Just posted to Last.fm.  I am afraid that I am talking to myself there so I am posting my entry here as well.

Wow, the value of this site is starting to rear its head. It is a lot of fun to look at what I have been listening to since the last time I had to rebuild my iTunes library.

It has been about a year, but a while back, the hard drive that I used to keep my music collection got corrupted and I had to go to backups and rebuild my music collection. Unfortunately, as in many cases, my backup wasn’t complete and I lost a number of files.

That was the point when my music listening statistics began again.

The great thing about this site is how it confirms some beliefs and denies others. For instance, I knew that I liked Coldplay, but according to the stats here, they are my number one band. I would have assumed that John Mayer would have been number one.

All these stats get me thinking. Now, I wonder what the numbers would look like if I combined my wife’s stats with mine. I can assure you that John Mayer would win in a landslide. Even more interesting, if I added my kids, High School Musical, Jonas Brothers, and Miley Cyrus/Hannah Montana would show up with alarming frequency

La la la la, I am blogging…writing on the internets. Putting my thoughts out there for all to read.  Everyone look at me.  I am a blogger.  Hooray! Bloggity, bloggity, blogging.  Engaging in community online.  Sharing myself!  Transparency and blogging hip hip hooray.  And, you are reading, hooray!

I just started using the social music site last.fm. You can check out my page! They have a journal/blogging system on the site that allows you to post entries about your thoughts on music. I posted something there, and I was afraid that the post would just disappear into the ether so I am going to post it here too!

I have heard about this site for years now and I haven’t felt like jumping in, but now.. it is a Friday, and I just bought Coldplay’s Viva La Vida, and music is on my mind so now is as good a time as any to jump in and do some social music.

Shuffle on iTunes

I have iTunes set to shuffle on a playlist I call Super Mix. I put all the albums I love in there and turn on shuffle. Sometimes I have this creepy feeling that iTunes shuffle has a personality and makes weird picks. Today, iTunes is in love with Coldplay. It won’t stop playing them. I hit the next track button and then it gets stuck on The Cure. I am trying to get to the magic number of tracks on last.fm so that I can see trends in my listening and all the other fun stuff this site does and I want the trends to be correct. iTunes, quit screwing me.

New Coldplay

The latest Coldplay album is a departure from its first three albums. Where the first ones were sparse and patient in bringing the full band to bear. This album is adventurous and more in your face. It has a definite flavor of 80’s new wave and is deliciously english. I am still in that strange honeymoon phase with this album, and it is a bit of an acquired taste. I am only now starting my third listen and the songs (itunes just played another Coldplay song… what the…) are starting to grow on me.

It seems very evident that Coldplay has a lot more money to throw at an album because every song is crammed with instruments, like I said earlier. A real departure from the sparse patient sound of their earlier albums, Parachutes, A Rush of Blood to the Head, and X&Y.

I am interested to see whether or not this new album will grow on me as their first three have (iTunes just played another The Cure song… this is weird…).

This little gem of a scene from Tommy Boy came up in conversation today at the office. It always makes me laugh.

Ok, I have this dinosaur of a computer at the house, and I have made it a dual boot computer so that I can use Linux.  A while back I got it running and used it for a while until Ubuntu came out with a new version.  I installed it and it crashed every time I booted it.  It was quite frustrating.  Ubuntu is not ready for mass adoption.

Now Ubuntu has come out with its latest version, 7.10 and I upgraded yet again.  This time it is a lot more stable on this computer, but it has taken me numerous tries to get wireless networking up and running.  Now, I am not a networking genius, but I have amassed at least some skillz, and it took all the tricks I have learned to get this computer back on the internets.

I am sure that if I wired this computer directly to the router with cat5 I am sure it would have worked immediately.  But, there is no way to run a wire from my router to this computer.  That means I have to use a USB Linksys wireless dongle thingy (yes, that is the technical name).

Ubuntu supports the USB thingy, but for some reason I had to unplug and re-plug and then manually configure it in order to make it work.  What the???  I would recommend this OS to more people if the networking was a little easier.  Most people need to be able to just plug in a peripheral and have it work.  If it doesn’t, most people will just give up and go back to Windows.

Here is how I finally configured it and made it work.  I switched over to manual configuration.  I typed in the ssid for my access point and then turned on DHCP and it finally got an IP address and started working.

So, if you are using Ubuntu and a Linksys Wireless-B USB network card this is how you can make it work

Today is the release date for the newest version of Firefox, but if you want it right now (at the time of the creation of this entry…) you can’t get it. The server is down.

Mozilla recently dubbed today the Download Mozilla Day, for the purpose of making Firefox the most downloaded piece of software within a 24 hour period.

This isn’t available yet, but man does it look sweet. I would love to get rid of Explorer on my Blackjack.

Apple has just upgraded the iPhone to 3G and really upgraded the price to a low $199. That sounds pretty good to me. The new phone also sports GPS and longer battery life. I would like one please.