Radio Free Arcadia
I know not too many people read my blog, and I'm only keeping it up for a small group of loyal friends (thanks guys and gals) but if you never click on any links I post up here, please try the link I'm putting up now, I swear to you, you will not be sorry you did. Steve told me about this at the movies and I only tried it today. Keeping in mind that I love music and it can do things to me that noise just shouldn't be able to do, and also keeping in mind that I (perhaps ignorantly) believe in the internet as the thing which will change humanity as an organism forever:
Pandora
This is another part of the internet that I feel is good. I don't mean good as in nice or fun, but good as in really good for you, like health food or sunshine. Wikipedia, Firefox, Google, Blogger, WUnderground, and all the other free programs that just do it, not really for the cash (or at least I'd like to think) but for the people. The internet cannot be owned, controlled, or destroyed. The internet as an organism is a growing, evolving being which has formed a symbiosis with the human race. We use it everyday, it needs our input to grow and feed us in return. I enjoy programs which want to make the internet free and damn the torpedoes about what the "man" says, they bring it to the masses.
Pandora is a program like that. Streaming music. Imagine an internet radio of over 10 million songs that keeps growing. Now imagine that radio commercial free, uninterrupted, without loading times or buffers, and the best part? It's tailored to you and your likes and dislikes. It's part of the music genome project (something I heard about a while back but didn't pay too much attention to at the time) in which music lovers and technophiles look through thousands of songs to identify musical "genes" like call-to-call vocals, dry snares, emotional lyrics, deep grooves, wailing guitars, strange musical progressions, and the like. Like animals, each song has a unique genetic signature and those help Pandora find more suggestions for you. You create (you can have 100) a radio station streaming to you by typing in a favorite artist or song. Then Pandora looks at the genetic fingerprint of the song and suggests a cousin of the song, that is, it shares some musical genes with the first song, but pushes out into the musical genepool a bit.
Here's where it's different from internet radio. You vote on the suggested song, thumbs up, it plays, thumbs down, it tries another cousin. If you keep the song (or do nothing) it will then try something new in the family tree (giving you names, artists, albums, and often artwork along the way) each time extrapolating through the unique genetic signatures of the song. The beauty is, the more you listen, the better it gets to making you a custom radio set. It streams, so you can't rewind or replay, but you can pause and forward to new tracks. If you come across a song you like, but you don't feel fits with the type of music you want at the time, you can create a new station off of that one song. You can even help it along by adding in more artists and songs you like to help it see new genetic elements you might like. Pandora will even tell you some of the genetics of the song if you ask it why it chose that song.
The whole project is a lot of fun and you can even email them with obscure CDs, unknown bands, and all sorts of details about what you'd like to hear and they'll then plug that information into the database for more songs. It's a great thing to see tailor-made new music so get out there and listen.
What's going on with me lately you ask (well I'm glad you did)? I survived the hell week last week and now I'm bracing for the flood of doom that is finals. I had a test today and a review for virology so that really took it out of me and I was quite low for a while today, but I picked up a little with my drug of choice. I finish on the 19th and I'll most likely be in Dallas on the 21st, so that should get me out of some Austin traffic. I still need to take Virology, Physics, and History so it should be fun and by fun I mean very, very painful. I still need to give out some more gifts and I got one this morning: Nick and Erica got me a rabbit! I was quite excited and can't wait to use it on some unsuspecting wine bottle. I'm trying to be good to myself while finals are going on because I'm normally so bad with lack of sleep, nicotine, and caffeine. I really do a number on the system, so hopefully eating better and walking/ biking will help me.
Power to the oligarchy...that's you
Pandora
This is another part of the internet that I feel is good. I don't mean good as in nice or fun, but good as in really good for you, like health food or sunshine. Wikipedia, Firefox, Google, Blogger, WUnderground, and all the other free programs that just do it, not really for the cash (or at least I'd like to think) but for the people. The internet cannot be owned, controlled, or destroyed. The internet as an organism is a growing, evolving being which has formed a symbiosis with the human race. We use it everyday, it needs our input to grow and feed us in return. I enjoy programs which want to make the internet free and damn the torpedoes about what the "man" says, they bring it to the masses.
Pandora is a program like that. Streaming music. Imagine an internet radio of over 10 million songs that keeps growing. Now imagine that radio commercial free, uninterrupted, without loading times or buffers, and the best part? It's tailored to you and your likes and dislikes. It's part of the music genome project (something I heard about a while back but didn't pay too much attention to at the time) in which music lovers and technophiles look through thousands of songs to identify musical "genes" like call-to-call vocals, dry snares, emotional lyrics, deep grooves, wailing guitars, strange musical progressions, and the like. Like animals, each song has a unique genetic signature and those help Pandora find more suggestions for you. You create (you can have 100) a radio station streaming to you by typing in a favorite artist or song. Then Pandora looks at the genetic fingerprint of the song and suggests a cousin of the song, that is, it shares some musical genes with the first song, but pushes out into the musical genepool a bit.
Here's where it's different from internet radio. You vote on the suggested song, thumbs up, it plays, thumbs down, it tries another cousin. If you keep the song (or do nothing) it will then try something new in the family tree (giving you names, artists, albums, and often artwork along the way) each time extrapolating through the unique genetic signatures of the song. The beauty is, the more you listen, the better it gets to making you a custom radio set. It streams, so you can't rewind or replay, but you can pause and forward to new tracks. If you come across a song you like, but you don't feel fits with the type of music you want at the time, you can create a new station off of that one song. You can even help it along by adding in more artists and songs you like to help it see new genetic elements you might like. Pandora will even tell you some of the genetics of the song if you ask it why it chose that song.
The whole project is a lot of fun and you can even email them with obscure CDs, unknown bands, and all sorts of details about what you'd like to hear and they'll then plug that information into the database for more songs. It's a great thing to see tailor-made new music so get out there and listen.
What's going on with me lately you ask (well I'm glad you did)? I survived the hell week last week and now I'm bracing for the flood of doom that is finals. I had a test today and a review for virology so that really took it out of me and I was quite low for a while today, but I picked up a little with my drug of choice. I finish on the 19th and I'll most likely be in Dallas on the 21st, so that should get me out of some Austin traffic. I still need to take Virology, Physics, and History so it should be fun and by fun I mean very, very painful. I still need to give out some more gifts and I got one this morning: Nick and Erica got me a rabbit! I was quite excited and can't wait to use it on some unsuspecting wine bottle. I'm trying to be good to myself while finals are going on because I'm normally so bad with lack of sleep, nicotine, and caffeine. I really do a number on the system, so hopefully eating better and walking/ biking will help me.
Power to the oligarchy...that's you
posted by wcyarbrough at 8:10 PM
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