Sunday, May 31 gave rise to...

Fear and Fashion in the Cold War

Read Full Post »

Friday, May 29 gave rise to...

It looks like corpsepaint.


Music producer Phil Spector sits in a courtroom for his sentencing in Los Angeles, Friday, May 29, 2009. Spector has been sentenced to 19 years to life in prison for the murder of actress Lana Clarkson. (AP Photo/Jae C. Hong, Pool)
...

('death' metal + music industry + famous music producer jokes)
(pics of black metal dudes)
(jokes about using the 'wall of sound' to climb out of prison)
(etc)

Read Full Post »

Thursday, May 28 gave rise to...

Use shell-fm for fun* and profit*

*where fun is great utility
*where profit is a rich storehouse of otherwise unsaveable audio tracks

I was supposed to post this about 8 months ago. Anyway, being that Last.fm was recently accused of handed over a load of non-anonymized data to the RIAA, I thought it would be fitting to post this info on basically abusing leveraging Last.fm through a combination of the shell-fm client and a program called tee. This is essentially me linking to someone else's information, but I put it in a few useful contexts. Click through to read the full post.

You should read this if any of the following apply:

  • you appreciate free music, especially via some cool linux hacks
  • you want to passively generate a potentially massive music library in mp3 format
  • to not only listen to, but also simultaneously download great potential mixtape songs that you've never heard before
  • somewhat random, yet full access to the entire secure last.fm catalogue of mp3s
  • to become part of a tiny minority of power users leveraging a great service for a novel purpose

Many of us listen to enormous quantities of music these days. Those of us who are smart and cautious tend to back this music up on external hard drives. Sometimes, multiple redundant hard drives. Some of us are smart, but not cautious. We have plenty of music, but it isn't stored with the worst case scenario in mind. My hard drives crashed in September, right after I moved 500 miles away from home, to live in Columbus, Ohio. Shortly thereafter, I found a hack here that allowed me to re-generate my music library using my last.fm profile data and the last.fm service. No hard work necessary. Listen to music; the collection builds itself.

About a year ago, I wrote about shell-fm, a lightweight Last.FM client for Linux. It's still pretty much the best thing going when it comes to console-based Last.FM clients. Being that it's just a little console app, it's a lot less bloated than the official last.fm app. And personally, I think it's better looking.

The command follows. There's a far more sophisticated version of this available at the external link now, that actually tags the file as it downloads. I suggest you go and get that one.
extern = tee "/home/noah/sapphires/%a - %t.mp3" | aoss madplay -Q -
With this, I generated a gigabyte of music over 3 days of casual listening. Over 300 songs, with many of them among my favorite songs. How else would I get this so easily?

Why would you want this?
  • You can regenerate a music library from music you've already scrobbled, but might not have access to.
  • You're like me in that when someone asks you to make them a mixtape, you never know what to put on it because your musical taste is so broad. Your Last.fm profile is pretty well fleshed out, so just run shell-fm with this script for as long as you want the mixtape to be, on the library station for your username, and then burn the mp3s to disc.
  • See above for more reasons.

Where this doesn't work: with filenames that have special characters. Artists who have filenames like GZA/Genius won't get written to disk because it confuses tee. tee interprets this as a directory instead of a filename because of the slash. Here's an example of a bad songname: Heard Iron Bug, "They're Coming To Town". The quotes in the song name also confuse tee. This may be corrected in the newer version discussed briefly above and linked to throughout this post, but I haven't finished testing it out yet.

Lastly, in light of the Last.fm user data scare, I feel I should mention Libre.fm, an open alternative to Last.fm. It's in the alpha stage of testing and will even import your user data via this scraping utility.

Read Full Post »

Potential For Talking Animals Tapped Through Giving Mice A Human Language Gene?

Researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany, have now genetically engineered a strain of mice whose FOXP2 gene has been swapped out for the human version. Svante Paabo, in whose laboratory the mouse was engineered, promised several years ago that when the project was completed, “We will speak to the mouse.”

He did not promise that the mouse would say anything in reply, doubtless because a great many genes must have undergone evolutionary change to endow people with the faculty of language, and the new mouse was gaining only one of them. So it is perhaps surprising that possession of the human version of FOXP2 does in fact change the sounds that mice use to communicate with other mice, as well as other aspects of brain function.
{see also: voice recording of odb audition as mr. ed for cancelled 'mr. ed' remake}

Read Full Post »

stolen bronze sculpture of a centaur and a snake in battle.

Read Full Post »

Wednesday, May 27 gave rise to...

N. Korea Literally Threatens "Unimaginable Merciless Punishment" lol

"Those who have provoked us will face unimaginable merciless punishment," the statement on the official Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) said, blaming Washington and Seoul for the latest turn of events.

Read Full Post »

They Agree That the new Pixar is Good, But...

Village Voice:

The first 10 minutes of Up are flawless; the final 80 minutes, close enough. (Though, note this: Do not see Up in 3-D. It's inessential to the tale and altogether distracting.)


New York Magazine:
By all means, see Up in its 3-D incarnation: The cliff drops are vertiginous, and the scores of balloons--bunched into the shape of one giant balloon--are as pluckable as grapes.

Read Full Post »

The player takes on the role of PaRappa, a paper-thin rapping dog. PaRappa is Japanese for "Paper Thin".

(read about Masaya Matsuura.)
(definitely check out vib-ribbon.)

Read Full Post »

Tuesday, May 26 gave rise to...

brief moratorium; back soon.

Read Full Post »

Monday, May 25 gave rise to...

Read Full Post »

Sunday, May 24 gave rise to...

Read Full Post »

Saturday, May 23 gave rise to...

"this record is going to mimic the same format, but it's going to be for an album. So you are going to get an infinite album."

Read Full Post »

Friday, May 22 gave rise to...

Read Full Post »

"Maybe if I get a perm and change my name, I can pass for Iranian. Then I'd reclaim the hatred my forefathers worked so long to cultivate."

Read Full Post »

"This greylag goose was captured by wildlife photographer Brian McFarlane in a manoeuvre known as whiffling"

Read Full Post »

Thursday, May 21 gave rise to...

"the Three Wolf Moon T-Shirt gave me a +10 resistance to energy attacks, +8 Strength... and I have successfully solved 7 crimes in my city"

Read Full Post »

"the only person i wouldnt really mind being raped by is johnny depp. im not emplying i want to be raped btw. i take rape seriously."

Read Full Post »

Wednesday, May 20 gave rise to...

Read Full Post »

Tuesday, May 19 gave rise to...

Stop Smoking That Fucking Sherm.

A Bakersfield father is accused of biting out one of the eyes of his small child and similarly mutilating the other eye, leaving the child blind.

After attacking the child, 34-year-old Angel Vidal Mendoza Sr. quickly left his apartment in a wheelchair, entered a backyard of a nearby vacant home and attacked his own legs with an ax, severely injuring himself, Bakersfield police reported.

The child, 4-year-old Angelo Mendoza Jr., later told police, "My daddy ate my eyes."

Read Full Post »

Monday, May 18 gave rise to...

The head of the Sri Lankan army Lt Gen Sarath Fonseka said the military had defeated the rebels and "liberated the entire country".

Read Full Post »

Sunday, May 17 gave rise to...

"Anybody that has time to sit and type at they computer might be gay to me." - Juelz Santana

Read Full Post »

Friday, May 15 gave rise to...

Read Full Post »

Thursday, May 14 gave rise to...

Read Full Post »

Wednesday, May 13 gave rise to...

be back in a bit

Read Full Post »

Tuesday, May 12 gave rise to...

ms america

An emotional Miss California Carrie Prejean kept her crown on Tuesday, and the beauty queen stood by her opposition to gay marriage and defended posing for topless photos.

Read Full Post »

Monday, May 11 gave rise to...

"JAPANESO: your open honesty is surely a sign of courage for i could not have broken such a reverent silence of understanding"

Read Full Post »

Sunday, May 10 gave rise to...

"I'm honoured to be taking over the fast for the next three days," the founder of the Virgin Group said in a statement on his blog.

Read Full Post »

Friday, May 8 gave rise to...

"Three squares a day and this spiffy outfit, look at all this bling,"

Read Full Post »

Thursday, May 7 gave rise to...

"is there any irony in that an old rich black woman is gonna pay for my young hispanic ass to get some chicken from a white confederate colonel?"

Read Full Post »

Monday, May 4 gave rise to...

Hell is real. It's a highly individual and deeply private place. Most times you'd never know a man was there if he couldn't tell you.

Read Full Post »