Results tagged “obama”

My iPod goes with me everywhere and I listen to it constantly. Whether it's in the car for the daily commute or at my desk while I'm coding, the vast majority of my music is delivered that way. Those days that I accidentally leave it at home are the bad days, the bleak days of despair, the days that I have to (shudder), listen to the radio.

I'm also a bit partial to statistics about my music listening habits and one of the reasons I love last.fm. Ever since I joined back in 2006 I've scrobbled just about everything I've listened to from both the home "stereo" (these days a MacBook Pro, Bose speakers) and my iPod. But by far, the iPod accounts for the majority.

Last week, like an idiot a true early adopter, I upgraded iTunes to 9.2.1. And that promptly broke the ability to scrobble iPod plays. Bollocks. But, credit where credit is due, last.fm released an update to the client app which fixed the issue nicely. Which is really rather impressive response time.

So now I'm all happy and can breathe again because as any last.fm addict will tell you...

Because it's important to keep you informed. Hey, I do what I can.

A while ago I wrote count-by-artist to go through my iTunes Library XML file and count up all the tracks by artist. I hadn't ran it for about 18 months so this morning while sipping my coffee I decided to fire it up to see if anything had changed.

Aha, and while Depeche Mode, The Cure, and Skinny Puppy have the most songs in my music collection, they're also who I've listened to most over the past four years. Coincidence?

Who do you find you end up listening to most?

I'm a self confessed music addict. I have been for as long as I can remember. I listen to music all the time: getting ready for work, in the car, writing code at work, in the car again. Well, you get the idea. Today it seems, I scrobbled my 150,000th play to last.fm.

I became aware of last.fm back in 2006 and since then have found it to be one of the best places to find out about new music. If you're into music and you've never tried last.fm I thoroughly recommend it.

How does it work?

After creating a last.fm account, you install software on your computer that submits every track you listen to back to the last.fm servers. They call that scrobbling. After you've been scrobbling for a while last.fm will learn what you like and offer recommendations of new artists. Which is all rather handy.

What's more, over time, other like minded last.fm users will come along, say hello, and leave their two-penneth on what they think you'd like to listen to. Plus you can always go looking at other user's charts to see what they've been playing recently. To be honest I love that the most as I've always been one for rummaging through other people's album collections when I'm at their house.

If manually poking through user's charts is not your thing, you can have last.fm stream their tracks to you. Streamable tracks and the ability to create playlists makes last.fm an invaluable service to me. I've been a subscriber for years because of this.

So, go give it a try if you're into this kind of thing. And if you do, stop by my profile and say hello. At the very least, you'll get to see the shitty drivel wonderful taste in music I have.

[Moozik: Chris & Cosey - Walking Through Heaven]

At the weekend I performed my first OS upgrade since becoming assimilated by Apple last year. For $29 it seemed like a no-brainer even though there were no new features. It would make stuff faster we were told. I like faster, so I dove right in.

The upgrade itself was quick and absolutely painless. Like all good OS upgrades should be. Except for when they're not. And I'm looking at you Ubuntu. Still, it was that little suckfest that finally convinced me to become a Mac addict so that things just work going forward.

The verdict after using it for a few days?

The good? Well it definitely seems faster. The Finder is certainly a lot snappier - thumbnail generation is lightning fast now for example. I do like new dock menu colors and the scrolling stacks as well.

The meh? I haven't noticed any speedup on system wake up when opening the lid on my MacBook Pro though. I could have sworn that was one of the promised speed improvements.

The bad? iScrobbler broke which I didn't notice until this morning. Which is a shame because the official Mac last.fm client is a little temperamental when it comes to scrobbling songs from your iPod. Still, a downgrade to iScrobbler 1.5.2 seems to have done the trick.

So overall, I'm a happy Snow Leopard user and can count my first Mac OS X upgrade a success.

[Moozik: Black Light Burns - Mesopotamia]

Did you watch tonight's press conference at the White House? Wasn't it weird to have an articulate President who actually used full sentences? A press conference that didn't make me want to punch my TV and I didn't cringe with embarrassment once. What a refreshing change.

Best moment for me:

Obama: (referring to the $800 billion) I didn't just pull that number out of..."
(queue dramatic pause)
Me: your arse, say "your arse", "you didn't pull that number out of your arse".
Obama: "...of a hat".
Me: oh but you totally meant "your arse".

[Moozik: The Chameleons - Up And Down The Escalator]

It's about to become obvious that I live in a cave as this has probably been linked to just about everywhere. But just in case you're one of the other people on the planet who haven't seen this yet. Go look. David Bergman made a 1,474 megapixel photo of President Obama's inauguration.

I made a panoramic image showing the nearly two million people who watched President Obama's inaugural address. To do so, I clamped a Gigapan Imager to the railing on the north media platform about six feet from my photo position. The Gigapan is a robotic camera mount that allows me to take multiple images and stitch them together, creating a massive image file.

My final photo is made up of 220 Canon G10 images and the file is 59,783 X 24,658 pixels or 1,474 megapixels. It took more than six and a half hours for the Gigapan software to put together all of the images on my Macbook Pro and the completed TIF file is almost 2 gigabytes.

Simply amazing.

[Moozik: Combichrist - Enjoy The Abuse]

Yesterday's inauguration of Barack Obama was the first time I've ever watched from start to finish. In years past I didn't really take an interest in American politics so always caught nothing more than a fleeting glimpse at the tail end of the news.

This year was different though. Firstly I felt compelled to watch for the historic significance. And It was extremely significant from a civil rights perspective. And secondly, even though I don't blog about it much anymore, I do take a far greater interest in American politics than I ever used to. I think this is partly due to me feeling more and more like America is my home now so I need to pay attention to the goings on in government. Maybe it's that whole getting older thing? Who knows?

So much has already been said about his speech, but for me, I was left with a sense that the country is finally going in the right direction. We'll be less insular, pay attention to the planet, and look to science instead of religion. Well at least that's my hope. The new Obama administration has promised much and it will be interesting to see if they can deliver on even half of their stated goals.

Sure change won't happen overnight, and I think we need to be a little patient. But I'm hoping that good things are ahead for this country. Time will tell and at the end of the day it's going to be up to us to measure their performance and ultimately hold them accountable. In 2012 it will certainly be interesting to see what became of his first term in office won't it?

[Moozik: Killing Joke - Follow The Leaders]

With the election finally over, I thought a little souvenir was in order.

Kottke mentioned that the New York Times brings out the 96pt font very rarely, so I decided that a brand new copy of the November 5th edition was as good a souvenir as any.

Yeah, I bought one.

$14.95 is certainly cheaper and less hassle than trying to get one from eBay. Getting it brand new from the source means...

Price includes the full newspaper inside resealable plastic envelope. Newspapers are shipped FLAT in corrugated cardboard shippers to protect issue during transit.

I completely forgot that I ordered it until I got the ship confirmation email today. I haven't got any idea what I'm actually going to do with the newspaper once I have it though.

Ok, maybe that's not entirely true. I can always cut out the front page and frame it. I'm thinking I can probably do it somewhat cheaper than the NY Times at least.

[Moozik: Depeche Mode - Lie To Me (Live Hamburg 1984)]

Tomorrow is the day that America likes to say a little thanks. So today I'd just like to thank America for thanking.

A day off work in which your sole goal is to eat as much food as is humanly possible. I so love this country. Thank you America.

In other news, Obama holds his third press conference in as many days to announce members of his economic team to help address the financial crisis. President Bush pardons a Turkey. I think it's becoming clear which adults are running the country.

[Moozik:Black Light Burns - I Am Where It Takes Me]

If you're anything like me, before you give someone your iPod, you kind of panic for a second. I mean, what if they see that embarrassing Right Said Fred song? Everyone, and I mean everyone no matter how cool they think their music collection is, has some songs that they'd rather not admit in public that they've listened to.

Of course, with the advent of last.fm, your listening habits can be somewhat more public than they used to be and even if you've now cleaned all evidence of those embarrassing songs from your media player, last.fm still knows all. This morning I was looking at my overall charts and noticed that I've certainly played some, er, interesting songs over the past couple of years. I mean, how did songs by these artists get onto my iPod?

Bee Gees
Bon Jovi
Cher
Kylie Minogue
Mariah Carey
REO Speedwagon
Rod Stewart
Wham

How about you? What skeletons do you have in your iPod closet?

[Moozik: Something About Vampires And Sluts - Dancing In Graveyards]

If you love photography as much as I do, these photos...

... are really quite good.

[Moozik: The Cure - Plainsong]

You did good today. Please go have a beer now. You deserve it.

[Moozik: Beastie Boys - Sure Shot]

Today of course is election day here in the US. I'm quite excited about it as we could very well be seeing history in the making. I'm reminding everyone I know to go and vote as I think it's extremely important for everyone to go and make that all important choice.

I, unfortunately, won't be one of them.

To be honest, nothing makes me feel like a stranger in a strange land more than elections here in the US. As an alien of the resident variety, I get to take part in all facets of American life. I work. I pay taxes. I own cars, houses, pets. But I can't vote. I live and breathe America 24 hours a day 7 days a week yet I have absolutely no say in the direction the country goes in.

I've lived in the US for over a decade and to be honest probably should have done the citizenship thing a long time ago. I like living here and after all this time does feel like 'home'. Anyone who has ever had to deal with the INS though knows that it's an experience you never want to have to go through again. The paperwork headaches, the being herded around like cattle, the queuing to see someone who doesn't care about your personal predicament. It's ugly. Perhaps after all these years it's gotten better but I certainly don't look forward to it.

Being in America at election time is really an eye opener for me in many ways. Elections here are so polarizing. In some respects it really brings out the crazy in people. Some really quite sane and intelligent individuals suddenly turn into something completely different. People are so set in their beliefs on social, religious, and economic issues and with fear and negativity coming out in some of the campaigns, it's not surprising that some people lose the plot. I for one, will not miss those attack ads on TV.

So America, on your big day, please go out and do the right thing. Regardless of which way your political pendulum swings, the right thing to do is vote. This is important. Elections matter.