No, I'm not dead.  I'm actually in the final stages of something else I've been working on. Well, more like the final stages of the pre-beginning.  But with a little luck, I'll have a link to it in about two weeks.  I think it's gonna be pretty damn cool, but nowhere as cool as Pandora.


Do you like music? 

  1. No. -- Then you're dead.  Sorry about that.
  2. Yes. -- Then you have to check out Pandora.com.


If you don't know what the Musical Genome Project is about, then check out this NPR story.  Then go to Pandora.com and enter a few of your favorite bands.  Then sit back as the player starts suggesting music you might like.  And not just links to buy them, but you get to hear the actual songs streaming on your computer.

So, Green Day + The White Stripes + Dashboard Confessional + Pete Yorn = Fall-Out Boy. 

And the best part of this service is that it tells you why it picked the song. 

For instance, I apparently like: mild rythmic syncopation, repetitive melodic phrasing, extensive vamping (What does that even mean?), a vocal central aesthetic and major-key tonality.

I knew what I liked, but I never knew why.  Now I do.  Awesome.

P.S.  I thought the Fall-Out Boy current hit "Sugar, We're Goin Down" main lyric was

you're number 1 with a bullet /
loaded gun complex /
cock it and pull it

But, that is not the case.  The second line is actually "lonely God complex".  This is one of the few times that my misunderstood lyric is actually better than the real lyric.  Seriously, you reference a bullet in the line before and "cock it and pull it" the line after, and the the middle line sounds exactly like "loaded gun complex" but isn't.  Really?  I hope I'm right and some Record company moron made them change the liner note on the CD.