Archive - 2011
December 21st
Wordless Wednesday
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Wed, 12/21/2011 - 20:48
December 20th
Playing with Spotify
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Tue, 12/20/2011 - 20:10Recently, I've been doing more and more with Spotify, and I'm really liking it. It shares to Facebook and last.fm. If you go to my timeline on Facebook, you can see a nice overview of what I've been listening to and get more details if you click on the Music tab. Yet some of the statistics are questionable.
Last.fm has some similar statistics. I don't have a strong opinion about one verses the other. However, Spotify also has a Last.fm app, which provides some nice recommendations based on what I've been listening to. The recommendations seem pretty good, so I'm playing some recommendations.
There are other Spotify Apps, such as for connecting to Tunewiki, so you can sing along to the lyrics, or a mood radio to select music based on your mood. Now, mashing up last.fm and mood radio might be good, so I can have recommendations based on what I've liked when I've been in different moods.
The other thing I've been doing a lot is experimenting with playlists. For example, I've been helping promote Middnight on Main, a New Year's Eve Festival that will be happening in Middletown, CT on the 31st. So, I created a Middnight on Main Spotify Playlist of various performers that will be there.
I also created a playlist of the Falcon Ridge Most Wanted 2012 performers.
You can also check out what other friends on Facebook have been listening to or have put in their playlists. So far, I haven't found much of interest there yet. So, are you doing anything interesting with Spotify?
December 19th
"Day is Done"
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Mon, 12/19/2011 - 20:20It's coming on Christmas
They're cutting down trees
They're putting up reindeer
And singing songs of joy and peace
Oh I wish I had a river I could skate away on
Well, yesterday, we cut down a tree. It is up in the living room, but not decorated. That will wait until my eldest daughters show up. I haven't put up any reindeer, but we did sing songs of joy and peace and the Christmas Pageant yesterday. Oh, and yes, I wish I had a river I could skate away on.
My sleep last night was disturbed. Perhaps it is because thinking too much about semiotics and structuralism as it applies to social media and virtual worlds before going to bed. Maybe it is because stress at work. Or maybe it was because of things going on in other worlds.
I don't have any particularly personal reaction to the death of Kim Jong Il. It was a shock. I hope it leads towards better relations between the U.S. and North Korea, or at least not a worsening of relations.
Yet, today, I received news that a friend had died yesterday. Rich Sivel, a political activist I've known and respected for several years died unexpectedly yesterday. On top of the lack of sleep, stress at work and just generally trying to make it though the holidays, I am deeply grieved.
It was another day that it was hard to drive home, I was so tired. Yet as I sit to write, the words of Day is Done come to mind.
All will be well when the day is done.
Day is done, Day is done
December 18th
The Church Christmas Pageant
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Sun, 12/18/2011 - 21:08December 17th
Tracing a Musical Linguistic Virus in the Internet Age
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Sat, 12/17/2011 - 21:37The other day, I was listening to the radio and I heard something that has set me off in the search of a Musical Linguistic Virus. The idea comes from Neal Stephenson's novel, Snow Crash. In Snow Crash there is a bio linguistic virus which ends up getting spread via virtual worlds. It seems to be a pretty virulent science fiction virus, but it seems like the idea isn't really all that far from reality.
Ideas, snippets of music, and memes have been spread from one person to another for ages. Perhaps a good example is an ear worm. Even without the Internet, ear worms can spread quickly. For people my age, I could simply mention, "Lovin' You" by Minnie Riperton, and many of my friends would not be able to get the tune out of the head.
Yet perhaps musical linguistic viruses in the Internet Age are more complicated. It wasn't a simple ear worm that I heard on the radio that I haven't been able to get out of my head. Instead, the host of the radio show was talking with guests from a band. They talked about key musical influences, bands from the eighties, and reusing samples. Perhaps they are taking musical DNA from the eighties and mutating it into new ear worms or musical linguistic viruses.
They mentioned Brian Eno, so I started to listen to some of his ambient music series on Spotify. This is a new avenue where musical linguistic viruses can spread. A thought came to me listening to a radio show. I pursued the thought on Spotify by listening to the music. Spotify posted to my Facebook Timeline that I had listened to Brian Eno and friends commented on it.
Steven L Johnson said, "That's what I listen to when I want to nap. :-)".
I responded, "Well, I've had a LONG week, and I'm actually going to crash soon." In fact, I did head off to bed soon after that, but my mind continued to turn about this. How does music affect what we think? How much does it reflect the current culture? Can we culture jam spreading different musical linguistic viruses via the Internet?
Perhaps an interesting project would be to create word clouds of the lyrics to the 25 songs of each year and tracking how it has changed.
So, what are you listening to? Why are you listening to it? How is it changing you? Perhaps most importantly, can we change what we listen to and how we talk about it to change our country and our world?
