It'll Never Fly

I’m feeling a bit nostalgic as I listen to some of my Euro-Techno and Electronica that I bought on CD between 1999 and 2001, but wouldn’t have bought if there weren’t great services out there like MongoMusic at the time. That was during the peak of Napster, before it became the pale shadow of its former self it is today. That’s right. The amount of CDs I bought went up tenfold during that period. I was finding new artists I had never heard of from all over the world. They had developed technology that could analyze a song and categorize it based on beats per minute, tempo, and all that other stuff. You could do searches based on similar song, similar artist, or even similar album. And you could listen to 30 second streams to get a pretty good idea whether you’d like the CD or not. What was the best part of it all? It actually worked. That was, until Microsoft bought them out and locked me out.

I haven’t bought a non-Anime or non-Game soundtrack since. I simply don’t know what’s out there. I created an AudioScrobbler (a.k.a. Last.fm) account when they were brand new, but I wasn’t getting good enough recommendations on their system, as I didn’t have my songs properly rated on my own system to do so (which has since been alleviated). Plus they were always going down. It looks like they’ve corrected most of their problems, and their similar artists actually seem fairly similar, so I will likely start up again fairly soon. I’ve also tried MusicBrainz, but somehow Kenny G and Bon Jovi don’t seem all that similar to me. And my music I tried with their tagging software didn’t give me very accurate results. Again, maybe that has changed since I tried it a year or so ago.

Long story short: bring back MongoMusic! For the time being, I can probably get buy with AudioScrobbler and iTMS.

Technorati Tags: audioscrobbler, music, itunes, recommendations

The first two are on right now on two unrelated stations. The third is on in a couple of hours on yet another unrelated station.

Yet Another Ruby/Python Article.

A coworker of mine has been going on about Python for ages. I’ve been quite happy on my little Perl island, not doing much more than writing little scripts for doing short menial tasks or scraping web sites. I thought it was about time to get with the times and update my knowledge of programming languages. I remember stumbling upon Ruby years ago (not quite this early; maybe a year after) and not thinking much about it. Python always seemed so distant, like I could never see myself using it for anything. In Mid-2001, I got into PHP in a big way. All my sites became PHP-based, and I was advocating PHP for any new sites we would build at the Web design company I used to work at. None of the code I wrote in PHP or Perl was really all that OOP, because it never seemed warranted. I’ve known about OOP since I was 16, but I’ve never seen a practical example that showed it’s merits, even through university (when I went through too late to learn C++ and too early to learn Java, so I learned Turing instead). It wasn’t until my latest job, where I got exposed to .Net and C# that I really learned the value and flexibility of OOP. I’ve since taken to it luck a duck to water.

Now I’m trying to find a comfortable language to use for my hobby projects outside of work. Seeing as I’d be doing my development on Mac OS X, Mono would make the most sense, but the maturity level doesn’t seem to be quite there, yet. Java seems to be the next best choice, and I likely will take the time to learn it soon, but it really feels like last decade’s technology (i.e. a little long in the tooth). It’s a mature language/framework, and a first-class citizen in the world of Mac development, but it feels like it’s being leap-frogged by something. Basically, it doesn’t feel all that exciting to learn.

That brings us to Python and Ruby. I don’t know much about either, but what I do know is that I don’t know a little less about Python, because I’ve at least looked at some programs written in Python. From the sounds of it, most people fall into one or the other’s camp, but one thing seems to be clear: either is better than Perl.

I’ve spent the last couple of days checking out Python, checking out Ruby, checking out Django, checking out Rails, checking out TextMate, and checking out Eclipse, and I’ve come to this conclusion: I need to check them out a little longer. Eclipse seems like a really good IDE, but not for me. It doesn’t adhere to the standard keyboard shortcuts for navigating through text as I’ve become accustomed to on the Mac (nor does it seem to adhere to any Windows “standard”). The shortcuts seem fully customizable, which gets you part of the way, but there are other behaviours that don’t seem customizable, and I don’t have the time/patience to babysit my IDE. I need to spend the next little while running TextMate though its paces. Vim is my editor of choice, but definitely doesn’t adhere to OS standards.

Right now I’m leaning towards Ruby. The latest stable version (1.8.2) comes pre-installed in Tiger. I downloaded Rails, installed it, and had the boilerplate page up and running in less than five minutes. There was nothing painful about it. Rails looks good, but what happens when the database you’re trying to build the interface for is not so simple as having primary key columns named ‘id?’ Django looks pretty good, too. I’ll have to check it out when I kick into Python gear.

Technorati Tags: django, eclipse, textmate, python, rails, ruby

I always get a chuckle when I see something like this. I know it’s not a big deal, but I always wonder how hard could it be to run down to street level and yank in the first white person you see.

Technorati Tags: anime, cityhunter, engrish

Always test your software before you release it. Case in point: Sega released probably the best hockey game ever, albeit with one flaw. A major flaw, I might add.

If injuries are turned on at any level, you run the huge risk that at some point during a season or franchise the game will irrevocably lock up. Once this happens, you may as well delete your franchise and start all over again. That is if you even want to put yourself through that again.

I gave up trying after about 3 or 4 tries, all locking up at some point early in a season. I play pretty aggressively because, after all, it is hockey. What’s so fun about skating around being polite to everyone? What’s so fun about playing an entire season without any injuries. Good news if your a real-life player; bad news if you want something fun to do.

Then I thought I licked it. I set the injuries as low as they could go without actually being off, and it seemed to be working. Then with about 15 games left in an 80 game, guys on every team start dropping like flies. Three games like that and it locks up before getting to the controller select screen for the next game.

With the rate that EA is buying up licenses, we might not get the chance to play an improved version from Sega. And that’s just wrong.