This is a sta­tion based on my Audiosc­rob­bler pro­file, i.e. the site that logs what I lis­ten to, it plays songs from other people’s pro­fi­les that are simi­lar to mine. Not quite the library of LAUNCH­cast but impro­ved bitrate, no anno­ying adverts and Audiosc­rob­bler inte­gra­tion make this extre­mely good. Not quite as advan­ced as LAUNCH but it has a lot more user friendly fea­tu­res and is more com­mu­nity orien­ta­ted; groups, friends, musi­cal neigh­bors, RDF feeds, favou­rite albums, artists and songs, ava­tars and advan­ced fea­tu­res at a frac­tion of the cost.

An online acquain­tance sug­gest I check out Yahoo’s cus­to­mi­za­ble music radio sta­tion. I was highly unenthu­sias­tic about this, I being a loather of all Yahoo pro­ducts and ser­vi­ces, their policy of cove­ring things with adverts, the busy pages, the fire­fox crashing non-compatible codes etc… . But today, a cou­ple of weeks later, in my free time, I deci­ded to check it out. After filling out forms, regis­te­ring a yahoo account and yadda yadda, I lis­te­ned to my own per­so­nal sta­tion. I chose a few of my favou­rite artists to inc­lude at the start, Eva Cas­sidy, Nick Drake, Elliott Smith. My very first song was some upco­ming teen-bopper lovey­do­vey piece of shit which made my skin crawl, I rated it 1. Some more songs follo­wed, Por­tishead, Mas­sive Attack, Moby, all fairly stan­dard songs I could hear a lot of other pla­ces. I wasn’t too impres­sed at this point. Rather than give up and move on, upon hea­ring a Nick Drake tune (from Gar­den State OST) I felt com­pe­lled to make this great. I scan­ned my Audiosc­rob­bler and iTu­nes for my fave songs and artists and I rated all of them. Now I am at 300 ratings with an Enthu­siast user ran­king and my sta­tion has deve­lo­ped a firm sense of ALL my tas­tes. Just now it pla­yed a local band “Sunna” follo­wed by my favou­rite track from the Vir­gin Sui­ci­des sound­track, “Dead Bodies” by Air. It suc­cess­fully covers my need for rag­time, blues, rock, indie, rap and orches­tral in one har­mo­nious place. If anyone wants to lis­ten to my radio sta­tion, PLEASE PLEASE do, you can find it here:
FofR’s LAUNCH­cast; click this to lis­ten to what I lis­ten to

Audiosc­rob­bler :: User :: FofR

: “1 The Mic­ropho­nes — Drums 18:58:37 UTC, Decem­ber 14 2004
2 Tim Hec­ker — untit­led (8) 18:55:23 UTC, Decem­ber 14 2004
3 Deerhoof — The For­bid­den Fruits 18:53:50 UTC, Decem­ber 14 2004
4 Wire — Read and Burn 18:51:16 UTC, Decem­ber 14 2004
5 The Wrens — The House That Guilt Built 18:34:50 UTC, Decem­ber 14 2004
6 mu — Jea­lous Kids 18:29:49 UTC, Decem­ber 14 2004
7 The Uni­corns — Sea Ghost 18:24:40 UTC, Decem­ber 14 2004
8 The Uni­corns — Ghost Moun­tain 18:21:13 UTC, Decem­ber 14 2004
9 The Uni­corns — Tuff Ghost 18:18:09 UTC, Decem­ber 14 2004
10 The Uni­corns — I Don’t Wanna Die 18:15:38 UTC, Decem­ber 14 2004″

Pre­sently life is very dull. Hoo­rah Hoo­rah the troops are a coming. Not. Any­way, today I have been mostly loo­king at pic­tu­res of an old aban­do­ned asy­lum. Pic­tu­res inc­lude freaky loo­king chairs, scraw­led mes­sa­ges on walls and old medi­cal records. That and an mp3 of what the folks pic­ked up on their wal­kie tal­kies when in the children’s ward. Freaky stuff. And they pro­mise to deli­ver more from their next visit. All very fun. I also spent a fabu­lous hour resi­zing 30 or so ima­ges to save a few megaby­tes. Life doesn’t get any bet­ter than this. 

Upon Physicist’s recom­men­da­tions, I am soon to lis­ten to the com­plete works of Tom Waits, Nick Drake and Belle & Sebas­tien. I look for­ward to it. I am already a gro­wing fan of Mr Drake’s. Pink Moon being a favou­rite. Other new music should inc­lude com­ple­tions of my Leo­nard Cohen, Pixies and Angelo Bada­la­menti collec­tions. Currently lis­te­ning to some elec­tro­nic FC Kahuna who I had heard some things from before. Bleep Freak. Not loving it but it may be a gro­wer. On my to lis­ten to list are: BT, Kosheen, Soul­wax and some vinyl Air. 

In the post I recei­ved £20 in book tokens from my school. I’ll pro­bably spend it on some uni text books. Got it as a prize for my good gra­des in A-level examinations.