New toy (Jack Bog's Blog)

Way down the sidebar to the main page of this blog, I've made it my practice to fill up space with "On My Stereo," a listing of what I've been listening to. (In case anyone cared.) Up 'til now, it's been a manual-entry sort of deal, showing album names, and it goes back to the days of physically putting CDs into, and taking them out of, a player.

With so many of my CDs now loaded onto a hard drive, and with random shuffle becoming the order of the day, I've been wanting to shift to a listing of individual song tracks, but I couldn't figure out a way to do it without keying in all the song names, which even I wasn't nerdly enough to do.

Well, I just acquired some software that gives me a way to automate the process to a large extent, and so lo and behold, we will now list what's on "the stereo" (a quaint term that will soon go the way of "hi-fi," I suppose) track by track, rather than "album" by "album" (another dinosaur word) If the listings take hard turns, or even U-turns, it could be a random shuffle, it could be a break between listening sessions, or it could be a mood swing.

Any track that I switch off before it makes it all the way to the end of the song won't appear. That's a function of the software I'm using, but I think it also makes the listing a better representation of what I'm using for a soundtrack these days.

Just looking over the latest listings, my favorites were Chickenwolf (which was a new one for me) and Marvin and Tammi's "Ain't No Mountain High Enough." The latter is a great example of why records were invented. It's about as perfect a 45 as was ever made.

T: No wind, no rain Or winter's cold Can stop me baby (M: No, no, baby) 'Cause you are my goal

M: If you're ever in trouble
I'll be there on the double
Just send for me,
Both: Oh baby!

Just typing that gave me chills. Anyway, if there's anybody out there who pays any attention to the nether reaches of the sidebar, enjoy.

Comments (5)

Forget the music, the dancing banana alone makes it worth the scrolling.

Posted by no one in particular | May 9, 2005 3:52 AM

Jack, you could have done this already with Audioscrobbler (via a plug-in for your media player) - check out my own Audioscrobbler page for an example: http://www.audioscrobbler.com/user/betsywhim/#

The 'now playing' data's also available as an RSS feed, so theoretically you'd be able to plug it into a sidebar (I haven't yet done this - instead I point people to Audioscrobbler.)

And the benefits to AS? You also can use their companion service, Last.FM, which will feed you streaming music from other users based on your own likes/musical profile. The more music you send up to Audioscrobbler, the more refined your profile gets...

Posted by Betsy | May 9, 2005 9:35 AM

To see the dancing banana in further action, go here.

Posted by Jack Bog | May 9, 2005 10:47 AM

Ain't no Mountain (High Enough) was the BEST duet between Marvin and Tammi. Poor Tammi, dead of a brain tumour at age 26.

Posted by lily | May 9, 2005 10:58 AM

Oooh, more content. Thank you :)

Posted by Stacy | May 9, 2005 12:19 PM