Trouble With Dreams :

Last.fm Historical Charts v2

I updated my historical charts program to allow album and track charts, make it utf8 compatible and give it a graphical overhaul too, hurrahs all round.

Same process as before - when you first create each kind of chart it’ll take a while to fetch your data, subsequent charts will be created a whole lot faster. Eventually I’ll make a script to purge the data stored for anybody who hasn’t used the program in a couple of months so keep popping back if you get fed up with the waits.

As always comments are welcome. Oh and suggestions for a better name too..

Esbjörn Svensson, I’m Glad I Knew You

Esbjörn Svensson died yesterday, he was only 44, and I always think of you when it comes to Believe, Beleft, Below. You said you loved it, I think it was the first time I really stopped to listen properly and you were right, it’s a joy, another world between the storming Did They Tell Cousteau? and the uplifting Elevation of Love – it’s the kind of music to make me want to curl up and stop everything forever, because nothing I do will match its simple perfection.

I wanted you to give it a whirl, in his memory.

Esbjörn Svensson Trio – Believe, Beleft, Below

Inside

I had fun not revising for an exam on genetic algorithms the other night, instead going through old posts from insolence.co.uk .. it’s a horrible perfumeadvertisingflashsite now, but I was pleased to find my second favourite news article in the world survives - Philippine Troops Threaten to Attack MILF Over Soldier’s Death. Fantastic choice of name.

And: Texan tries to cash $360bn cheque

The 21-year-old’s attempt to cash the money in a bank in Fort Worth failed when staff spotted the 10 zeros on the personal cheque.

2008 05 04 sam inthenews Comments (0) Permalink

LastFM Charts

I made my program to generate charts for any date range from LastFM data available to anybody a few weeks ago and it’s had a positive response, being included on build.last.fm as an interesting extra kindofthing. Though still nobody has feedback or suggestions. Maybe in itself it’s relatively complete and I should think of other, related bits and pieces. Anybody?

I’ve made it automatically updating, so you only need to add your data once the very first time you visit, and after that it’ll check whether there should be new charts available. Maybe it should only happen a few days into the week - LastFM never get the charts out on time after all..

That and I added a few extra quick links, to 3/6/12/24 months previous. No more ‘wait a month for charts to refresh’ ;-). I should totally see if I can make this into a greasemonkey script..

PHP’s strtotime function is no end of brilliance - strtotime("-6 months") and strtotime("last sunday") are genius conceptions.

2008 03 18 sam last.fm
scrobbler Comments (17) Permalink

Terrorists About!

The Metropolitan police are publicising a new campaign:

Thousands of people take photos every day. What if one of them seems odd?

Do you think that person is committing a crime? They probably are, most people are terrorists. Do you think ‘what a loony’? Do you sigh at the strange habits of foreigners? Do you think, a lá train spotting, that some people have very odd habits indeed? Do you report potential terrorist activity to the police and risk ruining the life of a person on a false accusation that you would have to repeat in court? What if the person looked like this? Or this? How about this one?

From the press release:

Terrorists use chemicals. Do you know someone buying large or unusual quantities of chemicals for no obvious reason?

When I next meet a terrorist purchasing unusual quantities of chemicals I will ask, ‘Why?’ and they will reply, ‘there is no obvious reason,’ and I shall say, ‘Oh, well I guess I had better report you then,’ and the country will be safer.

Thank heavens for this publicity.

2008 03 05 sam britain
life Comments (0) Permalink

A Day in the Life

Eleven hours in the labs and we’re not even in the last fornight :\

I made my Last.fm charts program available for anybody to use and it’s had a positive response, hurrah, though people are far too reluctant to give feedback. It’s good to know there’s others out there who like to investigate every inch of their music history :-)

The girl I lived next to in first year (all of two and a half years ago) decided it was time I knew that whistling along to Joni Mitchell at three in the morning probably isn’t the most social of characteristics I have, so I was like ‘why the hell didn’t you ever kick my door down and tell me to stop?’ From which the only answer I could glean was that she is far too pleasant and accommodating a person to have thought like that.

Oh and most importantly of all, searching for “flamboyant american penis” on Google now returns links here.

And finally, in the news from the Middle East today:

An Iranian court has ordered a man to give his wife the 124,000 roses that he promised in her dowry, after she filed a complaint to claim it, reports say.

The woman said she was claiming the dowry because her “very stingy husband” would not even pay for a cup of coffee, according to the E’temad newspaper.

The court has seized the man’s flat until he produces all of the roses.

As you do, as you do.

2008 03 04 sam edinburgh
inthenews
world Comments (0) Permalink

February 5th

Tape Loop, keeps on turning round, forever.

Hey, I reappeared, with everything intact.

Life went by, I spent a silly amount of time in Appleton Tower’s labs, and my musical life became electronica oriented – Amon Tobin, Venetian Snares, Pitch Black. I discovered the Amen Break and its extraordinary implications for the music we know. Electronica and piano. Brad Mehldau, Keith Jarrett, Oscar Peterson and Bill Evans could have my soul any day.

I was told by a child that ‘I’d like to go to Jamaica because I really want to kill some zombies’, and suddenly I’d rather like to visit this Jamaica that only exists in the world he inhabits.

Mogwai Fear Satan became my example definition of the sheer incredible nature of life. I’m surprised there’s not some kind of prose written along to it; starting from small groundings we get higher and higher and higher and higher until eventually we peak in minutes of glorious noise and from there it’s gentle fade out to the eventuality of death.

Didn’t I stop writing here because I was going to use LastFM’s journals?

Oh, and I discovered that googling ‘flamboyant american penis‘ returns zero results. :-(

2008 02 05 sam life
mogwai
music Comments (0) Permalink

Trouble With Dreams