2004-12-15

I am certified 37% evil

according to "The Sect of Homokaasu" website, which, incidentially, is also the home of the "Kill everyone project". Quite tasteless actually - but then again, I like that kind of humor and killed a couple myself };-> Because of that total harddisc crash (a RAID system no less!) while I have been away cycling all my mp3 music collection was lost. I'm currently in the process of re-ripping all the CDs. I'm currently at ~60GBs again. This time I've switched to Ogg Vorbis as my audio format. Unlike mp3 it's unemcumbered by software patents while at the same time offering better audio quality with better compression rates. It's not as ubiquitous as mp3s yet, but it's getting there with some hardware players (DvD players, portable players etc) already supporting it. During the ripping and cataloguing of all those CDs I've stumbled across these two very cool websites: Musicplasma is a very artsy website that lets you visually navigate through a network of bands where close proximity between two nodes indicates musical similarity. (read: if you enter your favourite band as a starting point you'll get bands that are musically alike) AudioScrobbler comes as a plugin for your favourite music player and monitors your playing choices. What you get in return is a list of "musical neighbours" of people also using the service with similar musical tastes like your own. Kinda like Amazons "people who bought X also bought Y" service - only better ;-) It also produces a list of recommondations after you've used it for a while. Very good! And it's also open, meaning everyone has access to their database and code.

1 comment:

  1. Talking about software patents...

    Have you started the Adobe Acrobat Reader version 6.0 recently? They list 47 (in words: forty seven!!!) patents on their splash screen. For a fucking reader software. That's sick...

    Capella

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