The Agrinautica

iTunes - Apple's continuing campaign to introduce the lowercase "i" prefix into English
   Some nine months ago, I get a new computer, and restarting my music playlist for the umpteenth time, decide to make the change from winamp to itunes. It took awhile getting used to the new program and overcoming the self-loathing that having something from Apple on my computer causes me, but eventually I got used to it. iTunes is much more convenient for having multiple lists and sorting one's music in various manners. And it displays all kinds of useful information simulteniously, so that for example I can know that my most played song is "Unknown" by "Unknown Artist," with 782 plays.
   I shortly discovered, that I could use the automatical "recently added" playlist to satisfy my desire to play repeatedly my newest acquisitions. And in custom playlists one can place songs in any random order, so I could make a list with my very favourite songs at the top and descending from there in favouriteness, which is my preferred playlist orientation. Only recently, however, did it occur to me that since I tend to select to play my favourite songs more, and tend to skip over songs I'm not in the mood for, ordering the whole list by "most played" would give me an automatic list ordering approximately most favourite to least. This has been my preferred setting for the last month.

   However, obviously it will take some time for recently added songs which I may think are awesome to ascend high enough to challenge those with 782 plays. I began to think that maybe it would be nice if one could rank things by total play count / time on list, to counteract the fact the songs I've had longer I've had more time to play.
   As far as I can tell, there's no way to make itunes do this. But it got me thinking, so I whipped out my favourite blogging tool --Excel-- and started crunching numbers to see how things would break down. My hypothesis was actually that the songs I've downloaded more recently would have significantly higher play/time ratios. My hypothesis was wrong.

   So first on my playlist is of course Unknown - Unknown with 782 plays. This averages out to 3.1 plays per day over the 8.4 months since I've had this computer. The next highest is Tiger Army - Cupid's Victim with 480 plays, and a bunch of Flogging Molly / Street Dogs / Against Me! / Planet Smashers all from around 6.8 months ago. Why the huge difference, considering I don't even really like the Unknown song THAT much? I think its because it was ambiguous enough to fit into all of my different genre playlists.
   At approximately the 40th-42nd spot down on my playlist (one of the things iTunes doesn't provide is a ranking of how far down you are on your playlist for whatever ranking mechanism you're using. In this case I estimated the song to be 10% down out of the 352 songs, rounded to 40 for a round number) are three songs which highlight a diversity of playage. Filthy Thieving Bastards - Neverkind, with 166 plays, is my least-played FTB song. Its been played .89 times per day over the 6.2 months its been on my playlist. Next, #41, New Amsterdams - Four More Years has been on my playlist only 2.3 months, but played 158 times for a play/day ratio of 2.29, putting it among the very highest ratios of those I looked at (3rd of 18). And, #42, Momsex - Zombies v. Pirates (by none other than trembyle), with 143 plays, only comes out to .57 plays a day. Now, Zombies v. Pirates is one of my favourite songs -- along with Filthy Theiving Bastards, Momsex is one of the only bands I'd go back into booking for. Totally underrated band. Unfortunately, they broke up. )= I don't know why they aren't higher on my playlist, I think I somehow forgot to put them in the approprate special list.

   The arbitrariness of these numbers is highlighted further by two songs I discovered to be on my list twice. At what as far as I can tell is the very middle of my list, The Magnetic Fields - Sunset City has 59 plays, for .31 per day; but much further down it has 1.41 plays per day. Coldplay - Green Eyes has .13 plays per day at appx #300 on the list, and 1.07 plays per day at appx #324 on the list.

   Anyway, so the bottem line is that it appears, probably because my list was much smaller in the begining so songs got replayed over and over and over again, that the oldest songs also have the highest ratios; and also what lists the songs ended up on has a primary effect on play count of those earlier songs. So yeah, not much of a conclusion, but I had already done all the work so I figured I'd make an entry about it anyway. Hopefully maybe you were tricked into reading it through liking one of the bolded bands or something. ;)
   I still wish I could rank things by ratio, or itunes would at least show me all the ratios without me having to hammer it out in excel.

   Also of note, Red Army Choir - Soviet National Anthem is appx #26 on my list, which I play .75 times a day.


Meanwhile in Real Life
   Yesterday Kristy ate with me at the Fat Cat Cafe and visited me at work. We gave her a tour of the Courthouse. Later, I was in the middle of making my lj update during my break when the civil process division staff presented me with a certificate of appreciation and cake, since they liked the entry so much it was my last day there.
   Today I went with Kristy into her work, at the Cat Factory. To do this I had to go through and airlock-like "disease control barrier" and take a shower. On the other side: cats, lots of cats. Pictures coming soon.


Entry of the Day: emd's dog assistant. The rest of you, less than a week to go, come on, finish strong!


Previously on Emosnail
   Three Years Ago Yesterday: Marination - My little brother joins tha marines, the band Smile breaks up.
   Three Years Ago Today: Godlite - God tries to communicate with me through scrabble. Also the beginning of the Most Awesome Summer Ever. Met my friend Shalane.
   Two Years Ago Yesterday: 30 in 30 I # 12 & 13 - Echidna Hype - Hyped up my former weekly humorous newsletter, the Chosen Echidna. Someday it will rise again!! Reproduced an article that originally I had just plastered around on walls on the third floor when moving to division one athletics was a big topic of debate -- I urge that we should move DOWN to division three athletics (which as far as I know doesn't exist).
   Year Ago Yesterday: 30 in 30 II # 23 - BlogSETI - I conduct a major investigation across the blogosphere in search of potential 30 in 30 participants. I would deem it a success in that it is responsible for bringing this year's participants pavel_lishin, bartgroks, insolent_pool, and eazyt. I'd do it again but.. it was a lot of work.
   Year Ago Today: 30 in 30 II # 24 - Guest Opinion - My mother writes an entry for me!