Stuff to do with the Internet. Strategy, design, usability.
When I found that recording of Braes o’ Balquhidder on YouTube I was happy.
I’m irrationally happier now to know that there are multiple YouTubers who are devoting themselves to uploading video of gramophone recordings. At least five. Possibly dozens, or scores.
(Discovered this thanks to Will’s tip about Forty-Seven Ginger-Headed Sailors.)
Pandora Radio![1]
I have three stations already built and I’ve only known about this for 15 minutes, thanks to a tip from Shital [2]. I am agog at the fantastic potential for time-suckage and serendipity and other forms of pleasant weirdness that result from what could (I suppose) be looked at as a simple replacement for the tyranny of MediaPlayer. I’m anticipating that not only will the music be enjoyable and absorbing, but that the process of training the music stream as to my likes and dislikes will be a source of great joy and outrage. I’d like to apologize to Ehren in advance for the about-to-increase exclamations of “What the hell is this supposed to be? Don’t you know anything??!!”
I’m looking forward to getting the taxonomy for the music I like. (Right now it’s ” folk roots | great musicianship | acoustic sonority | demanding instrumental part writing | intricate melodic phrasing | thru composed melodic style | minor key tonality | melodic songwriting | a prominent mandolin part | acoustic rhythm guitars | solo strings | an instrumental arrangement. (np: Chris Thile, “Big Sam Thompson”)
So I will permaybehaps not need any CDs at work ever again. Now I just have to solve the car-music problem. I’ve been listening to the wireless since my 8-track died. (Just kidding. It was a cassette deck. Yes, I do know there’s such a thing as an iPod. Whippersnappers. Get off my lawn.)
[1] Seems kind of an inapt name. (Is inapt a word?) Memorable, sure, but I’m not getting the metaphoric connection to, you know, Pandora who opened the box, or jar, full of either evil or gifts, depending on who you believe. Her. The Greek Eve, the opener.
[2] Shital never updates her own blog, so I don’t know why I thought she might post here ; )
Things that make me feel old:
(1) Area codes with a non-1-or-zero center digit. When I was growing up, all area codes had either a 1 or a 0 in the middle. I asked my dad about it once and he said it was a technical limitation of the telephone switching system from way back.
(2) After accidentally deleting the Busta Rhymes episode of Space Ghost Coast to Coast from TiVo about three years ago, not realizing until yesterday that we could just look it up on YouTube.
(3) The thing I’m happiest about finding on YouTube so far is a 1914 recording of a song written in 1820 from a poem written by a guy who was born in 1774.
(4) Realizing (while doing a crossword puzzle) that I remember when “undo” was a fancy new computer function.
(5) Having a panic attack because I only have 3.8 GB of space left on the file server, and then realizing that probably sometime in my lifetime, 4 GB was more storage than there was on all the computers in the whole world. (Maybe. Have been unable to find a chronology to confirm.)
Addendum: I was talking to Colin about this the other day, and we figured this: Back in the day (the October 1970-type day, when I was born), a really whiz-bang corporate computer had maybe 1 kilobyte of storage. Yes, kiddies, that’s 1KB. Most of the data at that time was on tape or cards, so the computers themselves were not big on the byte capacity. For there to have been 3.8GB available on the planet, there would have had to be 38,000 1KB computers in 1970 (or, alternatively, 3,800 1MB computers), which we are pretty sure there were not. But if anyone can tell us otherwise, we’d be delighted to hear about it.
And P.S. I got my shiny new file server and now I have 418GB of available space, and I sleep much better, so ha!
World Clock Meeting Planner. (Brought to us by the “Three Kinds of Twilight” people, as aforementioned.) (I want to say “hereinaforementioned.” Makes me feel all linguistically Germanic, and therefore cheerful, despite Ehren being out sick today.)
Why: I might have to schedule a phone meeting/web conference with someone in Wales.