The Music I Love: After complaining about Pandora's music recommendations last Saturday (some readers find Pandora works just fine for them, BTW), I decided to try another tool called Last.fm recommended by reader Ed Dowding. It's a lot more work, but I really like the design, and the early results are more promising. Last.fm not only recognized Trespassers William, it gave me a list of other fans, their rankings
of all the band's music, and some other groups that members have
'tagged' with the same identifiers (e.g. for Trespassers William:
female vocalists, singer-songwriters, and 'shoegaze', which apparently
is a genre). When you sign up you get your own page, which lets you
chat with other fans and set up 'groups' around common interests. It
also sets up several types of custom 'radio stations' that play tracks
that it thinks you might like. If you get the iTunes plugin, the site
will monitor and log the music you play, listing your favourite groups
and songs each week and cumulative to date. When you've logged enough,
it will identify 'neighbours', members whose music tastes correlate
closely with your own, and let you play a 'radio station' of their
favourite music. The site has two major weaknesses: You can only listen
music that Last.fm has the rights to 'broadcast' (substantial, but
frustratingly limited when you get away from the mainstream); and the
track identifier needs to be made 'smarter' (type 'the' in front of a
song name and it thinks it's a different song, and even using lower
case creates a 'different' song in its listings than mixed case).
Here's my page, with a third of my iTunes music captured so far. The premium 'subscription' is quite appealing for 3€ a month -- most notably it would create a 'radio station' of my favourite music that readers of my blog could tune to while they're reading.
Blog About Women Musicians: Speaking of music, womanfolk is a great blog that specializes in news and music samples by great women singer-songwriters.
Why This Blog Will Never Win an Award: I'm honoured to have been nominated once again for a Koufax
award (best writing on a 'progressive' blog). The problem for me is
that only 5-10% of my articles are about progressive political and
economic issues. I've been nominated for a Canadian blog award (but
only 2% of my articles are about Canadian matters), and several
business blog awards (perhaps 20% of my posts are business related). I
don't know if there's an award for environmental blogs, but I wouldn't
win it either, since I don't give readers the one critical thing that
all award-winning blogs need to provide: reassurance.
Ecoblogs like WorldChanging and TreeHugger, in addition to having
multiple writers, take a very upbeat, "we're gonna beat this thing",
techno-positive approach to the subject, not the "carry that weight"
grim assessment of the chances of all our efforts actually saving the
world that characterizes my blog. In my much-cited list of what blog
readers want, at the bottom of the right sidebar of my blog, I
deliberately chose to omit reassurance
-- that they're doing the right thing(s), that they're not alone in
their opinions and feelings, that the problems in the world are not
their fault. I thought it might make the list seem cynical. But readers (and not just blog readers) do want reassurance, not challenges to their thinking. And I just can't, won't,
do that just to make this blog more popular. So thank you, nominators,
it is wonderful to be recognized, and pleased don't get discouraged
just because I never win. I don't.
Peak Oil Was Reached Two Months Ago: A new analysis
suggests that peak oil -- the maximum monthly global production point,
and the point at which more than half of all the oil than can ever
economically be expected to be brought online, has been, was reached in
December. It's all downhill from here. Thanks to Dale Asberry for this link and the one that follows.
Our Unconscious Minds Make Better Complex Decisions: A new study
claims that when it comes to simple or merely complicated decisions
(where the number of variables to consider is finite, and their
relationship knowable), we should make those decisions consciously. But
when it comes to complex decisions, our conscious minds cannot handle
the fact that there are too many variables to assess, and that their
relationship is unknowable -- they keep trying to reduce the complexity
to less than what it is, leading to poor decisions. Better to sleep on
it, and let our instincts, emotions, and subconscious minds mull it
over. And if you're an insomniac, this may be the cause -- your left
brain trying, futilely, to process the infinite and irreducible. Calm
it by doing something right-brained (singing, drawing etc.) just before
you retire.
Comment corriger des fautes: Il y a un nouveau site qui s'appelle lepatron.ca
qui permet d'identifier des fautes d'orthographe et de grammaire que
l'on trouve fréquemment dans les travaux écrits des apprenants de
français langue seconde. Je vais l'utiliser souvent. (A new site that
corrects grammar and spelling of competent, but non-expert, non-native,
Francophones).
Delightful bird photo from Kevin Cameron at Bastish. |
MADE IN CANADA
trust your
instincts 
