music

I maded you a muxtape

..and I did NOT eat it.

http://domesticat.muxtape.com

A mix of old and new, including songs I've loved for quite a while and songs that are current earworms for me.

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I am nobody's little snowflake

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.

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love is an open data format

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
My ears, circa 2005.  Steady listening throughout the year with a major spike in late summer as I prepared a big code release for tech staff.

(Next year -- see graph for 2006)

(Stats recorded at last.fm and generated through the nifty service at lastgraph)2005: listening

2006
My ears, circa 2006.  Large code projects in the spring, followed by trips in the early summer, a new job in the fall, and an enormous spike in the winter as the enormity of my task hit me.

(Before and after -- see graphs for 2005 and 2007)

(Stats recorded at last.fm and generated through the nifty service at lastgraph)2006: listening

2007
My ears, circa 2007.  Follow along:  big project early in the year, lots of meetings in the summer, vacations in October and December, followed by a sharp spike in workload in January 2008.

(Before and after -- see graphs for 2006 and 2008)

(Stats recorded at last.fm and generated through the nifty service at lastgraph)2007: listening

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.

Infect yourself

I have to get this out of my head and now. I have been obsessed with this album for over a week and it JUST WON'T LEAVE ME BE. Here I am, sitting at my desk, headphones on, playing this album yet again (and looking longingly at that Caps Lock key) and wondering if perhaps that next cup of tea might be the one that finally crosses the line between 'overcaffeinated' and 'outright levitation.'

So here -- one of the best parts about being able to restrict posts to specific user groups - I can make downloads available for a short period of time.

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Jeff's debut

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.

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Unusually-Named People

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.

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