On April 2, 2007, I joined Last.Fm, as means to get an idea to my listening habits when I run iTunes in the background as I surf the net (most of the time, but not all the time, since I also watch TV for the most part of the night). Anyway, I just looked at my stats, and I am SEVEN away from 10,000 plays. My Last.FM Profile

Unfortunately, I haven’t been running, what I use now, Songbird, given my iTunes library is on another machine and I can’t find a easy way to add what I have on my laptop without creating a mass amount of duplicates (since I have at least 2,000 songs on this machine, and am ripping songs as I buy new CDs, and/or buying my tracks and TV shows and stuff only with this machine). I hardly ever listen from a CD nowadays, but I like having the physical CD, especially if I had an unexpected computer failure before getting a chance to back up any new purchases (though I try to back up after every time I purchase from iTunes). BTW, I’m not too far from having 300 CDs. There are several artists, including Tantric, that are gonna have new releases this year, so I’ll be over 300 total before this year is up. Yay!

Now why I like this service (I don’t care for the networking stuff):

The last few tracks I listened to:

1. Eric Clapton – Cocaine — 5/18/09 2:16am
2. Eagles – Hotel California — 5/18/09 2:09am
3. Queen – I Want It All — 5/18/09 2:05am

Most listened to artists in the last week:

• 1 – Lacuna Coil –> 14
• 2 – Tantric –> 8
• 3 – Within Temptation –> 6
• 4 – Breaking Benjamin –> 5
• 4 – Shinedown –> 5

Most Played in Last 6 Months:

• 1 – Tantric –> 153
• 2 – Breaking Benjamin –> 133
• 3 – Lacuna Coil –> 118
• 4 – Queen –> 89
• 5 – Within Temptation –> 82

Most Played in Last Year (top 3):

• 1 – Tantric –> 369
• 2 – Breaking Benjamin –> 303
• 3 – Lacuna Coil –> 226

AND the OVERALL TOP ARTISTS I’ve Listened to (since Apr 2, 2007 on iTunes, Amarok, or Songbird):

• 1 – Breaking Benjamin –> 1,019
• 2 – Collective Soul –> 930
• 3 – Tantric –> 901

Why not mention top tracks in last 6 months:

• 1 – Apocalyptica – I Don’t Care –> 25
• 2 – Tantric – Down and Out –> 24
• 3 – Tantric – Fall Down (Bonus Track) –> 23
• 3 – Queen – Another One Bites the Dust –> 23
• 5 – The Drama Club – Brand New Day (feat. Ben Burnley) –> 21

Last 12 Months:

• 1 – Tantric – The One –> 45
• 2 – Apocalyptica – I Don’t Care –> 38
• 3 – Tantric – Down and Out –> 36
• 4 – Tantric – Love Song –> 35
• 5 – Kansas – Carry on Wayward Son –> 33

And, Overall:

• 1 – Collective Soul – Heavy –> 90
• 2 – Breaking Benjamin – Until The End –> 86
• 2 – Collective Soul – December –> 86
• 4 – Tantric – Down and Out –> 71
• 5 – Collective Soul – Counting the Days –> 70

What do I get from this? It’s just really interesting. I can see overall what bands I take a liking to listening to often, but also, in terms of the last six-twelve months, I really enjoyed Tantric’s ‘The End Begins,’ A LOT! Looking at the last year, there were three Tantric songs in the top five, and about 6 months ago, was the time frame for which I finally got a Queen CD (Greatest Hits, and a few months later, I got Classic Queen, highly recommended).

And, I see the increase of Lacuna Coil as well, which surged with the arrival of their new CD, ‘Shallow Life,’ just last month (awesome, BTW). I hope Breaking Benjamin releases something soon, I need some new tunes, and it shows. (Same goes for Collective Soul).

With something that seemed to pick up with Comcast limiting that amount of data their customers can access on the Internet, at about a 150GB/mo limit. We thought that was tough, now Time Warner is looking at implementing a measly 40GB/mo limit. The whole point these caps is so companies can meter the bandwidth and charge for additional bandwidth (and honestly, make it fairer to those who just check email and maybe visit a site or two). Could make sense, but 40GB/mo for about $55/mo (an even pathetic amount of 5GB/mo for $30/mo)? Seriously? In today’s world, people use a lot of bandwidth, more than they may even realize. Just from streaming videos on YouTube.com or Hulu.com, or downloading their music and movies on iTunes, or from Amazon, NetFlix, etc. Generally surfing the net, with pages filled with pictures, after a while, these things add up. And if you’re like me, they’ll add up fast. [To give you an idea, a full-length movie from iTunes is about 1-1.5GB in size, more if its a LONG movie. So three movie downloads can easily go over that 5GB plan].

And I have Time Warner, luckily they haven’t implemented it in my area yet, as they will start a test run in two locations in August: Greensboro, N.C. and Rochester, N.Y. Now they seem to still be working on the details, but in a nutshell, Time Warner may be fearing loss cable subscriptions (as they should, since I had cable, and I hate cable, no matter the company. Satellite is just cheaper with more channels and clearer and ALL digital).

Anyway, back on topic, this loss, could be one reason to the caps. Also, the overage charge seems to be $1 for each additional GB (or $2/GB for their cheaper solution of a slower connection (768kbps) and 1GB cap). And for about $150/mo, it’ll be virtually unlimited (so, if a person has the cable, the digital phone, and the internet (which to me is a bad idea, one fails, well, they all fail since its the same service)). Many people talk of the evil ways of Comcast, but their 250GB cap is less than $50/mo. Hmm?

Time Warner Capping Scheme | DVICE

Oh, and to add on to this stupidity, Wired.Com has an article showing that their earnings and such (they have graphs and everything) makes this whole thing make even LESS sense.

I just spent about two hours or so joining a few fanlistings (I have a long list of those I’m in process of joining, mostly all TV related, of course), while looking for some more to join later. I have this weird system set up, where I have, in my Firefox Bookmarks Toolbar, a folder for Fanlistings Joined, then a Need Join folder. Each one is separated into TV, Movie, Music, Etc, and Fanlistings Joined as the Pending folder (recently joined but not yet approved), and Need Join has the Ready to Join (which I will work on maybe next week, or if I get approved of about 4-5 more soon, I can quickly join and add the buttons to my site).

Of course, my site itself (www.awesomely-aloof.net), has the Joined listings pages separated into very simple categories (I don’t feel like separating them anymore with specifics), so they are just either TV, Movies, Music, Actors/Actresses, or Misc, although, I feel like I’m gonna have to split up the TV one, ’cause it’s getting mighty large. Then the home page has the little icons on the side, which I don’t want to take up the whole thing, but I don’t want to take off any I haven’t been approved of yet, ’cause having them right on the front makes it easier to find initially. I wish I just took the time to set up Enthusiast or something, but that’s more of a whole Collective kind of thing, and right now I only own two fanlistings (one for the band Tantric, the other for the song ‘Until the End’ by Breaking Benjamin, and I use BellaBuffs for those (BTW, feel free to join if you like, you don’t need a website, just an email)), for the most part, I just have an addiction to joining listings (I don’t know why, I just do).

Anyway, I’m keeping this post short, since it’s more of a rambling, and I am tired, ’cause a useful PHP script like Enthusiast would probably make the whole joining easier (and keep up with the codes too, I think, or maybe the CodeSort would have to be added?). I don’t know, don’t care.

So here’s to fanlistings, keeping up with people’s love of whatever is out there.

I haven’t watched the Colbert Report on Comedy Central in a while (mostly during the writer’s strike last winter, and bits and pieces during the election stuff). But last night, I decided to watch it. Great as always (don’t know why I don’t watch everyday), and last night’s ‘Doom Bunker’ segment spoofing the ‘War Room’ on Fox News was downright hilarious (especially when the Transformers came into play, brilliant).

Anyway, the main point was encouraging viewers to continue to vote on the NASA site on a name for Node 3. They have about four that can be voted on (their narrowed down list), but also a field to submit another. Well, Stephen Colbert asks of us to fill in that field for ‘Colbert.’ So if you have free time, why not help NASA in the naming of a module for the Space Station that provides “a spectacular view of both their home planet and their home in space. The cupola’s six rectangular windows and one circular window overhead will show a panoramic view that will be unrivaled by any other spacecraft ever flown. Aside from providing a perfect location to observe and photograph the Earth, the cupola also will contain a robotics workstation, where astronauts will be able to control the station’s giant robotic arm.”

Right now, with the provided names, ‘Serenity,’ is number one with 86% (which I noticed after already submitting Colbert, and is possible geeky entry they probably don’t know of (Firefly everybody, the transport vessel name Serenity). Though, I find it interesting that ‘Enterprise’ isn’t higher on the submitted list, doubt NASA would be able to even do that if it won. Note, the names for Node 1 is ‘Unity,’ and Node 2 is ‘Harmony,’ so the lame names could end with us (Not that ‘Serenity’ is lame, though it is also a name of adult diapers, so…could be butt of jokes, especially after that whole astronaut traveling with adult diapers one thing that happened a while back, but sometimes may make an appearance in jokes.)

So, go to Colbert Nation to go onto the NASA page.

And reason why Colbert would be an appropriate name? Well, he did interview an astronaut on the International Space Station, so there is already NASA love. Check out the video for part 1 of the interview on YouTube:

Apparently there are some Christians not all too happy with those GoDaddy Super Bowl ads. No surprise. I don’t mean to offend, offer a little commentary to the story posted on Wired.com. It seems there’s this dude who uses GoDaddy for his clients, and then they communicated to him they weren’t happy with GoDaddy because of the “racy” ads during the Super Bowl. You can read all the blah blah blahs in the article, but what I really wanted to point out from that article is what that guy said to GoDaddy:

“(GoDaddy is) going to lose customers like us and every other church we come in contact with,” he says.

Boo-hoo. GoDaddy.com is a popular domain registrar (I use them), and get a ton of business. Just as the writer for the article noted, it’s a small amount of business that could be lost. At the same time, it’s all made up, because after those “racy” ads, basically, the horny guys that love them became new customers to GoDaddy.com after the Super Bowl (there was an increase of 110% over the numbers from the previous Super Bowl ads). These previous ads for 2009 were actually the most viewed spot of the Super Bowl itself (according to TiVo), and the court room/breast size ad was 4th-most watched ad on Hulu.com, and the #15 belonged to the other ad, Danica Patrick and the shower. So, I don’t think GoDaddy.com has anything to worry about, and in fact, if they changed their ways, I might be more inclined to leave myself, since I’m a firm believer in freedom of expression, whatever that expression is.

If they want to argue the Super Bowl being a family event, so those kinds of ads shouldn’t be shown, go ahead. But when it all comes down to it, this is a new era. Kids learn things younger and younger, and trying to hide them from it doesn’t seem to be working. And, I also bet that most of these Christians that took offense, were probably women (and again, don’t mean to offend, but in my opinion, they probably just aren’t getting any attention from their husbands), and if any man argued against it, he’s more likely whipped. I do have to wonder, how does their methods for getting new customers, matter to who the Christians turn to for a host. Just, how picky are there when it comes to Internet services. If GoDaddy isn’t doing it, somebody else will.

Now, I’ve seen the enhanced ad (online, which is the extended one). True, it’s stupid, but that doesn’t matter to men, apparently.

Sure it seems like the thing most people may have nowadays. All the cool kids have them, and all that blah, blah, blah. But you see, my main beef with MySpace, stems from bands now using them as the go-to place for information. It’s a hassle, since lots of people (average joes included), tend to bulk their pages with a shitload of crap. All these dumb widgets that clog up the screen, most very useless, and others downright annoying. I know most official sites to bands and artists tend to have music automatically play, so that’s not the main issue, but all these flash gadgets and hooplah, I guess you could say, makes it harder to find relevant information sometimes. It’s becomes highly congested, and a big waste of space and bandwidth, and my time.

I am forced to check out some from time to time, such as Tantric’s, only because that is their official “site” (the quotes is because anyone that uses MySpace and calls their little “space” a site, is completely misinformed. It, as far as I’m concerned, is nothing more than a page, part of a network of other pages. I site is a singular section on one subject. What I mean by this, you go to a MySpace page, there are links at the top to check other features and such of MySpace, meaning going away from the current subject you are on. I don’t define it as a site.

Anyway, it’s terrible more with non-technical groups. Average people who are most guilty with clogging their page with junk. Also, color schemes become huge problems, as I’m reminded of one from someone I’ve met that has light text and light background. It’s very tacky people. I don’t expect everyone to understand the basic concept of design, but I would like to think people could at least be smart enough to know that contrast is key. Afterall, don’t you want people to be able to, I don’t know, read the damn thing.

My sister-in-law actually signed up for an account, practically against her will, as her little brother and sister have their own and practically begged her to. She’s like me, finds it to be complete nonsense (plus, she’s one of the non-technical people).

Back to the idea of kids all pretty much having their own, this is where real problems occur. They mainly use them in communication with friends, and as long as they don’t allow it to be found to the public, then it’s not all too bad, I guess, but if they don’t know no better, what’s to stop a slip of information to their location. It’s also bad even if they are non-public. Their friends could easily crack their passwords (because it is like totally the hottest guy’s name, or whatever), and put very bad stuff on there. I’m talking nasty stuff that can ruin reputations. So kids, just because everyone else has one, doesn’t mean you need to too.

I went to school in web design, so I don’t need these kinds of services anyway. They were a quick and easy way to put a page up and have this little piece of the world wide web. MySpace is more on social networking, but also getting out there. Like I said, not everyone would or should buy a web host and install something like WordPress (awesome, BTW), and blog their troubles away, but MySpace is also a terrible way to go. When it comes down to it, not everyone should be out there on the Internet, as it is most definitely not for everybody.