June 2008 Archives

I guess that I'm a week late. Granted, I didn't even know that bike to work week was last week until after I got in via manual powered, two wheeled transportation this morning, but it's the thought that counts, right?

I'm going to try to make this a weekly occurrence, especially since it coincides nicely with my Wednesday training schedule--I normally have a 25-30 mile ride on Wednesdays, but nothing else. The distance from home to the office is about 17.5 miles. I know the round trip distance is a bit longer, but I do have a few hour (like 8) break in the middle there.

My goal is to do this for as long as the weather is nice--even after the training is done for the season.

We currently have an expensive radio in our office--expensive when it was purchased anyway. We have tasked an eMac that we used to use for development work. Often times we're listening to the music that the oldest guy in the office has on his ipod. Sometimes we'll listen to internet radio, but that gets tired pretty quickly.

Pandora has been the radio of choice for the last week or so. If you don't know what Pandora is, run--don't walk--to go check it out. You seed a "station" with an artist or song, and it will find songs that relate. They've gone through most non-classical music and categorized it pretty excessively. You have the ability to add seeds, and thumbs up (you like it) or thumbs down (you despise it) songs that it plays. Over time it generates a pretty good algorithm for tunes.

Today we got into a discussion about what a "lowest common denominator" radio station would play that would cater to all of our tastes. I suggested that we should create an office station, with the following rule: anyone can thumbs down a song, but we all have to agree to thumbs up a song. It will be interesting to see what the station ends up with.

I'll report back in a few weeks.