If you visit the new link I’ve added to the sidebar, you can play around with a dinky Web toy I made this afternoon. It’s a series of tag clouds that report the words most frequently found in reviews of this year’s indie hype monster, Arcade Fire’s “Neon Bible.” It’s hardly revelatory — and a long toss from scientific — but it can still make for a bit of fun.
If nothing else, it’s clear that the band’s lead singer, Win Butler, is getting more attention that his mates. And a bit interesting, though hardly surprising, that the band’s debut album, Funeral, played pretty high in most reviews.
How about how often “war” makes its way in?
I made the hypecloud using a free application developed by a bright guy named Chirag Mehta. You can check that out here. Mehta has done some cool stuff with it, particularly an excellent cloud that displays the most commonly used words in presidential rhetoric since the founding of America.
I’ve added yet another goofy widget to my media diet page. This one displays the books I’m working on at the moment.
It’s created by Shelfari, a social networking site built around users cataloging their personal libraries. I’ve decided to use it to track my reading habits, just as I’m using last.fm to record the music I listen to.
Capriciousness has always been my guide. I’ve never followed how many, or what type, of books I read over time. So, this will be something new for me. I feel a bit guilty about all the conspicious consumption lately. But I am curious to see how things stack up at the end of the year.
So far I’ve added all of the books I’ve read this year, including two I’m still working on, Philip Roth’s novel The Dying Animal and Brian Greene’s primer on modern physics, The Fabric of the Cosmos.
This plugin requires Adobe Flash 9.
You can scroll back and forth through the titles, or click on a book to learn more. As I add more books throughout the year, the shelf here should fill itself.
Like many of my fellow pale, white Americans, I have a job that requires I spend most of the work day seated in front of a computer.
It comes with a few negatives. I have minor neck pain. I’ve gained a little weight. And I’ve developed a highly refined, and easily inflamed, sensitivity toward the shortcomings of different varieties of database development software. None of which is probably doing much for my sex appeal. Especially that last one.
But it has its advantages, too. I enjoy the work. I’m blessed with great coworkers. And it’s possible to complete most of my job while also engaging in one of my favorite hobbies: listening to pop music.
To make the most of the opportunity, I decided several months ago to purchase a good pair of headphones, the Grado SR-80. While I won’t pretend to be an expert on the subject, they’ve certainly been great for me.
And, more recently, I’m signed up for an account at the social networking site last.fm. Now every time I listen to a song it’s cataloged by a little bug on my computer that sends the track back to their site. You can watch what I’m up to here. You should go join yourself, too. It’ll be fun. (And if you do, add me as a friend!)
Since I’ve written about last.fm and the RSS feed of recent tracks over there in the sidebar before, I won’t ramble too far. But I do have something new. Below is a quilt of album covers that displays artwork from the music I’ve been listening to lately.
It’s dynamically generated and updated by last.fm. You can check it out anytime right here or over on my media diet page. Pointless indeed, but at least marginally entertaining. Sort of like this blog, I suppose. When we’re clicking, at least.
Half of a cellphone conversation I overheard on the subway earlier this week:
“Oh my god. I am so tired. I’ve been lobbying all day.”