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.

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.