Wednesday, April 29, 2009

huh?

npr guy:
"Arlen Specter speaks of winning election to the Senate in 1980 — the year of Ronald Reagan — in the big-tent Republican Party. Is it fair to say that today's Republican Party is actually narrower and much more conservative than the GOP of the Reagan era?"


RNC chairman for the time being, Michael Steele:
blah blah blah... "So there's been no change from 1980 or 1964 or 1856."
Scandal-gate

I can't be the only one that finds it incredibly irritating to hear ever political scandal described as "something"-gate. Please, MSM, put an end to this!

On the other hand, Fitzmas is a political phrase I can get behind, and would love to see in wider use: e.g. Specter's defection = Fitzmas came early this year.
Also: Fitzmas would be a good title for a movie, or a band.

Tuesday, April 28, 2009

Specter

Arlan Specter switched parties a few minutes ago. That's great news for Norm Coleman's legal fund. Also, it will be interesting to see what Chris Matthews has to say about this - maybe this is the real reason that he decided not to enter politics.

I'm going to go out on a limb here and predict that Lieberman will switch to the GOP restoring their ability filibuster (perhaps he'll cite his opposition to Obama's Iran, Iraq or torture policies (embedded parenthesis side note: how weird is this headline?)).

Actually, I think this could make the Senate less liberal, since reconciliation would look bad for a filibuster proof Dem party, and Specter opposes some liberal priorities.

Anyway, enough politics. Here's some good music:

Saturday, April 04, 2009

Testing LALA's playlist embedding



Lala is a online music store, that also features an optional music trading feature for members. The trading is why I joined in the first place: I sent out CDs I no longer wanted (everything from MC Hammer, to an extra copy of OK Computer that I had for some reason), and got CDs in the mail from other members (a bunch of U2 and Bjork singles, other gaps in my collection like Sinatra, G'n'R, AC/DC, QOTSA... but also some new bands I discovered through lala like Material Issue)

...blah blah blah... point of story is: I'm testing their playlist embedding feature.

Update: it works ok. Lala makes uploading music faster by scanning your mp3s, and "automatically" adding songs that are in their database, and that you already own. There are three big flaws I've run into, so far: a) if your mp3s are not tagged the way lala has them tagged it won't recognize them (especially problematic for compilations), and b) if you listen to a lot of music that's not in their database, then you're also out of luck. (e.g. music that's not sung in English, British girl groups, European electronic music). Also, c) they automatically add clean versions of songs with bad language.

You can also *upload* songs but obviously that takes a long time.

This here playlist is just a bunch of random songs I uploaded and a couple I bought from lala. A few highlights: Sabali is an awesome French House song created by a blind Malian couple and the guy from Blur. I Know is some amazing Italo-Disco from Sweden. Baby Blue is the greatest song Dennis Wilson ever wrote.