..and I did NOT eat it.

http://domesticat.muxtape.com

A mix of old and new, including songs I've loved for quite a while and songs that are current earworms for me.

Last.fm lets you see your 'neighbours,' people whose music tastes are similar to yours. I've been fascinated by this list for a long time, and have taken to reading through the favored artists of each 'neighbour' to see if they already knew of artists or groups that I should be listening to.

It's actually worked. I first encountered Snow Patrol through a neighbour, and Adam's recommendation clinched it. (Though that's perhaps a misleading statement, because Adam and I trade music recommendations so often that he's been a regular on my neighbours list for some time now.)

It hit me, though: for the most part, neighbours were always slice-of-life snapshots of similarity. Single notes, if you will. If you picture a person's music taste as a chord of notes, then can we all agree to beat this metaphor into the ground and say that most of the people on the neighbours list had musical tastes that matched only a note or two in my chord.

In the spirit of Valentine's Day, and by that I mean "this doesn't have anything to do with Valentine's Day," I present something I love:

Open data formats.

Most of you know I've been logging my listening habits over at last.fm for several years now. Some time ago, a nifty gentleman wrote a set of scripts (available at lastgraph.aeracode.org) to generate a visual representation of a single user's listening habits over time.

2005
2005: listening
by domesticat.

2006
2006: listening
by domesticat.

2007
2007: listening
by domesticat.

I think I have earlier data saved on files at home, but I'll have to check. Clicking on the files will take you to the larger versions archived on flickr.

I have to get this out of my head and now. I have been obsessed with this album for over a week and it JUST WON'T LEAVE ME BE. Here I am, sitting at my desk, headphones on, playing this album yet again (and looking longingly at that Caps Lock key) and wondering if perhaps that next cup of tea might be the one that finally crosses the line between 'overcaffeinated' and 'outright levitation.'

So here -- one of the best parts about being able to restrict posts to specific user groups - I can make downloads available for a short period of time.

Jeff had his first performance with the Huntsville Master Chorale today. I used the performance as an opportunity to test out my new camera. I made some mistakes, but I also got some very good photos.

I borked the white balance prior to the show, so everything after the rehearsal had to be photochopped because the color was blown out. The blue channel was very serviceable, so I extracted just that, deepened the blacks, and got some serviceable black-and-white photos out of them.

I'm slowly learning how to use this camera.

I have to brag a little. I was quiet, so Jeff could make the announcement over on his site first, but Jeff is now a part of the Huntsville Master Chorale.