I am … unhindered by talent

Levi (KUMM’s music director) pointed me at musicmobs.com, and it looks like it could be pretty cool.

There are two main ways to use it. First, you can just go to their web site, enter three bands, and get a list of other bands that you might be interested in. Their recommendations are broad and interesting, which makes that useful in its own right.

The real win, though, is when you actually upload the list of songs in your iTunes library. This adds to the depth and breadth of their recommendations, and allows their system give you recommendations based on what you have and what you like. You can also search for other people that have “similiar” playlists as a way of discovering new stuff. (I tried uploading my iTunes library list yesterday, but nothing’s shown up yet. They say it can take up to 24 hours, though, so I’ll need to be patient.)

I’m currently listening to the excellent “Evolution” by Fred Frith from the recent re-release of Cheap at half the price. Their optional but cool Mobster program (with the Hipster/Mainstream slide down towards Hipster at 27%) is then recommending lots of cool stuff. Some of it is arguably expected (John Zorn, Can, Laurie Anderson), but others are just cool (Mingus and Monk, Ralph Stanley and Buena Vista Social Club). And I haven’t a clue who Yann Tiersen and Eyvind Kang are, so I guess I’ll have to check them out.

It’ll be interesting to see whether this catches on or fades away. They certainly seem to be struggling with some scaling issues at the moment (as do so many things like this), but it seems worth a spin.

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Got the following charming bit of spam today:

Lloyds TSB Group plc
25 Gresham Street
London EC2V 7HN

Greetings,
I discovered a dormant account in my office, as Group finance director
with Lloyds bank London. It will be in my interest to transfer this
fund worth $20,000,000 million dollars in an account offshore. If you
can be a collaborator to this please indicate interest immediately for
us to proceed. Remember this is absolutely confidential. My husband
does not know about this risk taking. My family will be in shambles if
it burst out and i will also be in trouble aswell as lose my precious
job. Your contact phone numbers and name will be necessary for this
effect.

Regards and respect,

Cynthia Wood.
Group Finance Director
Lloyds bank London.

If high level directors at my bank wrote like this, I’d be thinking about taking my business elsewhere. Cynthia clearly needs to take a writing class (and a course in introductory logic wouldn’t hurt) as this has to be one of the least convincing variants on this scam that I’ve ever seen, and I’ve seen a lot of them.

Sigh.

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I got a very nice e-mail today from someone who attended last night. She and her husband had been at things like anti-Vietnam War rallies in the Bay Area in the 60’s where people sang these songs. It’s all sort of distant and “academic” to me, so it’s cool hearing from someone with direct experience of those events. Hooray!

And WeatherGirl said nice things too, but I’m not convinced she’s an unbiased observer :-).

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Dad is a major league groupie of the jazz scene in NW Arkansas, and one of the stars of that universe is Claudia Burson, who plays a mean jazz piano. She’s finally recorded a proper studio CD, and he of course had to give out lots of copies for Xmas. I’ve not listened to it carefully on its own, but several tracks from it came up in the huge iTunes shuffle of new Xmas music, and I must say that’s it’s a really nice little recording. Nothing ground breaking (this is all stuff that people like Bill Evans did 40 years ago), but nice, smooth work that’s a pleasure to listen to. And it’s a document of a real, live local music scene of the sort that is way too uncommon these days.

Currently listening to “East of the sun” from Claudia Burson’s My foolish heart. Ain’t that a surprise?

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Day after tomorrow is Not One Damn Dime day, and it seems like a good day to not spend any money. I think the family is going to participate - need to make sure we have enough milk tomorrow.

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Sometimes you have to say things like that, ’specially when it’s true :).

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In a fit of flattered silliness I agreed (several months ago) to give a talk tonight at the PRCC on “Music in the Civil Rights Movement” in honor of MLK day. I then mostly ignored it for ages, and of course had to scramble all day today to get it together.

There was a nice crowd of about 15 people that were attentive and appreciative, so I think it went well. I played some very cool music, which was the easy part, although whittling the huge pool of cool music down hurt lots. In the end I probably had 5-10 minutes more music than I should have, even after deciding to only play excerpts from two pieces to make more room, but people still stayed to chat for a bit at the end so I don’t think it was out of control long.

I wish I’d had more time to practice my talk and transitions, and I wish I’d somehow made more time for audience discussion, since many of the pieces really needed a chance to talk about them. (Sadly, I am a professor at heart, and will lecture at people when given half a chance.) Still, I think it went well, and I certainly enjoyed the excuse to think about the topic in some detail and pull together a playlist.

And to think that Bernice Johnson Reagon will be on campus for two weeks later in the semester. If she’d been there tonight I quite clearly would have so intimidated that I would have simply wet myself and run.

I wonder if I should post my playlist to the iTunes store? I have no idea how many of the songs I played are available through their store, but it might be fun. I’ve got nothing else to do, right?

And classes start tomorrow. Syllabi? What syllabi?

Help.

Currently listening to See through by The Necks. This is yet another of their hour long epics (in a double CD with the equally epic Mesquito. See through is odd in that it (intentionally) includes long (multi-minute) silences at points that I at least don’t fully understand. An interesting idea, but I’m still struggling to decide if I buy the execution. The non-silent bits are classic Necks, though, and that’s certainly a good thing.

Oh, all three of us saw Finding Neverland night before last, and it’s definitely on the recommended list.

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We’ve been using TWiki wiki implementation at the U since 2001, and while it’s got it’s problems (wikis tend to be disorganized messes, and I’m afraid our wiki suffers this as well), it’s been incredibly successful based on the massive usage statistics.

Unfortunately we’re having a problem where saving/editing hangs on long/complex pages, and a month or two of poking around hasn’t turned up anything concrete. This means that people are less likely to use the wiki for courses this semester, and slowly drift away. I hope we can fix this soon. Unfortunately I know I don’t have the time required to make this the priority it deserves :(.

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Yesterday was a serious bear, with wind chills in the low -40sF. And of course they had a late start yesterday, when I had a 9am doctor’s appt and so couldn’t sleep in :(. Ain’t that the way? Today’s still quite cold (current -8F with a wind chill of -22F), but a lot better than yesterday, and it looks like it’s going to stay around that for the next few days. Doesn’t look like our highs will be above 0 until Monday, but they’re talking a high in the (positive) 20’s on Tuesday - break out the shorts!

The Doc says I’m all fine but that I should get a little more exercise and lose a little weight to bring up my good cholesteral. Gee, that’s a shock, given my wildly active, deskbound lifestyle :). Hmph. Glad everything else was cool, though.

Ellery and I are hoping to finish the first full draft of our GECCO paper today. It’s really coming together and I think will be a really nice little paper when it’s done. Nothing earth shattering, but a useful contribution with some nifty graphs :).

I got a real shock yesterday when I remembered that in the next week I have to get my 7 year post-tenure review file ready. So somewhere in all this I have to right 10-15 pages of stuff about my teaching, research, and service. Ouch! I actually like the idea of the process, but meeting that deadline is going to hurt.

Currently listening to the “title” track from Antibalas’ Who Is This America. Man, that is a great song.

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WeatherGirl talked about weird issues she’s had with browsers, and I must say that I’ve found Firefox an excellent browser. The only rub for me is that the embedded RealPlayer in the BBC’s web sites doesn’t work right in Firefox, but does in Safari. Don’t know why, but it does push me to Safari occassionally. (Not that I dislike Safari, I just prefer Firefox.)

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