Creating a Targeted Pandora.com Station

When you create a new station station using several similar songs that you like as song seeds, you can never be 100% sure that the common attributes Pandora uses for creating the station, will be the specific ones you are looking for.

Although Pandora usually does a great job, sometimes you don't already know enough songs that have the attributes you'd like to listen to. With the method below you should be able to created a pretty targeted station almost assured to contain songs containing a list of specific attributes.

1. Using this list of Attributes on the Music Genome Project Wikipedia page, pick several Attributes you would like for your new station.

2. Search google using the format below to return a list of songs that all contain the Attributes you identified.

site:pandora.com "attirbute1" "attribute2" "attribute3" inurl:song

For example I used the query below to generate an Indian Influenced Downtempo Ambient station.

site:pandora.com "Indian Influences" "ambient soundscapes" "downtempo influences" "electronica roots" inurl:song

3. Use the list of returned songs as Song Seeds for a new station.

4. Profit

Note: I find it best to start with a couple of attributes from the Influences section first, and then slowly add some other attributes until you are left with a couple of pages worth of hits.

Netflix, Ahead of the curve

I got this message in my email this morning, and although I had already read about the price reduction on the web, getting an unsolicited email stating that the price has been reduced, for just about anything, is always a good way to start your day!

Harder Times

Great photo taken of a 27 year old lumber worker and his wife in 1939 over at Shorpy.

Times were harder back then, and arguably so were the people. I'm struck by how much older than I he looks as we are both the same age.

Makes me wonder if he had a great head start on life experiences at 27, and I'm lazily slow-poking my way through life. Maybe I should just count myself blessed to live in such times of relative ease and prosperity.

Actually, it probably has more to do with the fact that he could actually grow facial hair at this point in his life...but I think I'm going to stick with the "harder times" thesis : )

2006 Richmond Highland Games and Celtic Festival

RedBull Flugtag 2006

click photo for Flicr set

This Sunday I got a chance to take my family to the 2006 RedBull Flugtag here in Baltimore. The Flugtag which means "flying day" in German, is an event where teams compete to see who can fly the farthest in their homebuilt human powered flying machines. The competition which is open to the public, consists of teams of friends, co-workers, and college students, attempting to break the US Flugtag Flight record of 72.8ft.

There are usually 1 or 2 serious craft resembling hangliders of some type which make a genuine effort at the distance goal. However the real event centers around the rest of the competition. Teams like "Oscar Flyer" and "Mount Jemima" who's flying craft (a giant Weiner and a stack of pancakes) are more along the lines of glorified Parade Floats than anything ever meant to take flight. Running down the "runway" towards the 30ft drop into the water below most of the craft meet a wet and sometimes violent end upon impact. Part science fair project gone wrong and part Mardi-Gras, the Flugtag is one of those events you just have to see to understand.

PicaJet 2.5 Review

review by Elijah Taylor

Introduction:

You can use the navigation menu at the bottom of each section to quickly jump to any point in the review, or if you are feeling brave you can read it straight through. Either way, make sure you leave a comment if this was helpful of if you have any insight on the topic.

If you decide to go on the hunt for an app to help organize your digital photos you could easily be overwhelmed with all the freeware and junkware floating around the web. While many claim to be the the "Ultimate Photo Manager", there are really only a couple of choices for those who want to do more with their photos than just browse and print them.

PicaJet is a programme that I found (while googling) for what people consider to be the best Photo Management tool around. It came down to PicaJet, Picasa (by google), and ACDSee. Having previously used Picasa I knew exactly what I did and did not want in a Photo Manager. I consider myself to have completed the search for a tool that fits the bill in finding PicaJet.

Introduction | Overview | Features | Comparison | Links
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Overview:

At $39.99 for the full version, you might be tempted to stick with a lesser programme such as Picasa, however there are two or three main things that make PicaJet stand out among other programmes of this sort. If you combine those along with all the standard features that you might expect you have a winning package.

• Categories: A way to organize photos using categories (or tags).
• Ease of use: They nailed the mix of features and ease of use (not always easy)
• EXIF data: The ability to view, sort by, and update the existing meta data ("headers") of a given photo.
• Grouping: Group based on date taken, date imported, local folder, and much more.
• Importing: A simple way to import photos from your camera with a couple of steps.
• Editing: The ability to do basic photo manipulation on one or multiple photos.
• Printing: Bringing your photos into the real world so that you can enjoy them all the time.
• Sharing: The ability to distribute your photos easily via email, cd's, the web and more.

As with many pieces of great software around today, PicaJet has a thriving forum community with responsive and present developers who will personally respond to questions and features requests, even for users of the free version.

Introduction | Overview | Features | Comparison | Links
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Features:

Categories:
PicaJet has a wonderful system for categorizing your photos. Some programmes have the ability to use Keywords (such as Picasa) or tags, however the hierarchical (or tree) method that PicaJet uses to categorize your photos, opens up a whole new world of organization.

As you can see in the screenshots below I have selected the category for my daughter Eden. This causes only photos in this category to appear in the reults on the right. By holding ctrl and clicking on another category, I could select as many categories as I would like to further trim down the results on the right. For example I could again select Eden and Florida, and I would be shown only photos that matched both of those categories. You can also select any given parent category, in this example Kids to show photos that have either Eden or James in them. At any point you may also exclude any category by right-clicking on it and choosing to exclude it from the results.

screenshot


To assign a photo to a given category simply select the photo (or photos) and then click on the little paper clip symbol next to the desired category, then click again on your selected photos. To top all of this off PicaJet will save all the category info including the categories structure into the photos own meta data (headers) so that it is readable by other programmes and websites (i.e. Flickr).

Now make no mistake there is definitely a time investment in categorizing your photos (more time the more complex you make your categories), however taking this time now will save you tons of time in looking for what you want in the future.

Grouping:
One of the key features lacking in Picasa is the ability to group your photos other than by date. With PicaJet you are given the choice to group photos based on the following criteria:

Created Date (month, day, hour)
Modified Date (month, day, hour)
EXIF Date (month, day, hour)
Rating
Imported Time
Folder on disk

In the screenshot below I have the same images as in the previous screenshot (Eden only) however this time they are grouped based on the hour they were taken.

screenshot

Introduction | Overview | Features | Comparison | Links
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Comparison:

Introduction | Overview | Features | Comparison | Links
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Links:

PicaJet Website
Free version download
Full version download
Forums

Organizing your digital photos

"Inaccessibility" "Swimming in a sea of confusion" "Where to begin?" If these phrases sum up your reaction when you think about your digital photo collection, then you can join me and tons of others who find themselves in search of a simple way to get a handle on an ever growing collection of digital photos.

While my collection of roughly 5000 family photos is nothing compared to even the most modest professional photographer, I have to admit that for the most part my photos go virtually un-enjoyed due to the sheer number of them, and lack of a way to find the ones I want. Having a good structured folder system with dates, times, and event names is a good start, but in order to really be able dig into your photos you are going to need some serious muscle.

Enter PicaJet. Found while googling (like many other good things), PicaJet has been consuming my time over this past week, so that I think its time to write up a sales-pitch type review of it. It is growing pretty large and all encompassing so I am going to break it out into its own post which will hopefully be ready in the next day or two. In the meantime check out there site, and the screenshot below and make sure you check back for the full review shortly.

PicaJet Website
Full Review

screenshot