"It sounds like a slot machine"

Rob and I went down to the grocery store to see about getting Amazon gift certificates from the Coinstar machine. I pretty much gave up on the concept of Coinstar when I found out it charged nearly 9% to count your coins, but they've partnered up with some retailers and will waive the fee if you buy a gift card or certificate with your coins.

I had thought it'd be like those casino machines: dump a whole bucket of coins in and just wait. Not so. The bucket is rather small, about 8 inches by 4 inches, and you can't just dump it: you have to kind of sweep the coins into a maybe 1/8" slot at the end only a few at a time in order to avoid clogging.

I had a plastic half-yard margarita glass full of coins: 162 quarters, 257 dimes, 227 nickels, and 756 pennies which netted me a sweet $85.11 of Amazon shopping. Nice!

Rob's coins were in a small tote bag, and were quite heavy to carry around -- maybe 30 pounds? He stood at the machine for about 10 minutes, because of the tiny coin slot. An older woman, no doubt an Indian casino veteran, walked by and remarked "Ooh, it sounds like a slot machine." Somewhere, Pavlov is smiling. Anyway, at the end of his task, he came out with over $200 in coinage, including over 4000 pennies. Yow. I figured that if each cash transaction yields an average of 2 pennies, that meant his change pile was the result of more than 2000 cash transactions, since he probably spent pennies at least some of the time. Yikes.

Pandora Traits List: a work in progress

I'm trying to put together a list of the traits that Pandora uses to classify songs.

I will update these as I discover more or comments are added.

acoustic drum samples

acoustic rhythm guitars

acoustic rhythm piano

acoustic sonority

ambiguous lyrics

atmospheric production

basic rock song structures

breathy female vocal

breathy male vocal

bumpin' kick sound

busy acoustic hihat

busy horn section

call and answer vocal harmony (antiphony)

chromatic harmonic structure

clear focus on recording studio production

danceable grooves

deep voice

demanding instrumental part writing

disco influences

dynamic male vocalist

electric bass riff

electric guitar riffs

electric guitars

electronica influences

electronica roots

emphasis on instrumental performance

extensive studio production

extensive vamping

female vocal

great lyrics

grunge recording qualities

hard rock roots

heavy syncopation

heavy use of chordal patterning

highly synthetic sonority

hip-hop influences

humorous lyrics

inventive instrumental arrangements

jazz influences

knack for catchy hooks

laid back female vocal

laid back male vocal

latin influences

lyrics with a political message

major key tonality

mellow rock instrumentation

melodic part writing

mild rhythmic syncopation

minor key tonality

mixed acoustic and electric instrumentation

mixed minor & major key tonality

new age influences

new wave influences orchestral arranging

paired vocal harmony

pop rock qualities

prevalent use of groove

prominent organ

reggae feel

repetitive melodic phrasing

ska influences

slow moving bass line

smooth male vocal

subtle use of electric keys

subtle use of vocal counterpoint

subtle use of vocal harmony

synth bass riff

synth rock arranging

synthetic sonority

tight kick sound

trippy soundscapes

unusual vocal sounds

use of electric pianos

use of strings

use of techno synths

use of tonal harmonies

variety of synth sounds

vocal harmony

vocal-centric aesthetic

vocal-centric performance

(last update 12/27/05)

Play Me Some Extensive Vamping

I really like recommendation sites. "If you like that, maybe you'll like this." I was listening to the Al Franken show, and some guy from Pandora.com came on to plug their service, which essentially involves pushing music to you based on songs you tell them you like. You can refine things by adding more songs. I started out with "What Difference Does It Make?" by The Smiths, and "No One Knows" by Queens of the Stone Age, and it popped up a song that I rather enjoyed: "Fault" by a band I've never heard of called Taproot.

Pandora is rooted in something called the Music Genome Project, which tries to classify songs according to various attributes. For example, the service played "Fault" because it thinks I like "hard rock roots, minor tonality and extensive vamping". Which is probably correct.

Now, Pandora isn't psychic, so it comes up with songs that I don't like, too. I can tell it to banish an offending song from my presence, and try not to play similar songs in the future.

It's free, supported by ads (iTunes ads for the most part). If you don't like ads, you can subscribe for $12 per quarter or $36 per year.

Give it a shot!

My friend Matt has a cute dog.

[click image to embiggen]

Matt describes his new puppy Samwise as "Kawaii!", and confronted with this photo he sent me, I really must agree.

Mmm-yoso!

Mmm-yoso is a nicely done blog about local eats in the San Diego area. Kirk K., "an Ex-Pat Kama'aina", puts special attention to Hawaiian and Asian food, but covers all sorts of local restaurants.

I'm definitely going to check out some of his faves.