Last.fm update - 20,000 songs yay!

Hey peeps, I have recently reached a landmark on last.fm music profile. Yep, I've past the 20000 song mark so I thought I'd take a quick look at how my charts are doing and make a blog out of it.

I think I remember mentioning in a previous blog when I hit the 10000 song mark and the artists at the top haven't changed much since. Yep, Coheed and Cambria still grace the top spot by a healthy distance, which is probably fair they are probs my fave band, and statistics prove this lol. I remember at the last milestone, Matthew Good Band were higher, once holding 2nd, but they've dropped down a few.

Checking my weekly charts now and again, I am quite proud that I can boast 100+ artists in some weeks, and well that does mean that the not-quote-so-popular artists grow at about the same rate and so there aren't too many fast climbers.

I have been listening to a crap load of MCS and Sparta, or at least what I thought was a crapload, but they currently sit in positions 31 and 28 respectively.

Some that I am suprised are still up there are the likes of bands like Bad Religion, but that is only because I have pretty much their entire discography and well some songs of theirs get played on my huge "All Music" random playlist that I feed winamp with.

The "Top Tracks" chart I was convinced was bugged as songs like Hundred Reasons' No Pretending and Coheed's The Suffering were up there pretty much since I signed up for last.fm and the chart hasn't really changed that much (again I think it's the same songs getting played at the same rate). Anyways, while I listened to the commentary to the playoff final featuring Shrewsbury (they lost sadly :() I decided to loop a small song and see what happens. 42 plays of Von Bondies' Going Down, and I can now confirm that the chart is working, like it always has been, no doubt lol. Yep, that song now sits in third in my all time top tracks (on last.fm).

Contrary to the disappointment of MCS and Sparta's poor performance in the charts, if the rolling charts are taken a look at - genius idea - it turns out those artists are very close to the top. When I discovered the Juliana Theory, their stuff got some heavy play and that has resulted in them lying in 12th.

Last.fm is a great idea, but one of the few criticisms I have is that the lists aren't weighted with how much material you have of a particular artist. Now this can't be implemented using the current online method, but bands like Bad Religion, Led Zeppelin, Iron Maiden etc are so high simply through attrition rather than geniune plays - don't get me wrong these artists have a load of good songs, just that sometimes the less-favourable songs get played cos they crop up more on the random playlist, simply due to the greater number of songs that belong to a particular artist. The idea of weighted lists is something I'd like to do in my own little music player if it ever gets off the ground.


Looking forward to the next milestone whichever I decide, whether it be 30000, or I wait till 50000. I'd like to think I could possible hit 50000 by the end of the year, and with my music collection growing and growing we'll see if Coheed will ever be knocked off the top spot. My music collection stands at about 40Gig atm, probably half of it I know pretty well and will listen to it comfortably, rather than making the effort of checking out a new artist etc.

I've just got winamp to add up all the songs and here are the results (lol):
I have 9783 songs (damn so close to 10G), which taking the track lengths makes a total length of 652 hours 3 minutes 55 seconds. That works out at just over 27 and a half days. Wow! I didn't realise it was that much. Ok, challenge to the masses, who wants to spend the entire of next February listening to every last song in my possession.

I have just under half of those songs of my mp3 player, and I may be slightly bragging that I can pretty much recognise them from the first few seconds of play - maybe someone would like to challenge me on that lol.

It blows my brain, I may have trouble sleeping, what with comprehending how music that is :S
Take it easy
J-Man.

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Be you Friend or Robot??

Welcome back, and the break has been a long one but here we are again.

After reading a few things on BBC news online, plus some existing general opinions, I'd thought I'd discuss the future.

The article I read which got me thinking was one concerning the possible rights that robots could inherit when they become sophisticated enough. Many fiction writers have predicted the collpase of human life as we know it, through a robotic force that will become so deeply embedded into our societies, and then rebel against their creators and cause our demise.

In my final year, I actually did a module on Mobile Robotics. Alas, it was all thereotical, we didn't actually get to build one ourselves. Anyways, the introductory lecture, like a lot of them, discussed topics of the emergence of robots etc. One particular footnote to the lecture, not at all to do with the course, was the origin of the word "robot". Apparently, it comes from a Czech word meaning slave, if I remember rightly (I cba to dig out my notes, just to make this entry slightly more correct). The word featured in a play from the 1920s (you know what, maybe the guy that wrote it was Czech instead?!?), and the story went along the lines of these faithful slaves eventually rebelling against their masters and destorying mankind.

Now that storyline seems pretty common amongst fiction nowadays. A few examples come easily to mind, those of the Terminator and Matrix films, which have a post-apocalyptic future where mankind is the verge of survival in a war against robots.

Bearing this in mind, is anyone else slightly worried about where the future will lead us? It could be neive, or perhaps even terribly wise to say that nothing is impossible, and that it is just a matter of time before we achieve what is considered the unthinkable today. Technology is already rife in today's world, and well probably not in my lifetime (although computers came from their first roots to what they are today in my grandparent's lifetimes) but one day it could be very feasable to have robots of some kind helping us in the jobs we do today.
There are many things, we as a race have achieved. Copying nature to make flight possible, prosthetic limbs, open heart surgery, beating diseases etc are all great achievements, and the sky is really the limit.
It would be foolish to say that robots will not be a reality, and probably quicker than we may expect. It is well known that Japan are technology nuts, and a number of companies are investing astronomical budgets to developing robots.

Following in another piece of Science Fiction that I am a big fan of is the Stargate series, and the development of the new galactic enemy, the replicators. A race of techo-bugs (that may be an O'Neill quote actually, wouldn't be that suprising, lol) that are hell bent on increasing their numbers. Now this is pure science fiction, machines composed of tiny "blocks" which can be used to form anything and possessing a shared consciousness through subspace. But stepping back into reality, again an article I read on BBC news online had revealed progress made in nanotechnology. Researchers had successfully created a type of worm/snake robot, made of blocks, which was programmed to recreate itself. Mmm, worrying stuff. And it can only get worse really.

I am being a little "doomsday-ish" in the tone on how robots will be our demise, predicted numerous times in science fiction, but perhaps it's worth mentioning the positives to the improvements gained from sophisticated robots. Robots will undoutably make our lives easier, assisting in both our professional and personal lives no doubt. To go back to scaremonging, they could eventually replace the need for us to work, or at least reducing the number of employed people - most probably becoming technicians to maintain the new army of robots. Back to the predictions in science fiction for one moment, one of the most famous is the use of geostationary satellites being placed into orbit to be used for communication purposes. If I was properly researching this, then I would mention the piece of fiction that the idea was born in.

The human brain is considered the most complex thing in the natural world, and surely it will only be a matter of time before it will be emulated, and then surely, free will artificially created in robots will be inevitable, and then we are probably boned. Although, if we reach a point of technical ingenuity where we can successfully emulate a brain, then hopefully they will be able to weild some kind of control over these robots, but this is all speculation, and pretty hollow speculation at that. Saying this, whatever happens in the future concerning the development of robots, the level reached where free will is possible will probably not occur in my lifetime. The wonderment is will I be completely dumbstruck as a lot of the older generation are today, technology wise, or is it truly a unique time, where this is such a technology gap between generations. Will my children be trying to explain to me how to use a new bit of technology, or explain a new socialising medium - we'll see...

Here's looking slightly afraid at the future.
J-Man.

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OCD [Dated 09/05/07]

Hey peeps, carrying on with the concentrated blogging I'd thought I'd bring your attention to OCD, but definitely a light-hearted look as I'm not attempting to make new discoveries etc.

Anyways, I got thinking about this the other day, and it seemed something I could write a paragraph or two, and thus is worthy of blogging.
My mate Eric bought boxsets for a daytime tv show Monk, you may have heard of it, but if not the premise of the show is this guy, last name Monk, who is a police detective, and also has OCD, which it so happens he finds himself using quite often to solve the bizarre cases which always seem to come his way. My point is not about the show, but my mate Eric, bless him, after watching a lot of this show is convinced he has some OCD traits like having to have his stack of DVDs neatly ordered, with the bind facing outwards etc.

I told Eric that this isn't really OCD behaviour but he won't have it, and he seems proud in his own little way. Anyways, I was thinking, do I exhibit any kind of behaviour like that? Behaviour that under Eric's definition is classed as OC behaviour?
At the time of Eric watching all this Monk, nothing came to mind, but recently the thought re-emerged, and I do have a few. These will probably sound daft but these seem a little OC to me. The first one that struck me was the way I eat chips. I don't know how long I have done as it seems like forever and I can't remember when I started to do it, but when I have chips, I actually eat them in size order, from smallest to largest, and I actually get a little annoyed if I discover smaller chips than the ones I've just eaten - pretty weird, and I do it without thinking.
Another similar OC thing I do, is when paying for something, like a train ticket or something similar, basically something that has me waiting with money in hand to make the purchase. I find myself arranging the money (it can only be done with coins I guess :D) in my hand in size order, so smaller coins lie "above" the larger coins - i.e. if I were to take the money in my hand and lay it on the table, it would form a "tower of coins" if you like, from large coins at the bottom to smaller ones as you go higher.

Another OC thing, which is probs the least weird, is my obsession with having my mp3s tagged correctly, and getting annoyed with downloaded ones that stand out in a winamp playlist, due to bad tags. Following on from that there is the file structure which must be maintained for my music directories. That being Artist/Album/Song. Also the naming convention must be exact for the song files. That being [tracknumber][space][song title(in full)].mp3. The tracknumber must also be prefixed with a 0 if less than 10, obviously. I am not a fan of having tracknumber, space, dash, space songtitle. It all seems rather wasteful, and pointless as it does not contribute any information.
I'm sure there are couple of OC behaviour which I do without thinking, and thus haven't been able to isolate them by posing myself the question, what OC behaviour do I exhibit?

Take it Easy.

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..Being vague and noncommital [Dated 08/05/07]

Hey, I was meaning to post Friday evening, but well it seems very easy to pre-write off the evening before I even attempt to do something productive. Anyways, moving on from my questionable motivation (oh dear!), and Friday was a bit of a weird day.

I don't know what it was about the day, but I was in an incredibly good mood, probs one of the best ones I've been in for quite some time. I don't think it was just one thing, but a number of things - first off the shower, yes the infamous shower has finally been fixed. For those not in the know, I kinda bust the old one sometime last year, so the task was taken up by my Uncle and Grandad. The new shower was a present for my mother at Christmas, and work started after local plumber favourite Mark installed the new shower, only for my Uncle and Grandad to remove it when they gutted the wall - crazy I know. Anyways, about 3-4 days of the week, my Uncle and Grandad would come along and spend about 3 hours working on retiling, buying new shower bases, new shower doors etc, and during that process, discovering new and exciting problems to extend the length of the job through a combination of the "uniqueness" of my bathroom and poor planning on their part.

I moaned about it a lot, and pretty much gave up the hope of having a shower at home ever again, but enough complaining about that saga, as of Friday I was given the all clear by mission control, and off I ventured into territories unkown. The shower feels smaller than it used to be, despite a solid brick wall removed, and replaced by a glass panel. The doors open on the corners which is fine, but I feel sorry if you're a large person, cos well I'm slightly on the large side, and there's not a lot of room. If you're wider in either direction, whether that be across the hips or have a beer belly, then you may have fun getting in and out. There was also a problem with the shower itself as the nozzle didn't actually point down, combined with the new pressure, meant that some parts never got water to put it mildly. But, using my skills, I "attacked" the shower, and taught it a new dimension, so now it does indeed point downwards. That's me 1, shower 0. Anyways, enough of the new shower review, I will end by giving it 3.5 Jonny stars.

That could have been it, but I didn't feel amazing till I got to work. That day, I also started on these multivitamin tablets. Yes, I am/did get a little concerned about my questionable diet at times, so I decided to opt for some of those, to keep me topped up on what the body needs etc. It actually says on the label that it shouldn't be used instead of a well-balanced diet. That's fair enough, it's not a get-out-of-jail-free card in terms of health, but if you did have a well-balanced diet you probs wouldn't need to take vitamin supplements - you would probably get what you needed from your pr0 diet I'm thinking.

I was round Carl's the night before, printing some stuff off and everyone's favourite Sam called, as she does. Anyways, Carl mentioned that I was in attendance, so suprise suprise I recieved a text off her, within the hour, in fact, within 5mins actually *shakes head*. Anyways, without going into absolute detail, she said that she was single and looking for someone, to which I replied that I was the same but had my eyes on some ppl (for new readers, that is hot librarian chick). She assumed that it was someone from work (on a side note, apparently most people meet their future spouses at work, I read somewhere, or it was on the Wright Stuff most likely, back to the story... ), so i decided not to correct her, and have a bit of fun being vague and noncommital - a taste of her own medicine if you will. I asked her to play a game and guess who it is. She went for this and said Becky, and then Vicky when I said no. I thought initially maybe she thought Becky is the most attractive one at work, but slight more thought made me to think that Becky and Vicky are the extent of the female staff that she knows the names of. Anyways, she eventually sent the message saying words to the effect of "I bet you'd like to have your eyes on me". To this, I decided the game had to stop, and I told her straight - not any of the potentially hurtful stuff about her going on and on asking if I like her etc, but the slightly complicated stuff with Carl. Read: Carl and her being exes, and every now and again Carl, wanted to get his end away, arranges to meet Sam to do the nasty, and she has no other, or better offers so she complies cos she's sex-crazy. Or at least that's what I've made out, Carl hasn't said as much, but pretty much confirmed it through phone calls and talking to others etc.

So I told her that I was not interested in starting anything with her while she was still having visits from Carl. I'm in the right, if it's happening before I got involved, there's nowt to stop it happening if and when I do. Evidence to that is Carl continuing to see her every now and again, despite me declaring my interest in maybe seeing her. Although it would be a cheap lay, I cba to put up with that carl business, and her general insecurity would drive me away for sure. I remember reading this drunken rant Marsh did on myspace, one particular part was something along the lines of "If we give you a compliment, don't turn it down, accept it cos we've made an effort to tell you how great you are, and if you keep denying it then we will eventually stop complimenting" - I need to dig that up and with his permission, I'll publish here, cos it is actually fantastic, and I told him so. A lot of the stuff in there I agree with whole-heartedly. Anyways back to the main story, and if after seeing Sam for a bit, and I did say how great I thought she was etc and she kept saying, oh I'm ugly, then I would probably go crazy.


Anyways, this turning down which I'll expand later as I have to go to work soon, came after the comedown of this great mood. I think it all happened when I was chatting to Steve about jobs and the future. Reality hurts I'm afraid, and both of us deciding that going to Uni seems a pointless exercise as we can't get hired by people who can't even form a grammatically-correct sentence, or do their own jobs properly - it's sickening. He also told me that I should move abroad, to Canada we eventually decided the best place being. He also told me not to put too much emphasis on material wealth, him walking out of the stockroom, leaving me to digest these cold, sobering facts - I crashed.

Going back to the Sam adventure, after sending this honest text, she sent back a text simply saying "bye" and then following that up with "me and carl are m8ts jonny and iam single im trying 2 find mr perfectr any way tb"

and then:

"Did carl say anythin about me 2 u plz tell tb iam getting very upset tb"

Do you see what I mean about truth hurting? Anyways, I did my best to clear the waters and replied, saying that Carl didn't say anything bad, just hinted at those two still being very friendly, which is nothing to get upset at, and I actually said, don't worry there's no need to get upset. Anyways, I got this message, now I kinda understand it, but I guess seeing someone who's grasp on the language and who uses text speak probably goes against every core value in me. WTF is "m8ts"?!?!? just type mates, it takes as long, for christ sake.

Anyways, emails pls to what this message actually means pls:

"Me and him r m8ts and have a laugh but i don't think i find any 1 im not pretty or fit tb am i be honnest"

And that's it copied exactly from my phone - lol. I feel a little bad, but I can't help her, and I'd definitely don't want to be dragged into daily calling and inelligable(sp) text messages. The silent treatment sent her away last time, and I can only hope it will this time, and before we forget I'm not the bad guy here.

Take it easy, work calls :s

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"It's only stalking if you work at it..." [Dated 03/05/07]

Hey all, back in the library again and recently I have been really blitzing episodes of the Shield. I am about halfway through season 3 and working through till I reach season 6, the new season whose episodes are being broadcasted now. Even though I remember most of the storylines, it is still an amazing show, really rough and tumble, edgy stuff with a swagger, which I guess dares you not to think it's cool. I've mentioned many times before about the strike team and how like when watching 24, you get pumped up and cheer loudly when they beat down the bad guys, whether it be throwing them over a car, pistolwhipping them, or whatever new method they can come up with the objects around them. As I said, the Strike Team, but Detective Dutch Wagenbach is also very cool, and he is the character in the show I am most like, so he is cool for different reasons.

Anyways, moving on from the Shield, and I think my WoW addiction is over, it's strange, but I just don't feel like playing it anymore - I think that's the problem now that I've reached the level cap there is no need to obsess about figues like xp/hour and how to spend talent points etc. As I've moaned before, the low population of the realm also means that groups are hard to put together, so that can be very frustrating. I wouldn't be surprised if my lessening addiction of WoW has been beaten by a new obsession of something, in the whole scheme of life, is pretty much pointless. And that is playing on my 360 and boosting my gamerscore - which doesn't mean anything, but is just a way of showing other Live players what milestones you've hit in the games you've played. This has meant me digging up Amped 3 and finally completing the "story" to bag myself lots of points to go towards my gamerscore. Acutally to anyone who hasn't played the game, I would advise doing so, just for the story itself, and doubling if you have an interest in snowboarding. The best bit of the story is the numerous cut-scenes which detail your progress, and they are ridiculous, often not having anything to do with snowboarding, and pretty much all of them have had me laughing my face off.
So much so was my quest for a better gamerscore, I actually bought the Live Arcade game Uno, and set about maxing out the possible 200 points that are up for grabs. Two weeks later, and I have them all :D

I have to say something about the type of achievements. Many of them involve completing missions through a campaign or story mode the game ha, which is fair enough. Although it's ok ina few cases, games which have allocated a lot of the points into continued Live play are not so popular in the land of Jonny. Another group of acheivements which are lame and frankly cheap are those that could be classed as attrition acheivements, ones awarded for things like 20hours time playing the game etc. I don't mind those that you could achieve quite comfortably if you are a fan of the game, and play it quite regularly. The ones that I can't stand are those which take insane amounts of time and effort on the part of the gamer. I was browsing around the web, looking for lists/articles on the supposed "worst" achievments for 360 games. One I remember was one from this Bomberman game - a game which is univerally accepted as an awful game -and the achievement was for blowing up x amount of bombs or something to that effect. Now, the article in question stated that if you were able to do 1 per second, then it would take over 3 weeks (or similarily ridiculous time, I read this about a week back) non-stop gameplay to complete the achievement - pretty stupid.

Another terrible, not to mention tough, achievement was to rank 1st overall in Live play - now that's a marathon and simply not attainable for those that are incredibly dedicated to reach that summit. Another similarily annoying achievement was to be online in this Tiger Woods game when there are another 1000 people online. The developers over-estimated the popularity of the game and there was simply never enough people on. This was got round, by people arranging specific times for people to go on Live so people could achieve this one.
Speaking of Live Leaderboards , it may have changed since me submitting the score, but doing this one particular event on Amped 3, my score registered as 8th on the leaderboard :D. Again, Amped 3 is another game that doesn't have a supremely massive online userbase, with a lot of my scores, coming in as <1000 on the leaderboards. On the note of competitive leaderboards, PGR3 is one of the top ones I reckon. They stage regular tournaments every week or so, and I would love to get the achievement "Tournament Qualifier" but that means being in the top 64 times, and generally my times are usually at least 1000th and above. As this one guy I met in a lobby ages back, he's waiting till PGR4 comes out, then hopefully all these hardcore amazing gamers will jump onto PGR4 and compete in the tournaments it has in that game - here's hoping :D

And there couldn't be a blog entry without mentioning some failing I have with some girl, lol. The last time I saw hot librarian chick was last Thursday, and it got me thinking, it's no big deal if I just ask her out, but I'd rather not do that in the deafening silence of the library, so I was planning to catch her as she left, which basing on Thursday's sighting, would be about 1. My reasoning being that she was in the library when I arrived at about half past, but not when I left at about quarter past 1.
So I camped outside the library reading my book, hoping to catch her as she left on the next day, Friday. To quote Dutch from the Shield, "It's only stalking if you work at it", so I thought why not actually devote a little time to finding out when she leaves so I can ask her out - that's not obsessive is it?!!? Coincedentally, that quote is my current MSN screenname, lol.

Unfortunately, she never showed on Friday, and not see her, the following Tuesday or Wednesday (I didn't work Monday). So here I am, the following Thursday, thinking that she would work this time every week - I walk in so I can head upstairs to write this very blog, and nothing. That makes me sad, but also curious to her exact working hours, I guess they change around, rather annoyingly. Ideally she should work the desk up here in the music section, where I come up to read/blog, as there are less people likely to listen in, but sadly that wish has not happened.
Anyways, I gotta go off to work in a bit, with any luck, she'll be in tomorrow instead, or knowing my luck, manning the main desk as I leave in a min.

Take it easy.

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