Audioscrobbler

Audioscrobbler is a plugin for WinAmp and XMMS that collects your listening behavior and aggregates it online along with other users. With data on what people are listening to, the system could begin to connect people to each other, users to new music they’re unaware of, or make predictions on the popularity of a given artist or song.

Unfortunately, the service has yet to reach critical mass (it only has 83 subscribed users), but it appears to be growing slowly. Even with a limited amount of raw data, its experimental artist similarity system pulls out pretty good predictions: a search for slowdive returns Sigur Ros, Mahogany, Bowery Electric and Mogwai, among others.

I’d love to see it grow, and I’d love to get my hands on the data. Mmmm… data.

Audioscrobbler Home

What Cameron is listening to

Morning after the Media Lab

pfeiffer sunPaul Pfeiffer, the respected video artist famous for his video-art-gone-screensaver John 3:16 is doing an installation at the List Visual arts center here at MIT (which is housed in the same building as the Media Lab). As promotion for the event, they’ve taped a giant photo from his new video piece Morning After the Deluge (2002) on the side of the Lab (which is shown on the right)

I couldn’t help but notice the irony.. a sun setting on the Media Lab? How strikingly appropriate for the current air surrounding our institutional success. Upon further investigation though, it turns out that the cleverness of Pfeiffer’s piece is the synthesis of both sunrise and sunset. The image taped to our building is a superimposition of both moments in the day. How appropriate. A statement of ambiguity on an institution with an ambiguous place in the future.

LVAC: Pfeiffer Exhibit

Bubb Rubb’n it up

bubb rubbIf you haven’t seen him yet, Bubb Rubb is the next internet video superstar. Check him out whoop whooping the whistle tip (windows media).

Every time I see a piece of video online that seems to be spreading like crazy, I make a local copy knowing well that these high-bandwidth memes tend to push people over their server quotas in rapid fashion. Given that my bandwidth at MIT is essentially unlimited, I host all of the video I link to locally, and as a result tend to serve up quite a bit of content.

In the case of Bubb, I like the man, and I want to make sure he lives to the fullest of his potential.

Bubb Rubb info center: unofficial bubb rubb and lil’ sis info center, Metafilter post, flash animation, sound clips, Bubb Rubb remix project. thousands more to come, I’m sure.

Tiny but deadly

sapphire virus map The Cooperative Association for Internet Data Analysis (CAIDA) has completed a study of the recent Sapphire virus, with some fascinating results (and noted missteps by the programmer).

As opposed to previous viruses, which depended on responses from randomly chosen potential hosts, Sapphire sent UDP packets that required no such return. In other words, Nimbda and Code Red were bounded by network latency, and Sapphire simply by bandwidth. Using this strategy, the virus was able to double its infected population every 8 seconds, while Code Red checked in at a snail-like 37 minutes. Most of the vulnerable machines were affected within 10 minutes.

CAIDA: The Spread of the Sapphire/Slammer Worm

abc=123

For some time I’ve been noticing a peculiar bug in my server logs, a curious variable added to every url, on both blogdex and overstated:

abc=123

At first this struck me as a programmatic glitch or tag for some spider. But it dawned on me a few days ago that this could be a sort of cryptic message touting the fabulous words of the Jackson 5. Abc is not only as easy as 123, it is god darned equal to it! Of course I assumed it to be Anil, but it struck no such chord.

It’s actually an ingenious way of marking your way around the internet, throwing an arbitrary variable onto the end of every url. Most servers will parse the unused signifier and discard it, but it will exist eternally, archived for antiquity in server logs. Call it modern-day graf for the web.

So I charge: reveal yourself mysterious tagger! Bring forth your wisdom in the act of web graffiti! Show your identity!

Update: Some of the other bombs left by visitors recently: cameron=noremac_backwards, anilisvisitingyou=true, youandme=cantyouse

The agony of a memestardom

soccer players with handbags
Carl Baldwin is the photoshopper who fashioned the image of handbag-toting Argentinean soccer players that spread around the world, and crossed over into mainstream publication. The blokes at B3TA caught up with him and asked him a few questions about being a memestar.

While the discussion thankfully degrades into regular B3TAisms (i.e. “what animals would you breed if you could cross breed anything,” or “which would you rather: be forced to wear a hospital gown for the rest of your life or have soup ladles for hands?”), there are a few good insights into the lifestyle of the photoshopper.

B3TA: Carl Baldwin interview

Come on Saddam

I caught the opening sequence to Dune a few nights back, and came to quite a strange realization:

President Shaddam, controller of Arrakis, has domain over the valuable resource spice.

With a little linguistic legwork and metaphor we have:

President Saddam, controller of Iraq, has domain over the valuable resource oil.

Coincidence?!? I think not. The movie was released at just about the same time as Saddam’s ascension to power, but these names are from Herbert’s novel right? Who is this guy, Rasputin?

Les Paul Digitales

digital les paulGibson has just released the first ethernet guitar, complete with cat5 jack alongside the time-honored quarter-inch plug.

It’s quite a computational beast, with onboard Sharc DSP, FPGA and 100 megabit ethernet. Of course this sort of digital advocacy begs the question: aren’t some things cheaper/better/simpler in analog form?

Think of the complexity involved in making feedback with this bad boy: Sound is analyzed, run through a DSP, sent over a network with tons of software to ensure timing, fed into a computer, run through a feedback VST effect, and out through a sound card. Or you could just plug into an amp and hold the guitar close by. (via boingboing)

EE Times: Guitar maker preps digital network platform