Update…
I had to modify the original script for Myth 0.20. You can find my updated script here. (Right click and choose Save As…)

I then turned google loose on a new search: “music from 24 season 1“. Results were mildly better. On a whim, I decided to click on the link to the IMDB. That’s the “Internet MOVIE Database”. Apparently they catalog TV shows as well. I clicked on the first episode and searched the links on the left and sure enough, there was a soundtrack link. IMDB gave me a list of all songs played during the episode! Sweet!

I proceded to open up iTunes and go to the iTunes Music Store to get an audible confirmation of the track in question. Bingo! One simple click and the song was a downloadin’ and on to my iPod.

By the way, the song in question is Christiansands by Tricky. Check it out, it has some funkyness to it.

Another neat feature of the internet is the totally kick ass website Pandora.com. Simply punch in an artist or a song and it will play songs for you which are similar to the artist or song you entered.

The Scientist
Some Beatles song
Stir It Up
The Sweater Song (Sam joined on guitar and someone picked up the bass and jammed with them)

TMg played a bunch of their old stuff and scattered in some new songs off of their new CD, which everyone who attended got a free copy of.

I began thinking about how I have listened to music in the past. When I first started listening to music, I listened to the radio and MTV. Radio and MTV play, what I thought at the time, a random set of songs. (I realized later that radio and MTV play songs based on what record companies pay them to play). Once I got sick of hearing the same 10 songs every 2 hours on the popular rock station, I started to buy CD’s and listening to music on a per-album basis. Now I no longer had the “randomness” of the radio, but I now had the control over what I wanted to listen to.

When Napster first came out, it provided people (and myself) the opportunity to download the songs that they like. No longer did we have to purchase an entire album just to get the one song that we like. We just searched, downloaded (and waited, because we only had 56k modems), and listened to the songs we liked. Now I had a playlist consisting of a few dozen tracks on Winamp, but listening to them in order got boring and sometimes I never got to the end of the playlist. Enter random play.

Faster computers, bigger hard drives, and faster internet connections helped grow my digital music collection until it became almost unmanageable by Winamp. Winamp 3 added a Library which provided a way to easilly call up any song or artist you wanted to listen to. You could still put your whole playlist on random and listen as Winamp played songs based off of a psuedo-random number. Interesting for a while, but you never had control over what was going to play next.

This is where iTunes and Party Shuffle come in. Party shuffle has 3 options for you to tweak. The number of songs to queue up, the playlist to pull songs from, and the most important one, the ability to play “higher rated songs more often.” I utilize this last option almost exclusively. Now I get a randomized playlist of my favorite tracks and every once and a while, Party Shuffle will pop in a song which I have not rated. Now I don’t know what is going to play next and every once and a while, I get a song that I haven’t heard for a while. This is very much like the early days of radio for me. (Plus, if I really want to modify the upcomming tracklist, I can do so. This is especially useful when I want to hear more from a particular artist.)

I have recently realized one shortcomming, which was pointed out by my favorite online radio station, Radio Paradise. Tracks are still chosen at random. On Radio Paradise, “Each hour of music is carefully blended together to flow smoothly between different musical styles & genres – just like real DJs used to do on FM.”

My musical tastes are really all over the place. Hearing Ricky Skaggs’ Rocky Top followed by Watching Me Fall by The Cure followed by Mother and Child Reunion by Paul Simon doesn’t really flow together. What Party Shuffle needs is a few more options and an updated song selection algorithm. Here is my vision:

Music files have a genre associated with it. Certain genres are similar to other genres (Indie Rock, Alternate Rock, Singer/Songwriter). Party Shuffle 2 should blend songs according to genres which are similar to one another. What else to songs have in common. Some songs are fast paced and some are slower. iTunes can even calculate Beats Per Minute. So why not Shuffle songs on some sort of a sine curve, playing a couple of slower paced songs which build up to faster paced songs. Add this to the current Party Shuffle and you would be enjoying the music you like the most, whith random un-rated songs thrown in there for kicks. Musical genres would cycle so that you hear similar artists and songs which gradually progress to other styles. And you would also have a progression from chilled out/slower songs to more upbeat/faster paced songs.

Modest Mouse
I saw Modest Mouse at the Eagles Ballroom last Saturday night. The opening bands were alright, but Modest Mouse were rockin’. They pumped out the big radio hits off of “Good News …” within the first 4 songs, which I thought was kinda cool. This left them the remaining of the show to mix up the slower paced songs and kept us wondering which song would be the closer and the encore. I felt old. I commented that I was happy that the entire high school graduating class of 2006 was able to show up. Holy Cow! I think that I saw at most 10 people of legal drinking age.

Random Linkage

• 300 essential fonts for designers. And they are FREE.
• A-maze-ing CSS.
• Leafpad a very lightweight text editor for Gnome. < -- Donnie, check this one out.

Site Update
I fixed the missing background in the comments section.

I also added a bit of css code that I saw on Ticketmasters site. If you hover or select the search box, you will see a blue “selection” border just like the highlighted widgets on OS X.

I came across a little program called Sizzling Keys which brings iTunes controls to your fingertips. You can set any of the basic iTunes functions to a keyboard shortcut. It also features a searching function which is similar to quicksilver.

I also learned two tricks in OS X today. The first is screen shot taking. Pressing Command-Shift-3 will take a screenshot of the entire screen (complete with camera shutter sound). Pressing Command-Shift-4 will allow you to select the region that you want to capture. Both place the screen capture in a pdf file on the desktop.

The other thing really isnt useful, but in Expose, holding the Shift key while pressing an shortcut key will make Expose animate the windows in slow motion. Pretty neat.

Finally, the UWM Panthers beat Butler tonight to claim their 3rd straight Horizon League Championship. UWM will now host the conference tournament at the US Cellular Arena.

Ben, you need to get your weblog back up and running!

Site Update
Redid the photo’s section using Original and added a few galleries. I can’t seem to figure out how to modify the gallery date using the info.txt file

Music
I recently discovered a band called Travis, and more precisely the 12 Memories album. The album starts out a little brash or punkish but chills out (and gets better!) as the album goes on. My favorite track is No. 10, “Happy To Hang Around” which features my favorite lyric on the album, which is also the chorus

And I’ll never get into your heart
Though I don’t even want to start
I’ll never get into your heart
I’m just happy to hang around

Travis and Keane have been surprises for me as I anxiously await something fresh from Coldplay.