Monthly Archives: May 2009

Totally Digging Pandora Radio

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Apparently this has been around for a while and I just didn’t know about it, but if you’re in to music and you like finding new stuff you should definitely check out Pandora Radio.  Pandora Radio is an Internets radio station created by the Music Genome Project, where they’ve identified some 400 characteristics to describe music at its most basic level, and use a really complex algorithm to group songs and artists together.

The beauty of Pandora, in my limited use so far, is that you just punch in the name of a song or artist that has the kind of music you’re in the mood to listen to and it will use its magic to play songs that fit right in with that mood.  So far my experience has been that its extremely accurate in the selections that it makes for you to listen to.

By creating a profile for free, Pandora will also remember the stations you’ve created based on your song or artist searches so that you can cue a past request right up when you get back to the page.  I don’t know how many different stations you can have.  I only have three at this point, but I would have to assume that it would be quite a few more than that.

There are a couple of limitations in functionality that people will probably dislike, but they’re understandable given licensing rules Pandora has to deal with from the the publishing companies.  You can’t hear any song you want at any time.  You do get a limited number of song skips per hour and you can sample pretty much everything they have, but you don’t get on demand songs.  The record companies just won’t let that happen.  So if you want to hear a specific song immediately, try your luck at YouTube.

My only other complaint that I have at this point is that some of the technical stuff doesn’t seem to want to play nice with Chrome.  Some of the layout/CSS stuff doesn’t seem to want to agree with Chrome.  Also, you have the ability to get more information about whatever artist is playing at the moment or additional information about the song your listening to.  The problem comes in that the site provides this information in a pop-up, which Chrome blocks everytime, forcing me go through my pop-up blocker to get to the additional information I want to read.  Not a huge deal, but kind of annoying.

Like I said before, if you’re looking to hear a specific song right away, this isn’t the place for you, but if you want to listen to the kind of music you want to hear, and maybe find a new artist or two along the way, Pandora is a great place to do that.  Without a doubt, its an improvement on crappy radio stations that play the same songs over and over and make you sit through commercials all the time.

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Lost May be the Best Show Ever

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So I’m a little late on this now, but I’ve been a little busy and haven’t been able to finish this post I started last Thursday.

Yes, I am one of the many addicted to Lost.  The show is truly unique, and is one of the few that I actually look forward to watching on a regular basis.  I’m not going to rehash the finale the other night, except to say that it was freaking awesome.  That set of writers has probably done one of the best jobs of cliffhangers for season finales ever.

What I did want to note is what I think is a great story telling plan they came up with for Lost that I think other shows would do well to follow.  At some point the producers/writers of the show made it known that there was a definitive scheduled end to the show.  They weren’t going to drag it out for as long as they could to squeeze dollars out of the show.  The writers had a specific idea of what the story arc should look like and they plotted it out with a definitive end.

Now this means that next season Lost will go away, and I will actually lose a show that I’m completely invested in.  It’ll suck when we all know its not going to be coming on anymore, but a part of me appreciates the anticipation of knowing that you’re almost to the conclusion, like when you’re reading a book and you realize you only have twenty-five pages left.

It’s also extremely comforting to know that we’re not going to get to the end of the season and someone is going to wake up and realize everything that just happened over the last season was a dream.  Well, we actually might with Lost, but it won’t be with the intent of extending the show another four seasons.  It will be with the intent to blow your mind once again, and given that goal, no one is going to wake up from a dream because that story line is old and played out and the Lost writers are too good for that.

As I said already, I think other shows where the primary focus is an ongoing story arc should consider a finite beginning and end.  Now I know that’s not going to happen, because it doesn’t allow for the greed of production companies, and honestly, I think it would probably be harder for writers to do that well.  They’d actually have to do more planning on the front end for an extended story, but I think it would likely lead to better quality throughout the run of a show.

You wouldn’t get to a point where the story lines get increasingly ridiculous (ER) and it would mitigate the problem of writers leaving the show or running out of steam because they basic outline is there for whoever picks up.  In some ways it would be like the show is a long miniseries or a movie told in many parts.  I think its an intriguing idea and I’d love to see it.

You won’t see me holding my breath anytime soon.

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Slate Article on Events in Pakistan

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Really interesting article on the events taking place in Pakistan right now with the ebb and flow of the Taliban.  I’m sort of an international news nerd so some of you may not follow this really closely, but as I understand it, and as this article suggests to me, the conflict going on in Pakistan right now is almost as messed up as what’s been happening in the Middle East for the last 50 years, with the added element of nuclear weapons being involved.

I think many would agree that the idea of nuclear weapons in the hands of al-Qa’ida is about as scary as you can get, and if this issue isn’t handled correctly by the Pakistani government and the international community as a whole, that’s what we could end up with.

Anyway, check out the article.  Its a very interesting read.

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Breaking the Box Again

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I’m the youngest of three, and as I grew up through my teen, high school, and college years I subconsciously put my older brother and sister into “boxes” of how I viewed them.  I superimposed on them a persona based upon my understanding of their lives and my relationship with them.  They were always my brother or sister, but they were always placed into a context in my head.

Over time they’ve repeatedly messed up my head by…well… living.  The first instance of this was the first time I was on the phone with my brother at work and he told me he had to go because he had a meeting.  Now, I recognize this is a totally everyday, mundane thing, but at that moment he was no longer just the brother that I played soccer and partied with in college.  He was a grown up with a job.  I had already realized he was a grown up and had a job, but at that point it was officially official.  He thought I was weird for thinking that at the time, and he probably still does.

It took a little while for that to happen with my sister.  She is older than me and when I was a teen she was already in college and working so she was in the working adult box from pretty early on.  She broke that box when I saw her with her first baby for the first time, and the first thing I thought was, “holy crap my sister is a mom.”  Yeah, I knew she had her baby and she was a mom, but she was like, really a mom.  Again, this is a completely natural progression of life that for some reason hadn’t sunk in until it was right there in front of me.  And for the record I think she’s a bad ass at work and being a mom.

The most recent breaking of a box is chalked up to my brother.  He and his wife just had their first baby and he’s a freaking dad.  I have to say that again.  He’s a freaking dad.  I don’t expect this to have the same impact on anyone else, but this totally throws me for a loop, even though it shouldn’t.  My brother and I are two years apart so we’ve shared many life experiences and have had a long standing, health sibling rivaly, and I generally think he’s a big goon in a good sort of way.  He’s looked forward to having a family for a while, and the goofiness in him that made it hard for me to see him as a father is probably one of the qualities that’s going to make him an awesome dad and make his kids love him.

In closing, box broken, my brother is a dad, and I’d just like to say, “welcome to the world BroJr.”  I’m completely psyched for my brother and sister-in-law and I can’t wait to make a trip up to MN. to meet him for the first time.  I also reserve the right to take a moment to process my brother holding him the first time I see it in person.

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