Music

Clearly, I haven’t found much motivation to complete a blog post lately. In my defense, I haven’t been entirely idle. Recently I’ve released two projects related to the excellent Zen starter theme for Drupal: Zenophile lets you create Zen subthemes quickly, and Zen Midnight is a starter theme for themes which will use a light-on-dark color scheme (such as white text on a black background). There’s also been the utilitarian boringness of Menu Clone and Compound Eye (which lets you monitor the status of several Drupal sites at once - or will some day, anyway). Then there’s activities at work; we’ve finally got our own private server (of the virtual sort, for now), so I’ve been having a lot of fun and learning a lot as I’m getting it set up. Linux and Apache? That’s for wussies! We’re running FreeBSD and Lighty! Having full control of HTTP headers and being able to install things like Xcache means that we’re able to serve pages faster than ever before.

On a decidedly less nerdy note, I’ve also created a mini-fansite (it’s only one page long) for one of my favorite new bands, Fatblueman. Check it out here. I’ve included a list of all of their music I could find on YouTube - which is a heck of a lot - so if you’re interested in finding some new candy for your ears, check it out and give some of the vids a lesson. You can even download their albums (legally) for free! Give ‘em a try - maybe they’ll become one of your favorite new bands too.

You might have heard about the recent release of iTunes if you’ve read any sort of tech-related web site lately. The program has two new “genius” features; the Genius Sidebar and the ability to create a Genius Playlist. The Genius Sidebar is a clear ploy to get you to spend more money at the iTunes Store; as you play a song, it recommends albums and songs by the same or similar groups in the sidebar. It doesn’t seem to be the best designed as it often recommends songs I already own and have in iTunes… but it did successfully get $20 out of me the other day.

You see, as I played a song by Japanese rock group the pillows (lower-case intentional), it suggested I buy their two latest albums in the iTunes store. I was flabbergasted, as the company that was releasing their albums domestically has been MIA for over a year and a half and I hadn’t heard anything about a new deal being inked. I searched Amazon (both their CD section and their MP3 section) for the albums, but they weren’t to be found. It appears that Apple managed to make a deal to distribute their music digitally stateside, even though nobody is distributing their actual physical CD.

Now ever since Amazon started up Amazon MP3, I haven’t purchased anything from iTunes. Amazon offers DRM-free MP3s I can play on the Sansa Clip I picked up after the headphone jack on my iPod busted. (I still use it in my car.) But I had to give in and come crawling back to the iTunes Store to get those albums. So that’s how Apple’s unspectacular Genius Sidebar nevertheless succeeded in getting twenty bucks out of me.

Anyway, the Genius Playlist feature is more spectacular, as well as cheaper. Select a song, press a button, and it builds a playlist of similar songs to the one you selected and starts playing. I’ve used it a couple of times, and have been consistently surprised about how smart it is about grouping together complementary songs. It seems to favor hit songs. Check out the result of selecting a Red Hot Chili Peppers song in the image above.

iTunes 8 also includes new visualizers. Now I didn’t exactly write a master’s thesis on digital signal processing or anything like that, but is it really so hard to make a visualizer that matches music? I’ve never really been impressed with any of the ones I’ve seen, on iTunes or any other programs. Interestingly, the Stix visualizer, which is the most visibly simple (it’s just a single colored orb flying around in 2D), also seems to be the one which matches music the closest.