Well, it has been a while. Time for a new entry.

Anyway, I'm here to talk about a really interesting site that I discovered a while ago, but didn't really start using until recently. Most of you have probably heard of Last.FM - it's described as the "Social Music Revolution", and while I don't know whether it exactly counts as a revolution, it is pretty useful and fun.

Basically, you make an account, and then slowly build up information about the kind of music that you like. This is done by either listening to music on the site - some in the form of 30 second samples, others as whole songs - or downloading the Last.FM "scrobbler" which tracks the music that you listen to in WMP/iTunes/etc. and even the songs that you listen to on your iPod. You can control which songs get scrobbled, or how much of a song you have to listen to.

The website takes all of this information and collects into a series of easily-viewable charts, so you can see, for instance, how many times over the past six months you listened to a particular band, or what song you listened to most last week. I think I have two different charts included on the main page of RabidCentipede here, so you can see what kind of music I've been listening to lately. Exciting.

Anyway, the fun part comes after it has built up a good amount of information about your music tastes. You can listen to a streamed "radio station" made out of music that it recomends for you based on your favorite bands, songs, etc. - I've been trying this feature out recently, and it's pretty neat. I'll sometimes come across a band that I liked a while ago, but never listened to on my computer. In addition, I've found a whole bunch of new (and not so new) bands who seem quite good.

You should really check it out - www.last.fm/home

By the way - I'm going on vacation to boston until friday! Yay!