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Spotify
Just checking out this new Spotify Play button thing. Actually it’s underwhelming – it doesn’t play it for you inline – it just starts up Spotify (at least on my Mac it does anyway). So I fail to see what the advantage is over just having a link using the spotify URI.
But in checking out, I figured out that there really is a heck of a lot of stuff on Spotify now. Wow. I mean a lot of stuff still isn’t, but they have some seriously obscure LPs. Peg o My Heart by Robert Maxwell. I wasn’t expecting that and couldn’t imagine a market for it. Loads of records I hunted down fanatically on LP or CD – Knef for example.
One really good thing about it is that it can confirm suspicions – such as my suspicion that it would be impossible to do a decent cover of Se Telefonando by Mina. There are dozens of random recordings/karaoke tracks. All dreadful!
Posted in Digital Music
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Test post
From Dora IV, posted by Jonny Perl on 10/12/2010 (3 items)
- Hi boots
Generated by Facebook Photo Fetcher
Posted in Uncategorized
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Gil Scott Heron
Sad and also weird to hear about his death.
We rarely listen to music not on headphones in my office, but a colleague asked me to throw something on that afternoon (that is, a few hours before his death was announced) and I chose one of his tracks.
Posted in RIP
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My sites
I first learned to programme (forgetting an unconsequential flirtation with BASIC in the early 80s on the Vic 20) in 2000. I had been working on websites for the last 5 years and I could deal with HTML but the actual programming and interaction of forms and data seemed beyond me.
In the autumn of 2000, almost by accident, I came up with an idea for a website and decided to learn PHP so I could build it. While I don’t regret doing that, the standard of my coding left something to be desired. I actually learned how to do it (wrong) from a particular book. This was the one. Even the front cover is evocative to me now. I remember that $29.99 seemed a lot to pay for such a thin book. But then again, if such a thin book could teach me how to do this, wasn’t that a good thing?
It actually took many nights of staying up learning stuff and plugging away. I’m still not sure if my partial programming knowledge (I had worked among programmers) was a help or a hindrance. Anyway, in March 2001 my site was ready and I unleashed it on the world. Incredibly people actually went to it! I announced it on a music mailing list of which I am a longtime member. The nascent blogging community picked it up and I probably had about 50 people linking into it within a week, and member numbers grew dramatically. And the site was kind of cool. Basic, but kind of cool. There wasn’t so much of this around back then remember. I then started this very blog just a few weeks later.
Anyway, as I said, my code seriously blew chunks. I had been putting off fixing it properly for many years (and this is in spite of having become a reasonable programmer in the meantime). Now in 2011, my programming career having pretty much come and gone, I have gone in and fixed it up? Why? Because the number of bots trashing my server pushed me over the edge. I have hardened the settings and had to reprogramme a bunch of things to get them to work at all.
Now, what I really need to do is update the whole concept of musicaltaste.com and remake the whole thing for the modern world. But one step at a time! In the meantime, touch wood, the thing is safe and will stay up there for a bit.
Posted in Uncategorized
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NYC map
Wow – some of these are seriously cool: http://blogs.wsj.com/metropolis/2011/03/22/on-grids-birthday-beautiful-manhattan-maps/
Posted in Cities
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Making music
I barely find the time to make music these days, which seems a shame. The last couple of nights I’ve been able to dig in and lay down a bit of guitar and glockenspiel, which has been nice.
There will be a Misty Roses show in London in June to celebrate the release of our new 7″ single. Hopefully we can preview some new material too.
Posted in Musical Projects
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Lafayette Avenue C stop
This used to be my local subway station. Never saw it looking quite like this NY Times photo though.
Posted in Cities
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