Crushing Krisis

Comic Books, Drag Race, & Life in New Zealand

weblinks

Don’t Play That Song (A Trio of Links)

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You were supposed to receive the second Influences Trio tonight, but it took six hours last night to get one song right, and we are leaving on our T-Day expedition to NJ in a few hours.

This exemplifies why Trio did not typically include cover songs back when it was a weekly feature (and why it started taking so damned long when it did start including cover songs): i’m a huge music fan, and in almost every case i have an obsessive fascination with the original, which leads me to go through this horrific Sophie’s Choice drama about every little flaw and if i can really give them up to the oppressive, fascist listening public.

So, rather than my still-incubating Trio, here’s a trio of quick-hit weblinks for you:

#1 Yeti Ornament from HungerSite. Dude, if we get a tree i am buying this in a hot second.

Plus, it totally jives with the holiday competition i have with my mother about buying farm animals for each other.

#2 PhotoJunkie’s “One Million Giveaway”. No, not a million dollars. PhotoJunkie is a fantastic blogger who was on the forefront of Photoblogging a few scant years ago. I think i know him from Blogathon (?). In any event, to celebrate his upcoming 1,000,000th website hit he’s giving away all sorts of stuff to anyone who comments on or links to his blog.

I should be seeing my millionth hit sometime before i turn 40, thanks for asking.

#3 Want a seasonal job in Philly? Be a newspaper scab! Our two big (collectively owned) papers are heading for strike, and they’re already fishing for temporary staff. $17-$20 an hour, 60hrs a week, minimal experience required. I say, go for it.

In closing, i feel that you should know that i am eating raw cookie-dough for dinner, and that after a content-lite day for T-Give i’ll be closing out NaBloPoMo with several more Trios and more NaBloPoMo site reviews.

Oh, right, and more blogging.

Edit: Every time i see the title of this post i hear the same thing in my head. In the interests of you hearing it too, here it is: Kelly Clarkson singing “Don’t Play That Song” from Season 1 of American Idol.

Streets of Philadelphia

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As a lifetime Philadelphian, I’m often asked (or just expected to know) what people should do while they’re here. Honestly, i’m often flummoxed – so much of what Philadelphia is to me is just scenery that passes by that i hardly know how to single out anything special. By the same token, i often flounder to suggest a day’s activity within walking distance other than the habitual trip to South Street.

Today proved that there is a little something more to be found, and it was the sort of day that bears recapping.

It all started out because we wanted to visit a sidewalk sale at Hello World that we noticed while driving by with Amanda the day before. Eleventh is one of the more pleasant walks up from South Philly to the city, so we made our way there and headed north.

The sidewalk sale wasn’t much – the store had a motley collection of many nice yuppy things, but each collection was too slim for there to be many pickings. We didn’t feel like walking straight home after such a small excursion. We walked up Pine to 13th (Last Drop and a new(er) sushi place on facing corners) to peek into a guitar store i’m always passing. They had some nice electrics and a finely weathered mandolin, but nothing unusual (which is what i’m looking for – primarily a baritone).

Walking backwards (east) we browsed by a few shops before Elise stopped to ogle Soul of the Artist – something i always do on my walk down Antique Row. I had never been inside – mostly because i assume that everything on Pine Street is out of my price range, but Elise decided we should venture in.

I’m happy we did, because SOTA is one of the most fantastic owner-operated stores i’ve ever been to, in Philly or elsewhere. Frank gave us a friendly greeting, and let us know that everything he sold was made by an artist he knows and appreciates (a nice change from yuppy giftshops), and while we browsed he invited us to touch and explore his merchandise. Elise was entranced by a series of intricate puzzle-boxes (the best was almost a thousand dollars), while i walked away with a beautiful starred wooden keychain from this collection. The thing that will probably motivate me to return were a series of polished wooden clipboards and business card holders, all of which were eminently afforable.

Frank sent us packing with as many oblong business cards as we cared to have. (PS – the store on the corner of 10th has some good beers). We peeked into Ethnics Furniture, but it was disgustingly (and predictably) expensive. Must be nice to work in a store where one sale covers a whole day of operating costs.

We aimed ourselves towards South Street via 9th, and stumbled (literally) into the spectacular Broadcast Guitars, a new(ish) store owned by former BlueBond salesguy (and cousin of Anastasia) Rocco Renzetti. Though they didn’t have the selection of BlueBond, the store has a cozy atmosphere. And a cat. I thought i’d just take a quick browse for an unlikely baritone, but in my browse i found a solid and affordable Cort 12-string. I played it on a pure lark (what Bowie fan doesn’t love 12-strings?), but I actually really liked it. Rocco said he’d put fresh strings on it later this week so i could give it a better try.

(Don’t get me wrong, i LOVE BlueBond, where i bought my beautiful green workhorse. I just don’t feel comfortable browsing there anymore (even though they finally recognize me) with all of their various rock-school kids roaming around and trying guitars they don’t plan to buy. Right now they have a beautiful white Hofner bass, and a 12-String Taylor (3x as much as the Cort) that i haven’t even dared to touch because i (frighteningly) do actually have that much credit available to me.)

We wound down our shopping with a peek into American Pie / Abode, another store i had passed but never entered. They had a killer collection of Yelena Designs (including this wardrobe) – i think they’d hand over the whole set for an offer of $10k. However, i was a bigger fan of this hanging (sortof) armoire. I almost walked out with some nifty placards (one with a weathered “P,” the other with guilded sheet music) but for my reluctance to put holes in walls. We were helped the adorable Mandy.

Afterwards we wandered our way back for a quick stop home before swinging back out and encountering (to my unmitigated delight) “O,” an awesome sandwich shop WITH EFFING BUBBLE TEA splitting 9th and Passyunk with Geno’s (blech). They open early enough that i could probably snag a bubble tea every day on my way to work. And they’re only $3. I think i can keep them in business single-handedly.

(This is a wonderful place to eat after you’ve hit Pat’s or Geno’s for a picture and a less-than-appetizing cheesesteak. Any Philadelphian with a stomach that isn’t made of cast iron would much rather eat at Jim’s on 4th and South, though the best ones in the city are acknowledged to reside @ Tony Luke’s @ 39 East Oregon Ave).

In any event, that was our adventure, and now i’m home dreaming of the 12-string and pounding out way-too-hard-for-me Tori songs on the piano eight note by eight note. It was a good day to be in Philly, and now perhaps i’ve given you a few ideas of where to visit when i may have before been lax.

Closed Loop

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This post will (temporarily, at least) close the loop my recent discussion of good music prediction systems.

One service that initially escaped my attention was Last FM, aka AudioScrobbler. Perhaps it went unmentioned because it’s a bit of a hodgepodge when it comes to features – it tracks what you listen to, but compiles only the vaguest (and in my experience, often incorrect) statistics about your listening habits. It features some free music, but not in a predictable enough fasion that i’d use it on a regular basis.

Since it doesn’t accumulate anything but playcounts, Last.fm can only predict based on your listening habits. For someone like me who listens to 1k+ tracks a month, the approach is fascinating but ultimately scattershot, as it isn’t weighting my likes and dislikes at all. Though it has the plus side of offering predictions based on a large network of users who you can either friend or “neighbor,” the lack of any rating scheme is a major turnoff.

That said, i return my attention to Yahoo’s LaunchCast Radio.

I have been phasing this out at work now that I have a new iPod, and it’s unaccessible at home since it doesn’t work in Firefox. However, i remain convinced that it comes the closest to being the best music service out there based on the strength of its predictive abilities. It has lead me to more than a few downloads and purchases in the last month, many of which have been surprisingly obscure.

I definitely recommending trying the service, and do so with the following recommendations:

  • When you first subscribe spend a day or two listening to one of the pre-set stations that’s nearest to your tastes in order to give the service some ratings to work with. Alternately, take a sampling of your record collection and add 200-500 ratings – probably enough for the services correlative powers to kick in.

  • Unless you enjoy a *wide* swath of music in one particular genre it’s in your best interest to rate genres very conservatively, especially high-level buckets like “Rock” or “R&B.” Rating “Rock” highly partially thwarts a rating of “Don’t Play” for “Classic Rock.” Furthermore, the system seems to prefer genre recommendations to song correlations, which is increasingly frustrating as you fine-tune your song ratings. Just as bad, if not worse, if you leave genres blank Yahoo assumes you like them all equally!

  • One positive impact is that if you have a subgenre you’re interested in hearing more of, like “Big Band” or “Zydeco,” you can rank it heavily for a few days to get served a bigger sampling of songs so you can develop your opinion.

  • Similarly, only rate an artist if you want them to impact the system’s choices. You might love Madonna or Depeche Mode, but if you aren’t interested in the terrible pop they’re correlated to you might be safer just rating songs and albums. Rating a smattering of songs by an artist has an equal (or better) effect on being served more songs by the same artist as rating the artist themselves.

  • Whenever you hear a song you really like, click the song name to view its entry, which contains its similar songs. This is especially fun when listening to classic music that you don’t necessarily own, as it tends to jog your memory for other songs you’ve forgotten. (When you hear a song you really hate you should do the same thing; you might kill ten terrible-sounding birds with one well place stone. Or, you could find out a song you love is too closely correlated to the distasteful pick).

  • There’s a fixed amount of time (or number of songs?) you can consume in any given month before higher features are locked out, leaving you only with your own station with a somewhat limited pool of songs. Our office seems to hit this point about 2/3 into a month. If your tastes run mainstream the limited pool is actually not so bad, but to avoid this make sure to shut (or at least pause) the player when you leave your desk.

  • Though Yahoo’s awesome correlations per Artist, Album, or Song help support predictions of your taste, the system seems to be incapable of adapting to a non-standard correlative scheme on a per-user basis.

    For example, what if I rate “Don’t Play” on every song over five minutes? The system would learn to avoid long songs that were similar to each other, but voting no to Queen’s “Bohemian Rhapsody” and LedZep’s “Stairway to Heaven” wouldn’t necessarily protect me from Fiona’s “Never Is a Promise” or Tori’s “Yes, Anastasia.”

    A best-of-class predictive system would be able to determine your tastes not only based on correlated predictive data, but also based on your personal trend of ratings for certain song lengths, BPMs, producers, labels, or even mix levels and/or frequency response.

If you know of this promised land of music consumption, please point me in the right direction. Heaven forbid i learn enough programming/scripting to be dangerous, i might have a go at my own datamart, a la iTunes Registry.

with a couple of warm beers and watched the fireworks explode in the sky

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Despite previous independence highlights, today’s pre-fourth could have been my best. How many other days can you succeed at work, see one of your favorite people engaged, and get rip-roaring drunk with the best of your bestest of friends (actually, family). I love it.

In other notes: A great random-topic blog, Kinkish. Some art, some recipes, some musings. All good.

Also, I don’t completely understand what it’s about (something about gay men, i think), but Ballroom Rockstar is a wonderful name for a magazine.

And (fittingly, though you might not be able to tell by my typing), the 86 Rules of Boozing. Which maybe sounds a little tongue-in-cheek, but if you’re someone who doesn’t go out to bars very often a lot of them will serve you well.

Happy freedom to do whatever it is you’re doing.

Pshaw, I Post All My Secrets

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If you blog (or read Time, apparently) you may have already been introduced to the utterly genius Post Secret, wherein random strangers mail in secrets on inventively designed postcards which are subsequently scanned and posted. Combines the always-fun voyeurism angle with art-appreciation. Awesome. Curator Frank Warren now has a book out.

Via a link from PostSecret, John Kerry blogs for Save the Internet. Save the Internet is a site dedicated to keeping Americans informed about “Net Neutrality,” which might be erroded by Telecomm companies in cahoots with Congress soon if us and the flip-flopper don’t do something about it. In short:

Net Neutrality ensures that all users can access the content or run the applications and devices of their choice. With Net Neutrality, the network’s only job is to move data – not choose which data to privilege with higher quality service. Net Neutrality prevents the companies that control the wires from discriminating against content based on its source or ownership.

You might not get off your virtual butt for many causes, but this one pretty much makes or breaks what you can do with your virtual butt – it deserves your attention.