iBlog
Today was freaking horrible. Therefore, I shall focus this blog on three things that have nothing at all to do with my life at the moment.
1. Seriousness: Steve Jobs
I credit Steve Jobs with the initiation of my love of music.* The second generation iPod mini (with colors silver, blue, pink, and green) came out in 2005 and I remember my dad asking me if I wanted one. I pretty much had no interest in it. I had a grand total of five music CDs and a rockin’ portable CD player decorated in stickers. Why would I want to change that?
He got me one anyway, though, for Christmas 2005. Enter iTunes plus a $50 iTunes gift card for my birthday two months later and I was suddenly introduced to the fact that I now had the power to find ALL THE OBSCURE SONGS I’D EVER LOVED. It took like two months for my meager 40-something-song library to grow to 400+. The portability factor—along with the fact that I could now purchase songs individually and therefore didn’t have to weigh the pros and cons of buying a whole $15 CD for just one or two songs—made me want to listen to music.
Haha, and now look where I am.
So I thank you, Mr. Jobs, for your business sense, your inventive mind, and your desire to continually make/improve portable media products for gadget lovers like myself. If I had any extra money at this time, I would upgrade my current iPod (I need a bigger one, haha) in your memory. But that will have to wait until I’m not dirt poor.
RIP.
Found on Imgur.
2. Creepiness: Googol
So remember when I blogged about Google’s Profiles and how it was freakishly similar to the product Google Face as I described in my NaNo Googol written last year (last part of this blog)?
Well, if Google merges with or takes over Apple within the next year or so, then I FREAKING CALLED IT AGAIN.
What I wrote:
“After the death of Steve Jobs in the early 2000s, Google’s founders felt there to be no other option but to approach Apple with a merger deal, offering them almost any stipulations they desired in exchange for being able to essentially mix the two companies into one giant hyper corporation that would push the limits of the known size of any company that had ever been in existence. […] Of course, prior to his death, Jobs had anticipated Google’s future moves. He knew that the corporation in charge of providing internet goers everything from facial recognition to “street views” of Pluto to basic search would not be so quick to pass up a merger opportunity with any company they thought was and would continue to be a successful internet partner. […] He knew a merger with the giant that was Google would most likely require sacrifices on the part of his own company. These sacrifices, however, he was not too willing to make. The impression Clarke gathered from the literature was that Jobs, in a somewhat secret move several years before his death, had created and documented several heavy handed stipulations and bargains that would have to be met in order for any sort of posthumous merger to take place.”
Including, as I go on to describe, a redesign of the Googleplex to match more the style of Apple.
Fun times.
3. Silliness: I Gotta Feeling
I’m not into hating specific types of music and I actually like this song, but this review is pretty great.
30-Day Meme – Day 6: Your favorite music video.
Oh crap, that’s tough.
I love The Music Scene by Blockhead because OMFG COLORZ:
But I think my favorite music video has to be for White Winter Hymnal by Fleet Foxes. Watch this and tell me it’s not the most beautiful, sad thing ever:
I could watch that over and over and over and over.
That is all.
*Actually, such a statement is a bit of a misnomer. I’ve always loved music in the sense that I’ve loved playing it…I guess I should say that Mr. Jobs initiated my love of listening to music in general.
Be still and know that I am DOG
Woah, dudes. Woah, woah, woah.
Awesome Breakbot song combined with ridiculously trippy music video? Life is good.
That is all.
Claudia’s 365 Days of Music – A Review
Are you ready for a long post? ‘CAUSE YOU’RE GONNA GET ONE!
Ahem.
Well here we are, ladies and gents. 365 days later, I now have 365 new songs, one for each day of 2010.
Snazzy? YES I’D CERTAINLY SAY SO.
So this was a super fun New Year’s resolution. If you have the time and money, I highly recommend you try this out. Anyway. Because I’m a stats whore, you know this year has to end with a bunch of analyses. Otherwise, what’s the point?
Total songs: 365 (duh)
Total time: 24 hours, 14 minutes and 48 seconds
Total size: 2.59 GB
Mean song length: 4 minutes (okay, 3 minutes, 59.412 seconds)
First song: United State of Pop 2009 (Blame It on the Pop) by DJ Earworm
Last song: United State of Pop 2010 (Don’t Stop the Pop) by DJ Earworm
Total number of Sleepyhead remixes/covers: 6 (shut up, that song is like heroin)
Estimated cost: ~$350. The vast majority of songs were either $0.99 or $1.29 (yes, I made it a point to acquire songs legally), but I also use justmusicstore.com for the songs I couldn’t find on iTunes; their songs are $0.15 each.
The bests are as follows. I’m not going to embed the vids because that would make this post even longer, but they’re all linked. Go forth!
Top 10 Favorite Music Videos/Regular Videos Featuring the Artist(s)
Some aren’t official, but they SHOULD be!
1. The Music Scene – Blockhead
2. White Winter Hymnal – Fleet Foxes
3. Happy Up Here – Royksopp
4. Hey There Mr. – Leisure Alaska
5. Bad Romance – Lady Gaga
6. Resistance – Muse
7. This Too Shall Pass – OK Go
8. Viva La Love Story – Jon Schmidt
9. Flightless Bird, American Mouth – Iron & Wine
10. Disorganized Fun – Ronald Jenkees
Top 5 Most Touching Songs
These made me bawl. Very powerful.
1. The Last Day on Earth – Kate Miller-Heidke
2. 10,000 Miles – Mary Chapin Carpenter
3. Eet – Regina Spektor
4. Happy Ending – Mika
5. Flightless Bird, American Mouth – Iron & Wine
The Five Stars
The final list for the year, listed from January to December acquisition
Disorganized Fun – Ronald Jenkees
Bad Romance – Lady Gaga
Happy Up Here – Royksopp
White Winter Hymnal – Fleet Foxes
Blow Up – Gooseflesh
Viva La Love Story – Jon Schmidt
Sleepyhead (Run Toto Run Cover) – Passion Pit
Monster – Lady Gaga
Sleepyhead (Cillo Remix) – Passion Pit
Hey There Mr. – Leisure Alaska
Yours To Keep – Teddybears featuring Paola
Cobrastyle – Robyn
The Music Scene – Blockhead
Alejandro – Lady Gaga
Mediational Field – Susumu Hirasawa
I Want You To Want Me – Cheap Trick
I’m The Man Who Murdered Love – XTC
So what are the best of the best? Like the top 5? Well here they are:
Sleepyhead (Cillo Remix) – Passion Pit
Oh my god. Ohmygodohmygodohmygod. This is SUCH a chill remix of the coolest song on the planet. 5 minutes and 16 seconds of “you can’t worry about anything because if you try to break the chill trance of this song, your head will explode.”
Hey There Mr. – Leisure Alaska
There’s just something about this song, man. The singer’s voice is like Chris Martin (Coldplay) mixed with peanut butter—very smooth, very lingering, with an ease of singing that is very apparent in the chorus. Fantastic.
Happy Up Here – Royksopp
The future is here, and it’s got a great beat. This is what electronic music should sound like. Very catchy.
Viva La Love Story – Jon Schmidt
The way this song crescendos to Viva La Vida is AMAZING. A very nice blend of Taylor Swift’s Love Story and Coldplay’s Viva La Vida using a cello and a piano.
I’m The Man Who Murdered Love – XTC
I actually just downloaded this song yesterday, but holy freaking crap it’s like crack. I danced to it on repeat for about an hour this afternoon. The tempo is perfect.
And I just have to give an honorable mention to Dildo by Interactive, solely because of the fact that this song consists of only 4 words—with 95% of the lyrics being “dildo”—and yet is so undeniably catchy that it begs to be played in the car at maximum volume when you’re driving around with your friends.
Now I’m sure you’re all looking for some plots, am I right? Just say yes, it’ll make things go more smoothly.
Here is the year in review: music style. Pie chart has been used due to the fact a bar graph would have sucked owing to the large range. As you can see, I am an electronic whore.
Here’s an aesthetically pleasing donut plot done of the top 4 genres plotted by month. January is the innermost circle, December is the outermost.
Here is a pie chart of the playcounts for the year (clicky for full size). I listened to songs purchased in 2010 a total of 15,045 times. The mean length of song is almost exactly 4:00, so that means I listened to a total of 3,610,800 seconds of music (60,180 minutes, 1,003 hours, or 41 days and 19 hours). Wow. And that’s just the music from this year, that doesn’t even count all the older stuff I listened to.
Oh, and the correlation between number of songs in a genre purchased and the number of plays for a particular genre? .98. For anyone who cares.
I was going to do a bunch of stuff with the genre plots, but they’re a lot messier than I was anticipating and therefore look like crap, so I’ll just leave you with a pdf list of the music I downloaded this year: 2010 Song List
I totally recommend doing this. Totally.
Today’s song: United State of Pop 2010 (Don’t Stop the Pop) by DJ Earworm
I AM BLOGGER, HEAR ME POST
MIND TRIP
Woah, dude. This is how I see things.
Rock on.
Today’s song: Kiss Me by Sixpence None the Richer
SHAMWOW (no, it’s not another Omegle conversation, don’t worry)
As much as Rube Goldberg tortured me my senior year of high school, this music video is really snazzy. I love all the crashes and bangs throughout, it’s great. So is the song.
Today’s song: This Too Shall Pass by OK Go
Waiter! There’s Godot in my post-modern humorous play!
TWO POINTS!
One: It’s really hard to work on stats/research/other technical stuff when I have a very strong urge to do something creative. Another problem involves the fact that I don’t know whether to write, draw, make flash, take pictures, or do something involving nudity.
Two: This is an amazingly cool music video with an amazingly cool song to go with it. I can’t get either one out of my head, so here ya go:
You might as well expect a lot of music videos now that I must download a song a day.
Today’s song: White Winter Hymnal by Fleet Foxes
Math Rock: aka WHAT THE HELL
Oh math rock, you crazy, crazy genre. I think every single band gets weirder and weirder.
Wait until you see the hearts. THERE ARE SO MANY HEARTS.
This video scared the crap out of me. But it was also intriguing enough for me to seek out some of their other videos, some of which included flaming teacups, flaming shoes, dancing mime women, and weird sweaters.
Today’s song (surprisingly not this one): Disorganized Fun by Ronald Jenkees
Zoooooooooooooooooooooom
Gets really good about halfway through.
“What the HELL?! It’s our guitars! Where’d they get those?”
