KENTBREW_24be.badger.pingFeed({"count":30,"value":{"title":"Badger: http:\/\/kentbrewster.com\/badger","description":"A straight pipe for use in creating Web badges.","link":"http:\/\/pipes.yahoo.com\/pipes\/pipe.info?_id=zIQi0Iy72xGJ3NMhJhOy0Q","pubDate":"Mon, 14 Mar 2011 16:03:31 -0700","generator":"http:\/\/pipes.yahoo.com\/pipes\/","callback":"KENTBREW_24be.badger.pingFeed","items":[{"link":"http:\/\/blogs.sun.com\/plamere\/entry\/last_post","y:id":{"value":"http:\/\/blogs.sun.com\/plamere\/entry\/last_post","permalink":"false"},"description":"

<\/a>This is my last post to the Duke Listens! blog. I've been posting to this blog for nearly 5 year starting with my first post on May 3, 2004<\/a>. At that time, I was still working on speech engines, and the blog name was \"Duke Speaks!\". A month later, I wrote my first post that hinted at my interest in music information retrieval<\/a>.\n

\nBlogging has been good to me. It serves as my backup memory. My nearly 50-year-old neurons may not remember everything, but I can usually remember if I've blogged about something, and a re-reading what I wrote refreshes my memory. So, for instance, if I can't remember the difference between the Idiomag API<\/a> and the YES API<\/a>, I can just read what I wrote.

\nBlogging has been a great way to get connected with folks. When I write something about a new Music 2.0 startup, I'll often get an introductory email from the CEO or CTO of the company the next day - I have a pretty good virtual rolodex due to my blogging.\n

\nBlogging has helped me improve my writing. Writing something every day that will be read by a thousand or so people has been a good exercise. I'm not sure if my writing is any better than before I started blogging, but it certainly is faster. I used to have a real problem with writer's block (and I still do when it comes to writing papers), but now blog posts seem to flow much more easily. Blogging has also helped me improve my thinking. By writing down my ideas on a topic I'm forced to think things through.\n

\nBlogging has given me a thicker skin. On the Internet, people like to disagree and criticize -especially anonymously. I've received my share of criticism, some gentle, some harsh and some downright offensive, but after 5 years, the critics don't bother me to much, and I can just reject and delete the offensive ones.\n

Total posts	1079\n
Total comments	1143\n
Daily uniques	~2,000\n
Google reader subscribers:	> 300
Where readers live	55 different countries\n<\/table>\n \nI want to thank all of my loyal readers for visiting Duke Listens!. I especially want to thank the many folks who've contributed ideas and links. I especially want to thank Steve, Jeremy, Zac and Oscar who have been particularly faithful in providing me with blog fodder. \nAnd so with that, I write my last post of Duke Listens! I hope you all will continue to follow me on Music Machinery<\/a>. Duke Out!","dc:creator":"plamere","y:title":"Last Post","category":"General","title":"Last Post","guid":{"isPermaLink":"true","content":"http:\/\/blogs.sun.com\/plamere\/entry\/last_post"},"pubDate":"Tue, 17 Feb 2009 10:55:38 -0800","y:published":{"hour":"18","timezone":"UTC","second":"38","month":"2","minute":"55","utime":"1234896938","day":"17","day_of_week":"2","year":"2009"}},{"link":"http:\/\/blogs.sun.com\/plamere\/entry\/the_best_job_in_the","y:id":{"value":"http:\/\/blogs.sun.com\/plamere\/entry\/the_best_job_in_the","permalink":"false"},"description":"Tuesday is my last day at Sun. After 9 years, I've decided to move on to the next thing. During these last 9 year I've worked on some really fun projects and worked with some really smart, creative and interesting people. The work environment at Sun Labs is really special and I doubt that I shall ever experience anything like it again. Bob Sproull, the head of the labs believes that the best way to run the labs is to let the researchers work on the things that they are passionate about. Some companies have a practice called 'Friday Projects' where you can spend one day a week working on a project that you find interesting. For us in Sun Labs, every day is Friday.\n \nWith this freedom, I've spent the last four years working on the problem of music recommendation and discovery. I've written lots of code, given lots of talks, presented demos, written papers, filed patents, gave interviews for reporters, dined with an astronaut, written lots of blog posts, and listened to lots and lots of music.\n \nI've also made many friends, and saying goodbye is the hardest part of leaving, but I suspect that many of our paths will cross again.\n \nThe labs is an extremely comfortable place to be. I could easily stay here for the rest of my working career and be quite happy and productive, but I have an itch to go and try to do something really great. I think I've found the place to go and do it, and so Tuesday is my last day at Sun, and Wednesday starts my new adventure. Feel free to follow along on my adventure<\/a>.","dc:creator":"plamere","y:title":"The best job in the world","category":"General","title":"The best job in the world","guid":{"isPermaLink":"true","content":"http:\/\/blogs.sun.com\/plamere\/entry\/the_best_job_in_the"},"pubDate":"Mon, 16 Feb 2009 18:00:04 -0800","y:published":{"hour":"2","timezone":"UTC","second":"4","month":"2","minute":"0","utime":"1234836004","day":"17","day_of_week":"2","year":"2009"}},{"link":"http:\/\/blogs.sun.com\/plamere\/entry\/music_gone_viral","y:id":{"value":"http:\/\/blogs.sun.com\/plamere\/entry\/music_gone_viral","permalink":"false"},"description":"Check out my review of the new music app for Twitter - Twisten.fm over at MusicMachinery.com<\/a>","dc:creator":"plamere","y:title":"Music gone viral?","category":"music","title":"Music gone viral?","guid":{"isPermaLink":"true","content":"http:\/\/blogs.sun.com\/plamere\/entry\/music_gone_viral"},"pubDate":"Fri, 13 Feb 2009 05:26:13 -0800","y:published":{"hour":"13","timezone":"UTC","second":"13","month":"2","minute":"26","utime":"1234531573","day":"13","day_of_week":"5","year":"2009"}},{"link":"http:\/\/blogs.sun.com\/plamere\/entry\/music_recommendation_and_the_long","y:id":{"value":"http:\/\/blogs.sun.com\/plamere\/entry\/music_recommendation_and_the_long","permalink":"false"},"description":"Oscar's Thesis - ready to read, check out the details on MusicMachinery.com<\/a>","dc:creator":"plamere","y:title":"Music Recommendation and the Long Tail","category":"music","title":"Music Recommendation and the Long Tail","guid":{"isPermaLink":"true","content":"http:\/\/blogs.sun.com\/plamere\/entry\/music_recommendation_and_the_long"},"pubDate":"Thu, 12 Feb 2009 17:43:29 -0800","y:published":{"hour":"1","timezone":"UTC","second":"29","month":"2","minute":"43","utime":"1234489409","day":"13","day_of_week":"5","year":"2009"}},{"link":"http:\/\/blogs.sun.com\/plamere\/entry\/sxsw_artist_catalog_updated","y:id":{"value":"http:\/\/blogs.sun.com\/plamere\/entry\/sxsw_artist_catalog_updated","permalink":"false"},"description":"I've pushed out a new revision of the SXSW Artist Catalog. Details are posted over at Music Machinery<\/a>.","dc:creator":"plamere","y:title":"SXSW Artist Catalog updated","category":"General","title":"SXSW Artist Catalog updated","guid":{"isPermaLink":"true","content":"http:\/\/blogs.sun.com\/plamere\/entry\/sxsw_artist_catalog_updated"},"pubDate":"Wed, 11 Feb 2009 05:25:04 -0800","y:published":{"hour":"13","timezone":"UTC","second":"4","month":"2","minute":"25","utime":"1234358704","day":"11","day_of_week":"3","year":"2009"}},{"link":"http:\/\/blogs.sun.com\/plamere\/entry\/most_overused_animals_of_indie","y:id":{"value":"http:\/\/blogs.sun.com\/plamere\/entry\/most_overused_animals_of_indie","permalink":"false"},"description":"The Beat Crave published recently published their list of the top 5 most overused animals names of indie rock<\/a>. I wanted to see if this was generally true, so I grabbed a copy of of WordNet<\/a>, a list of the top 20,000 most popular artists, and wrote a little code to find out the answer. I posted my results over at the Music Machinery<\/a>.","dc:creator":"plamere","y:title":"Most overused animals of indie rock?","category":"General","title":"Most overused animals of indie rock?","guid":{"isPermaLink":"true","content":"http:\/\/blogs.sun.com\/plamere\/entry\/most_overused_animals_of_indie"},"pubDate":"Tue, 10 Feb 2009 09:46:25 -0800","y:published":{"hour":"17","timezone":"UTC","second":"25","month":"2","minute":"46","utime":"1234287985","day":"10","day_of_week":"2","year":"2009"}},{"link":"http:\/\/blogs.sun.com\/plamere\/entry\/blip_fm_api","y:id":{"value":"http:\/\/blogs.sun.com\/plamere\/entry\/blip_fm_api","permalink":"false"},"description":" $\"6658B3EB-C7FF-4E71-B8C4-A7BC22CFD698.jpg\"$ Blip.fm is often described as a twitter for music. Blip users post \u2018blips\u2019 to tracks - and as with Twitter, others can follow your Blips and listen to what you\u2019ve posted. It\u2019s music-micro-blogging. The folks at Blip.fm have built some web services around Blip.fm that let a 3rd party application do all sorts of nifty things with Blip. I've taken a look at the Blip.fm API and have posted a review on the Music Machinery blog<\/a>. So go check it out.","dc:creator":"plamere","y:title":"Blip.fm API","category":"General","title":"Blip.fm API","guid":{"isPermaLink":"true","content":"http:\/\/blogs.sun.com\/plamere\/entry\/blip_fm_api"},"pubDate":"Tue, 10 Feb 2009 04:39:19 -0800","y:published":{"hour":"12","timezone":"UTC","second":"19","month":"2","minute":"39","utime":"1234269559","day":"10","day_of_week":"2","year":"2009"}},{"link":"http:\/\/blogs.sun.com\/plamere\/entry\/new_release_of_sphinx_4","y:id":{"value":"http:\/\/blogs.sun.com\/plamere\/entry\/new_release_of_sphinx_4","permalink":"false"},"description":"The Sphinx-4 team has released 1.0 beta2 of Sphinx-4<\/a>, which is a state-of-the-art, speaker-independent, continuous speech recognition system written entirely in the Java programming language.\n \nNew features and improvements include:\n \n new much cleaner and more robust configuration system refactored to make use of java5 language features new API to setup speech recognizers without any xml improved feature extraction (better voice activity detection, many bug-fixes) Cleaned up some of the core APIs 'include' and 'extends' for configuration files better JavaSound support fully qualified grammar names in JSGF (Roger Toenz) support for dictionary addenda in the FastDictionary (Gregg Liming) added batch tools for measuring performance on NIST corpus with CTL files many performance and stability improvements <\/ul>","dc:creator":"plamere","y:title":"New release of Sphinx-4","category":"speech","title":"New release of Sphinx-4","guid":{"isPermaLink":"true","content":"http:\/\/blogs.sun.com\/plamere\/entry\/new_release_of_sphinx_4"},"pubDate":"Sun, 8 Feb 2009 04:39:38 -0800","y:published":{"hour":"12","timezone":"UTC","second":"38","month":"2","minute":"39","utime":"1234096778","day":"8","day_of_week":"7","year":"2009"}},{"link":"http:\/\/blogs.sun.com\/plamere\/entry\/styling_the_sxsw_artist_catalog","y:id":{"value":"http:\/\/blogs.sun.com\/plamere\/entry\/styling_the_sxsw_artist_catalog","permalink":"false"},"description":"Taylor McKnight<\/a> 'spent an hour playing around' with the CSS for the SXSW Artist Catalog. He's cleaned up the design and added a dash of color. I really like the new look. Thanks Taylor!\n \n $\"sxsw-stylin.png\"$ <\/a>","dc:creator":"plamere","y:title":"Styling the SXSW Artist Catalog","category":"General","title":"Styling the SXSW Artist Catalog","guid":{"isPermaLink":"true","content":"http:\/\/blogs.sun.com\/plamere\/entry\/styling_the_sxsw_artist_catalog"},"pubDate":"Sat, 7 Feb 2009 13:51:25 -0800","y:published":{"hour":"21","timezone":"UTC","second":"25","month":"2","minute":"51","utime":"1234043485","day":"7","day_of_week":"6","year":"2009"}},{"link":"http:\/\/blogs.sun.com\/plamere\/entry\/getting_the_most_space_on","y:id":{"value":"http:\/\/blogs.sun.com\/plamere\/entry\/getting_the_most_space_on","permalink":"false"},"description":"One way to make sure that your band gets the most space on the marquee at SXSW is to have a really long band name. Some bands have done just that. Here's a histogram of the name length of the 1200 or so artists that are appearing at SXSW:\n \n $\"hist.png\"$ \n \nThis histogram shows that the most frequent band name length is 11 characters, (the average is 12.9 characters) with some as short as 3 characters, but there are quite a few with lengths of 30 characters or more, with one topping out at 43 characters.\n \nHere are the bands that are getting the most space on the marquee:\n \n Jon Langford And The Pine Valley Cosmonauts\n Johnny Goudie and The Little Champions\n Samantha Crain & the Midnight Shivers\n Someone Still Loves You Boris Yeltsin\n Solange and the Hadley Street Dreams\n Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros\n Hermano L backed by Ranking Soldiers\n Danny And The Champions Of The World\n I Love You But I've Chosen Darkness\n Bryan Scary and The Shredding Tears\n Steve Goldberg and the Arch Enemies\n<\/ul>\n \nAnd here the bands that are getting the least space:\n \n WAZ\n XYX\n TAT\n Mom\n Fun\n fiN\n CLP\n Cla\n CKY\n Blu\n Aun\n<\/ul>\n \nNote to bands - when you are picking the name for your band, try googling for it first - it is going to be a lot easier for people to find you with a name like \"Jon Langford And The Pine Valley Cosmonauts<\/a>\" than for a band with the name \"fun<\/a>\"","dc:creator":"plamere","y:title":"Getting the most space on the marquee","category":"General","title":"Getting the most space on the marquee","guid":{"isPermaLink":"true","content":"http:\/\/blogs.sun.com\/plamere\/entry\/getting_the_most_space_on"},"pubDate":"Tue, 3 Feb 2009 04:15:49 -0800","y:published":{"hour":"12","timezone":"UTC","second":"49","month":"2","minute":"15","utime":"1233663349","day":"3","day_of_week":"2","year":"2009"}},{"link":"http:\/\/blogs.sun.com\/plamere\/entry\/what_will_be_the_break","y:id":{"value":"http:\/\/blogs.sun.com\/plamere\/entry\/what_will_be_the_break","permalink":"false"},"description":"There are so many artists going to SXSW, it is hard for me to decide which bands that I'd like to see. I know I'd like to catch a band that's on the verge of breaking out - a band that just might make it big in 2009. To help me find the potential break out bands, I've updated my SXSW Artist Catalog to also list the 'Rising'<\/a> artists. . These are the artists that are getting a lot of buzz in the mp3 blogs, but don't have a whole lot of listeners yet. Presumably these are the bands that are getting noticed by the critics, but haven't built a listener base yet. \nAccording to this metric, the band to see at SXSW this year is Come On Gang!<\/a> - they have a 'hotness' score of 28, while at Last.fm they only have 45 listeners.\n \n<\/iframe> \n<p>\nMuch thanks to Chris Gaines for suggesting this metric.","dc:creator":"plamere","y:title":"What will be the break out bands of 2009?","category":"General","title":"What will be the break out bands of 2009?","guid":{"isPermaLink":"true","content":"http:\/\/blogs.sun.com\/plamere\/entry\/what_will_be_the_break"},"pubDate":"Fri, 30 Jan 2009 04:26:15 -0800","y:published":{"hour":"12","timezone":"UTC","second":"15","month":"1","minute":"26","utime":"1233318375","day":"30","day_of_week":"5","year":"2009"}},{"link":"http:\/\/blogs.sun.com\/plamere\/entry\/recked_presentations_are_online","y:id":{"value":"http:\/\/blogs.sun.com\/plamere\/entry\/recked_presentations_are_online","permalink":"false"},"description":"The presentations for <a rel=\"nofollow\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"http:\/\/blog.strands.com\/2009\/01\/28\/recked-presentations\/\">RECKED, are now available online<\/a>. They are all pretty interesting.<img src=\"http:\/\/blogs.sun.com\/plamere\/resource\/_D2ABFA40-A824-4E3E-8681-BEA09031FA4F.jpg\" alt=\"D2ABFA40-A824-4E3E-8681-BEA09031FA4F.jpg\" border=\"0\" width=\"365\" height=\"135\"\/>","dc:creator":"plamere","y:title":"Recked presentations are online","category":"General","title":"Recked presentations are online","guid":{"isPermaLink":"true","content":"http:\/\/blogs.sun.com\/plamere\/entry\/recked_presentations_are_online"},"pubDate":"Wed, 28 Jan 2009 05:14:32 -0800","y:published":{"hour":"13","timezone":"UTC","second":"32","month":"1","minute":"14","utime":"1233148472","day":"28","day_of_week":"3","year":"2009"}},{"link":"http:\/\/blogs.sun.com\/plamere\/entry\/world_s_fastest_bug_fix","y:id":{"value":"http:\/\/blogs.sun.com\/plamere\/entry\/world_s_fastest_bug_fix","permalink":"false"},"description":"I was using the nifty <a rel=\"nofollow\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"http:\/\/developer.echonest.com\/\">developer's API at the Echo Nest<\/a> to fill out some of the data for the SXSW Artist Catalog. I encountered a bug where the API would return an HTTP response code of 500 for some artists. I <a rel=\"nofollow\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"http:\/\/developer.echonest.com\/forums\/thread\/26\/\">posted a description of the bug<\/a>, grabbed another cup of coffee and then re-ran my artist crawler. I noticed that my crawler was no longer encountering the bug. Suspecting that I may have just encountered a glitch, I went back to the Echo Nest developer's forum to add a note when I saw that they had already replied to my request and had fixed the bug. So in <strong>four minutes<\/strong> they had: 1) Noticed my bug report, 2) identified it as real bug, 3) fixed the bug, 4) deployed the fix, and 5) Posted a response to the bug report. I think that may be a world record bug fix time for a deployed web application. Nicely done, Echo Nest.","dc:creator":"plamere","y:title":"World's fastest bug fix","category":"music","title":"World's fastest bug fix","guid":{"isPermaLink":"true","content":"http:\/\/blogs.sun.com\/plamere\/entry\/world_s_fastest_bug_fix"},"pubDate":"Mon, 26 Jan 2009 04:50:36 -0800","y:published":{"hour":"12","timezone":"UTC","second":"36","month":"1","minute":"50","utime":"1232974236","day":"26","day_of_week":"1","year":"2009"}},{"link":"http:\/\/blogs.sun.com\/plamere\/entry\/what_s_hot_this_year","y:id":{"value":"http:\/\/blogs.sun.com\/plamere\/entry\/what_s_hot_this_year","permalink":"false"},"description":"I've updated my SXSW Artist Catalog to include a list of the <a rel=\"nofollow\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"http:\/\/research.sun.com:8080\/SXSWArtistCatalog\/sxsw_hot.html\">hottest bands attending SXSW<\/a>. These are the bands that are getting the most buzz in the music blogs. I'm getting this hotness value from the musical brain at the echo nest via their <a rel=\"nofollow\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"http:\/\/developer.echonest.com\/\">developer APIs.<\/a>","dc:creator":"plamere","y:title":"What's hot this year at SXSW?","category":"General","title":"What's hot this year at SXSW?","guid":{"isPermaLink":"true","content":"http:\/\/blogs.sun.com\/plamere\/entry\/what_s_hot_this_year"},"pubDate":"Sun, 25 Jan 2009 03:56:31 -0800","y:published":{"hour":"11","timezone":"UTC","second":"31","month":"1","minute":"56","utime":"1232884591","day":"25","day_of_week":"7","year":"2009"}},{"link":"http:\/\/blogs.sun.com\/plamere\/entry\/montreal_music_homework","y:id":{"value":"http:\/\/blogs.sun.com\/plamere\/entry\/montreal_music_homework","permalink":"false"},"description":"Monday I shall be in Montreal, giving a talk about music recommendation and discovery at Doug Eck's <a rel=\"nofollow\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"http:\/\/www.iro.umontreal.ca\/~pift6080\/H09\/en\/index.html\">Music and Machine Learning course<\/a> (or more properly, 'Musique et Apprentissage Automatique'). Also joining us will be the students taking the McGill course \"The Remonetization of Music and Other Promiscuously Transportable Media Objects\".\n<p>\nTo get people thinking a little bit about the issues surrounding music recommendation and discovery, I offer these two pre-class assignments: <p>The first assignment is to visit and use the following music recommendation\/discovery sites:<br \/> <\/p> <ul> <li><a rel=\"nofollow\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"http:\/\/www.last.fm\/\">Last.fm<\/a> <br \/> <\/li> <li><a rel=\"nofollow\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"http:\/\/techno.org\/electronic-music-guide\/\">Ishkur's Guide to Electronic Music<\/a><br \/><\/li> <li><a rel=\"nofollow\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"http:\/\/hypem.com\/\">Hype Machine<\/a> <br \/><\/li> <\/ul>\n<p>\nThe second assignment is to actually make a music recommendation. Here's the details: I'll be attending the SXSW Music festival in March where about 1,200 bands will be playing. For your assignment, make a few recommendations for me of bands that that I should see. Post your recommendations and how you came up with them as a comment to this blog post. The SXSW Band list is here: <a rel=\"nofollow\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"http:\/\/sxsw.com\/music\/shows\/bands\">Official SXSW Showcasing Bands<\/a>. You can perhaps glean something about my music taste by looking at my <a rel=\"nofollow\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"http:\/\/www.last.fm\/user\/lamere\">Last.fm profile<\/a>.","dc:creator":"plamere","y:title":"Montreal Music Homework","category":"General","title":"Montreal Music Homework","guid":{"isPermaLink":"true","content":"http:\/\/blogs.sun.com\/plamere\/entry\/montreal_music_homework"},"pubDate":"Fri, 23 Jan 2009 04:26:05 -0800","y:published":{"hour":"12","timezone":"UTC","second":"5","month":"1","minute":"26","utime":"1232713565","day":"23","day_of_week":"5","year":"2009"}},{"link":"http:\/\/blogs.sun.com\/plamere\/entry\/the_logos_of_music_1","y:id":{"value":"http:\/\/blogs.sun.com\/plamere\/entry\/the_logos_of_music_1","permalink":"false"},"description":"We've all seen Rocketsurgeon's logos of web 2.0 montage:\n<p>\n<a rel=\"nofollow\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"http:\/\/rocketsurgeon.squarespace.com\/articles\/2007\/5\/17\/the-logos-of-music-20.html\"><img src=\"http:\/\/blogs.sun.com\/plamere\/resource\/_1B0D776E-3F50-43E3-98CA-33DD9B8CAED7.jpg\" alt=\"1B0D776E-3F50-43E3-98CA-33DD9B8CAED7.jpg\" border=\"0\" width=\"200\"\/><\/a>\n<p>\nBut I think I prefer this image of 'logos' of music 1.0.:\n<p>\n<a rel=\"nofollow\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"http:\/\/www.flickr.com\/photos\/forwardfluidmotion\/2647367264\/sizes\/l\/\"><img src=\"http:\/\/blogs.sun.com\/plamere\/resource\/_C2744F07-64C9-4386-B3D6-C53DD24FD2BD.jpg\" alt=\"C2744F07-64C9-4386-B3D6-C53DD24FD2BD.jpg\" border=\"0\" width=\"200\"\/><\/a>\n<br> <i> Click through to see the full size version on Flickr. <p>(Photo by <a rel=\"nofollow\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"http:\/\/www.flickr.com\/photos\/forwardfluidmotion\/\">forwardfluidmotion<\/a>)<\/i>","dc:creator":"plamere","y:title":"The Logos of Music 1.0","category":"General","title":"The Logos of Music 1.0","guid":{"isPermaLink":"true","content":"http:\/\/blogs.sun.com\/plamere\/entry\/the_logos_of_music_1"},"pubDate":"Thu, 22 Jan 2009 12:54:18 -0800","y:published":{"hour":"20","timezone":"UTC","second":"18","month":"1","minute":"54","utime":"1232657658","day":"22","day_of_week":"4","year":"2009"}},{"link":"http:\/\/blogs.sun.com\/plamere\/entry\/finding_artists_at_sxsw","y:id":{"value":"http:\/\/blogs.sun.com\/plamere\/entry\/finding_artists_at_sxsw","permalink":"false"},"description":"Here's my desktop this evening, using my <a rel=\"nofollow\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"http:\/\/research.sun.com:8080\/SXSWArtistCatalog\/\">SXSW Artist Catalog<\/a> to browse <a rel=\"nofollow\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"http:\/\/www.theraveonettes.com\/\">The Raveonettes<\/a>, seeing photos of them on Flickr, and listening to them on Spotify (with the help of <a rel=\"nofollow\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"http:\/\/hublog.hubmed.org\/archives\/001805.html\">Alf's supercool greasemonkey script<\/a>). Everything I need for SXSW music discovery.\n<p>\n<a rel=\"nofollow\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"http:\/\/blogs.sun.com\/plamere\/resource\/_sxsw-discovery.1.png\"><img src=\"http:\/\/blogs.sun.com\/plamere\/resource\/_sxsw-discovery.1.png\" alt=\"sxsw-discovery.1.png\" border=\"0\" width=\"500\"\/><\/a>","dc:creator":"plamere","y:title":"Finding artists at SXSW","category":"General","title":"Finding artists at SXSW","guid":{"isPermaLink":"true","content":"http:\/\/blogs.sun.com\/plamere\/entry\/finding_artists_at_sxsw"},"pubDate":"Wed, 21 Jan 2009 15:35:28 -0800","y:published":{"hour":"23","timezone":"UTC","second":"28","month":"1","minute":"35","utime":"1232580928","day":"21","day_of_week":"3","year":"2009"}},{"link":"http:\/\/blogs.sun.com\/plamere\/entry\/more_updates_to_the_sxsw","y:id":{"value":"http:\/\/blogs.sun.com\/plamere\/entry\/more_updates_to_the_sxsw","permalink":"false"},"description":"I've done a few more updates to the <a rel=\"nofollow\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"http:\/\/research.sun.com:8080\/SXSWArtistCatalog\/\">SXSW Artist catalog<\/a>. I've spent quite a bit of time working on improving data quality - trying to make sure that we maximize the chance that an artist will be resolved properly. Most of the problems had to do with dealing with international characters, HTML entities and encodings. After a bit of work, I've reduced the mismatches so that we can now resolve 1136 of 1168 artists (> 97%).\n<p>\n<img src=\"http:\/\/blogs.sun.com\/plamere\/resource\/_sxsw-map3.png\" alt=\"sxsw-map3.png\" border=\"0\"\/> <p>\nI've added a '<a rel=\"nofollow\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"http:\/\/research.sun.com:8080\/SXSWArtistCatalog\/sxsw_new.html\">Newest<\/a>' page that shows artists that have been recently added to the list by SXSW. I've also added an artist patch up mechanism that lets me easily fix data for an artist if it is wrong. I've already used it too - the band <a rel=\"nofollow\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"http:\/\/www.sonicbids.com\/HotKicks\">The Hot Kicks<\/a> send me some updated info that I was able to apply with the patch mechanism.\nAnd finally, I've added a link that will show you Flickr images of the artist.","dc:creator":"plamere","y:title":"More updates to the SXSW Artist Catalog ....","category":"music","title":"More updates to the SXSW Artist Catalog ....","guid":{"isPermaLink":"true","content":"http:\/\/blogs.sun.com\/plamere\/entry\/more_updates_to_the_sxsw"},"pubDate":"Wed, 21 Jan 2009 07:46:42 -0800","y:published":{"hour":"15","timezone":"UTC","second":"42","month":"1","minute":"46","utime":"1232552802","day":"21","day_of_week":"3","year":"2009"}},{"link":"http:\/\/blogs.sun.com\/plamere\/entry\/sten_s_javafx_tag_visualizer","y:id":{"value":"http:\/\/blogs.sun.com\/plamere\/entry\/sten_s_javafx_tag_visualizer","permalink":"false"},"description":"Sten has a pretty nifty <a rel=\"nofollow\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"http:\/\/blogs.citytechinc.com\/sanderson\/?p=56\">JavaFX Visualizer<\/a> for social tags. Sten's experimenting with the animation frameworks. It's pretty neat. <p>\n<img src=\"http:\/\/blogs.sun.com\/plamere\/resource\/_37A385ED-826C-4D1D-AC76-7DDF503480DC.jpg\" alt=\"37A385ED-826C-4D1D-AC76-7DDF503480DC.jpg\" border=\"0\" width=\"500\"\/><\/p>","dc:creator":"plamere","y:title":"Sten\u2019s JavaFX Tag Visualizer","category":"General","title":"Sten\u2019s JavaFX Tag Visualizer","guid":{"isPermaLink":"true","content":"http:\/\/blogs.sun.com\/plamere\/entry\/sten_s_javafx_tag_visualizer"},"pubDate":"Mon, 19 Jan 2009 15:30:07 -0800","y:published":{"hour":"23","timezone":"UTC","second":"7","month":"1","minute":"30","utime":"1232407807","day":"19","day_of_week":"1","year":"2009"}},{"link":"http:\/\/blogs.sun.com\/plamere\/entry\/hublog_spotified_sxsw_catalog","y:id":{"value":"http:\/\/blogs.sun.com\/plamere\/entry\/hublog_spotified_sxsw_catalog","permalink":"false"},"description":"Alf has written a greasemonkey script that will add Spotify links to my SXSW Artist Catalog. The script adds a little (and so unobtrusive that I thought it wasn't working) Spotify link to the catalog. It's pretty neat:\n<a rel=\"nofollow\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"http:\/\/hublog.hubmed.org\/archives\/001805.html\">HubLog: Spotified SXSW Catalog<\/a>","dc:creator":"plamere","y:title":"HubLog: Spotified SXSW Catalog","category":"General","title":"HubLog: Spotified SXSW Catalog","guid":{"isPermaLink":"true","content":"http:\/\/blogs.sun.com\/plamere\/entry\/hublog_spotified_sxsw_catalog"},"pubDate":"Mon, 19 Jan 2009 13:55:24 -0800","y:published":{"hour":"21","timezone":"UTC","second":"24","month":"1","minute":"55","utime":"1232402124","day":"19","day_of_week":"1","year":"2009"}},{"link":"http:\/\/blogs.sun.com\/plamere\/entry\/adding_google_maps_to_the","y:id":{"value":"http:\/\/blogs.sun.com\/plamere\/entry\/adding_google_maps_to_the","permalink":"false"},"description":"Today, I added another option to my <a rel=\"nofollow\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"http:\/\/research.sun.com:8080\/SXSWArtistCatalog\/index.html\">SXSW Artist Catalog<\/a>. In addition to browsing artists by popularity or tag, you can now browse artists via a Google map. Artists are shown on the map as markers - clicking on a marker shows you details about the artist and lets you listen to the Artist on Last.fm or Youtube.\n<p>\n<a rel=\"nofollow\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"http:\/\/research.sun.com:8080\/SXSWArtistCatalog\/sxsw_map.html\"><img src=\"http:\/\/blogs.sun.com\/plamere\/resource\/_sxsw-map2.png\" alt=\"sxsw-map2.png\" border=\"0\" width=\"495\" height=\"784\"\/><\/a>\n<p>\nThe map shows just how global the SXSW music festival really is, with bands coming from all over the world. There are bands from as far north as Iceland, and from as far south as New Zealand. There are artists from Iran, Uganda, Nigeria, the Canary Islands, and a hundred from the NYC area. I find that it is fun to explore for music in this way. I'll see a band in some far flung place like Laramie Arizona, and wonder what <a rel=\"nofollow\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=naoD4dWDVi0\">kind of music<\/a> I'd find there.<p>\nThis was my first time using the Google maps API. I never realized how powerful and flexible the API is. One of the tricks that you can do with the API is to use a MarkerManger to control how many markers are visible at any particular zoom level. Without this, I would be trying to display over a thousand markers at once, which will hobble many browsers. <p>\nOne issue, we only have city-level resolution for artists, so when you look at a city like London or NYC, there may be 100s of artists at a single point. To deal with this, I randomly dither the lat\/longs for artists that collide with others, so each artist appears at a distinct location. The downside of course, is that some artists will appear in strange places like the Hudson river (and as far as I know, the only artist who has actually appeared in the Hudson is <a rel=\"nofollow\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"http:\/\/www.nydailynews.com\/ny_local\/2009\/01\/16\/2009-01-16_australian_songwriter_emma_sophina_sings.html\">Emma Sophina<\/a>, and I don't think she's going to SXSW). Despite this, the dithering works pretty well - here's a zoom in on the NYC area. Without the dithering, you'd only see one marker. <p>\n<img src=\"http:\/\/blogs.sun.com\/plamere\/resource\/_sxsw-map1.png\" alt=\"sxsw-map1.png\" border=\"0\" width=\"500\"\/>\n<p>\nThere are a few errors - for instance the band \"pat\u00e9 de fu\u00e1\" appear in Maine and not Mexico city - this is because the band is listed as being from \"Mexico City <b>ME<\/b>\" on the <a rel=\"nofollow\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"http:\/\/sxsw.com\/music\/shows\/bands\">SXSW site<\/a> - and believe it or not, there is a Mexico Maine. Probably over the next few days, I'll add a patch-up mechanism to make it easy to fix these sorts of errors. <p>\nThis has been a fun little project - I really enjoy playing with all of these APIs to build something that might be useful for others. I'd love to hear feedback and suggestions - so feel free to send them my way.","dc:creator":"plamere","y:title":"Adding Google maps to the SXSW Artist Catalog","category":"General","title":"Adding Google maps to the SXSW Artist Catalog","guid":{"isPermaLink":"true","content":"http:\/\/blogs.sun.com\/plamere\/entry\/adding_google_maps_to_the"},"pubDate":"Mon, 19 Jan 2009 07:54:38 -0800","y:published":{"hour":"15","timezone":"UTC","second":"38","month":"1","minute":"54","utime":"1232380478","day":"19","day_of_week":"1","year":"2009"}},{"link":"http:\/\/blogs.sun.com\/plamere\/entry\/my_sxsw_artist_guide","y:id":{"value":"http:\/\/blogs.sun.com\/plamere\/entry\/my_sxsw_artist_guide","permalink":"false"},"description":"<img src=\"http:\/\/blogs.sun.com\/plamere\/resource\/_5A075252-1581-4C1F-BF53-61269BC88346.jpg\" alt=\"5A075252-1581-4C1F-BF53-61269BC88346.jpg\" border=\"0\" style=\"float:left;margin:10px;\" width=\"77\" height=\"77\"\/>I'm excited to be able to go to SXSW this year (I'm giving a <a rel=\"nofollow\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"http:\/\/blogs.sun.com\/plamere\/entry\/my_ipod_thinks_i_m\">talk on music recommendation<\/a>). I'm especially looking forward to seeing and hearing some of the thousand-plus musicians and bands that will be playing this year at the festival. This week, the SXSW organizers posted the <a rel=\"nofollow\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"http:\/\/sxsw.com\/music\/shows\/bands\"> official list of 2009 artists<\/a> with 1200 or so bands with links to their home pages. Here's the head of the list:\n<p>\n<a rel=\"nofollow\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"http:\/\/sxsw.com\/music\/shows\/bands\"><img src=\"http:\/\/blogs.sun.com\/plamere\/resource\/_sxsw-showcase.1.png\" alt=\"sxsw-showcase.1.png\" border=\"0\"\/><\/a> \n<p> I found the list incredibly daunting - I had not heard of most of the artists - how would I figure out which ones I wanted to see? I could imagine me sitting in a hotel room all week in Austin paralyzed by the many options.\n<p>\nI decided to deal with this problem directly - I just needed to add some context to this list - some photos, a little bio, some social tags, links to music and videos. If I had all that I could more easily pick the bands that I wanted to see. And so that's what I did. Using Last.fm's and Youtube's web services, I've created my own version of the SXSW Artist catalog that fills in all of the missing context. With the catalog, I can browse the artists alphabetically, by popularity and by tag. Here's an example:\n<p>\n<a rel=\"nofollow\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"http:\/\/research.sun.com:8080\/SXSWArtistCatalog\/index.html\"><img src=\"http:\/\/blogs.sun.com\/plamere\/resource\/_guide-pop.png\" alt=\"guide-pop.png\" border=\"0\"\/><\/a>\n<p>\nNow, with the catalog, I can, for instance, find all of the bands that have been tagged with \"<a rel=\"nofollow\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"http:\/\/research.sun.com:8080\/SXSWArtistCatalog\/mathrock.html\">math rock<\/a>\" (there are currently 14 of them), audition them, look at their videos and decide which ones I want to see (<a rel=\"nofollow\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"http:\/\/www.ecstaticsunshine.com\/\">Ecstatic Sunshine<\/a> looks interesting).\n<p> Building the catalog was fun. I decided to keep it as simple as possible, just a set of static HTML pages that get updated offline. No AJAX, no servlets, nothing but HTML. By keeping it simple, I was able to create the whole thing in a day. Getting all the data was pretty easy too. It is amazing what you can do with the web services at places like Last.fm and Youtube. It would have been impossible to build this sort of site 5 years ago. <p>I've put the catalog online - perhaps others will find it useful too. Feel free to check out <a rel=\"nofollow\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"http:\/\/research.sun.com:8080\/SXSWArtistCatalog\/\">Paul's SXSW Artist Catalog<\/a>.","dc:creator":"plamere","y:title":"My SXSW Artist Catalog","category":"music","title":"My SXSW Artist Catalog","guid":{"isPermaLink":"true","content":"http:\/\/blogs.sun.com\/plamere\/entry\/my_sxsw_artist_guide"},"pubDate":"Sat, 17 Jan 2009 09:28:12 -0800","y:published":{"hour":"17","timezone":"UTC","second":"12","month":"1","minute":"28","utime":"1232213292","day":"17","day_of_week":"6","year":"2009"}},{"link":"http:\/\/blogs.sun.com\/plamere\/entry\/recked_a_night_of_recommendation","y:id":{"value":"http:\/\/blogs.sun.com\/plamere\/entry\/recked_a_night_of_recommendation","permalink":"false"},"description":"<a rel=\"nofollow\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"http:\/\/www.iua.upf.es\/~ocelma\/\">Oscar<\/a> points me to this upcoming event in Amsterdam:\n<p>\n<a rel=\"nofollow\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"http:\/\/recked.org\/\"><img src=\"http:\/\/blogs.sun.com\/plamere\/resource\/_D2ABFA40-A824-4E3E-8681-BEA09031FA4F.jpg\" alt=\"D2ABFA40-A824-4E3E-8681-BEA09031FA4F.jpg\" border=\"0\" width=\"365\" height=\"135\"\/><\/a>\n<p> Recked is an informal event for engineers interested in recommender systems. This technology has proven its success for businesses like Amazon, Google, Last.fm and Netflix, and now new startups are using it to shape their products.\n<p>\nHeld on January 26 in Amsterdam, The Netherlands, Recked will focus on how to implement collaborative filtering for your product in a manageable and practical way. Three experienced speakers will give you all the real-world use cases and solutions you'll need to start building your own recommendation platform. <p>","dc:creator":"plamere","y:title":"Recked - a night of recommendation technologies","category":"recommendation","title":"Recked - a night of recommendation technologies","guid":{"isPermaLink":"true","content":"http:\/\/blogs.sun.com\/plamere\/entry\/recked_a_night_of_recommendation"},"pubDate":"Fri, 16 Jan 2009 04:09:32 -0800","y:published":{"hour":"12","timezone":"UTC","second":"32","month":"1","minute":"9","utime":"1232107772","day":"16","day_of_week":"5","year":"2009"}},{"link":"http:\/\/blogs.sun.com\/plamere\/entry\/freakomendation_us_airways_and_flickr","y:id":{"value":"http:\/\/blogs.sun.com\/plamere\/entry\/freakomendation_us_airways_and_flickr","permalink":"false"},"description":"<a rel=\"nofollow\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"http:\/\/blogs.sun.com\/plamere\/resource\/_usairways.2.1.png\"><img src=\"http:\/\/blogs.sun.com\/plamere\/resource\/_usairways.2.1.png\" alt=\"usairways.2.1.png\" border=\"0\" width=\"500\"\/><\/a>","dc:creator":"plamere","y:title":"Freakomendation - US AIrways and Flickr sponsored results","category":"freakomendations","title":"Freakomendation - US AIrways and Flickr sponsored results","guid":{"isPermaLink":"true","content":"http:\/\/blogs.sun.com\/plamere\/entry\/freakomendation_us_airways_and_flickr"},"pubDate":"Thu, 15 Jan 2009 15:50:33 -0800","y:published":{"hour":"23","timezone":"UTC","second":"33","month":"1","minute":"50","utime":"1232063433","day":"15","day_of_week":"4","year":"2009"}},{"link":"http:\/\/blogs.sun.com\/plamere\/entry\/event_mapping_at_last_fm","y:id":{"value":"http:\/\/blogs.sun.com\/plamere\/entry\/event_mapping_at_last_fm","permalink":"false"},"description":"The folks over at Last.fm have added an <a rel=\"nofollow\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"http:\/\/playground.last.fm\/eventmap\">experimental event mapper<\/a> that will show nearby events that you might be interested in on a google map. Since Last.fm knows what kind of music I like, they can map upcoming shows of artists that I've listened to on map. It's pretty neat - here's my map:\n<p>\n<a rel=\"nofollow\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"http:\/\/blogs.sun.com\/plamere\/resource\/_lastfmmap.png\"><img src=\"http:\/\/blogs.sun.com\/plamere\/resource\/_lastfmmap.png\" alt=\"lastfmmap.png\" border=\"0\" width=\"500\"\/><\/a>\n<p>\nI really like this and I hope they extend this into the long tail. It'd be really neat if they could improve their event recommender to find the long tail artists that are playing in my neighborhood that I would like. It looks like their event recommender is only showing artists that I've already listened to (but I could be wrong). It'd be really helpful if their event recommender would point me to artists playing locally that I haven't heard, but might like.","dc:creator":"plamere","y:title":"Event mapping at last.fm","category":"music","title":"Event mapping at last.fm","guid":{"isPermaLink":"true","content":"http:\/\/blogs.sun.com\/plamere\/entry\/event_mapping_at_last_fm"},"pubDate":"Wed, 14 Jan 2009 07:47:17 -0800","y:published":{"hour":"15","timezone":"UTC","second":"17","month":"1","minute":"47","utime":"1231948037","day":"14","day_of_week":"3","year":"2009"}},{"link":"http:\/\/blogs.sun.com\/plamere\/entry\/a_soothing_music_based_puzzle","y:id":{"value":"http:\/\/blogs.sun.com\/plamere\/entry\/a_soothing_music_based_puzzle","permalink":"false"},"description":"<a rel=\"nofollow\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"http:\/\/blogs.citytechinc.com\/sanderson\/\">Sten<\/a> sent me this link to <a rel=\"nofollow\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"http:\/\/playauditorium.com\/\">auditorium<\/a>, a music-based puzzle game. It's fun and soothing at the same time.<p> <a rel=\"nofollow\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"http:\/\/playauditorium.com\/\"><img src=\"http:\/\/blogs.sun.com\/plamere\/resource\/_F78B255E-D6BC-4DBE-A484-E065748DE7E6.jpg\" alt=\"F78B255E-D6BC-4DBE-A484-E065748DE7E6.jpg\" border=\"0\"\/><\/a>","dc:creator":"plamere","y:title":"A soothing, music-based puzzle game","category":"music","title":"A soothing, music-based puzzle game","guid":{"isPermaLink":"true","content":"http:\/\/blogs.sun.com\/plamere\/entry\/a_soothing_music_based_puzzle"},"pubDate":"Wed, 14 Jan 2009 04:14:09 -0800","y:published":{"hour":"12","timezone":"UTC","second":"9","month":"1","minute":"14","utime":"1231935249","day":"14","day_of_week":"3","year":"2009"}},{"link":"http:\/\/blogs.sun.com\/plamere\/entry\/the_taxonomy_of_heavy_metal","y:id":{"value":"http:\/\/blogs.sun.com\/plamere\/entry\/the_taxonomy_of_heavy_metal","permalink":"false"},"description":"This visualization of heavy metal band names has to be part of some PhD thesis somewhere:\n<p>\n<a rel=\"nofollow\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"http:\/\/www.comicvsaudience.net\/images\/flow_heavymetal.jpg\"><img src=\"http:\/\/blogs.sun.com\/plamere\/resource\/_metalbandnames.1.png\" alt=\"metalbandnames.1.png\" border=\"0\"\/><\/a>","dc:creator":"plamere","y:title":"The taxonomy of heavy metal band names","category":"music","title":"The taxonomy of heavy metal band names","guid":{"isPermaLink":"true","content":"http:\/\/blogs.sun.com\/plamere\/entry\/the_taxonomy_of_heavy_metal"},"pubDate":"Tue, 13 Jan 2009 05:33:21 -0800","y:published":{"hour":"13","timezone":"UTC","second":"21","month":"1","minute":"33","utime":"1231853601","day":"13","day_of_week":"2","year":"2009"}},{"link":"http:\/\/blogs.sun.com\/plamere\/entry\/monitoring_and_visualizing_last_fm","y:id":{"value":"http:\/\/blogs.sun.com\/plamere\/entry\/monitoring_and_visualizing_last_fm","permalink":"false"},"description":"In their final year project, <a rel=\"nofollow\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"http:\/\/visualizinglastfm.de\/index.html\">Monitoring and Visualizing Last.fm<\/a>, Christopher Adjei and Mils Holland-Cunz use data from Last.fm to create visualizations that help identify new music trends as they spread around the world. This is one of the more stunning sets of visualizations of last.fm data that I've seen.\n<p>\n<img src=\"http:\/\/blogs.sun.com\/plamere\/resource\/_lfmviz1.png\" alt=\"lfmviz1.png\" border=\"0\"\/>\n<p>\n<img src=\"http:\/\/blogs.sun.com\/plamere\/resource\/_lfmviz2.png\" alt=\"lfmviz2.png\" border=\"0\"\/><img src=\"http:\/\/blogs.sun.com\/plamere\/resource\/_lfmviz3.png\" alt=\"lfmviz3.png\" border=\"0\"\/>\n<p>\n<img src=\"http:\/\/blogs.sun.com\/plamere\/resource\/_lfmviz4.png\" alt=\"lfmviz4.png\" border=\"0\"\/> \n<p>\nMore visualizations with (German) descriptions of their procedures and stages of development are available <a rel=\"nofollow\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"http:\/\/visualizinglastfm.de\/download.html\">here<\/a>.\n<p> <i><a rel=\"nofollow\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"http:\/\/www.visualcomplexity.com\/vc\/project.cfm?id=642\"> Via Visual Complexity<\/a> <\/i>","dc:creator":"plamere","y:title":"Monitoring and Visualizing Last.fm","category":"music","title":"Monitoring and Visualizing Last.fm","guid":{"isPermaLink":"true","content":"http:\/\/blogs.sun.com\/plamere\/entry\/monitoring_and_visualizing_last_fm"},"pubDate":"Tue, 13 Jan 2009 04:02:01 -0800","y:published":{"hour":"12","timezone":"UTC","second":"1","month":"1","minute":"2","utime":"1231848121","day":"13","day_of_week":"2","year":"2009"}},{"link":"http:\/\/blogs.sun.com\/plamere\/entry\/freakomendations_a_savage_recommendation","y:id":{"value":"http:\/\/blogs.sun.com\/plamere\/entry\/freakomendations_a_savage_recommendation","permalink":"false"},"description":"<a rel=\"nofollow\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"http:\/\/failblog.org\/2009\/01\/11\/netflix-suggestion-fail\/\"><img src=\"http:\/\/blogs.sun.com\/plamere\/resource\/_345AFE89-8DEE-4207-9A94-F720FF300DD8.jpg\" alt=\"345AFE89-8DEE-4207-9A94-F720FF300DD8.jpg\" border=\"0\" width=\"350\" height=\"364\"\/><\/a><p>Hmmm.... Bloodsport was a pretty <i>savage<\/i> movie ...<br><i> Via the <a rel=\"nofollow\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"http:\/\/failblog.org\/\">Failblog<\/a> <\/i>","dc:creator":"plamere","y:title":"Freakomendations - a savage recommendation","category":"freakomendations","title":"Freakomendations - a savage recommendation","guid":{"isPermaLink":"true","content":"http:\/\/blogs.sun.com\/plamere\/entry\/freakomendations_a_savage_recommendation"},"pubDate":"Mon, 12 Jan 2009 07:20:45 -0800","y:published":{"hour":"15","timezone":"UTC","second":"45","month":"1","minute":"20","utime":"1231773645","day":"12","day_of_week":"1","year":"2009"}},{"link":"http:\/\/blogs.sun.com\/plamere\/entry\/music_genre_is_hard","y:id":{"value":"http:\/\/blogs.sun.com\/plamere\/entry\/music_genre_is_hard","permalink":"false"},"description":"<a rel=\"nofollow\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"http:\/\/flickr.com\/photos\/patetiiko\/1326657871\/\"><img style=\"float:left;margin:10px;\" src=\"http:\/\/farm2.static.flickr.com\/1393\/1326657871_b1a1a0f7c8_m.jpg\"\/><\/a>Go to last.fm and search for<a rel=\"nofollow\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"http:\/\/www.last.fm\/tag\/emo\"> tag emo<\/a> and Last.fm will happily show you that the top emo bands are Fall Out Boy, My Chemical Romance, Jimmy Eat World, Brand New, Death Cab for Cutie and Taking Back Sunday. Pretty easy right? Next, go to the Wikipedia and look at the <a rel=\"nofollow\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/List_of_emo_artists\">List of Emo Artists<\/a> - they have a list of 75 or so bands that have 'been referred to as, or had their music described as emo'. Again, that seems to be pretty straightforward. But emo is not so simple. Just take a look at the <a rel=\"nofollow\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Talk:List_of_emo_artists\">Wiki discussion page for the list of emo artists<\/a> - you'll find a debate as vigorous and vitriolic as the great emacs vs. vi debate of the 80s, the paper vs. plastic debate of the 90s and the Gervais vs. Carell debate of 00s all put together.\n<p> Some excerpts: <ul>\n<li> Emo is chaotic music. Emo is a form of hardcore punk. Emo is closely related to screamo. Pop rock is not. Who started this whole emo thing? Rites of Spring. Neon White, go listen to Rites of Spring. Tell me the difference between them and Panic! At the Disco. They just don't sound anything alike. I like all music, and pop rock, but I have enough sense to know that their is a huge line between emo, and mainstream music. Therefore, Wikipedia itself, is unreliable\n<li>hm.... im a bit puzzled here... the article is named \"list of emo band\", yet there's not a single emo band in the entire list....\n<li>My Chemical Romance is not emo. Alexisonfire is not emo, Fall Out Boy? just posers. Real emo music is emocore emo violence, screamo, emopunk, indie\/emorock\n<li>all Out Boy May not be emo but they are not possers\n<li>THREE DAYS GRACE not!!!! emo!!! they are POST GRUNGE!!!!\n<li> MCR IS NOT EMO\n<\/ul>\n<p>\nAnd the discussion just goes on and on. People can't agree what emo is.\n<p>\n<em>Photo (CC) by <a rel=\"nofollow\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"http:\/\/flickr.com\/photos\/patetiiko\/\">Feel the Fever<\/a>.<\/em>","dc:creator":"plamere","y:title":"Music genre is hard","category":"General","title":"Music genre is hard","guid":{"isPermaLink":"true","content":"http:\/\/blogs.sun.com\/plamere\/entry\/music_genre_is_hard"},"pubDate":"Fri, 9 Jan 2009 14:03:33 -0800","y:published":{"hour":"22","timezone":"UTC","second":"33","month":"1","minute":"3","utime":"1231538613","day":"9","day_of_week":"5","year":"2009"}}]}})