be going to shit in 2026 but at least the printers got their shit together.

Tags 3dprinters, 3dprinting, fix