Do you listen to music when you are blogging or surfing the web? I want to share an online radio that seems pretty cool, is free, and has a great selection of music. It is called Pandora, radio from the Music Genome Project. You can check it out at pandora.com. They’ve been putting this together since January 2000. I guess I am a late comer!

Their idea was to create the most comprehensive analysis of music. How did they do that? Here’s a quote from their about page:

We set out to capture the essence of music at the most fundamental level. We ended up assembling literally hundreds of musical attributes or “genes” into a very large Music Genome. Taken together these genes capture the unique and magical musical identity of a song – everything from melody, harmony and rhythm, to instrumentation, orchestration, arrangement, lyrics, and of course the rich world of singing and vocal harmony. It’s not about what a band looks like, or what genre they supposedly belong to, or about who buys their records – it’s about what each individual song sounds like.

You start with a simple registration process that does not ask you a bunch of personal questions. You then start building your channel based on your favorite bands, songs, genres. I started by entering a few artist’s names and I now have a great station I enjoy listening to while I blog. Check it out.

PHOENIX IS HEATING UP !@!

This past Friday’s paper reported on the front page that this summer is on track to match last year’s record number of days at or above 110 degrees. As of August 1st last year, the 110 degree or higher mark had been reached 22 times and by the end of summer 2007, the record of 32 days was set. August 1st this year will be the 22nd day of 110 degrees or higher. Even so, I can’t imagine the 100+ degree temps I am hearing about in the Mid-west and South WITH humidity over 90%. I’ll take the desert heat with our monsoon moisture.

40 DAY BETTER HEALTH UPDATE

I am almost half way through my forty days of focusing on living healthier. Here’s a summary of the “focus”:

  • an increased intake of water (distilled is my preference)
  • increase eating of raw type foods (fruits and vegetables)
  • avoidance of sodas, fast food, caffeine, and sugar
  • a colon cleanse program (by recommendation of a co-worker, we started the Dr. Natura program) This could be a possible humorous future blog post.
  • have not begun the taking of the supplements
  • still eating too many (bad) carbs!

Can’t say results are life changing yet, but I do think these are all positive changes in my diet. And I am hoping the focus factor will translate to a continued moving toward a healthier lifestyle after the forty days come to an end.