Pandora radio review

From listening to Pandora

 lately:

The Good:

• I've discovered a number of new albums and songs that may become passionate favorites.
• Compared to other internet radio which will alternately play great and terrible music, at least I know what I'm listening to and can skip ahead.  That makes it worth the commercials.
• Music genres can also be very restrictive and false, listing artists instead of genres has provided a much better level of quality songs.  Additionally, you find more stuff from artists you already know that you may not have heard yet.  For artists with a wide catalog, this can be a real eye opener.

The Bad:

One major problem is that it almost excludes a whole genre of music: electronic, which has a lot of outros and intros.  These are long, repetitive strings of music that are there just to allow the DJ to beat-match two records before seamlessly switching over, often giving the impression of a never-ending song.  Frequently these intros and outros from singles and studio albums are included in radio stations who don't know any better.  A very great song might await you after a very dull intro, but you've already voted the song down or skipped it.  This can also be heard on non-singles albums, where overlapping intro-outro sequences abruptly cut off.

Additionally, I rarely listen to individual songs in Electronic music, and instead aim for whole sets or whole albums.  Favorite music selections among fans like me usually aren't focused on individual songs.  For this reason, Pandora is a great way to discover new music, but in terms of overall listening isn't my first choice.

Handling extremism

An excellent article on cult religious deprogramming applied to Muslim extremists.  This represents a peaceful and positive option for young people who would normally join the most hated group in America and much of the world.  It also thins the line between religious madness of dangerous cults like Jonestown with those of the 9/11 attacks.  Best of all, it takes away from what Martin Buber might have termed the otherness of what are basically angry young people.

Psychology of climate change

How do people handle something that is:

• supported by mountains of evidence by scientists all over the world
  
• very far away
• very dire
• probably inescapable?

With the help of some well-funded PR groups, we disbelieve that there's any problem at all.  Denial on a near-global scale.

Plugging a friend

[Edit: sadly both these sites are now offline]

• battll.com - "you have an opinion, defend it"
• snippettron.com for some cool computer tricks

Great Mac finds

• Unplug headphones, pause VLC or iTunes with Breakaway. Plug them back in and continue. I absolutely love this.
• A much more indpenedant twist on iTunes, DoubleTwist allows you to connect to many different music devices, import music from Youtube, and buy music from Amazon. Didn't function with my Palm TX device, but worked beautifully with my Blackberry and an old SanDisk player. (Available for Mac and Windows)
• Clear out all the extra install and language information with Mac applications using Monolingual. I've talked about this before but it turns out this is something you want to run every few months as software updates frequently bring with them thousands of unnecessary files. Also for space saving, don't forget Disk Inventory X.
• Note: this program is out of date except for Limewire/Frostwire and other iTunes share clones. OurTunes lets you download music from any iTunes share. Just go to an internet Cafe where someone's sharing and grab some tunes! (Available for Mac and Windows)

Thanks but I don't need a drummer

With people like Kid Beyond and Imogen Heap doing very similar one-person-band performances, this makes me wonder what bands of the future will look like.

I recommend just listening; the only reason to watch the rather dull videos are to see that these are remarkably complex and beautiful songs by just one person with an effects tool.

Musical find of the week: "Extrawelt"

Really enjoying this genre-bending set from an electronic music artist I'd never even heard of before today from Newmixes.com (scroll down a bit to get to the full set downloadable in MP3).   Very much reminds me of the "clickhop" genre: something inside electronica, downtempo, and IDM.

Ergonomics

Had been planning on writing an article on this for a while but Lifehacker has a great breakdown. The screen height, keyboard level, alignment, and posture are all very important.

See also: Carpel Tunnel Advice

Protect yourself from your landlord

• Get everything in writing - if its not written down, it didn't happen
  
• Look for positive reviews online
• Send all communications via certified mail

... and more.

Windows 7 wants to be Mac OS X

Although this will be old news for some of you, many aspects of Vista mirror Mac OS X.  From look and feel, included applications and functionality, all the way down to a new directory structure all made me think someone was trying pretty hard to be a Mac.  Windows 7 seemed to take it a step further and at least one Microsoft employee seems to concur. (thanks Silver)

Mafia Wars actually somewhat Mafia-like

I'm sure spammers justify their activities similar to how CEO Mark Pincus justifies starting his "Mafia Wars" company.  Paraphrasing Balzac: "Behind every great fortune there is a great crime." (thanks Kimberly)

My new favorite Wikipedia article

List of cats with fraudulent diplomas.

Update: I was linking to the discussion on this article and not the actual article, which is far more entertaining.

Glenn Beck doesn't do his homework

Evidently Beck is ripping on people to an audience of millions without even doing the courtesy of asking for comment.  Why should facts get in the way of a good story?

Cheney vs. Cheney

A withering but, as far as I can tell, accurate attack on Dick Cheney, suggesting most of all that his recent criticism of Obama's slow movement on Afghanistan is absurd given that his administration sat on their hands on the same issue for years.  I'm straining to see another side to this issue, but it seems here as complete lack of awareness.

It sort of reminds me of gay Republican senators attacking gays, which spawned this.