You all know I enjoy music a lot. I tend to go through phases with particular genres, but love music of all types. Recently I found myself wondering: what words occur the most frequently in the music that I listen to? I had some guesses, but wanted to do a proper in-depth analysis.

I call this little app "LyricsHistogram." It does the following:

• Uses ScriptingBridge technology from Apple to get the list of tracks you have in iTunes
• Uses LyrDb to fetch a set of lyrics for each song
• Breaks out all of the words in each song and keeps track of the frequency of each one
• Optionally weights the lyrics of each song based on how many times it has been played in iTunes
  • I added this weighting ability after I realized I listed to some songs very frequently and never listened to some of the music in my library
• Outputs word-frequency pairs in comma-separated (CSV) format for detailed analysis using programs like Microsoft Excel

This application is available via my shared Subversion repository here. If you don't know what that means, then this application is not ready for you to use yet - sorry. Usage help is available on the command-line.

With my machine's speed and network performance I run through my library of ~5400 songs in about 10 minutes. Since this will hit the LyrDb database every time you run it (I haven't added lyrics caching yet) try not to run it frivolously. Please enjoy and experiment with this code. If you want write-access to the repository to contribute, let me know. One day we might be able to make this a really interesting and useful application.

It was really fun to use ScriptingBridge and simple web services to write this app. I've run both weighted and unweighted on my library and the results were very interesting. I'll have another blog post to share what I've seen with my own music library another day.

Subtitle: “Whoa, I just reprogrammed a RAM chip”

I purchased 4 GiB of RAM for my sister and brother-in-law’s old Macbook. Did you know that Apple shipped a Macbook configuration in 2008 that included only 1 GiB of RAM? Since I upgraded them to Snow Leopard (64-bit!) and they want to use vmware Fusion to run Windows 7 side-by-side, they sorely needed some more memory.

I bought two of these RAM modules for their computer and had them shipped to my parent’s address, so that they were available when I came home for the long weekend. I put both of the RAM modules in, and was dismayed by what happened when I tried to start up; instead of the gray-on-grey Apple startup screen, I got no chime and a solid white light from the power/sleep indicator. I took one of the modules out and put an old 512 MiB modules back in, and it started up and showed 2.5 GB of memory installed.

That certainly took me by surprise. I’ve seen blinking white lights to indicate different kinds of RAM failures, but never a solid one before. I searched online and was quickly met with a description of the problem: if you put only DDR800 RAM into a Macbook that uses DDR667 it cannot negotiate the RAM to use the slower speed. Unfortunately, nothing is wrong with the RAM. Instead the motherboard/firmware are incapable of properly using the memory modules. Most people suggested buying one piece of RAM that was only capable of 667 MHz operation at most, which would force the other module to run at the lower, compatible speed. Have you tried finding 667 MHz-only RAM these days?! I ordered what I thought was the required RAM, and continued to investigate.

I managed to find this link to [H]ard|Forum, where someone else ran into the same problem, but ultimately found a great solution. Use SPDTool for Windows to edit the RAM’s EEPROM and tell it that it is only capable of 667MHz. Why buy any new RAM when you can just reprogram the one you have?

I popped the module into my work computer (running Windows 7, naturally), made the specified edits, wrote the new data to the module, and put it into the Macbook alongside its virgin 800MHz cousin. We are all good to go. The Macbook now shows 4GB of available RAM. I’m writing this blog post in hopes that someone else who runs into this problem will find the solution. If you enjoyed reading it or feel like giving me more nerd cred that was entirely unintentional.

“Mission Accomplished”

People have been asking my recently about anime I’ve been watching that I really liked. Here are some, in no particular order, that are mostly available on Netflix:

Blood+ An anime with international intrigue, corporate dealings, genetic research, references to Vietnam, opera, and vampiric creatures? Yes, please. As the name implies, it’s pretty bloody and violent, but still a little Magic-Girl-feeling. This was picked up a few years ago by Cartoon Network, but I believe the whole series is currently available on Netflix.

Genshiken: The Society for the Study of Modern Visual Culture Ha, it’s an anime about Otaku (Japanese ultra-nerds). Very school/college-type anime, but it’s an interesting and compelling window into a very identifiable subculture in Japan. The characters are well-written, and the story moves steadily forward while continuing to go nowhere. Wikipedia describes it as “Slice-of-life,” and that feels pretty much spot-on to me. It’s faintly reminiscent of Azumanga Daioh.

There are a few bits that some people might find inappropriate, since it does make quite a few references to doujinshi. You’ve been forewarned. At least the starting part of the series is on Netflix.

BECK: Mongolian Chop Squad One of my favorite anime that I’ve watched recently. It’s a music anime, about some youngsters starting a band and growing up at the same time.

Nothing impossible or unimaginable happens, and the music is really, really good. There’s a lot of that “coming of age” feeling to it, since the main character is in high school.

Oh, and Beck is the name of the dog. The entire series is on Netflix.

Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood A retelling of the original Fullmetal Alchemist, this time closer to the original manga. This version of the series is also much darker than the first one. I’ve only watched the first 10 episodes but so far it seems to be a bit accelerated compared to the original series. Be prepared: All of the painful, tragic moments in this story are actually a little harder to bear the second time around. I believe Cartoon Network will start airing dubbed versions of this series soon, but otherwise some episodes are available online for download or streaming.

I’ll end it here for now; I don’t want to overload you with a list of anime. At some point in the future I’ll try to post some other anime that I’ve watched recently.

I’m sorting the bands in this title in order of decreasing Awesome when describing this show.

One-line summary: These guys came and rocked pretty hard in a good venue with a pretty good crowd.

Okay, now for specifics…since more than just music goes into making a concert a good concert.

Getting There
Yes, it’s in Lowell. Yes, it’s a schlep. It takes about 45 minutes to get there from Cambridge in decent pre-concert traffic. The show started at 7, so we arrived pretty early with the intention of having dinner in the area beforehand. Since we came early it was pretty easy to drive through Lowell and get a parking spot in the Tsongas Arena parking garage ($10), which is right next to the venue. Many of the private lots in the area charge $15 or $20, which made very little sense to me.

Lowell
Lowell gets its own heading here. We drove through downtown Lowell, but not dine there. Instead we went to Southeast Asia Cafe; I haven’t posted a Yelp review yet but the service and food were excellent. There are many restaurants within a short walking distance, and your options are diverse.

Venue
Tsongas Arena is associated with UMass Lowell and is located on the campus, more or less. For events like these the entire place is opened up as general admission, which is always the most fun, anyway. I don’t really care about Flyleaf, but for a 7PM show they definitely started playing music at or slightly before 7! Who does that? The staff was pretty friendly, and generally helpful.

Flyleaf
Besides the failure of starting time (which wasn’t their fault), Flyleaf was okay. I heard of them back when they opened for Seether in the Warfield in SF, and have never been too fond of their sound. It was fun to watch the crowd change throughout the night depending on who was playing. Flyleaf has the late-20s, probably religious couples as their primary audience. One big failure here was the sound, you could barely hear Lacey Mosley’s singing, and what was audible wasn’t intelligible.

Breaking Benjamin
The second act, but the one that I (and seemingly the majority of people) came to see. Breaking Benjamin stole the show. The sound was perfect, the set was tight, and the stage effects were fun. They had these LED-type display curtains hanging behind them with a good set of accompanying visuals. The crowd was really into the music, which makes it all the more fun. It was during Breaking Benjamin that the crowd surfing and moshing started, which added this interesting interactive element to the experience. I wasn’t badly hurt by the shoving and lifting of people, but this was definitely the most active GA section that I’ve ever been in. My friend Jeff said they played for a while, but I guess I just enjoyed the music so much that I lost track of time.

One bit that surprised me was the way Ben was singing. Having heard only their albums so far I couldn’t figure out how he was producing the voice that he did. After listening to their live set it was clear that they normally record double-tracked vocals and add some interesting EQ effects on top of it to produce the distinct vocal tracks in the studio. I also wonder if Ben was careful with how he screamed to avoid further damage to his voice.

Three Days Grace
Definitely the band with the best pedigree. They’ve been around since the mid-90’s at least, and it seems they still cater to the same audience – angsty teenagers. The band had a good set, playing a lot of their classics as well as a bit of their newer stuff. Once fun part of their set was the pyrotechnics; during certain songs they had six columns of flame flaring with the music, which certainly added to the intensity. The other fun thing that 3DG did was in the middle of their set: everyone went offstage and their drummer, Neil Sanderson, was playing this crazy drum solo. Then, while playing drums, and synth, and synthpads, him and his drumset started rotating on the stage. He played with a looper live, which is pretty intense! Then, all of a sudden, the stage lights point to a spot right behind us, and their singer Adam Gontier comes onto this little stage and starts singing. That was a fun little surprise.

I wasn’t surprised to hear Adam’s voice sounding destroyed after 15 years of singing. For songs like, “Riot,” he didn’t even bother trying to pull off the intense screams, and I don’t blame him for it. The crowd didn’t seem to mind – they were actually a bit calmer by this point compared to when Breaking Benjamin was playing.

I was shocked that, as the last act, 3DG decided to just end the set and end the night without an encore! Who does that? I know it was around midnight at that point, so the concert had already lasted about 5 hours, but even just one encore song, for the fans.

Wrap-up
No encore meant everyone left at the exact same time. Getting out of the parking structure was a struggle. I ended up getting out of my vehicle and asking a car in line to leave if they would wait for my car to back out. Thankfully they agreed, or it would have been an hour of waiting for an opportunity to get in line to leave. Driving to leave Lowell was a challenge, as well; the streets of the town simply weren’t made to handle that much traffic. After we got to the highway entrance traffic wasn’t a problem at all, thankfully.

Overall it was a great concert, and I would definitely go to other shows in Tsongas Arena in the future.

Everyone raves about this blogging tool. It takes a bit of setup to get it working with Drupal, but let’s see how well it works!

Unfortunately it seems like I still have to manually add the <BR CLEAR=”LEFT”> to get out of the inline image. Maybe if I keep digging I’ll find a more effective way within this blogging tool. So far, though, I will say that I’m pretty impressed. WLW even downloaded the site theme from Drupal so that I can see a preview of what my post will look like once it actually gets uploaded to the server. Now, hopefully this actually publishes! It looks like it published – now, will it edit?

Apparently everyone and their mom already has a humidifier, but no one told me they were so critical to east coast winter apartment life. For the past few nights I was completely unable to sleep and woke up with a bloody nose because of the unbelievable dryness that comes with the forced air heat that is installed in our apartment.

The little (actually, big) guy on the left is my new humidifier. Before I share my experiences with it so far, here's what I was looking for in my unit:

• About 8 hours of life. I really only need this while sleeping at night.
• On my sister's recommendation I was looking for warm steam humidifiers instead of cool mist.
• I'm not a humidifier nerd: I don't need timers, filters, and humidity controls.

After some comparison-shopping at Economy Hardware, Walgreens, and CVS, I picked this one for $18. I later found out this is the same one my sister uses in her bedroom, and she really likes it. Here are my thoughts:

Good

• This thing is stupidly simple to operate: fill with water, add a little salt, and plug it in.
• Warm steam is very pleasant in the winter time. Every breath you take just makes you want to breathe more.
• The unit will turn itself off if the water runs out, so no worries about the motor burning out.
• $17 is a great price for humidifier.

Cons

• You can't turn the little nightlight off, not at least as far as I can see.
• It should run the whole night, but if you ever have to refill it around when it was running, be mindful of the heating chamber which can get very hot.
• The unit has no on-off switch. To turn it off it either has to run out of water or be unplugged.
• It's ugly. You shouldn't care about it too much, but it's worth mentioning.

So, there you have it. If you have a Walgreen near you and need a cheap humidifier, my opinion is that you really can't go wrong. Best of luck, everyone!

Every Tuesday at Apple we would get deliveries of fresh fruit to each of the breakout/lounge areas. Every day at the cafeteria there were free apples for people to grab with their lunch. Every Tuesday and Friday morning (I think) after Steve got cancer there was delicious organic vegan broth you could pour into a cup and sip. The only thing we had to drink was Allhambra water from huge water coolers. The division I worked in usually had doughnuts once a week.

All of Microsoft has water-filtering coolers and free soda (pretty much all the major cans). My old Microsoft team would have doughnuts or muffins every Friday morning. My new Microsoft team has bagels or hot breakfast/pancakes/bacon every Wednesday. Someone also brings in doughnuts once a week on average.

Please see my previous post for a full list of disclaimers. The emphasis with this one is that I'm not making a judgement on which one is better.

This past weekend was interesting for driving.

I went to Casey's family's holiday party on Saturday. There was an option to spend the night there, which was appreciated since snow was in the forecast. It wasn't snowing in Exeter, so I figured I could probably make it back and it wouldn't be too bad.

I left their home at about 2AM; it's about 60 miles away from Cambridge.

The first 15 miles of the trip were at full speed, but then I noticed the air had the 'sparkly' look to it. Sure enough the closer I got to Cambridge the more snow I saw falling. Around 35 miles away there was accumulation on I-95 South. It must have been about 2:20AM; the skies were pink, the snow was failling, and the roads were empty. I continued to slow down as I got closer to Cambridge, since visibility decreased with snowfall and more snow had accumulated. I tried to seek out tracks left by previous cars to improve my vehicle's traction.

There were times many cars were driving in lines and I found myself behind them; this actually felt less safe and I tried to avoid it. Vehicles were keeping very little distance between each other, and if someone lost control or braked suddenly there could have easily been a collision. Around 20 miles away from Cambridge there were parts of the highway where I had to drive behind one of the many plows because the snow had piled up too high. It was kind of fun being in these little trains of people being led by the big highway plows.

Many times on the highway I was driving underneath overpasses for smaller local roads. Since snow had just recently started to fall it seems the local authorities had just started to mobilize; each of these overpasses was filled end-to-end with the flashing yellow lights of snow-removal vehicles, waiting to be dispatched to their assignments. It was eerily beautiful.

Though it was late and night and I was alone, I think it was the best way to experience driving in snow for the first time. I had opportunities to experiment with vehicle acceleration, braking, and steering without concern for other motorists. I'm not convinced that my rear-wheel drive car is any worse in bad weather than a front-wheel drive car - it seems more likely to me that RWD car drivers tend to drive more rashly and drive more powerful cars, and FWD car drivers don't know how to drive a RWD car.

The local roads in Somerville/Cambridge were quite a trip. Here I learned about stopping and starting from a dead stop. Turns were also an interesting experience. When I finally reached Broadway and parked my car (on Tremont Street because of the snow emergency status) it was about 3:15AM. There were no cars driving on the road and no cars parked on it. I spent about 15 minutes just enjoying the incredible silence and beauty of the snowy night. It's something I haven't experienced in a few years.

I'm sure I'll enjoy it even more when I find my gloves.

Having worked at and read extensively on these two fine corporations, a few differences come to mind, that over time I hope to commit to writing. Here are some disclaimers:

• There is no confidential information contained in anything I write
• The thoughts expressed represent solely my opinions
• Nothing I write is designed to present either of these companies in a particularly positive or negative light. I've played for both teams - I don't play favorites.

On to today's thoughts: relationships with Independent Software Vendors (ISVs).

Perhaps it is Steve Jobs' ego, or simply the Apple corporate philosophy, but the "whole widget" thing can indeed be taken to an extreme at the company a little too easily. Too many times, now, we've seen software from Apple that closely resembles functionality offered by third-party shareware developers for the platform. To old Mac users all of these examples are familiar, but I'll spell them out for the others:

Back in the days of yore, users wanted a way to more easily search for things online. Web browsers were not the panacea that they are today, and people still preferred the desktop application experience over the clunky AJAX-free web application. Enter Watson, which did awesome things like search movie listings, eBay auctions (back when people used eBay), the phone book, and other useful sources of information. It was not long after Watson was released that Apple introduced Sherlock 3. Sherlock offered much of the same functionality that users had clamored for, but came free with Mac OS X.

Apple introduced Dashboard and its widgets with Mac OS X 10.4, providing users with an easy way to access tiny bits of information quickly. Konfabulator had been available for about 2 years before OS X Tiger's release, or about 1 year before any information had been made public by Apple about Tiger's feature set.

Even today many user's love the easy access interface of Quicksilver on their Mac. While it does many, many things, I couldn't help but feel like Apple making application matches the first result in a Spotlight search wasn't meant to take some users of Quicksilver who use it solely to quickly launch an app and bring them back into the Apple fold. All of these incidents stirred up some level of outcry from developers, but people are always willing to forgive Apple with time. I don't find any of these incidents bad, per se, but they speak more to Apple's perceived desire to keep users running an all-Apple system as much as possible.

I feel like Microsoft lives on the other side of the fence in ISV-land. You can see how every decision they make is designed to keep ISVs happy, so that their platform will continue to thrive with diversity. Microsoft is a company with a lot of brilliant, capable people - but why is it that Windows Mobile tends to suffer so much in public opinion? I think a lot of it stems from the relationship with ISVs and OEMs. I have no doubt Microsoft could have produced much of the same experience that software like Pocket Informant used to offer, or the slick, custom experience that HTC, Sony, et al. have been able to produce on their Windows Mobile (or Windows Phone, excuse me) handsets. By keeping the Windows Phone experience relatively vanilla an ecosystem of software development is able to grow and diversify.

Microsoft is, first-and-foremost a platform company. Whether you look at their enterprise or consumer offerings, everything makes more sense when examined in this light (except the Zune, sorta). The rationale with which many business decisions are made definitely seems to center, "What's best for the platform?"

Let's see if we can insert an image inline. This is an important feature since I often have graphical things to share with people. This could be fun.
Text
Images
Life
Food
Everything coexisting, and mingling, producing that intoxicating melange of life.
We always look for more, but why can't we see that everything we need and want is right in front of us, just waiting to be accepted?

And now, it seems the time has come for something new to begin. Something that can break free of its bonds. Something to which we can lend our inner strength, and in the process become stronger ourselves. It may not be easy, but perhaps it should be. People always talk about how life if so incredibly hard. I have to wonder sometimes if the more we struggle against the flow of the universe, the less pleasant our life experience is.