Last.fm > Imeem

So. Remember when I reluctantly endorsed imeem? The ad-supported music-on-demand "social network"? Okay, well: endorsement rendered somewhat moot. As I said a few weeks ago, it "definitely delivers on the music front, and I've started using imeem to delve into bands that I find through last.fm." This was true. But also cumbersome. Messing around with a couple last.fm windows and a pile of imeem tabs was, well, a mess.

Tada! Mess averted.

According to the Bits blog over at the New York Times, last.fm today opened up its entire catalog of 3.5 million songs to play-on-demand status. You can only demand each song 3 times, sadly. But demand you can, and demand you will!

The true genius of this, to me, is that last.fm is the medium through which I've already chosen to receive my music. The consumers have spoken, and last.fm is a clear favorite. How easy, and how sensible, for all of us to take our little digital feet and patter over to the ad-supported songs on demand.

I haven't tried out this new feature yet, partly because my regular laptop is super broken and holed up in the fixit shop. But also, I find myself weirdly devoid of the usual sense of New Gadget Imminent Try-and-Enthuse. Last.fm and I? We're old pals. This time, there's no way that enthuse is going to morph into refuse. At some point, I'll report back in a leisurely fashion. In the meantime, though, don't be surprised if you hear the light pattering of digital feet—off in the distance, dancing to whatever music they please.

Extra-Shiny: Friday Night Lights, or, Adventures with RSS

Using Google Reader's search function is like having a robot finish your sentences. Or like having a backup of your brain, except the backup is even smarter than you are. Since I funnel almost all activities that could be described as "poking around on the internet" through Reader these days, I'll often hit the search button there, first, when I'm looking for something I read and vaguely remember. If I read it, see, chances are it's in there somewhere.

This is the approach I tried when I was hunting down this great article on NBC's even greater TV show, Friday Night Lights. Since this article was in fact what spurred me to start watching Friday Night Lights on DVD over the past few days, I wanted to pay it a little visit, you know, offer it my gratitude, maybe write a post in its honor. But when I hit that search button, something interesting happened. Instead of the New York Times article in question, I stumbled upon these two from MIT's C3 blog, both written by the ever-sharp Sam Ford. What was so interesting about this? Well. I'd never seen the articles before; must have skimmed past them last fall, when Friday Night Lights wasn't immediately relevant to me. But when I rediscovered them, I realized that I'd just effectively performed a search on my peripheral sphere of knowledge. Sam Ford's articles—respectively, about the perils of audience commitment and the show's product placement of Applebee's—were exactly what my better self would have wanted me to read on the topic. In fact, my better self DID want me to read those very articles; that's why I subscribed to the C3 blog and others like it in the first place, since I knew the knowledge they were producing contained ideas I wanted to hear. Searching Reader was like having a very smart, very on-top-of-things me grin mischievously, while not-on-top-of-things me rummaged crazily through digital heaps of information, and say, "You were looking for these?," while handing me carefully-clipped articles.

Robot, backup brain, doppelganger; Google Reader's search function is a lot of things today, I guess. But only because it's one thing above all, and that's: great.

Anyway. I highly recommend reading all three articles, but mostly I just recommend getting yourself a copy of Friday Night Light's first season, and proceeding to watch all 22 episodes in quick succession. This is not just television. It's real life, transposed onto the screen. Fans and critics agree; audience sizes don't. If the New York Times is right, Friday Night Lights is a show either before or after its time, a microcosm so perfect that nobody—not even fans—wants to mess with it. Maybe this doesn't lead to action figures, troll-infested message boards, or any of the other fun add-ons that make serialized television shows profitable and buzz-worthy. So I'm just going to throw in whatever buzz I can muster, and tell you: Friday Night Lights is eminently worthwhile. I love it. You will, too.

Boots Made for Sloshing

Last year, I survived a very cold Cambridge winter without the following supplies:

1) Gloves and/or mittens
2) Hat and/or hood
3) Umbrella (in Cambridge, sometimes people use umbrellas for snow. That is, if they are lucky/undumb enough to own one.)
4) Boots of any description

Oh, and:

5) A working brain.

Yes, it is true. Out of a fearsome mix of stubbornness, inertia, and being broke, I somehow barreled through last winter without many of the supplies that, in fact, make winter bearable. I will spare you the details, but let's just say that old, ratty running shoes are generally not waterproof objects.

This winter, though, I got smart. -er. I'm still umbrellaless, but do you see me fretting? No you do not. Because I have something better: the greatest winter boots ever created.



Boots and Twister 2, originally uploaded by galacticsupersleuth.

Allow me to extol the virtues of Tretorn's Skerry Vinter W boots. First: they are great. Second: they are sturdy, basic, and yet at the same time just a little bit cute. Third: synthetic fur lining! Fourth: WATERPROOF.

I really cannot stress that last point enough. They keep out the water. I had no idea how important that was, but trust me: old, ratty sneakers are not waterproof. Skerry Vinter W boots are waterproof. And also not too expensive, at a handy $60. Now I know, I know, that's a little bit steeper than those flashy rubber galoshes from Target. Guess what? Those break, and are better at sloshing around on your feet than sloshing your feet through puddles and muck. Skerry Vinter W boots may have a name that makes no sense, but they will take good care of you.

Now if only Tretorn made a snow umbrella...

Photo: The View From Her Room

curtain, door, window, originally uploaded by galacticsupersleuth.

Phototastic

It's Day 2 of 2008, which means it's also Day 2 of the Grand Photo Experiment of 2008. Ever since my tentative first post about my plan to take a photo a day this year, I've been overwhelmed by the support and excitement coming out of the digital woodwork. Nickd suggested that I try Flickr on for size; Phil totally rocked my world by deciding to come along for the ride with his own daily photos. By all accounts, 2008 is set to be the most phototastic year on record.

Some thoughts so far:

First of all, I actually already had a Flickr account [galactisupersleuth]. However, it had long lain dormant, gathering pixel dust as I poured my meager photostreams into Facebook. There's something to be said for putting photos on Facebook. Mainly, all your friends will definitely see them; also, the geek in me can't get over the beautiful efficiency of distributing relevant photos through people-tagging. (I can immediately fan out group photos to all my friends just by tagging them appropriately! So long, cumbersome emailing of photographs!)

But Flickr serves a different purpose—and actually, kind of an even more exciting one. On Flickr, it's just not about distributing photos to your friends; it's about distributing photos to everybody ever. Geotagging is especially out of control. I mean, within seconds I had digitally pinned a photograph of an outdoor clock to the exact street corner where the shot was taken. That. Is so cool. Also, Flickr's way less of a walled garden, which means I can do things like pump photos into the little widget you see to your right. Its ultranice API has begotten an incredibly rich ecosystem of add-ons and integrations, and it's just basically a joy to use. I'm sold.

Outdoor clock on Mass. Ave., Cambridge, MA.

Second: I love looking at the world through a photographer's eyes. That is to say: they're my eyes, except better. Walking through the streets of Cambridge, looking for shards of beautiful things—that's pretty much exactly how I want to be living my live. Still not doing so great on the whole "taking pictures with people in them" thing (the fire hydrant's siren song is still going strong!), but I feel like that will become less of a problem once kids start flooding back onto campus for finals.

The immortal fire hydrant, from way back in May.

Third: I like my camera a lot. But you know what I would like even better? This camera.

I'm just saying.