A Cool Music Streaming Site

I recently discovered the Podcast, "Inside the Net"
Catching up on the earlier podcasts, I was interested enough in episode 6 to check out two of the sites they talked about.

One of them blew me away. The developer is a musician by training and profession.
Movie and TV producers would hire him to compose music for segments in their shows.
They would bring him music that they had compiled from commercial releases and say, "This music would work in this spot. Can you compose something like this for us?" This got him thinking about classifying the attributes of the different kinds of music.

The result is explained here.


He generated a site that you can "seed" with music titles or artists that you enjoy, and it will create a playlist that has an uncanny ability to play music that you like, whether you have heard of it or not. I've now discovered a number of artists that I've never heard of or listened to before.

Try it out! Music Genome Project

You can sample my preferences here.

There are a collection of metaphores that refer to a persons intellectual or neurotic quirks:

Everyone has heard, "He's not playing with as full deck."

You may have heard the more hip, "He's not the sharpest knife in the drawer."
or the similiar, "He's not the sharpest tool in the shed."

My all time favorite, "He's one taco shy of a combination plate."

I just heard a new one, "Chalk don't stick to his blackboard."

My Fate!

savage chickens

Science Fiction vs Fantasy

I've always preferred Science Fiction to Fantasy. I recently ran across this entry from John Scalzi's blog defining the difference between SF and F:

Call me unbearably shallow, but here's how you know the difference. You walk up to the main character of the story in question and say: "Hey! Main character! That deus ex machina doodad you have on your belt, does it have, like, a battery?"

If he says "Why, yes, there's a tiny nuclear fuel cell in there that will power this baby for 10,000 planetary revolutions," well, then, you've got some science fiction there. If he says, "Of course not, it was forged in the eternal flames of Mount [insert typewriter spasm here] by the dwarves who serve the elder and/or fallen god [insert second typewriter spasm here], and holds captive his immortal soul" or some such, well, that's fantasy. Everything else is pretty much elaboration and variation on the point.

It seems like there is not that much difference after all. However, I've always been a fan of SF ever since reading "Have Spacesuit Will Travel" by Heinlein. To me, SF is more the "What if civilization took this path because of one or more futuristic events." Where Fantasy tends to morality tales of epic proportions. One of these I liked was the "Thomas Covenant Chronicles" by Stephen Donaldson. Firefly/Serenity fills both squares.

The Baby Gift

My daughter, S, became interested in a medical career after she had her first child. While taking nursing classes, she met a young female doctor from Pakistan. They became close friends. Even after they moved away from each other, they kept in contact by email. One day S got an email that Simi, the doctor, was pregnant. They began a correspondence that lasted for the rest of the pregnancy. S was the counselor now, and Simi the student. All the fears, excitement, expectations were shared over the internet. S had saved all of it, both sides of the conversations. When the baby was born, my daughter found some decorative printer paper, printed all the emails, bound them in a book, gift wrapped it, and presented it to...
the baby!

Shuttle Commander

I work with some interesting people. One of them will be retiring next week. He joined us about thirteen years ago, from NASA. He was a Space Shuttle commander with three missions to his credit. A genuinely nice guy, he never played the "astronaut card." One had to ask him a direct question to get him to talk about his experiences. Enough people asked that he agreed to bring in his slides and give those that wished to attend, a fascinating briefing on his career at NASA. He began his discussion with his selection as an Astronaut Candidate, dubbed "Ass Cans". There may be some life lessons from his experiences, like:

The Ass Cans that thought they were shoo-ins, weren't. The ones who were just glad to have made it this far, made it farther.

"Count backwards from 100 by 7's." (The trick; subtract 10, add 3.)
A very handy tip, that.

Of numerous personal photo's he took, several were of the damage to the biosphere from pollution and habitat destruction.
Astronauts may be environmentalists at heart.

A Grown Man

Living and working in the Puget Sound area, almost everyone I know has taken a crack at the famous STP.
Four years ago, C and I took one of our road trips to Texas and back. One morning on the trip, we were in West Texas, just south of the panhandle. Since we were practically in Larry McMurtry's back yard, it was appropriate that we stop for breakfast at a Dairy Queen. While we were ordering at the counter, a local couple came in. They were about our parents age. As C and I took our place at a booth, a second couple came in. The four were friends and sat down in the booth directly behind me. C and I ate our breakfast quietly, listening to the sound of their conversation. We weren't eavesdropping, just enjoying the dry, slow drawl of their voices.
Then, one of the women said to her husband, "Tell them what you saw yesterday." This caught our attention. In a tone of disbelief, the old man said, "Well, I saw a grown man ridin' a bicycle through town!"
C and I couldn't look at each other. The strain of stifling our giggles brought tears to our eyes.

Texas = Walmart

We were back on the farm in Texas for a week. We made the required daily trips to WalMart.
Except for one day we missed, so we made two trips the next day. It's a law or something.