This year started off pretty light when it came to programming because I’ve been addicted to the video game Against the Storm since last winter. But I eventually started working again on various projects - some old and some new. I didn’t do any programming in January, so we’ll start in February.

February and March

Over these two months I worked on my replacement for web access to my Taskwarrior TODO list because Inthe.am had shut down. In February I got the podman containers set up - one to run the taskd server and one to run the website I’d coded up in Flask. In March I had to write some rudimentary Javascript to get the website to highlight the selected tab (Overdue, Today, This Month, etc). The rest of the interactivity on the site works using HTMX, letting me focus on Python instead of Javascript, but I just wasn’t able to get that part of the site to work without a tiny bit of Javascript. I also added some fixes because the date/time widget assumes UTC. Of course, now that I have it all working correctly and get lots of use for it (especially when I’m at work and I want to quickly get something out of my brain’s short-term buffer), Taskwarrior went to 3.0 which completely changes the way the program works, the API, and the way syncing works. I think in the end it’ll be for the best, but it’s annoying that I need to figure this out. That may involve finally learning how to use PyO3 to interact with Rust or re-writing part of my backend in Rust. We’ll have to see where that goes.

I started off the year mostly working on Python projects. For January and February I finally started making some great progress with understanding modern web frameworks and use of CSS frameworks rather than rolling my own. This not only helped with the Prophecy Practicum project, but would form the backbone to a lot of coding this year. I also wrote a utility to tally up my videos for my end of year video game roundup, saving me literal hours of time. As you can read from following the link above, I also worked on my long-running Extra Life Donation Tracker code.

Another year, another look at my music trends for the year. It was another year of music acquisition (supporting the artists, ftw! - I knew Spotify wasn’t paying artists well, but Corey Doctorow’s book, Chokepoint Capitalism really brought home how much they’re screwing over artists), although I think things may slow down in 2023. Here are the albums I purchased in 2023:

• The Protomen - Presents: A Night of Queen
• Encantó soundtrack
• Moderator - The World Within
• Kognitif - Soul Food
• MxPx - Horns, Plans within Plans, Let’s Rock, Left Coast Punk EP, The Rennaisance EP
• Packy Lundholm - Track Sabbath Vol 1
• Lana Del Rey - Blue Banisters
• Catbite - Nice One
• Macroblank - entire discography - 14 albums
• Vicente Garcia - Lomas de Cayenas
• Girl Ultra - Nuevos Aires
• The Shape of Ska Punk to Come
• Me Like Bees - Songs from The Realm
• Kill Lincoln - Can’t Complain
• Jokabi - Chilltendo Deluxe
• Turning Red Soundtrack
• We Are the Union - Ordinary Life
• Chillhop Music - Essentials Spring 2022, Essentials Summer 2022, Essentials Fall 2022
• Anberlin - Silverline

New Music I got as a gift:

This year I was able to attend the Paul and Storm / JoCo concert that COVID stole from me last year. While there I bought the entire Paul and Storm discography, but I think because I listened to it so much on Spotify in the past, I didn’t listen to it as much as I thought I would.

This was not one of those years where I came out ahead by not paying for Spotify. I bought a lot of albums, including starting on my quest to get the entire MxPx back catalog from the time I stopped listening in high school until now. (This is reflected in this year’s numbers)

Thanks to COVID I missed out on the concert where I was going to see Paul and Storm and Jonathan Coulton. Compared to last year, I also barely bought any music.

This year I switched from using Ampache to listen to my music at work, to using Funkwhale. The more responsive interface has led to me playing a lot more albums as well as doing “artist radio” mode which plays all of an artists’ songs at random. This may have concentrated the scrobbles rather than having them be as random as in the past. That said, I did make good use of Funkwhale’s “Less Listened” radio to keep things fresh. At home I’ve been using Cantata’s “similar artists” dynamic playlists a lot which may also have contributed to a concentration of artists this year.

In 2019 I went to 5 concerts, starting with Neon Trees and Fitz & The Tantrums in May. Then I saw a bunch of my favorite smaller bands like The MiSbehavin’ Maidens, The Doubleclicks, Lionize, and The PDX Broadsides. Anberlin came out of retirement and so it was great to go see them in concert again for the first time in years.

I also got a LOT of albums in 2019. Some were Kickstarted and others were freely available. Others still were purchased for family members. Here is a mostly complete list of all the albums I added to my collection in 2019:

This year my music listening is under-counted because of a few factors. 1) Spotify scrobbling stopped working at work, 2) I listened to a lot of bandcamp at work (not scrobbled), and 3) for K-Pop I mostly just watch it on Youtube (not scrobbled). That said, I have been listening to music slightly more often. I’ve spent the last couple months listening to music that I’ve never listened to on my computer (as far as Amarok knows), so while that’s contributed to scrobbles, it’s going to mean that the scrobbles are going to be long-tail, ie they won’t make dents in the counts of top artists, songs, etc.

For now, my music listening continues to be in decline relative to earlier in my life. Because the babies are often napping, I don’t have music playing throughout the day. And if I’m playing video games I’m usually not listening to music so I can stream. That said, when I do listen to Spotify at work, it usually Scrobbles and that has increased the number a bit higher than it would have otherwise been.

Lots of artists made their spot because I attended a concert or discovered them this year and got very enthusiastic about listening to this new artist. There are also lots of Spotify scrobbles, but not as many as there would be if work’s firewall didn’t keep scrobbles from being counted.

Artists

1. Anberlin (427 listens)
2. Fall Out boy (239 listens)
3. Jim Guthrie (221 listens)
4. I Fight Dragons (214 listens)
5. Paul and Storm (190 listens) - A nerdy folksy group that I really like. Their irreverence is my kind of fun.
6. The Beatles (136 listens)
7. Anamanaguchi (130 listens)
8. Lionize (130 listens)
9. Five Iron Frenzy (128 listens)
10. Louis Jordan (113 listens)
11. The Protomen (104 listens)
12. Beebs and Her Money Makers (104 listens)
13. Willy Chirino (93 listens)
14. Katy Perry (93 listens)
15. Ignacio Cervantes (92 listens)

Songs

Interestingly, only two new songs made the list this year - Talking Body and Know Yourself. Because I don’t listen to the radio, I discovered these via Spotify. The rest are all older songs that I happened to listen to a lot. And Chandelier came from Danielle getting the album and asking me to play it in the car.

This was not a big quarter for listening to music for me. That’s mostly because Sam and Stella were born and so I didn’t have much ability to listen to music as I needed to be able to hear if they were crying or if someone needed help with them. According to last.fm I went from 1,104 scrobbles in Oct to 288 in November.

1. Beebs and Her Money Makers (94 listens) - one of the songs came up randomly in Amarok which led me to listen through the albums a few times.
2. The Beatles (55 listens)
3. Kenny Clarke (44 listens) - A Fresh Air review of a new collection got me interested in him so I added it to my Spotify tracks. Really fun music.
4. Anberlin (34 listens)
5. DJ Cutman (33 listens) - I don’t know why, but I ended up with a lot of DJ Cutman music on my new phone and since I don’t like to use bandwidth while I’m driving, I’ve listened to it a lot in the car.
6. Ignacio Cervantes (32 listens)
7. Fall Out Boy (29 listens)
8. Danny Elfman (28 listens)
9. Katy Perry (26 listens) - all from Scarlett requests
10. Relent K (25 listens)
11. Five Iron Frenzy (24 listens)
12. Jonathan Geer (19 listens)
13. Vampire Weekend (18 listens) - heard a song so I wanted to re-explore the band. Some of the songs still hit me hard and others have faded.
14. Sergei Prokofiev (17 listens)
15. Anamanaguchi 16 listens)

Stats: Total Songs (in my collection): 16985 (Up from 16088 ) – Mostly from buying CDs with 100 tracks of various classical artists.

After getting to MGMT alphabetically, I tired of going through the list alphabetically. While I have rediscovered some music, I wanted to go back to my auto-playlists which would give me my favorites. I could always get back to going through things alphabetically in the future. One way to accomplish what I wanted was to see which songs don’t have a score - another would be to create a low score playlist I could run every once in a while to see if anything that had scored lowly was now something I wanted to hear.

1. Anberlin (171) - Almost the same number of listens as my top artist last quarter (179 for I Fight Dragons). As usual, I continue to enjoy their music and have grown to appreciate some of the ones I didn’t like before. And some of the older stuff seems trite in comparison. 2. Jim Guthrie (168) - As I’ve mentioned before, his folk song compositions are mostly really enjoyable and I like his work on video games and soundtracks. 3. Paul & Storm (138) - I discovered these guys via John Scalzi. I was hesitant to back the Kickstarter for Ball Pit, but I’ve been enjoying the heck out of it on Spotify. 4. Fall Out Boy (101) - A lot of this is from a few recent road trips in which I didn’t want to use data and happened to have Fall Out Boy already on my phone. Doesn’t mean I don’t like the music. 5. Jonathan Coulton (61) - I’ve said so much about how much I enjoy this over the years. Recently Scarlett’s been asking me to play The Princess Who Saved Herself because I got her the book from Greg Pak’s kickstarter. 6. Louis Jorda n (58) - I like to kick it to Louis Jordan on the weekends when I want something classic. 7. Anamanaguchi (56) - Some of this was from the high of seeing them live. Some of it was just from really enjoying the music no matter what, especially Endless Fantasy. 8. Jack White (54) - Another artist I’ve been listening to a lot of because of Spotify. His album Lazaretto does not do well on 30 second preview on Amazon. But because of Spotify, I want to buy the album. 9. Kanye West (42) - Most of this came from listening to my music alphabetically. 10. Lostprophets (41) - I may hate what the singer was accused of doing, but these songs still mostly rock. 10. Lana Del Rey (41) - Something I can throw on that both my wife and I like 12. Willy Chirino (34) - Most of the listens came from a greatest hits album on Spotify. 13. Buddy Rich (33) - Another album I wasn’t sure I wanted until I listened to it on Spotify. It reminds me a lot of the music in Cowboy Bebop 13. Five Iron Frenzy (33) - Perennial Favorite 15. Thelonious Monk (31) - something else I like to throw on Sunday mornings.

1. I Fight Dragons (179 plays) - Over this quarter I have continued to really enjoy the B Side to The Near Future and listened to them a lot after work. Scarlett likes quite a few of those songs as well.

2. Anberlin (74 plays) - For the concert last year I put all their albums on my phone. So when I listen to my music already on the phone, Anberlin comes up a lot.

Once again Scarlett had a hand in determining the year’s winners. However, sometime around June she stopped requesting Disney music all the time, allowing others a chance at the spotlight. Still, while other artists were able to take the top artist spots, I didn’t listen to any one song often enough to undermine the Disney songs taking the top spots there.

Artists

1. Alan Menken (450 listens) - THE Disney songwriter 2. Mandy Moore (332 listens) - 100% all of these are from the Tangled soundtrack 2. Five Iron Frenzy (332 listens) - I just enjoyed the heck out of FIF music this year. 4. The Beatles (329 listens) - As usual, this is a mix of me picking something different when the family’s together and just enjoying listening to it myself. 5. Anberlin (247 listens) - I had Google Music load all the albums to my phone in preparation for the concert. This means when I listen to music in the car, Anberlin is very likely to come up. 6 .I Fight Dragons (207 listens) - As I mentioned in the Q4 post, most of this is due to the new album coming out this year. 7. Donna Murphy (139 listens) - A great performance on the Tangled soundtrack. 8. Chance the Rapper (116 listens) - Many of these are from early in the year. I still really enjoy Acid Rap, but am also ready for something new. 9. “Weird Al” Yankovic (115 listens) - A new album produced most of these scrobbles. It’d be slightly higher if the Android app didn’t have a problem with the quotation marks in the artist name. 10. Childish Gambino (113 listens) - I went through as part of listening to my music in alphabetical order. It reinforced that I probably am done with him for now. Lyrically my wife can’t stand it and I shouldn’t listen to it in front of the toddler. 11. Celia Cruz (100 listens) - The Queen of Salsa. 12. Brad Kane (97 listens) - From the Aladdin soundtrack. 13. The Beach Boys (96 listens) - I continue to love Pet Sounds. 14. Billie Holiday (93 listens) - She’s so great it’s too bad she isn’t really played on many radio stations anymore. 15. Jonathan Coulton (92 listens) - Wow, didn’t realize I listened to so much JoCo.

1. Five Iron Frenzy (147 listens) - Many of these came from me continuing to go through my collection in alphabetical order. 2. I Fight Dragons (102 listens) - IFD’s Kickstarter album finally came out. I really like it a lot. I’ve been listening to the B side more than the song cycle, but that’s mostly because those are more easily listened to here and there while the song cycle is best heard all at once. 3. Anberlin (98 listens) - Tried to listen to a bunch of Anberlin to get ready for their farewell concert. 4. Fantastic Plastic Machine (71 listens) - Also from the alphabetical listen. 5. Fall Out Boy (63 listens) - Partly from the alphabetical listen and partly from Scrobbles from Spotify of their new singles. 6. Final Fantasy (Soundtracks) (50 listens) - from the alphabetical listens. 7. Edith Piaf (44 listens) - from the alphabetical listens. I’d completely forgotten we had a bunch of her music. We used to listen to it more often. 7. Doctor Octoroc (44 listens) - from the alphabetical listens. I really don’t like the albums anymore. 9. Willy Chirino (43 listens) - Mostly from listening to his great Christmas album. The only Spanish-language Christmas album I have. 10. Relient K (41 listens) - I felt nostalgic for some Relient K. Still love the earlier stuff. 11. DC Talk (40 listens) - While I still like some of the songs, others have not aged well. 12. Dj CUTMAN (39 listens) - I just love these remixes. 13. Celia Cruz (38 listens) - Put on some Celia because Scarlett really likes to dance to salsa. 14. Elvis Presley (35 listens) - Going through my collection of #1s. 15. Taylor Swift (32 listens) - Danielle got the new album and, unsurprisingly for Ms Swift, it’s quite catchy.

This quarter was a mix of new music, continuing to listen to my music in alphabetical order (by artist), and whatever I happened to listen to on my phone. And that resulted in a little something like this (a lot more ties than usual): 1. The Beatles (243 listens) - For the first time in a long time the Fab Four are back on top. I continue to love their later stuff although their older stuff is played out having spent my childhood listening to oldies.

I started 2014 with a bunch of music I’d acquired in 2013, but which I still hadn’t listened to. So I created a playlist with a high weight on unplayed music from Q4 2013 to Q1 2014. I changed my Amarok settings so that instead of populating the next 11 items, it would populate the next 3. That way if I was getting bored with the new music (a lot of which is music I got for free so sometimes it’s awesome (to my tastes) and sometimes it’s just OK) I could switch to another dynamic playlist for a while and I’d just be three songs away from hearing some music I know I like. I also bought an album with 100 of the best Beethoven compositions. However, since I’m scrobbling the orchestra that played it (not the composer), I’m not sure if any of them will end up dominating the list. (They didn’t)

This year I bought LOTS of albums. I don’t know if it’s the most albums I’ve purchased in one year since writing these blog posts or even since keeping track of Scrobbles. I do know that while I listened to my music randomly, in general, I did also listen to entire albums whenever I purchased one. Sometimes I’d listen to the album a few times and other times I’d take the album purchase as an opportunity to review the artist’s previous work. I know that was the case with Five Iron Frenzy (although that was also concert prep as I mentioned a few days ago), Relient K, I Fight Dragons, and Fall Out Boy. It was a very fun year for me, musically. Kacey Musgraves, for example, was a reminder that country music doesn’t have to suck. Disclosure made me realize that I could still like loop-heavy electronic music. I hope that I can continue to explore new sounds in 2014.

This quarter I mostly listened to my music on pure random with a few variations which’ll be accounted for below. This finally allowed The Beatles to place in 2013. In the last few weeks I just listened to music that I added in this quarter to make sure I had a chance to get to know some of the newer songs.

[caption id=“attachment_7569” align=“aligncenter” width=“500”] FIF Concert (Nov 2013)[/caption]

This quarter was a mix of listening to the music I had at work and listening on pure random. Once again Amarok lost the first played and last played stats. Of all the stats to lose, these are the least detrimental, but it makes the “don’t play songs I’ve heard in the last x days” playlists not work. So I just went on pure random and rediscovered some music I’d forgotten about. Once again no Beatles on the top 15. We’ll see if they can rectify that next quarter. (Note: I have added Amazon affiliate links this time around. If you use them to buy the music, it helps support this site)

For the second quarter in a row The Beatles have NOT made the list! But that’s easily explained: I have been listening to a lot of new music and a lot of playlists that don’t include The Beatles. But as you’ll see, they kinda snuck in sideways. This quarter I spent a lot of time listening to Jonathan Coulton and I Fight Dragons because of their Kickstarters, which I backed. I Fight Dragons released two albums as Kickstarter bonuses - a live recording of their most recent concert and a remix album of sorts in which the band members sung different arrangements of the songs. There was also the new Fall Out Boy album, Save Rock and Roll. I really enjoyed the album but it was overtaken in my mind by the previously mentioned IFD and JoCo music and I quickly forgot they had a new album out. Again, that’s a shame since I did enjoy it and while I was in Florida last week I quickly tired of “My Songs Know What You Did in the Dark”. Incidentally, I was reminded of why I stopped listening to live radio - it’s far too repetitive. I think the true problem is that it’s too formulaic in its repetition. I didn’t mind hearing “The Princess Who Saved Herself” every day for a week because the songs surrounding it were always different. On a separate note, I got some music for Father’s Day and I’ll mention that below.

For this quarter I’ve gone back and forth between picking albums to listen to and having dynamic playlists determine what I listen to.  For most of March I was listening to a bunch of free South by Southwest samplers with some pretty GREAT music.  Not a lot of repeat among the artists there so none of them appear on this list.  Some of those songs could potentially end up in the most listened song list at the end of the year.

In 2012 I accelerated my trend of listening to new music.  More than ever, I experienced new music via various outlets that provided free music like Jamendo, Rolling Stone, and others.  I discovered some great music that I really, really enjoyed.  Since it mostly consisted of singles, a lot of the new artists I discovered aren’t really represented in the lists here, but it does contribute to lower numbers for the usual artists.

Throughout the month of October I alternated between listening to newly acquired music (of which I had quite a bit) and a dynamic playlist that was weighted so that most of the music had auto-ratings above 90, less music above 75, and even less above 50. Any song that I listened to only once would fit in the third category. After that, if I skipped it just once it would fall out of the group. So it gave me a nice mix of music including forgotten favorites. Now that I’ve listened to a good chunk of my library since the last time the Amarok database was corrupted I may modify the playlist to include the caveat that it couldn’t have been played in the last x days. I’m not sure if I want to make the date large enough that I only hear songs once per quarter or my standard two week waiting period. Given how little time I have to listen to music nowadays I might go for the 90 days. I also spent some chunks of time listening to my music on random on Google Music. That’s completely random so I end up hearing some songs I didn’t even remember ever acquiring. A lot of my new music came from Jamendo when I got an email with the month’s most popular songs and I decided to do a search for ska. Although I really enjoy ska, I got into it rather late so I don’t have very much ska music. (Mostly just Five Iron Frenzy, Save Ferris, No Doubt, and the Orange County Supertones - who are an OK ska band - I mostly like their least ska songs)

For the first time since I started keeping track The Beatles did NOT make the list!  That’s mostly because I have been acquiring TONS of new music (over one thousand tracks) in this quarter and haven’t really been listening on random as much.  Although my #1 artist doesn’t have as many listens as some other quarters, I think this is the first (or second, at most) time where my #15 artist has more than 20 listens.  There are some great new artists making their debuts on my list and hopefully you can discover some new music to listen to!

I started off this quarter using a smart playlist that only played songs I hadn’t heard in the last quarter in an attempt to listen to even more great music, but Amarok lost my library which clears out the last played field and so I ended up with lots of repeats again.  Oh well!  It’s all great music!

1. Five Iron Frenzy (65 plays) - I continued to listen to some great music from my high school years

This quarter my listens were a bit lower than they would otherwise have been because a lot of time I would have spent in front of the computer was spent with my new daughter. But, as she grew and now spends time in her “baby gym”, I sometimes put on music for her both so that she can hear complex music and for my sanity. There are only so many times I can listen to “itsy bitsy spider”.

So here’s my top listened artists for 2011.  Some of these entries are a surprise and others are expected.  I can’t wait to see how many of these artists are on this list next year.  Well, let’s take a look.

1. The Beatles (492) - No surprises here; the ancestors of nearly all pop and rock in America has been on top every quarter.  So of course they’d top this list.

For the last fourth of the year I continued to listen to my music on random via Amarok’s dynamic playlist.  I set it to only play songs that I liked, but other than that left it up to chance.  For the most part, the only exceptions were when I had exams to take and wanted some non-vocal music or to listen to new songs I’d downloaded from Rolling Stone’s website.  Here’s how the artists fared.

For this Quarter I continued listening to my music in order as I attempted to go through my entire catalog so that Amarok could auto-rate the songs I liked and I could switch to a dynamic, random playlist.  I actually finished going through all my music A-Z (and Japanese characters) - except for songs that didn’t have the Album Artist set.

Through a quirk of the way Amarok is programmed and the sorting I’ve selected, a bunch of artists who had the Album Artist blank did not appear along with the artist.  In other words, if a Kanye West track had an album artist of either Kanye or Various, it would appear under Kanye.  But if that field was blank, it appeared under “various artist” at the top.  It’s a strange quirk and as I go through this final category in Q4, I’m trying to remember to fix as many of those as possible.

I started off this quarter ending my random listening. I wanted to listen to certain artists I really enjoyed. I figured I could go back to random once I got bored of choosing the artists I was listening to. Additionally, in between picking certain artists if I wanted to hear a certain song, I started going through my library alphabetically by artist. Let’s see how these trends panned out over the quarter.

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.

I wrote this code a while back because a website that does the same thing seemed to miss my posts every other week.  So I figured I’d write my own in python to do the same thing to me.  Then I just put it into a cron job to automatically run it every Sunday.  I’m going to be posting the code on my GPL code page.  Here it is for you to see and for Google to index.  Just fill in the appropriate variables with the secret keys you get from each site’s API.

I came to a disturbing realization the other day - I’ve come to feel that whatever isn’t online isn’t real.  This came about thanks to the Wii’s insanely stupid online policy.  Everything about playing online with the Wii is an exercise in frustrating the user.  Rather than always be connected to the net when the console is on (like modern computers, Xbox 360 and Playstation 3), the Wii attempts to connect to the game servers at the time you wish to play the game.  This leads to the very frustrated experience of wanting to play online, loading up into the game you want to play and then realizing that the system is having problems connecting to the Internet.  So you have to back out to the Wii menu and trouble-shoot the problem.  This wouldn’t be so vexing if it didn’t take the Wii ages to load games, including the “don’t throw your effing Wiimote around” warning every time!  Even in games where it doesn’t make sense!  (Like Rock Band)

Last.fm is getting close to relaunching their site and I was invited to participate in the beta program.  I think the new design has some great new features and I wanted to share it with you so you could get excited about it too.

Here’s the main page as it appears now:

The most important thing to notice is how cluttered it is.  Look at the proposed layout under beta: