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I know it’s been a while faithful, if sparse, readers. And I apologize. Recently a great travesty has been done to my normal way of life. Pandora has begun putting invasive advertising in my playlists. Normally, I listen in peace, enjoy new music and can avoid the passive advertising on their site. Of course they offer a subscription service for money, but seriously, NOT WORTH IT OK. Streaming netflix and hulu to my XBOX because I don’t get cable, is a little more worth it.

so here goes, I googled “pandora alternative,” and while i mostly found yahoo! answers… here’s the results of my search (untested).

• musicovery - this is probably the one i will recommend for being the most like pandora in the way it takes your input and gives you new music to listen to.
• finetune – this is a really interesting one. I signed up for this a long time ago when they first came out with their player for the wii. I’m thinking I may get back into this one if musicovery bombs out. You enter an artist that you like and they make you a playlist with music you may like. A playlist that you can share! on your wii!
• allmuzz/lavabeat - these aren’t really suggestion programs as much as they are media purchasing centers. I’d recommend lala over these any day.
• rhapsody – i think this one is also like lala/allmuzz/lavabeat, but you have to subscribe, and i think realplayer is trash, so avoid this one like the plague.
• delicast – internet radio, not so much music recommendation, but it has a huge variety of stations to check out. presentation is uber lo-fi, so shoutcast may be better in this genre of things.
• shoutcast – AOL‘s streaming radio. it used to be winamp’s streaming radio… or maybe it never was until aol bought winamp. i personally prefer podcasts to radios, plus itunes does the whole streaming audio thing too. but for a web based music source, this isn’t too bad.
• imeem – this is like virb or myspace for music lovers. i haven’t really jumped into this one mostly because i’m clinging to last.fm for dear life and honestly i’m not sure how many more social networks my life will support.
• last.fm – you get the plugin and listen to music. it logs what you’re listening to. then if you’re ever without your prized music library, you can login, and they have a radio that recommends music to you based on your listens. i’m trying this out now as we speak, but it’s tricky because i haven’t used their audio scrobbler in ages.

welcome to another edition. this will be a mixed bag, but i’ll sort by source.

From some publication on the Left Coast in LA, word is out that Mr. Wizard died yesterday. I hate admitting this, but for some reason when I watched this on NICK as a kid, I always thought Mr. Wizard was Patrick Stewart. TRAVESTY OF TRAVESTIES.

Next up, from the pages of make!

Surreal Wallpaper! Queue jokes about eating shrooms without all the hassle. But I’m intrigued. Maybe I’ll find a great little room of my own just for putting up this paper.

In early alpha, Wii Media Center X. I’m pretty excited to toy around with this one so I can stop using my XBOX for media. But that’s Bias, since the XBOX hates on my network at home.

A spanish blog noticed a small picture “hidden” on the Windows Vista Business CD. Conspiracy? I think so. God I despise M$, not that this really has anything to do with them. I just thought I’d let you know.

And now from the top lists of Reddit

Straight dope’s response to: Can you open the hatch of a commercial airliner in midflight? BUT WHAT ABOUT IN THE MOVIES?

I would include a more in depth explanation of my beliefs, but I don’t think that this blog is the correct venue for this. Suffice to say that I completely disagree with the idea of “God Said Pi=3” and another article on the same topic, sited by the other. Why don’t you site the Missler/Numerology explanation of the original Hebrew manuscripts that was given in the comments section? And finally in answer to Mr. Dutch’s Question: Your humility. In your presentation of pi, you pridefully assume that you know more than God. This hubris causes you to assume that your interpretation of the Word of God is absolute and final. And with that I will always disagree.

And back to our regular programming. I hope google really isn’t evil. Now that they are moving into universities their market will expand a great deal, as will their access to more information. While I applaud the business of their movements, I am still concerned.

Ninja? In Italy? Who is Russian? Oh the cultural hilarity that ensues.

And now, my new RSS subscription filed under fun: The Fake Steve Jobs Blog!

And we’re back after a grueling weekend.

Interesting, common sense blog article on Free and Open Sourced Software (FOSS). While this article is probably a little oversimplified, I’m always interested in the benefits/drawback of free software that you can reprogram yourself (if you’ve got the programming resources).

A new virus was discovered in Australia after three patients received transplants and subsequently died. Their organs were from the same donor. Somewhat gruesome, but the doctors seem upbeat simply on the fact that they were able to detect and will be able to test it further.

Mac’s are hack-proof… sort of. I didn’t see any specifics on the rules that were laxed to make this possible. I find it interesting that he spent 9 hours programming the site to exploit the security hole. Intense.

I’m not totally versed in N. Korean culture. But this UK Times article about a man not selling them anymore giant rabbits for consumption is just cool. (That they are using rabbits as food, not that he’s not selling to N. Korea anymore). Because rabbits reproduce so quickly, this seems like a great way to relieve some food shortage issues.

The Twinky vs. the Carrot? A great article on obesity, caloric pricing, the Farm Bill and politics. Via Megnut.

Some phenomenal hand-made electronica instruments. I really need to try my hand at some of this. Sigh. Via Made.

A free and open sourced bass synth modeled after the Roland TB-303. (NOT A CLONE, mind you). Another musical project endeavor. Sigh, sigh.

Article from BBC on sleep and how much you should be getting. 8 hours isn’t really standard, the article says about 7.25 is OK. I think I need like 9, because I’m always tired at work. There’s just not enough time in the day for sleep.

The leader, Boris Yeltsin, is dead. His career seems to be marked with varying highs and lows. He seemingly ushered both democracy and economic decline into Russia.

Japanese like the wii so much they’re making cell phones with motion-based games. I just wish that instead of having their own games, they could connect to the wii and be used to some capacity. A NINE+ BUTTON CONTROLLER WITH MOTION! overkill? nahhh