At some point when working at Liquid, I started listening to music nearly every day. Partly because everything at Liquid was open (ie no cubicles), so occasionally I needed a way to shut out everything else so I could focus on work. Partly because I saw the lead programmer listening to music, so I figured it must be okay. The IT guys had specifically said no internet radio streaming was allowed, so I had to rely on what music I had or what a co-worker was sharing.
Listening to the same songs day and and day out got kind of tiring, so for the first time in a long time, my CD collection started growing. I've never really been into the music scene, so I never know who I would like. I'd listen to the radio on the way to work and could sing along with songs, but have absolutely no idea who sang the song (still true). So I'd have to trust recommendations from peers (which brought me such wonders as Gaelic Storm and the Cowboy Bebop soundtrack) or hope to find something good through the websites I check (which brought me The OneUps).
Then when I started working at NPS, I discovered we had free reign to stream whatever we wanted to at work (hooray for the government and their large bandwidth!). At some point at Liquid, someone told me about a website called Pandora. This is exactly the sort of thing I had been looking for. You give it a song or artist that you like and it will create a radio station for you based on that style. What this means is that you will occasionally hear songs from the artist you told (or the actual song the station is based on), but mostly you hear other artists playing similar styles. For example, today I wanted to hear some good banjo music, so I created a radio station based on Foggy Mountain Breakdown. Hoo boy did I hear a lot of great bluegrass all day! Other radio stations that have been incredibly successful include The Fray, Gaelic Storm, Nobuo Uematsu, The Insyderz, and Squirrel Nut Zippers. If you want to see my whole list, you can add me as a friend on it with my junkmail e-mail address (first initial last name AT hotmail DOT com).
The one downside of Pandora is that if you really like a particular song and want to hear it again, you have to wait until it decides to play it again (which it will relatively often if you give it a thumbs up on that song). Apparently this is due to how they license their music. You also can't skip too many songs or play the exact song you want. For this, there is the other good music site, Grooveshark. Grooveshark lets you search for an artist, album, song, genre, playlist, or people and play the exact song you want to hear at that moment.
My experience with Grooveshark has not been that great however. I don't think I've heard a completely uninterrupted song (ie it can't stream the song fast enough) and that's assuming I actually found the song I'm looking for. Granted, I've been searching for some newer (and thus less known) names, so it's fairly likely they won't be on this site yet.
So if you find yourself in need of music at a computer and have the ability to stream music, I would recommend Grooveshark (if you know what you want) and Pandora (if you don't). Happy listening!
Tuesday, March 10, 2009
Monday, March 9, 2009
If Life Were An RPG
- You would be able to cure any sickness by drinking a certain type of potion
- You can cure death by talking to a priest at a church
- Getting to work would take even longer due to having to randomly fight monsters
- Everyone would have a list of every skill they are capable of, how good they are at it, and how much more work they have to do to get better at it
- Switching jobs would be a matter of going to selecting a new job from a menu (possible requirements from other seemingly unrelated fields)
- Banks would only exist to protect your money in case of death at which point a friend can go to church to revive you (see above) and you can get your money back
- If you lived in a small village, there's a good chance you'd be called on to save the world from imminent danger (even more likely if you had spiky hair)
- Strangers wouldn't mind you barging in to their houses, rooting through their stuff, taking what you want, and leaving without saying a single word
- You'd probably start to notice that everything looks the same from one area to the next, just in different colors
- You can cure death by talking to a priest at a church
- Getting to work would take even longer due to having to randomly fight monsters
- Everyone would have a list of every skill they are capable of, how good they are at it, and how much more work they have to do to get better at it
- Switching jobs would be a matter of going to selecting a new job from a menu (possible requirements from other seemingly unrelated fields)
- Banks would only exist to protect your money in case of death at which point a friend can go to church to revive you (see above) and you can get your money back
- If you lived in a small village, there's a good chance you'd be called on to save the world from imminent danger (even more likely if you had spiky hair)
- Strangers wouldn't mind you barging in to their houses, rooting through their stuff, taking what you want, and leaving without saying a single word
- You'd probably start to notice that everything looks the same from one area to the next, just in different colors
Saturday, March 7, 2009
There was a priest, a rabbi, and a nun
I read a lot of comedy books. In fact, that's almost all I read. I love to laugh and I love reading clever jokes. But how many times in life have you read/heard a joke setup that got interrupted in a book, movie, or TV show? I guess a lot of these jokes are dirty jokes that most people should know or something and should get the reference to, but I always wonder what the rest of the joke is. Is the joke actually funny or was it more amusing that it got cut off?
I think there should be a repository of unfinished jokes. Then people can add the ending to the joke (if it's appropriate). I also wonder if making a character in a story whose sole purpose is to start unfinished jokes that keep getting cut off would be funny.
Another thought just occurred to me...other than books, movies, and TV shows, I don't really hear jokes set up like this. Do I just not hang out with the right people? Or are jokes about religious figures and pianos and such like cole slaw, a favorite of a previous generation that my generation just doesn't get?
I think there should be a repository of unfinished jokes. Then people can add the ending to the joke (if it's appropriate). I also wonder if making a character in a story whose sole purpose is to start unfinished jokes that keep getting cut off would be funny.
Another thought just occurred to me...other than books, movies, and TV shows, I don't really hear jokes set up like this. Do I just not hang out with the right people? Or are jokes about religious figures and pianos and such like cole slaw, a favorite of a previous generation that my generation just doesn't get?
Friday, March 6, 2009
BillMonk
Another useful website that I've discovered thanks to my housemates is BillMonk. If you ever find yourself splitting bills or covering lunches a lot and don't want to have to remember who owes money to whom or if you lend out your stuff a lot and want to keep track of who has your stuff, this site is for you.
When you first sign up, you invite or add friends to your lists using their e-mail addresses. Then whenever you say, pay a bill for the house, cover lunch since no one had cash, or buy groceries for the house, then you just add the bill (which can be a evenly split bill or an itemized bill) and BillMonk will keep track of who owes whom how much money. It displays pretty pie charts of these things, lets you see your entire loan/debt history with people, and lets you shuffle debts between people in case you owe one person money, but are owed by another.
Another feature that I haven't really used because I haven't loaned out anything since discovering BillMonk is the Library feature. Whenever you loan something out to someone, you can add that item to your library (or add anything loanable to the library from the get go) and then tell BillMonk who is borrowing it. So this way, you know at any given time who has your stuff.
When you first sign up, you invite or add friends to your lists using their e-mail addresses. Then whenever you say, pay a bill for the house, cover lunch since no one had cash, or buy groceries for the house, then you just add the bill (which can be a evenly split bill or an itemized bill) and BillMonk will keep track of who owes whom how much money. It displays pretty pie charts of these things, lets you see your entire loan/debt history with people, and lets you shuffle debts between people in case you owe one person money, but are owed by another.
Another feature that I haven't really used because I haven't loaned out anything since discovering BillMonk is the Library feature. Whenever you loan something out to someone, you can add that item to your library (or add anything loanable to the library from the get go) and then tell BillMonk who is borrowing it. So this way, you know at any given time who has your stuff.
Thursday, March 5, 2009
Dish scrubber +1
One of the things that came from the aforementioned house meetings is the use of a site called Chore Wars. Chores are a common cause of arguments in households larger than 1 person so Chore Wars is a way to make doing chores more rewarding.
You start off by making a character with a certain class (really only the character's name matters as the class changes when leveling up) for each person in the house. Then one of you creates a party and invites the other members of the house into that party. Everytime one of you does a chore, you claim an adventure associated with that chore. The default adventure list has things like paying bills, grocery shopping, cleaning dishes, etc. You can add, remove, or edit adventures at your leisure.
Everytime you claim an adventure, you get an amount of experience defined by the adventure (hopefully these amounts are proportional to the task, so taking the garbage out gets less experience than doing the dishes). You also have a chance of getting items, gold, or fighting monsters on your adventure (all of these are defined as possibilities in the adventure). We have an adventure for cleaning the stove top and one of the potential monsters to fight is a Crusted Cheese Goo.
The enemy fights serve no purpose other than to keep the RPG feel the site has going. The items and gold are used based on what the house agrees to. My house hasn't decided anything, so I just keep stockpiling gold and alley cat hair. Some possibilities are to "spend" some gold so you don't have to do a particular chore one week.
What I find useful about this (and really the only reason I do it anymore) is it's a good way to track who overall is not doing their share of the chores. In theory, everyone should be getting about the same experience per week and so if someone is a lower level character (you level up after reaching certain amounts of experience, which adds stats based on the chores you did and changes your class to match your stats) then you know they are slacking. You can also track who did a particular chore for the past six months, so you can tell if one chore tends to be done by one person or the whole group more often.
If you live with other people and haven't settled on a way to deal with chore distribution, I would highly recommend Chore Wars. Especially if you also happen to like fantasy RPG settings.
You start off by making a character with a certain class (really only the character's name matters as the class changes when leveling up) for each person in the house. Then one of you creates a party and invites the other members of the house into that party. Everytime one of you does a chore, you claim an adventure associated with that chore. The default adventure list has things like paying bills, grocery shopping, cleaning dishes, etc. You can add, remove, or edit adventures at your leisure.
Everytime you claim an adventure, you get an amount of experience defined by the adventure (hopefully these amounts are proportional to the task, so taking the garbage out gets less experience than doing the dishes). You also have a chance of getting items, gold, or fighting monsters on your adventure (all of these are defined as possibilities in the adventure). We have an adventure for cleaning the stove top and one of the potential monsters to fight is a Crusted Cheese Goo.
The enemy fights serve no purpose other than to keep the RPG feel the site has going. The items and gold are used based on what the house agrees to. My house hasn't decided anything, so I just keep stockpiling gold and alley cat hair. Some possibilities are to "spend" some gold so you don't have to do a particular chore one week.
What I find useful about this (and really the only reason I do it anymore) is it's a good way to track who overall is not doing their share of the chores. In theory, everyone should be getting about the same experience per week and so if someone is a lower level character (you level up after reaching certain amounts of experience, which adds stats based on the chores you did and changes your class to match your stats) then you know they are slacking. You can also track who did a particular chore for the past six months, so you can tell if one chore tends to be done by one person or the whole group more often.
If you live with other people and haven't settled on a way to deal with chore distribution, I would highly recommend Chore Wars. Especially if you also happen to like fantasy RPG settings.
Wednesday, March 4, 2009
Housemate Rulesets
In my life I've lived with other people four times, not including my family. Once was with a roommate in college (of which I'd like to not think about), once was a house of four in Santa Cruz, once with a co-worker in Pasadena, and now with three co-workers in Monterey. What's interesting, is each time the social dynamics have been completely different.
In Santa Cruz, my housemates would occasionally watch me play video games, we'd watch movies together, we'd occasionally cook meals together/for each other, but for the most part we were four separate people living in one house. There were no hard rules about anything and the only thing we shared was toilet paper. This worked really well, but I think mostly because we were all pretty laid back. There was the occasional grumble fest by whoever couldn't handle the sink filled with dishes anymore, but no real explosions.
In Pasadena, we didn't have any real rules either, but I found my personal grumblefests to happen more often. I believe most of it was my crazy inherited OCDness, so I tried to keep things to myself and do passive aggresive things like turn off the kitchen light while Jeff was still in the room hoping he'd catch on that it bugged me when he left it on. That never worked.
So now I'm in a house with four guys, who are all programmers (who I think tend to be more stubborn about their opinions than most). We also all work together, so we see a lot of each other. These are the probable causes of what seem to be more conflicts and grumblefests in this household, so we've been having house meetings and setting up sets of rules as we go. What makes me laugh about this is when we watch the show Big Bang Theory and we realize we're those four guys. We haven't gone so far as to need motions to add something to the agenda of our meetings (we haven't quite gotten that bureaucratic yet), but I wouldn't be surprised if we got there at some point.
In Santa Cruz, my housemates would occasionally watch me play video games, we'd watch movies together, we'd occasionally cook meals together/for each other, but for the most part we were four separate people living in one house. There were no hard rules about anything and the only thing we shared was toilet paper. This worked really well, but I think mostly because we were all pretty laid back. There was the occasional grumble fest by whoever couldn't handle the sink filled with dishes anymore, but no real explosions.
In Pasadena, we didn't have any real rules either, but I found my personal grumblefests to happen more often. I believe most of it was my crazy inherited OCDness, so I tried to keep things to myself and do passive aggresive things like turn off the kitchen light while Jeff was still in the room hoping he'd catch on that it bugged me when he left it on. That never worked.
So now I'm in a house with four guys, who are all programmers (who I think tend to be more stubborn about their opinions than most). We also all work together, so we see a lot of each other. These are the probable causes of what seem to be more conflicts and grumblefests in this household, so we've been having house meetings and setting up sets of rules as we go. What makes me laugh about this is when we watch the show Big Bang Theory and we realize we're those four guys. We haven't gone so far as to need motions to add something to the agenda of our meetings (we haven't quite gotten that bureaucratic yet), but I wouldn't be surprised if we got there at some point.
Blog Revamp
I woke up last night at 5:20am and couldn't get back to sleep. For some reason I was feeling especially creative and was coming up with all sorts of random thoughts and ideas that I wanted to share. At some point I realized this blog would be a great place for that because I clearly wasn't using it for its original purpose. So I used what I always use when I want to remember something, Post-Its.
I make sure to have a stack of Post-Its in easy reach anytime I'm at home or at work because I learned from my mom that Post-Its are the best thing to use to remember to do things. My computer glasses' case carries my filled out reminders to and from work until whatever it was I needed to remember is dealt with. I used to e-mail myself things back and forth, but then my I'd keep thinking I had new e-mails and would open it up to find my own notes (sometimes ones I sent minutes ago and forgot already). I also tried just putting the Post-Its in my pockets, but that ended with wet soggy paper after laundry day. My glasses' case is the only thing I can trust to put Post-Its on that I can: A) have at work and home and 2) actually see and deal with the Post-It at home and work since my glasses case always gets taken out of the backpack and put on a desk.
I still want to aim for the original purpose of this blog, just not as forced as I was originally thinking. So now this blog will be more like other blogs, a random guy rambling on about random subjects they care about it.
I make sure to have a stack of Post-Its in easy reach anytime I'm at home or at work because I learned from my mom that Post-Its are the best thing to use to remember to do things. My computer glasses' case carries my filled out reminders to and from work until whatever it was I needed to remember is dealt with. I used to e-mail myself things back and forth, but then my I'd keep thinking I had new e-mails and would open it up to find my own notes (sometimes ones I sent minutes ago and forgot already). I also tried just putting the Post-Its in my pockets, but that ended with wet soggy paper after laundry day. My glasses' case is the only thing I can trust to put Post-Its on that I can: A) have at work and home and 2) actually see and deal with the Post-It at home and work since my glasses case always gets taken out of the backpack and put on a desk.
I still want to aim for the original purpose of this blog, just not as forced as I was originally thinking. So now this blog will be more like other blogs, a random guy rambling on about random subjects they care about it.
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