open the box

Pandora.com is an  incredible site that helps you discover new music. You tell it
the title of a song or name of an artist, and it will create a station
for you, starting from that selection. Pandora then plays a song from a similar artist that it thinks you’ll like, as it builds a custom net.radio station for you. The Long Tail Blog says,

"[T]hey
determine similarity not by what other people listen to but what their
small army of musicologists identify as related traits in the music
itself. You’ll get delightful stuff you never would have thought of."

I started with Soul coughing, discovered a band called
Gerling, heard an old TMBG song I’d somehow managed to never hear
over the years, and eventually heard a new band called The One AM Radio (which I LOVE, and never would have found on my own, which is the whole point of Pandora.) If you really like a band, there are links to Amazon or iTunes so you can buy the album, or explore more of their stuff on your own.

Pandora
gives you ten hours of free listening to try it out, and offers a year of service for thirty-six bucks. If pandora can stay honest, and keep
the music industry’s pay-for-play agenda out of the way, it could be an
amazing service.

(Thanks, Carsten!)

turn the page

Via Slashdot, I saw that the British Library has an online exhibit of some amazing works of literature, including manuscripts in the authors’ original hand, like Leonardo DaVinci, and Lewis Carroll. There are flash and non-flash interfaces, to serve users of varying bandwidths and preferences, and the images are simply amazing.

This is one of the greatest advantages of living in these times: I would almost certainly never get a chance to see any of these works in person, but The Internets bring them right into my home.

If you like this exhibit, you’ll probably like WikiSource and Project Gutenberg too.

yet another insult from the governator

This is crossposted to blogging.la.

In addition to countless lies, denying basic civil rights to gays and lesbians, and calling an unnecessary special election with powergrabs that masquerade as "reform," I present yet another reason Arnold Schwarzenegger makes me want to puke. Last week, while firefighters were battling the Topanga fire, the Governor flew in for a George Bush-esque photo-op, and several firemen say they were ordered to stand with him for the cameras.
It’s an outrageous insult to firefighters to force them to pose for a photo-op with this idiot, who is doing everything he can to silence their union with prop 75.

A few firefighters were bold enough to complain they were ordered to stand behind the governor against their will on the day of the news conference, KCAL 9’s Linda Breakstone reported. Seven more came forward Wednesday.
“We did not want to do it,” Los Angeles County firefighter Greg Alldredge said. “Then it came down as an order directly from above.”
Firefighters were "ordered and forced" to participate, Alldredge said. Rank-and-file firefighters were very displeased with "having to shake hands with somebody who really doesn’t support us.”
Schwarzenegger’s press secretary says "No one from the governor’s office ordered anyone to do anything.

Could it have come from his campaign office, and not his Sacramento office? I guess it could depend on what your definition of "office" is.

Updated: via comments, I see the Governor’s incredibly compassionate, thoughtful, appreciative response to the firefighters’ criticism:

Schwarzenegger later brushed off criticism of the stunt. He says everybody is ordered to do things at one point or another. He also pointed out that "as a matter of fact, in one of my movies, I played a firefighter."

It’s almost like the word "asshole" was invented specifically for him. He played a firefighter once in a movie, and we’re supposed to believe that fact is somehow relevant to anything.
Well, actually, it is. It shows how arrogant, out of touch, and clueless this coddled celebrity who’s playing governor actually is.

WWdN is in C|Net’s Top 100

Wow. According to C|Net, there are fourteen million blogs on The Internets . . . and their editors have selected WWdN for inclusion in their top 100.

I don’t usually care about things like this, because they’re so subjective, and it’s too easy to obsess over what lists I’m on or not on, and what my ranking is or isn’t, but the blogs on this list are all really fantstic. It’s a real honor to be included with them.

. . . I guess I’d better hurry up and get WWdN working again, huh?