Weekly Status: Week 10

Week 10 and we're in the last few weeks of summer and our grand experiment. All continues to go well, and we've not broken our promises.

This week, fall sports start up again. We have our first Soccer tournament this weekend, and Cross Country practice begins tomorrow morning at 9am. So, the girls have been busying themselves and sorting out athletic equipment situation and such.

Kate needed some new runners, so we had the opportunity to visit one of my favorite old haunts -- The FrontRunner store on Lane Ave. If you're an experience Columbus runner, you already know about this place. If you're a beginner, you'd be doing yourself a favor to get down there and check them out. As per their norm, FrontRunner staff had us in and out with a great fitting pair in no time.

An Authentic Beach Vacation: Revisited

A friend of mine after reading my post on looking for authenticity in a beach vacation dropped this article on my desk. Based on the report, this is the place we're all looking for -- so get there quick, they are probably already running low on sponge cake.

A Florida Island, End to End, Table by Table via the New York Times.







Looks like fun.

Music: Stumbling onto Music

Stumbling onto Music

Having much more time to spend on the computer lately, I have visited about as many websites as I could remember, and have Google'd about as many subjects as I could think up. At some point, you're just out of ideas -- and start feeling like you've reach the proverbial end of the Internet. As I was spiffing up the site the other week for the social media folks, I re-stumbled upon StumbleUpon.

For those unfamiliar with StumbleUpon -- you sign up for free, specify which topics interest you, add a toolbar, and by clicking a button -- StumbleUpon shoots you to a website that you might find interesting -- presumably because other people with similar interests have identified the site as "interesting". It's great for casual browsing. I setup my account and selected "Music" as one of my interests.

AAannywho... this has dropped me into some great music sites, and pointed me to some interesting music-related content. It pointed to me to this video of Bobby McFerrin ("Don't Worry - Be Happy" - remember?) doing a demonstration using the pentatonic scale. What's the pentatonic scale? Umm..It really doesn't matter. Let's just say that in a lot of ways -- you already know what it is. Bobby proves it in this video. -- Enjoy.

World Science Festival 2009: Bobby McFerrin Demonstrates the Power of the Pentatonic Scale from World Science Festival on Vimeo.

Music: Pandora - Personalized Internet Radio

Internet Radio

I got a Blackberry a while back, and on my way back from Florida I was messing around with a new application that I downloaded. The goal was to use my Blackberry as a music player so I could ditch my iPod. So, scanning the new Blackberry apps one day, I came across the Pandora application for Blackberry. On the way back from Florida, I tuned into the new App to see if I'd like it.

Pandora starts you off by having you name an artist you like, and then it plays that artist and other similar artists thus presenting a "personalized" radio station for you. I was skeptical. I figured sure, you put in "The Beatles" and it also plays the "Rolling Stones" -- even though everyone who knows anything about music knows that there are "Beatles people" and "Stones people" -- and they're very different groups.

I put in Ani DiFranco because while she's one of a dozen female singer/songwriter that came out of the late 90's -- she's has a unique style in what she does. Simply put, she's got a bit of an angry streak, and she flat tears up the guitar. I especially like that about her.

In short, almost 3 hours of listening later, I was sold. Pandora uses a database from their Music Genome Project to categorize the songs it plays for you. It then asks you to rate each song and analyzes your picks to fine tune the songs it selects for you. This, then, creates a personalized radio station that plays songs that you've already said you liked and adds similar songs to see if you like those. Very cool. It'll even explain to you why it picked the songs it picked. It says stuff like this:

Based on what you've told us this far, we're playing this song because it features folk roots, a subtle use of vocal harmony, mild rhythmic syncopation, acoustic sonority, and extensive vamping.

Funny.. I thought I liked Ani because she can flat tear up a guitar.. but yeah, all that stuff is good, too.

Pandora is one of several similar internet-based radio sources that you can try. Here's a big run-down of the service on Tradevibes. It has a list of competitors on the site, too, so if Pandora doesn't do it for you -- look around.