I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but all this web technology (webology?) has hardly added up to the ominous level of cool I was promised a long time ago.

I think most of us bought into e-mail, chat, online banking and shopping. Those are great features, but they’ve been around for a long time. YouTube has entertained some of us with a laundry list of shorts in the style of Jackass, but entertainment has been a little lacking since the day Napster died and went to pay service hell.

iTunes music store at least made the idea of paying for music simple and addictive again. But what I liked about Napster was the ability to discover new music.

✂———✂———✂———✂———✂———✂———✂———✂———✂———✂———

The RIAA has done a great job of fudging up that avenue of music discovery. I know a bunch of people were just downloading music en masse, but some of us were making discoveries we wouldn’t afford to find otherwise. (Never mind that the idea of a physical album is becoming obsolete)

Enter Last.fm, a web technology that delivers. I’ve been using this service (free service) for just a week and I’m hooked on it. So.. what does it do?

Imagine a radio station that could hear your contempt when bad music is played and remember not to play that again. Furthermore, imagine it remembers what you like and starts to make better and better guesses as to what you might want to hear. Imagine you could hand your entire music collection to a DJ and say.. “Play stuff I like” and the DJ does it. That’s Last.fm in the most simple form.

It gets much better. It looks through your iTunes library and pays attention to what you listen to from your own library (so long as you’ve installed the free software) and then, upon your request, will stream music from the interwebs that it thinks you might like. You can enter a band name or genre and it will feed similar artists instantly.

Simple ‘Love’ and ‘Ban’ buttons allow you to reward or punish the software’s intentions and you can even make a playlist that is saved to your profile page so you can keep a list of songs you liked.

There is much more available and my user page gets more and more interesting the longer I’ve allowed the Last.fm software to run while I listen.

For music lovers, this is one more way you can find new artists that are within the sphere of your aural interests.

**So, we were just having a good time
We left for KCI Airport at 4 am with bleary eyes and an ache for sleep; only the hopes of sunny skies and blue Caribbean waters motivating us towards the bliss that is the airport.

Continue reading »

When I was about 15 years old, I realized I knew everything. Not from the perspective of “My parents don’t get me”, or “The world operates for silly and ridiculous reasons that I could fix in a heart beat if I cared” typical way, but a true metaphysical understanding of the world and its workings.

I thought myself deep, advanced and skilled in wielding mental wizardry that revealed the fundamental roots to all life and non-life. I could see yen and yang while others could only think to tattoo the symbol somewhere on their bodies hoping to gain its strength through some odd absorbing process.

I wrote a great mass of this wisdom down, often in lyrical poetic form because intelligence, *true* intelligence spoke through artistic forms that related to math such as music, meter and measurements.

Before I drag you too far along, I assure you I’m wrong. This isn’t a post about how I thought I was right but now I’m right. It’s about being wrong in a rather infinite way. Maybe more importantly to me (and I stress *me*) is what do I do with that?

Continue reading »

My dad has started to blog on all the various gadgets he’s gotten into and I think I’m going to rob that idea from him.

I’ve inherited my gadget collecting habit from him anyways, so I might as well fess up and admit it.

Gadgets play an interesting role in life as it were. Different people like and dislike certain types of gadgets in their lives, and I think these items are more defining of who we are than we give credit.
Continue reading »

I can’t say that posting to my blog has been a top priority since Torrin arrived. Two primary reasons have prevented any serious attempts at writing for the last few months:
1. Baby’s don’t sleep when you want to, at least not at first - if at all.
2. Baby’s don’t sleep, so you don’t sleep, so you can’t think.

Continue reading »

Continue reading »

Of all the chaos that is my life right now, Kerry and I did find some time to have a little fun with our growing boy.

We took him in for a 3D ultrasound, where it is possible to see a semi-blurry representation of your future child that isn’t just gray fuzz and whir in 2D.

We weren’t sure if we were going to do it or not, but then Grandpa-to-be stepped in with gusto.

Continue reading »