Posts filed under 'Technology'
Just wanted to share a recent find on the Net. If you are looking for a good mix of music, or to find music similar to an artist you already like, try Pandora or Last.fm. Pandora has one of the best Flash menus/navigation that I’ve ever seen. It is simple, yet very functional so that the most novice Internet user can find it easy to use. Panodra knows what to play based on the Music Genome Project. Last.fm takes a little getting used to and isn’t nearly as usable as Pandora, but provides more features and a history of what you listen to. It also provides recommendations (like Netflix). The more you listen, the better your recommendations get. Last.fm gets their data from other users tagging each song or artist and from Audioscrobbler data. I’ve been using Last.fm more lately because I like that I can more easily manipulate what I want to listen to. The only big drawback to Last.fm is the fact that you have to download and run a separate player to hear any music. You only need a Flash-enabled browser to use Pandora.
So obviously, as the post title says, these services really help you to find new music based on the tastes that you already have. This can be good and bad, in my opinion. These services will help you find music based on what you already like. However, some of the best music I’ve found was by accident or someone else telling me to listen to it and it was COMPLETELY different than what I was used to.
July 6th, 2006
I can’t believe this wasn’t dugg yet. I found this on del.icio.us this morning, and thought it looked really cool. The Wordpress forums have a tagging mechanism that can be helpful, but that limits the scope to Wordpress only. I’m sure there are other forums that are tag based, but this is the first I’ve seen.
From the blogoforum website:
Instead of fixed list of forums / subforums you are allowed to post - freely classify your message using keywords, or tags.
Collaborate. Categorize other’s messages. Found a message with misleading categories? Give it its place.
Say Goodbye to long threads. Any post can be a starting point for a discussion.
read more | digg story
June 27th, 2006
Ok, so it’s been 290 days since my last post - sorry if you’ve been waiting with bated breath. 
Anyway, I just upgraded to WordPress 2.0.2 and it seems to be much more polished and advanced than 1.5 and I wanted to get the word out. I showed it to Trey and it didn’t take long for him to upgrade as well. Something that came out of this, however, was that I had to sign up for a WordPress.com account to get an API key to enable the Akismet plugin so that I can could stop getting moderation e-mails from comment spam. A byproduct of registering with WP.com is that a blog is created. At first, I thought I would just leave it empty, but I started messing around with the “features” that come with it and I was truly impressed. So, I might start using my new blog for other purposes - stay tuned on that.
I have 4 old drafts on this blog that I want to get rid of because I know I’ll never finish them. Here they are in a nutshell:
- I upgraded my server from ClarkConnect 3.0 to 3.1 - it was a smooth upgrade with some good benefits, but I think I already need to upgrade again!
- I am using Vonage for my home phone service - it has its drawbacks, the quality isn’t the greatest, but I’ve cut my phone bill in half.
- 2 movie reviews - Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind, which is another great Miyazaki anime film. I gave it a 7/10. Saints and Soldiers, which is a fairly good WWII film that I gave a 7/10 as well.
That should just about cover it. I’ve seen a lot of movies since then and later I’ll post a quick list of what I’ve seen through Netflix that I think deserves to be mentioned.
April 26th, 2006
Google has FINALLY gotten its act together and has released an official toolbar for Google. I’ve already installed it and it works wonderfully. Now I have form spell checking, form auto filling, autolink (street addresses to maps, and more), and all of the other usual features I’ve seen on the IE toolbar.
This was announced through the Google blog and you can go straight to the download here.
July 8th, 2005
I finally made the painless upgrade of my blog from Wordpress 1.2 to 1.5. Obviously, the look to this site has hardly changed because the theme I was using before, Kubrick, was made the default theme for 1.5. I still want to change up the look a little, so I don’t it isn’t the same as everyone else, but it might be a while. I also still need to add my del.icio.us links and Netflix RSS feeds.
Kudos to the Wordpress team for making this so easy!
July 4th, 2005
It was announced a few days ago that Ubuntu released the latest version (5.04) of their Linux distribution, codenamed Hoary Hedgehog. I was currently using the previous version (4.10 and named Warty Warthog) and figured I would have to download the ISO and do some type of upgrade or reinstall altogether. But to my suprise, as I was reading the release notes, I saw that I could just upgrade while I was running Ubuntu.
All I had to do was change my apt repositories to point to hoary instead of warty, then perform a couple other simple steps. I thought this was surely too easy to be true, but decided to try it anyway. AND IT WORKED!!! All I had to do was answer a few questions during the upgrade and they all had to do with upgrading software that had configuration files. This was actually really nice because it would let you use the new config file, your old one, see the difference between the two, or skip the package upgrade. In all, I think the total time to upgrade took about 30 minutes.
Now I think Ubuntu is pretty much sealed as my distribution of choice for a desktop operating system. It is very easy to use, has all the software you could ever want, and is very easy to upgrade. If you haven’t tried Ubuntu, and you are either new to linux or an old pro, please try it now. You won’t be sorry.
April 10th, 2005
I have been getting up the courage for over a month now to make the move and switch over to my newly upgraded server OS. So, if things look or act funny or broken, they should be fixed soon. If you notice something strange, drop me a comment below.
The very first thing I did was, of course, bring my blog back online. That actually didn’t take nearly as long as I expected. My database, which was running under MySQL 3.23 ran just fine under MySQL 4.1, so no problems there. I also had to upgrade my photo gallery, but that wasn’t a problem either. The only big things left to do is to move over my awstats logs and set up webdav on apache. Gee, I hope I’m not giving away too much info on my system!
I’ve got 4 movie reviews in my queue, and I hope to cram those out this Easter weekend. Until then…
March 24th, 2005
Just thought I’d post this quick note about a site I found called Blogmap. It’s a free service that will let you see who has a blog near you, or browse for blogs in a particular location. It is very similar to A2B, but Blogmap will give you a little picture of where you are at (and possibly, who’s around you) or a little button (now under my Cooperation section) that will take you to a map of where you are and who’s blogging around you. The only caveat with this is that other people have to submit their blogs through the site in order for their blog to show up on the maps. So, what are you waiting for? Submit yours today!
March 7th, 2005
Since this blog is movie-centric, I thought it should be noted that Google now does move-based searches. Basically, just type in “movie:” proceeded by your zip code (to find movies playing at theatres near you), an actor, a movie title, a quote from a movie, or anything else, and you’ll get special results relating to movies that relate to your search string. Each result comes with an average movie rating for each movie based on reviews on the Internet. If you click the movie title, you’ll get a page that lists all of the reviews it takes into account and has very simple Gmail-like navigation and filtering. Go to their blog post to find out more info on how to leverage this new searching power.
March 2nd, 2005
I know I just posted something Google related, but this has to be mentioned. Google just released Google Maps, which I think is probably the coolest online map service on the Net! But, what else would you expect from Google, right? It does all of the things that most map services do - maps and directions. But, what sets it apart is the interface and the integration with search. At any point you are looking at a map, you can do a Google Local search by clicking on Local Search at the top, where it will find the closest 10 businesses relating to your search.
Take a tour of google maps here to learn about all you can do with Google’s new offering.
February 9th, 2005
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