Saturday, September 22, 2007

New old friends

Yesterday I asked what happened at last.fm. I think the answer is clear. Someone did delete my account. Which is sad, but let's face it, not all together surprising. When I discovered that the account was deleted, I attempted to sign up again and was successful for about 15 minutes or so before the account was deleted again. I think that the second deletion had more to do with mirrored servers synchronizing but I could be wrong. The difference that I noted between the first time the account was deleted and the second time is that the first time, the iameveryone friend disappeared from other users accounts, but the second time, it didn't. Also, the second time, iameveryone could still scrobble and would show up in the friend's dashboard. Strange. I sent a note to last.fm support but haven't heard anything. Yesterday another iameveryone was registered and is still operating so hopefully we'll be able to keep it open for a while longer anyway.

Today I went through the gmail account and re-added all the old friends that I could find e-mails from there. Surely there were many more. At some point on the old last.fm account the e-mail address had been changed to coco@denver.com. I do not know who that e-mail address belongs to. But, when I tried to send a message there, it bounced back anyway, so I doubt that it matters much.

I subscribed to last.fm again. And I'm sending a message to see if I can get the subscription from the old account applied to the new one.

Right now, I'm listening to doctor_dee's Radio and it is delightful!

I hope that I will continue to post in the blog as my personality changes in the coming days.

Friday, September 21, 2007

Today . . .

What happened to the old account at last.fm? Did someone intentionally delete it?

Here's what I've done. There was no avatar so I did a google image search for "I am everyone" and the first image that came up was the one I've chosen. Came from this here website:

http://www.doukhobordugouthouse.com/events_current.html

Interesting!

I've visited some pages, I've joined a few groups based on randomness. I added a silly name and an old age (that keeps changing) to add to the mystery of being everyone.

I've put in some comments, also rather random. (In efforts to humanize ourselves.)

I chose a member's radio to listen to randomly but loosely based in their eclectic tastes.

Loved a few songs that I thought were just down right good.

Nobody's biting on the friendship. I didn't add anyone but it's clear that people know I'm around and with a statement like "Please add me!", well, they must know I mean them!

Today I am a woman. Middle-aged and a bit silly. I'm doing things randomly, just as anyone new to a community would. But since I am in actuality a subscriber who has been around for awhile I am finding the anonymity rather exhilarating! I happened upon this experiment by chance. I didn't think much of it at first, maybe I thought it was pointless? But I was just sitting there today and thinking, "I wonder about that account!" So I looked it up only to find that someone had deleted the old account. Fortunately there was already a new one up and running. But now everyone must start over, new friends, new groups. Oh well, we can handle it. But like I was saying, I didn't really like the idea in the beginning. But not only is it an experiment in how last.fm works, (I'm not positive about what we're really trying to prove anyway) it's psychological. How we act when we are everyone. There really is something about being everyone! I've been anonymous before, but this is different. Maybe I am crazy but when I am browsing around I really do feel like I could be ANYONE! Very unlike in my own account where everything is based on my personal library. The people that pop up are different, the groups are different! I am moved to listen to things I wouldn't normally try. In my own profile, I really have to work hard to find new interesting people. But with this new frame of mind and complete randomness I am finding much that is of interest. I truly hope I get to come back and do this again. I really wouldn't mind doing it often.

Sunday, June 3, 2007

95

Been doing a bit of IAE surfing around last.fm over the past week, leaving a few comments here and there; it seems to have generated a bit of interest. Judging by content and numbers and times, I'd say there are at least three IAEs scrobbling at the moment. Things have picked up in the wake of redhalo's tenure; loads of attention, a slew of new friends and -- quite obviously -- users.

Current stats are as follows. Tracks per day is sitting at 95 (there was a huge bump in stats with redhalo's turn at the wheel and it has been holding steady). Top artists overall as of June 3, 2007 (Weekly Top Artists were not available)...

Ween, The Legendary Pink Dots, Modest Mouse, The Tear Garden, radio trailer, Edward Ka-Spel, Inuit vocalists, Radiohead, Anton Webern, Ami Yoshida, Spoon, Gene Ween, The Gun Club, The Beatles, Bob L. Sturm, Belle and Sebastian, Throbbing Gristle, György Ligeti, Operation Ivy, Naked City, Daphne Oram, Old 97's, Nina Simone, Tod Dockstader, NPR, Cat Power, Wire, Low, Leoš Janáček, The Cure, Darius Milhaud, The Fall, François de Roubaix, Andrew Bird, David Bowie, PJ Harvey, György Kurtág, Calexico, Gerhard Rühm, The Postal Service, The Go-Betweens, Built to Spill, The Shins, Lubos Fiser, Lily Allen, The Smiths, The White Stripes, The Kinks, Counting Crows, The Dandy Warhols...

Logged into and sorted through the bulk of messages at gheemail. Wrote up a number of filters and labels to catagorize and sort content; hope this helps. That done, I logged back into IAEs last.fm and calculated IAEs mainstream percentile. The Mainstream-O-Meter calculates one's mainstream-ness by comparing the listener count of IAEs favorite bands to the average listener count of the five bands who have the most listeners among Last.fm-users. IAE currently sits at 14.90% of mainstream.

Also, added an AEP link in IAEs last.fm sidebar (it appears just under the Journals entry). AEP is a measure of how diverse one's music tastes are, based on the top 50 artists in one's Last.fm profile. AEP is a number, usually below 5. Roughly speaking, if it is greater than 4 you have very diverse taste in music, if it greater than 3 then you have fairly diverse taste in music. At the other end of the scale, if it is less that 0, you are probably an obsessive fan of your top artist. As of this posting, IAEs AEP stood at 0.85 (it will be interesting to watch how the profile changes over the coming weeks and months.

Wrote up this post and logged out of iameveryone's everything. Out to enjoy the first sunny day in a week!

Wednesday, April 25, 2007

2.79

One month in and I'm averaging 67 tracks a day. Yippee! That's 2.79 tracks an hour! This evening marked the playing of track number 2,000... you guessed it, a Radiohead tune. Track number 1,000 by the way, was a Lily Allen tune.

Tuesday, April 24, 2007

so long shania

Logged into iameveryone's last.fm account and played Neighbour Radio again. Noted -- just like last.fm -- Radiohead was top of the pops. Weekly top artists were as follows: Nina Simone, Old 97's, Lily Allen, Belle and Sebastian, The Postal Service, Modest Mouse, Shania Twain, Spoon, The Beatles and Controller 7. Any surprises there?

I am wondering if an attempt to befriend the 50 neighbours showing up on IAEs last.fm Overview page has been made now that enough tracks have been played to generate the lists on a weekly basis? Does IAE have time for this?

Ran iameveryone through mainstream on vincentahrend.com and found IAE is 36.26% of mainstream! That's the rolling stat... I think it would be a little more interesting to track this data from week to week. IAE was -- for plays falling between 15th and 22nd of April 2007 -- 30.45% of mainstream! As time passes, and participation hopefully grows, do you think the stats will fall in line with those posted by last.fm or veer off in another direction?

Logged into IAEs blogger account and streamlined the html running the template. With the compressed code, the IAE blogger pages should load 25 to 28% faster (and running a few test loads on various browsers seems to bear this out). It's the little things, eh. (As I doubt casual users of IAE's last.fm are bothering with reading the mail), I posted a couple of last.fm mails I though worth launching into the blogosphere.

Read the 23rd of April 2007 entry concerning IAEs eighteen month parcel wait; sounds -- as the package was in such good condition -- it never left the company's mail/shipping department; went down behind a desk or something. Wrote up this post and signed out of IAE's last.fm account, noticing someone else had slid into the account, playing Def Leppard and Guns 'n Roses and Metallica. So long, Shania.

the greatest gift

From:[a last.fm user]
Subject: Hi
Date: 16 Apr 2007, 17:55
I'm sorry, bot there is no ultimate listener, there will never be! And there is no need for such one. It's the greatest gift that we all can call us individuals. that's what makes EVERY PERSON interesting.
Sorry, I can't join you.
greetings

it's my hat

From: [a last.fm user]
Subject: Friend's request
Date: 14 Apr 2007, 19:43
Hi,

Don't know how you found me... ?
I don't have any french... and you are not really in my neighboor ;)

I think it's my hat on my pic... am i right ? Every girls likes the hat ;)