I wanted to take a look at my music listening habits quarterly to see how each quarter’s stats stack up against the final numbers at the end of the year.  I started off the year listening to some of the new artists I’d bought, then just switched to random listens for the rest of the quarter.

1.  Girl Talk (294 plays) - I discovered Girl Talk at the end of 2010.  I really enjoyed the latest album.  Quickly acquired the rest of his albums.  I enjoy all of them other than the first one.  Listened to each of the albums a few times.  Then when I put my playlist on random, of course a few of them kept coming up because of how many tracks there were. 2. Doctor Octoroc (279 plays) - I got into chip tunes at the end of 2010/beginning 2011 via I Fight Dragons.  That caused me to check out Anamanaguchi, who Dan had been recommending for a while.  Then I came across Doctor Octoroc.  Got his chiptunes version of the Dr Horrible soundtrack and his chiptunes album “After These Messages”.  Enjoyed it for a while.  Quickly tired of it.  I don’t think I’ve listened to it once since the initial push. 3. The Beatles (132 plays) - I went through my Beatles rush in 2010 when I first got all the songs.  The Beatles are in third place solely on the basis of having SO MANY songs that they’re bound to come up often why I’m listening to my entire collection on random. 4. I Fight Dragons (109 plays) - I have all three of their EPs.  One was available for joining the mailing list - the other two I bought.  I really enjoy this group.  They’re a regular rock band that embellishes their sound with chiptunes.  The topics are not as nerdy as you’d expect from a chiptunes band.  They have a good sound, the singer has a good voice, and the songs are good.  I wouldn’t say they’re awesome, but they’re enjoyable enough that I always get happy when their CDs come up in my rotation of CD-Rs are work. 5. Anberlin (89 plays) - I own all their CDs so I’m surprised they didn’t come up more often.  I like all their albums to varying degrees.  I’m partial to their earlier work, although their latest CD had me falling for them again. 6. Relient K (54 plays) - I also own all of their CDs.  Although the first two CDs are awful compared to their later albums, there are still a few songs I enjoy on the first two.  I’m not a big fan of their absolute latest album, it forays a bit more into a country type of sound.  I’ll probably have to listen to previews of their next CD rather than blindly buying it. 7. “Weird Al” Yankovic (49 plays) - I have a ton of his songs, but I often had to skip them to keep from annoying Danielle.  Perhaps now that I’m mostly listening with headphones there’ll be more listens. 8. Billy Joel (43 plays) - nearly all of these plays come from a greatest hits album of his that I bought.  Around this time, I stopped listening at random in order to listen to my newly bought music. 9. Five Iron Frenzy (40 plays) - I’m a huge fan of Five Iron Frenzy, but they’ve fallen to the wayside as I’ve explored other non-ska music recently 10.  MxPx (33 plays) - I hadn’t heard any MxPx music in a long time.  They were one of my favorite bands from middle school through high school.  But I hadn’t listened to any of the three of four albums I own in a long time.  Listening to my collection on random brought them back into my radar. 11. GRITS (33 plays) - all their plays came from listening to my collection on random.  After their second album, I only like selected songs from their further albums. 12. The Hangovers (29 plays) - all from their latest album Three Sails to the Wind.  I really enjoy this album a lot. 13. Anamanaguchi (28 plays) - I really enjoy listening to this group.  It’s weird having groups producing music without vocals nowadays.  But I wonder if this is the future evolution of symphonic music. 14. Tom Lehrer (27 plays) - A great musician who rivals “Weird Al” for making me laugh. 14. ???? (Nobuo Uematsu) (27 plays) - I don’t have any of his solo work.  All these are from Final Fantasy soundtracks.  He is a great composer.  I think some of his songs rival movie soundtracks.

My latest Photojojo photo time capsule is available. All the photos were from my 365 project.

Civ 5 (70 hrs) - In March I fired up Civilization V for the first time since 16 Nov 2010.  What was the catalyst?  My wife asking what happened to all the enthusiasm for the game when it first came out.  Well, as I’ve mentioned before, right after I got the game I played it for a week straight.  Then I went on vacation to the Grand Canyon, to NYC for Halloween, had Thanksgiving and Christmas at my house, and a stronger focus on my webcomic.  Her question reminded me of how much I loved the Civilization franchise.  So I started playing and was reminded of why I loved it so much.  It took me most of the first game to get back into the groove with Civ 5’s new quirks, but I really appreciated the improvements to AI.  Civ V is now my most played game with 117 hours.  (Finally surpassing Civ 4)  Most of that time was added in March as I got sick and spent a few days home.  The achievements in Civ 5 really played a key role in keeping me interested over so many hours.  I did things I never would have done in order to get those achievements and now I have a much better understanding of how best to use those Civilizations.

Hot and Steamy for today’s Top 200 Photos.

photo #148 is:

I did a conceptual photo based on where our clothes fell to the ground one day during sex. The photos aren’t staged.

Back to Cornell for today’s Top 200 Photos.

photo #149 is:

I’ve already spoken about Slope Day in a previous post. We have one other huge tradition at Cornell - Dragon Day. I’m not sure if there will be more Dragon Day photos (I’ve only captured up to photo #121 at this time), but I have a bunch up on my Cornell set.

Out onto the Pacific for today’s Top 200 Photo.

photo #150 is:

I’d never seen a whale in the wild before, so I knew we HAD to take advantage of the humpback whales who come to Hawaii for the winter. We went out on a lunch cruise to go see some whales. The only disappointing thing (which is not mentioned in the brochures) is that you can only get within 100 yards of the whales. That’s a whole football field away! And I didn’t have my Sigma 120-400 (link to B&H) yet, so this is the closest I could get to the whale. At least we got lucky and this mother jumped out. She was teaching her kid how to slap the water and other things and at first I thought we’d just see fins and tails.

Today’s Top 200 Photo.

photo #151 is:

I was practicing my macro photography and I chose to try and photograph myself. And I decided to focus on my stubble because that seems to be a perpetual feature of mine. I was very happy with the comments I ended up getting.

Back to Baltimore for this Top 200 Photo.

photo #152 is:

Another photo from Otakon. I was especially happy to see these guys at Otakon. Ranma ½ was the first anime I ever saw. It was my entry into the whole genre. I remember discovering it at a video rental store in Tualatin, OR. They had some VHS tapes of Seasons 2 and 3. I remember being so psyched that there were cartoons that weren’t for kids. I couldn’t wait for them to get the next tape. I spent all my time in the library at school researching Ranma and learning about the story and getting into fan fiction for the first time. If I’d been born about a decade later I probably would have really gotten into the whole fan-sub scene. Bandwidth was just too small back in those days.

So I’ve been using reKonq for about 3 weeks now.  (Regardless of what the date of this blog post is in relation to the previous one - I usually write these ahead of time and then stick them into the queue)  So here we go:

The Good -Appears to have “Download them All” built-in if you enable the KGet settings in the preferences -Integrates perfectly with KDE -When you start up a new tab and then click on “recently closed tabs” the list of tabs has thumbnails of the sites.  I think this is great because it helps you quickly find the site you’re looking for.

Still at Cornell for this Photo.

photo #153 is:

I was just walking back to my apartment when I passed by this mail truck. I’d never seen the inside of a mail truck before, so I took the shot. I also remember thinking it was neat how the back of the truck framed the inside which framed the windshield which framed a view of the outside. (If only it were more scenic out there)