Hi. I'm Steve.

Grooveshark: Awesome, But Will It Last?

2010-02-09T01:17:00.000-08:00

I recently (a few hours ago) switched to Grooveshark as my primary music player. In case you haven't heard of it before, Grooveshark is a great up-and-coming web-app that lets users play just about any song they want from any computer with an internet connection. On top of that, it offers great radio functionality, so even if you can't decide what to listen to or don't have time to set up your playlist, you'll still be hearing tunes that will (most likely) satisfy.

For a while, I was hesitant to switch to Grooveshark from Lala (now bought out by Apple) because they don't yet offer Last.fm scrobbling. Fortunately for me, a dude named Sami Samhuri developed a tool called scrobbleshark that fixes that problem. EDIT: Another tool called Rumpus by Michele Palmia appears to be a bit more reliable. Also, it can apparently send your loved tracks on Grooveshark to your favorited tracks on Last.fm, a feature that Sami Samhuri also plans to include in future versions of scrobbleshark, though I haven't gotten this to work yet.

Anyway, I am now using what is pretty close to the ideal music player - one that allows me to play anything from anywhere at any time, whether I know what I want to listen to or not, and records it all to Last.fm. It is this fact, however, that worries me. It is not legal in the US to play copyrighted material whenever I want unless I've payed for it. The one advertisement to the right of the Grooveshark player (which I block with Adblock Plus) and very cheap payments from "VIP" users don't seem like they could possibly be enough to finance deals with record labels. In fact, the people at Grooveshark have already been dealt a couple lawsuits. An optimist would say that the record companies are just using the lawsuits as bargaining chips in their deals with the online music prospect, but a successful one could be the end of the service entirely. Either way, I respect the people at Grooveshark for sticking to their goals: "To improve the connection between people and music. To change the music industry in ways they seem so unwilling to consider. To have fun."

Who wants a Google Voice and/or Wave invite?

2009-10-31T14:26:00.000-07:00

After a long dry spell in my blogging I have something worth talking about again! I'm testing out a couple newish Google products called Google Voice and Google Wave. I have some invites for them both (3 and 20 respectively) that I can give out to whomever I deem worthy. The invites are especially important for Wave because it's pretty pointless to try out a new means of communication if you have nobody to communicate with on it. I thought about asking who wanted the invites in my Facebook status, but then remembered how many times I had seen fellow computer nerds begging for them in various forums and blog/article comments. So rather than giving them all out to people I know who probably haven't thought twice about either of these products (or even heard of them at all) I have decided to give out 2 Voice invites and 15 Wave invites to those who comment on this post on a first-come-first-serve basis. Ask away (but please specify if you're looking for a Wave or Voice invite)!

PS: According to the people at Google Wave "Invitations will not be sent immediately. We have a lot of stamps to lick." Looking at the Google Wave forums, people are saying that they can take anywhere from a few hours to 10 days to go through.

EDIT: I ran out of Voice invites but I still have plenty of Wave invites for anyone who's is interested.

My name is Steve and I suffer from OCD

2009-03-03T08:27:00.000-08:00

Yes, it's true. I, Steve Farbota, have Obsessive Customizing Disorder. The logical side of me knows that I could probably live without the more neutral skin for my FoxyTunes add-on to Firefox, but I just can't resist! The future me will be thanking the current (past?) me, you'll see!
I have always known that I can tend to be a bit of a perfectionist about things that reeeally don't matter, but opening my laptop this morning made me realize how serious my tweaking and customizing has gotten:

(Click image for larger view)
That's Facebook in Firefox if you were wondering, scary I know. I wish that I could say I am finally content with my setup forever, but I know that the alure of software updates will never cease to suck me in to that black hole of convenience.

Motion

2009-02-22T02:53:00.000-08:00

(Click image for larger view)
I made this in Adobe Photoshop CS3 to convey the idea of motion to the viewer on a somewhat subconscious level. In other words, I wasn't trying to make something that actually appears to move, but rather something that almost forces the viewer to imagine that it's moving. There are also various other themes that I came up with as I went but I'll leave those for you to figure out yourself. The only thing I still can't decide on is if it should be displayed vertically (as it is above) or horizontally (as I have it on my desktop right now). It doesn't have a real title as of yet so I figured "Motion" was a good enough working title.

Wascawy Dubya

2008-12-23T14:41:00.001-08:00

I made this a few days after someone threw a shoe at Bush. Unfortunately I kept getting distracted from it so the thrill of the meme had warn off had worn off by the time I finished it.

An Annoying E-mail

2008-12-22T12:43:00.000-08:00

About a week ago I received what was probably the strangest e-mail I've ever come across. It was definitely not from anyone I know, but it also was not your average "You just inherit $1,000,000 from uncle in Nigeria. Give me - er uh, him - credit card number now!" The message was from tacticalanalysis@gmail.com and the Subject was "A serious inventor's attempt to communicate." It read:

Shouldn't you be seeking out another human who thinks as you do? If not, there's no need to read further as it means that those who think just like you are already around you.

You must long to compel others to adopt your views. Or do you prefer to advocate foolishness?

I was planning to become married this year because there would have been tax benefits. They told me they'd only consider marriage for love. They had no excitement for team work.

They revel in the idea of finding what you enjoy doing. They're being dishonest with themselves. A few per cent of today's Gross Domestic Product would suffice to produce what we need.

People ask how I survive since I rarely work. I ask them why they compensate talented pretenders by paying to watch films. Why do they hunger after autos and single family homes? Is it not obvious that they admire traveling only as long as it's well-respected by the masses?

They're convinced that people won't change. Yet when young, they dreamt about omniscience, perfect relationships, and perfect worlds. We are still kids in our thoughts. We'll create a group based on logical reasoning.Don't reply to this letter since we will not read it. Try a google search on the following words.

nothing arrogant teenage intelligence students

surreptitious philosophy strategy ideology logic

pure general enclave design insecure

notary terrestrial personality intolerant defiance

conspiracy social spiritual art traits

indoctrination innovative Borg monomania clandestine

I advise choosing three words for each search request. That's right, there are an intimidating number of search possibilities, so only the ambitious will not give up.

When I read this the first time, I wrote it off as a mass e-mail sent out to random addresses or spam from some obscure website I signed up for years ago and forgot about - until I got to the word bank section at the bottom. Why would someone want me to try 24,360 different combinations of words in Google searches rather than just linking me to whatever site they want to scam me with or attaching a file in the e-mail itself? I also noticed that every other name in the "To:" section, with one exception, was a ".edu" address, meaning it was most likely sent only to college students. At the risk of being dumb enough to follow a spammer's wild goose chase, I decided to look into it a bit.

Being the computer geek that I am, my first instinct was to write a java program to give me every combination of 3 words from the list and then automate a Google search on every line in the file, saving the first few results of each one in another file. I did this, let the automation run overnight, and skimmed through the results in the morning. The only result of any real significance was a LiveJournal post by someone who got a similar e-mail. There were comments on there from other people who also had gotten one. Some of them couldn't understand the message whatsoever and others reached some unlikely conclusions. One comment, however, gave me a good idea. "could someone track the email addresses... who owns them?" While it is usually very hard to track an e-mail address, it is pretty easy to see where an e-mail was sent from. MS Outlook told me that the IP address of the computer it was sent from was 10.126.24.9. I Googled the IP and found a site where a guy was saying that he too was having a problem with this IP. He had found the address and the name of a guy who used the computer with that IP. I got excited and made a couple impulse responses to that LiveJournal post, but the feeling of accomplishment didn't last long.

I looked at the second site again and realized that he went on to say that the address actually belonged to the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN). So apparently the sender of this e-mail decided to mask his or her identity by "sending" it from a false IP address and thought it would be funny to pick a headquarters for the company that manages IP addresses itself. Somehow my annoyance with this person outweighed my appreciation for the irony.

So now I've spent hours trying to get some clue as to who is sending this and why they would care enough to do so...and I've gotten nowhere.

EDIT: Apparently this is the guy who sent the e-mails. It all makes sense now: it's a lonely middle-aged guy with no friends in denial about his failing marriage. I feel a bit bad for him, but my annoyance for the wasted time still overpowers that.