What music do I listen to?

Well, I won’t tell you whether I actually own the ABBA Gold CD or that I might have ripped an old Ed Bruce LP (I know, that’s a double-whammy I-just-aged-myself statement, I mean how many people would write Ed Bruce and LP in one sentence?).  My taste is actually pretty diverse and I like a LOT of what plays on the radio today.  Here is what’s on my “What I’m Listening To” playlist:

<<playlist removed>>

If you’ve never heard of IMEEM, it’s a social media service that let’s you create playlists of music, videos, and photos.  You can listen to and upload full-length tracks!  I actually use it to discover new music, they are always recommending songs and I get recommendations based on the songs on my playlists.

Update: January 8, 2009

Well, IMEEM is no more.  They were bought out by MySpace.  They are suppose to be migrating IMEEM accounts over but so far it’s not quite the same experience.  I’ll check back periodically to see if it’s worth using.  In the meantime, I’ve started using Last.fm.  They don’t let you upload your own music but you create your own radio stations by specifying songs or artists and the station plays songs similar to them.  They limit play on the computer but the experience is pretty nice on the XBOX 360 which has support for Last.FM.

I also have discovered Pandora.  Like Last.FM you create ratio stations.  They have pretty amazing technology that matches songs and artists similar to the ones you select.  What’s cool is they tell you exactly why a song matches your selected criteria.  You can also read a lot about the song, artist or other stuff.  Pandora has a terrific Flash interface.  Last.FM does not allow you to pause.  You can only stop.  Pandora allows you to pause.  Pandora limits you to skipping 6 songs per hour per station it also has a limit of 40 hours per month.   The free service is ad supported or you can pay 99 cents for the rest of the month once you’ve reached the 40 hr limit. You can pay $36 for unlimited play for a year without ads.  Pandora FAQs are here.

I use to think  I preferred having an exact playlist of my favorite songs but I also loved discovering or re-discovering songs.  With the ability to tell  Pandora which songs I like (and get more replay) and tell  Pandora which songs I DON”T like (and thus remove them from playing again in that radio station), Pandora may have the best of all worlds.  It’s my #1 place for listening to music on the Internet for now.

Sample  Radio Station created by Pandora:

I selected Hall &  Oates and the next six songs that played in the station:

Journey – Who’s Crying Now
The  Police – Every Breath You Take
Dan Hartman – I Can Dream About You
The Doobie Brothers – What A Fool Believes
Fleetwood Mac – Dreams
Spandau Ballet – True

Not bad huh?

Why I blog

There are really three reasons why I blog.

1. I like writing down various events or thoughts in my life.   I get a feeling of closure once I have documented something that I wish to remember, would like to refer back to, or be able to share with others and link to. Basically, I do the blog for myself.
2. I like to give back to the development community.  When I've researched extensively a  problem I'm having coding, and I find the solution,  I publish it here in hopes that I might save someone with a similar problem some time.  For example, THIS post is #1 today, in Google search for the phrase "xcode breakpoint" which probably means that Google has decided it is very relevant and people are benefiting from it.
3. I like to give back to others.  Same as #2 but more on a personal than a professional level. THIS post is #1 in google as well for the phrase "Why music is important in our culture".  It is the post with the most comments.  People don't generally leave me a comment unless they REALLY got something out of a post.

I spend a lot of time searching the net as I'm sure many of you do.  Most of the content I read are not news site or commercial sites, no, most of them are personal sites and blogs.   I try to give back to that community since I'm an avid consumer of it.