Hello again, it’s been a while since the last blog post and even longer since the last regular blog post updates. I apologise now for this but I’ve been busier coding which isn’t a valid excuse and I know I need to get back into the habit of doing the weekly(ish) blog updates.
So if you’ve not been following me elsewhere & / or via the changelogs then you may not think much has been going on but you are wrong as there’s been 12 beta builds provided since the start of 2017 (not counting some of the interim builds before the main builds were released to all of the beta testers). I won’t recap all of those changelogs here but suffice to say a lot of work has been going on (not as much as I’d like at times) but things are progressing (unlike any official progress from what was recently indicated).
The main reason for doing this blog post today (15th September) is it marks 2 years since my “collaboration” with a certain organisation came to an end and I was feeling a bit reflective on the matter. In that time, there’s been a lot of ups and downs from the time between it happening and then being encouraged to start on what has now come to be WACUP through to issues myself and my partner have experienced (having seen both the highs and lows of the UK’s NHS - living on a county border is not fun for certain matters) and trying to skip over a certain organisation being troublesome.
Overall, I’ve been left feeling positive about the feedback, support and encouragement about doing WACUP and trying to do what can be done to keep Winamp alive and usable. I do know and acknowledge that there’s a lot who will never want to use WACUP and will only ever accept an “official” Winamp update which is a bit sad (as it looks like it won’t come or if it does it’ll be quite the let down if the assumption is people have been working on it full time) but that’s their choice as is also mine to work on WACUP.
This brings me onto something that I really should have done last year and that’s the WACUP support page which lists both financial and non-financial ways in which to help support work on WACUP.
The big thing is that I’ve (finally) made a Patreon. This is in addition to the existing Paypal donation option that was already provided via the WACUP ‘About | Updates’ preferences page (or even from my old plug-in website).
This now means that all of the links on the above preferences screenshot actually work :) The support page also details other ways that you can help out if you don’t want to or cannot financially help out with WACUP. As any help you can provide, be it financially or from feedback, suggestions and (if possible) beta testing will and does help to make WACUP better by gradually implementing user requests.
I think that’s it for this update especially as I’ve not done any proper coding today on WACUP whilst trying to get.the Patreon sorted out.
For the beta testers, there will be a newer build out hopefully by the end of next week (some required detours mean I’m holding off sending out a beta build until some key issues have been resolved in the new plug-ins).
And until the next blog update, happy winamping, thank you for the support so far and a thank you for the support that is still to come as all of it is very much appreciated!
-dro