Nothing funny about feldspar

Ok, so RealNetworks is in a lawsuit with the MPAA over its RealDVD software. It seems as though they shot the first salvo. I wish them luck.

According to my iTunes statistics, I’ve got 10896 songs in my music library, including the 455 songs on albums in the “Christmas” genre.

I have been listening almost exclusively to “Genius” generated playlists. The common complaint about the “Genius” algorithm is that it sucks for pretty much anything except rock and pop. However, it’s not so good for that, either. I picked “One Week” by Barenaked Ladies and got tons of “Alternative” hit songs, but in 50 songs there are 37 artists represented. I have 162 “Alternative” albums, by 91 artists. Many of them are popular! Why don’t they show up in my list?

Some artists who I should be able to use as a “Genius” seed “are unavailable”, Al DiMeola, for instance. Also Wendy Carlos, PDQ Bach, Tomita, Ravi Shankar, Astor Piazzolla, and The Beastie Boys. (I can understand not finding Beatmistress, but The Beastie Boys?!)

These are just at random. It could be that I’m just choosing songs that aren’t available, rather than artists. But if one song by an artist is available, why doesn’t it do better extrapolation?

What I want is something between “Genius” and “Shuffle” — something that will pick a random song and decide if there is something that keeps it from following the currently playing song. Sort of the best of both worlds.

By the way, I’ve played 250 songs all the way through since “Genius” debuted, from 165 albums and 112 artists. (It doesn’t seem like a lot but I don’t have iTunes running all the time; also since I don’t sync music my iPod based play counts are lost.) The most frequently played song is “Loser” by Beck because I used it as a “Genius” list starter.

Like many people, I do all of my best thinking in the shower.¹ This morning I was wondering about petroleum.

Here we have have some stuff, a resource that up until about 150 years ago was little used. Then someone figured out a way to use this stuff more efficiently, and it replaced all of the other burning oils (animal fats, generally) in use. And then came cars and then came plastics, and the rest, they say, is history.

And now there is some concern that the wells are running dry, and we’re having wars over oil and can’t afford to fill up our cars and trucks and OMG WHERE’S THE OIL!?!! LET’S DRILL EVERYWHERE AND SUCK DOWN THE LAST DROP SO NO ONE ELSE CAN HAVE IT!!!!1!!

We neeeeeed it!

What other thing have we (broadly defined as “historical peoples”) needed, have only known recently that we needed it so much, and yet we used it up so completely that our economic society was completely transformed into something else, and what was that something else?

Was it caves -> lack of room for our burgeoning population -> built dwellings? Was it grazing lands -> deserts -> irrigation? Those, I think are long, slow changes. I could see climate changes having a large local effect in a short period of time, but then the people move (like the Anasazi, perhaps). Is there a pattern we are following, that perhaps we can learn from, or break free of?

And then what is the next thing, corn?

1. Sometimes that’s the only time I think at all — the rest of the day I’m on autopilot.↩

I’m not political. Not apolitical, either, just tend to vote for the best choice I have at the moment.¹ So the various conventions leave me cold, I have a countdown calendar to remind me when silly season is over for this year, and I will vote in November for whomever has made me the least embarrassed (or angry) to be an American Voter in the previous few months.

At the moment, I’m leaning towards the Senator from Illinois, but not for his specific policies nor for his message, but because I think the Senator from Arizona is a cynical, calculating, asshole.²

Mr. M’s selection of a person who is expected to attract the people he can’t — women, evangelicals, “hockey-moms”, oil-industry insiders, young people, outsider-to-support-his-maverick-image…

I’ve had too much wine to be able to articulate my precise problem with this — I just have an uncomfortable feeling that Mr. M. is hoping we don’t realize that Mrs. P. is distinctly lacking in experience, is staunchly socially conservative, and is in the middle of an ethics investigation because we are blinded by her youth and vagina.

As a currently-undecided moderate, I’m finding his selection bordering on the near-insulting. He (and she) will have to do a lot of work to get my vote.

1. Tactics, rather than strategy.↩
2. By the way, it doesn’t take much for me to change my (political) opinions, in case you’re wondering. I’m fickle.↩

In general I like the “new” Delicious, but I hate the color scheme. I hope they make user-settable colors available soon.