I've updated my muxtape with some songs that have been stuck in my head over the past month or so.

What? That's not enough for an update for you people? Hmph. Okay then. Then how about photos from the Bleu, Sandra McCracken, and Derek Webb show I attended with Geof:

This album is madness and I feel like inflicting it on as many people as possible.

New album: Girl Talk's "Feed the Animals." Adam described it as what happens when all of the music you've liked in the past 30 years gets in a room and has a giant mashup orgy. It's an accurate description.

Last.fm lets you see your 'neighbours,' people whose music tastes are similar to yours. I've been fascinated by this list for a long time, and have taken to reading through the favored artists of each 'neighbour' to see if they already knew of artists or groups that I should be listening to.

It's actually worked. I first encountered Snow Patrol through a neighbour, and Adam's recommendation clinched it. (Though that's perhaps a misleading statement, because Adam and I trade music recommendations so often that he's been a regular on my neighbours list for some time now.)

It hit me, though: for the most part, neighbours were always slice-of-life snapshots of similarity. Single notes, if you will. If you picture a person's music taste as a chord of notes, then can we all agree to beat this metaphor into the ground and say that most of the people on the neighbours list had musical tastes that matched only a note or two in my chord.

In the spirit of Valentine's Day, and by that I mean "this doesn't have anything to do with Valentine's Day," I present something I love:

Open data formats.

Most of you know I've been logging my listening habits over at last.fm for several years now. Some time ago, a nifty gentleman wrote a set of scripts (available at lastgraph.aeracode.org) to generate a visual representation of a single user's listening habits over time.

2005

2006

2007

I think I have earlier data saved on files at home, but I'll have to check. Clicking on the files will take you to the larger versions archived on flickr.

Jeff had his first performance with the Huntsville Master Chorale today. I used the performance as an opportunity to test out my new camera. I made some mistakes, but I also got some very good photos.

I borked the white balance prior to the show, so everything after the rehearsal had to be photochopped because the color was blown out. The blue channel was very serviceable, so I extracted just that, deepened the blacks, and got some serviceable black-and-white photos out of them.

I'm slowly learning how to use this camera.

I have to brag a little. I was quiet, so Jeff could make the announcement over on his site first, but Jeff is now a part of the Huntsville Master Chorale.