February 18th, 2010

garfield-boringinhere

Music of 2009

January 20th, 2010

One of my favourite things about my Last.fm subscription is it’s tracking of my listening history. It’s one thing to try and arbitrarily choose today what my top songs of 2009 were, but to actually look at what tracks I played the most over the year offers a more interesting (to me anyway) view.

So here’s the list of my top 25 songs of 2009, in order of the number of times I played the full track on my computer, iPod, or iPhone:

  1. Joel Plaskett Emergency – Nowhere With You
  2. Flogging Molly – What’s Left of the Flag
  3. Hi-Standard – Wait for the Sun
  4. Portal – Still Alive
  5. Leonard Cohen – Waiting For The Miracle
  6. Enter the Haggis – One Last Drink
  7. Great Big Sea – The Night Pat Murphy Died
  8. Jonathan Coulton – Mr. Fancy Pants
  9. The Salads – Get Loose
  10. Styrofoam and Sarah Shannon – I Found Love
  11. Jonathan Coulton – The Future Soon
  12. Finnegan’s Lads – Dirty Old Town
  13. Da Vinci’s Notebook – The Gates
  14. Semisonic – Closing Time
  15. Jonathan Coulton – Code Monkey
  16. Three Dead Trolls in a Baggie – The System Administrator Song
  17. Dean Elliott & His Big Band – Lonesome Road
  18. Corb Lund Band – The Truck Got Stuck
  19. The Tossers – Altercations
  20. John Coltrane – Giant Steps
  21. Dropkick Murphys – The Dirty Glass
  22. Patti Smith – Gloria
  23. Tenacious D – The Metal
  24. Rancid – Roots Radicals
  25. Flogging Molly – Rebels of the Sacred Heart

Of course, the math geek in me just screams at the idea of using raw play count data that doesn’t take into account when any of these songs actually became available to me. For example, I bought Enter the Haggis in November, and they made it to #6. I bought Jonathan Coulton’s album in March, and he appears three times (four if you count “Still Alive”). And yet, bands like Flogging Molly and Corb Lund, oft-stated “favourite” bands of mine of which I own many albums, only appear once or twice. Some of these tracks I don’t own at all, but have appeared often enough as “recommendations” on my last.fm station that they make the list!

Hmm… I wonder how hard it would be to build an algorithm that could level out the initial enthusiastic repetition of a new album or song, consider the time of year it was added to the overall library, and assign an appropriate weighting as compared to those that have been in rotation for more than 12 (24? more?) months. I wonder how clear the pattern would be if I could go back and track plays of a new song from purchase, peak, trough, to plateau. What kind of timeline does there need to be for a song to stabilize into regular rotation, or just be forgotten until it gets picked up by a random shuffle and brought back into play? How much of an effect does placing the song into a playlist have versus leaving it in the overall library?

How much time can I waste discussing pattern analysis of my music listening habits before I get back to work?

That one I think I can answer.

Sum Up A Year In A Finger

January 14th, 2010

For the record, my personal feelings on 2009 in general:

…………………./´¯/)
………………..,/¯../
………………./…./
…………./´¯/’…’/´¯¯`·¸
………./’/…/…./……./¨¯\
……..(’(…´…´…. ¯~/’…’)
………\……………..’…../
……….”…\………. _.·´
…………\…………..(
…………..\………….\…

Have a Wonderful Whatever

December 14th, 2009

Hey.

I’m currently sitting in my dear sister’s apartment in Melbourne, Australia, waiting for my girlfriend to appear on Skype so I can look into her deep brown eyes, and likely flash her inappropriately.

These sort of bloggity activities take a bit of a back seat when travelling, so for everyone out there in the InterTubeLands, have a swell couple of weeks.

(There, did I offend anybody THAT time??)

Brain Hunt

November 6th, 2009

I love this quote so much I want to keep it here to remind me in the future:

At least half of all writing involves just sitting and staring into space. Letting your brain out to hunt down ideas, bringing them back all warm and bloody between its teeth.

That’s from Warren Ellis, one of my favourite authors, shared by Wil Wheaton, another one of my favourite authors (and people in general).

Happy Halloween (have one for me)

October 31st, 2009

So I got the Big Bad Flu that everyone who’s anyone has been enjoying this lovely autumn season. The first disease that sounds like an HTML tag:

<H1N1>me</H1N1>

Got knocked on my arse the very day they released the shots. And yes, I would have got mine. If you don’t get yours, you’re an ignorant selfish asshole. I’ll go off on that rant another day.

The worst part of it is I’m still too sick to do anything for Halloween, my favourite holiday of the year. I’ve got no costume, no parties to go to, I can’t even hand out candy to the kids. Just sitting in the basement watching horror movies (ok, that part’s not so bad).

A toast to the demons: May your jack-o-lanterns burn bright, may your trick-or-treat’s ring loud through the night, may your candy arm stay strong, and may you have glorious nightmares ALL WINTER LONG!!

This H1N1 is worse than I thought

This H1N1 is worse than I thought

Now if you’ll excuse me, Rocky Horror Picture Show is starting, and I need to make some toast.

Always wear comfortable shoes when driving at night

October 31st, 2009

Just posted another story on Ficly; I wanted to write something suitably spooky for Halloween. I wrote about 90% of it around 2am this morning (couldn’t sleep), and finished the rest this afternoon. You can read it here.

Unfortunately my original draft was over the character limit for Ficly (1024), so I had to cut it down quite a bit. Here’s the story in it’s “unabridged” form:

Always wear comfortable shoes when driving at night


Run.

Keep running. Run faster.

Don’t stop. For anything.

Run.

RUN!

Turn right. Down that alley.

NO!!

BACK TO THE STREET!

Right. Go. Stay in the streetlights.

Why are all the houses dark? Why isn’t anybody home?

Where is everybody?

I don’t know where I am. I don’t recognize anything, no buildings or street names.

I don’t know where I left my truck. I don’t know what I hit. Hard enough to crush the steel bumper and snap off a wheel.

I know there wasn’t anything there when I got out to look.

I don’t know what’s chasing me.

Can’t scream anymore. Hard enough to breathe.

Tried calling for help. No answer.

Tried pounding on doors. No answer. Not a light or sound from any of these houses.

Haven’t seen a single other car drive by, or person out for a walk, or even a stray cat or squirrel.

Just row after row of the same three models of some developer’s idea of suburban paradise.

Have to keep running.

I can hear them. Chasing me. No idea how many.

Can’t see them, but I can hear them.

They’re getting closer.

Keep running.

Left. Wait. Haven’t I already been down there?

Every street here looks the same.

There has to be a way out. A way back to the main road. With other cars, other people.

Just keep running. Left. Go. GO!

Is that a light? Is that a light on in that house?? It is!

HEY! HEY!! HELP!!

THERE’S SOMETHING CHASING ME!

PLEASE! HELP!

The light’s out.

I can’t hear anything. They’re gone?

No.

They’re here. They’re h

I’M SORRY I’M SORRY IT WAS AN ACCIDENT I DIDN’T SEE YOU I’M SORRY IT WAS AN ACCID

Let me know what you think!

The Test of Trees (Part 01)

August 16th, 2009

Drove far past where the roads turned to gravel, then dirt.  Parked by a tall tree with bright leaves, flanked by a twisted spruce with dead red needles.  Put one mountain peak at my back, a beckoning finger raised, and mark another in the distance.  A sheer rock face at the end of a curving ridge, like soup pouring over the edge of a spoon.

(I’m already thinking of food.)

It takes me the rest of the day to reach the foot of the mountain face.  Had to cross one small stream, trying to forget about it.  Any foreknowledge of the area is against the rules.

I gather some wood, start a small fire (the easy way) and get some water boiling in a metal pot.  Some goes in a foil pouch labelled “Chicken Enchillada”, the rest gets mixed with hot chocolate powder.  I savor the taste of spice and sweet, eating and drinking at a pace to hold the memories on my tongue.  I sleep in a tunnel of blue nylon held up by army surplus paracord.  Tonight I am warm, dry, and full.

I don’t sleep.

(To be continued…)

AHHHHH!!!

July 24th, 2009

GAAHHHHH!!!!

018_fry-argh

AARRGGHHHH!!!!

CharlieBrown-argh

AAAAAAAA!!!

computer-scream

WAAAAAAA!!!

crazy_donkey_at542_large

AAAAAAHHHHH!!!!

frustration_narrowweb__300x349,0

AAAAAAHH!!!

home-alone-lr

AAAAAAHHHHHHHH!!

scream

AAAAAAHHHH!!!!

yell

*whew*, that’s better.

Sorry, just needed to get that off my chest.

Unnecessary and unexcused AWOL writing hiatus over.

Back to our regularly scheduled blogging.

Gobstopper Trailer

March 20th, 2009

This might just be the greatest movie parody/mashup video I’ve ever seen.

Gobstopper Trailer – watch more funny videos

They had me at the Scion…