Listening Habits

My Music Listening Habits for January 2020

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I keep wanting to change these up to be by artist instead of album but there doesn’t seem to be a 5×5 generator that does artists and has images. Sounds like an excuse to do some coding, but I’m not sure it’s possible because it feels like something someone would have done.

So anyway, it’s back to albums. Which gets a little sloppy looking this month.

So, there has been one major change this month. Around the turn of the year, I got an email through work for 6 months of Spotify Premium. I usually don’t really go for limited time offers but 6 months is a pretty good chunk of time, so I decided to go in on that. I’m enjoying using Spotify, but I doubt I keep the subscription after the 6 months are over. In general, I prefer to buy music. It has been pretty nice for discovery however.

Most of that discovery doesn’t show up on this 5×5 grid though. It’s hard to make it to the top monthly list when you get played maybe 2-3 times within a playlist of others played 2-3 times. Going by the numbers, it didn’t really increase my overall monthly Scrobbles either.

I am honestly a little surprised that Sigrid is still my most listened to artist. She has consistently held that spot since I started listening to her music, and she has become my most listened to artist of all time. I’ve gone through several phases of listening to her music which has helped. There was a time listening to the Sucker Punch album, which is Sigrid’s most recent album. Then I was listening to tracks from live shows that are currently unreleased, some on Youtube (which also gets scrobbled). Then there was a period of listening to the previous two EP releases, Ray and Don’t Kill my Vibe. More recently, with Spotify, I’ve found a cache of tracks that are only on Spotify.

I want to roll of Sigrid to Amanda Tenfjord. Her music came recomended on some Sigrid fan channels due to her similarity in overall style to Sigrid. The music sounds similar, the album art sounds similar, she is also Norwegian. There were jokes that she was secretly Sigrid, though there is a definite difference in the vocals. I am probably not an expert enough to properly describe it, but Amanda Tenfjord has less range and sounds a bit more Tenor… maybe? Like there’s more low end going on in her voice. Plus there is a slight difference in their accents.

Moving on.

Still a lot of Tessa Violet sprinkled throughout the playlist. I mentioned last month that I expect her to stick around for a while, though I’m starting to wonder just how long. I don’t really like all of her songs like I do other artists who stick around for a while. Another one that’s all over this 5×5 is Carly Rae Jepsen. I’ve enjoyed Carly’s music for a while, but Spotify has kind of opened up a nice little world of alternate takes and songs from her library. I particularly like this take on No Doubt’s Don’t Speak.

It’s not a super interesting take, but It’s a weird contrast to the usual super upbeat music of Carly Rae Jepsen. Also, back in the day, I used to listed to Tragic Kingdom a lot, so I have an underlying love for No Doubt as well.

The only thing left that’s particularly notable here is the soundtrack to Gris, coming in at number 4. Gris is a video game I was playing earlier this year and both the visuals and the soundtrack are excellent. It’s got a really nice ambient sort of piano vibe going that’s great for background music.

Listening Habits

One Year, One Decade, in Music

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A lot of people recently started posting their Spotify year end reviews to social media. I don’t really use Spotify for music, but I do use Last.fm. In fact, I’ve used Last.fm off and on since 2005.

There are a few low points, I had basically zero Scrobbles for 2015 for example, and it was a lot lower while I was using Windows Phone, in general, but it’s still a pretty good snapshot of music habits. and changes. So rather than just settle for a year, i wanted to look over a year, and the last decade of music.

The top level kind of feels like it should be Artist. Across both lists of top 10 artists for the year and decade, only three make both lists. Taylor Swift, Sigrid, and The Who. I kind of feel like Taylor Swift doesn’t really need much said. She was literally named Artist of the Decade, she does music across various genres, basically like her or hate her, everyone knows who she is.

Sigrid is more notable on this list. I’ve talked about Sigrid in previous monthly posts quite a bit. She is notable because she is in third place for the decade, and in my overall list, and every single one of those listens is from 2019. Most of them are from the last 6 months. In more recent weeks I’ve been listening to less Sigrid, but I know that will change when she releases a new album. I can’t even really say that for Taylor Swift at the moment. I’ve only recently started listening to her most recent album, Lover, and so far, I’m really not feeling it like Reputation or 1989 or Red.

The Who is also a bit notable. Of all of the artists I’ve listened to over my lifetime, The Who has been the one consistent group I’ve come back to. I started listening to them back around 1990 when I first got a CD Player stereo of my own and have listened to their music ever since. Before that time, most of my music listening comprised of stuff my cousin was listening to like Madonna, Michael Jackson and Debbie Gibson, as well as the soundtracks to the Ninja Turtles movies and Oliver and Company on Cassette tape. They don’t really top any of my “favorites lists” but they are reliably always “up there”.

The rest of the top artists for the decade are all pretty representative of my primary musical tastes, though I honestly listen to a pretty wide cross section of genres overall. BT, Daft Punk, Skrillix make up some of my interest in electronic music, other like Lady Gaga, Katy Perry, and Ke$ha making up the pop music aspects. I pick up a ton of singles by less known artists, but they tend to get pushed down the list simply by sheer volume numbers of bigger named artists.

The last particularly notable point I want to add for artists is Tessa Violet. I’ve only just started recently listening to her music and I expect to see her popping up more in 2020.

So what about individual Albums. On some level, this is just a more spread out version of the top artists lists. Funny enough, Sigrid’s Sucker Punch is my top album on both. Taylor Swift is higher over all, but her music is spread out over several albums. The same for Avril Lavigne. Sigrid does have several albums listed, but Don’t Kill my Vibe and Raw are both EPs and not full albums, and “In the Moment” is sort of a fake album that’s attached to live tracks.

Top tracks gets a little more interesting, at least on the side of Top for the decade, since it better pulls out singles I have listened to a lot. The top for the year isn’t that interesting, 13 of the top 15 are all Sigrid Tracks. Number 12 is “Why so Serious” by Alice Merton and number 14 is “Ready for it?” by Taylor Swift.

Sia doesn’t even show up in my top ten artists, but “The Greatest” is my single most listened to track. The Gorillaz are sort of int he same boat. I’ve even listened to a lot of other tracks by both artists, but “The Greatest” and “Stylo” both top these two on an individual basis. Also, despite being number 14 for the year, “Ready for it?” blows away the top Sigrid track, “Basic” for the decade. Which is to be expected since I’ve been listening to “Ready For it?” for a lot longer. Meanwhile, I’m not sure I’ve listened to Telephone or Bulletproof at all int he last few years. Which just shoes how one track can fall out of rotation despite clearly being dominant for a while.

Something that’s probably worth adding, that skews a lot of these lists, I still do listen to CDs, especially for artists I really like. I’m sure if I could track CD listens that Taylor Swift and Avril Lavigne would be higher, since that’s my primary way I’ve listened to both of them. This also makes BT come off a lot lower. I really really love BT’s music, but a lot of what I listen to there is on CD. Also, BT’s “These Hopeful Machines” is 2 continuous 45 minute+ tracks, mixing the tracks of “These Humble Machines” into one. Last.fm doesn’t really track these sort of things very well.

Language

One Year of Duolingo

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So, I have just reached a 1 year, 365 day streak, on Duolingo. Technically, it’s been a little longer than that I think, because I believe I broke some short, earlier streaks. I’ve also, occasionally, used a Streak Freeze item, which you can use to skip a day. Still, the point is, I have effectively used Duolingo, for 5-15+ minutes, each day, to learn a foreign language.

The vast majority of this time has been spent learning Spanish. I very briefly toyed with the idea of doing Japanese at the same time, but never bothered to get past the first set of challenges. I took 4 years of Japanese (maybe it was 3, I think it was 4), in High School. I still know the general idea of Japanese, but I am rusty enough that I couldn’t really understand it with any speed without some work. More recently, I have also started doing a little bit of the Norwegian tree, along side the Spanish.

Surprisingly, Norwegian is closer to English than Spanish. I guess if you look up some actual language relational trees, both English and Norwegian are on the same larger branch, and Spanish is on a seperate branch.

So the question is, do I feel like I’ve learned anything? I would say, yes. Early on I was doing a bit of research on what it means to “know” a language, and it’s essentially 4 parts. Reading, Writing, Speaking, Listening. My weakest area would definitely be speaking. I seriously doubt I could speak Spanish well at all to anyone beyond some basic stuff. Part of this is because I don’t exactly have any way to really practice speaking Spanish to anyone.

“Always it’s sunny” versus
“It’s always sunny”

I would say listening is probably my second weakest area, but more because I’ve found that natural Spanish speakers, talk very quickly. I sometimes will run a Spanish TV channel or Spanish HBO in the background while doing other things and I can sort of pick out words I know, but they get jumbled among words I don’t know.

Writing is a little easier. My problem with writing is that I still get messed up on the tenses or whatever they are called for the verbs. Eating, eaten, will eat, he eats, I eat, that sort of thing. I still get kind of lost on which one to use where. I imagine I could get the idea across, but it would come off as broken Spanish.

Lastly is reading. I feel fairly confident in the reading department, at least if I know the vocabulary being used. Part of this is because I can get the idea of things like eating and eat and eats, using context clues. Como, Comer, comes, all just become “something to do with eating”.

The app itself overall, does an alright job, but it’s not perfect. It does a really good job of pushing memorization of the same handful of phrases, but it’s not so great at encouraging the free forming of sentences. I’m not sure that would even be possible though, since the App isn’t going ot be able to effectively evaluate open ended questions.

In a previous exercise, “Preferred food” was wrong, even though favorite and preferred are synonyms and obviously “Preferida” is the same root of “Preferred”.

I also wish there was a way to just do the matching mode with words learned so far. Especially with verbs. Like give me all the variations of “eat” and let me match them up, so maybe I can get a better handle on which is which. There is a separate app that sort of does this, but the format is a little different and it doesn’t directly sync to the main app.

It also gets a little less literal with it’s translations that I like. I have seen other people comment on this a bit on the Duolingo forums, and there are arguments for both ways. Some people will argue that making the translation more natural English is better, because it gets the point across more. I would argue it makes for poor learning, and encourages memorizing phrases instead of actually learning translations. One common one is with words like “Always” and “Never”. You may get the phrase, “He is always happy”, which in Spanish would be, “El siempre esta feliz.” Except it’s not, not directly, in English, “El siempre esta feliz”, is “He always is happy”. The placement of “always” in the English version is valid both ways, though it would be more common to say “is always” than “always is”. I feel like if Duolingo emphasized the “Always is” translation, it would better emphasize how the sentence structure works in Spanish. Since spanish is “siempre esta”.

Another synonym issue with plate and dish.

Another way more common example of this is the omission of “the”. A lot of the Spanish uses “la/el” in the sentence. “Me gusta la escuela”, which duo translates to “I like school”, even though it’s more literally, “I like the school”. Now, granted, I am learning Spanish, and it may in fact be perfectly valid to just say “Me gusta escuela”, except Duolingo, in the app, would mark that incorrect, for missing the “la”. These little inconsistencies drive me nuts and frankly, are probably one of the biggest reason I miss some of the questions. It also does make a difference int he long run, since “I like school” and “I like the school”, are arguably completely different phrases. One can like going to school and learning (I like school), or one can like a particular school (I like the school).

Anyway, I can deal with the little weirdness, but there are times when it’s annoying, it also feels a little inconsistent on it’s enforcement as well.

I plan to keep going on my learning expedition. I have been also doing a bit of LingoDeer Spanish, for a fresh perspective and methodology. I have a couple of Audiobooks for learning Spanish that I got in a Humble Bundle a while back I want to listen to. I hope to reach at least a mild level of competency in Spanish, and maybe eventually some other languages as well, eventually. I don’t have any particular reason for it, other than I have always liked the idea of learning other languages and, in general, I enjoy learning new things.

Listening Habits

My Music Listening Habits for November 2019

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Another month, another round of music. There’s not as much need for as much intro this round so I’m just going to jump right into it.

So, while Number 2, 3, 9 16, and 19 are all Sigrid albums, the top spot this month goes to Lusine with Sensorimotor. I’ve been enjoying the whole album, but I’ve had this particular video in rotation on Youtube for a bit.

It’s got a nice sort of ambient feel to it. Speaking of Ambient, While moving the Lusine album to my phone, I remebered I had the Overwatch based Lucio album downloaded. Which puts it at number 5. It’s alright, nothing super stellar, but it’s nice chill background beats. Number 7 also falls into this category a bit. The soundtrack for the anime film Armitage the Third has been a long term favorite of mine. It’s a CD I’ve owned and listened to for probably 20 years now.

Armitage isn’t the only older stuff I’ve thrown in this month. Alanis Morissette’s Jagged Little Pill was definitely my most listened to album back in the 90s. Alanis was one of my first real musical obsessions. I’ve also been listening to more The Who recently as well.

Number 11 has a new comer to my rotations. I was browsing through Amazon’s sale albums and on a bit of a whim, picked up the album Rise by Molly Tuttle. She’s a Bluegrass artist and man she can pick and play a guitar. It also helps that she also has a nice pleasant voice to accompany the guitar.

Also new… ish, is number 8. Kristina Skyberg’s one and only album. It’s all in Norwegian, so I don’t really know what she is singing, but it’s very very good. I say Kristina is newish to the list because Kristina is Sigrid’s backup singer during live shows.

Lastly, I wanted to mention the Native American Flute Lullabies. You listen to one album with multiple artists, and it spams out and fills in three slots. List a little bit annoying. Basically though, it’s exactly what it says, and it’s nice music to sleep to.

Books Organizing

Too Many eBooks and Keeping them Organized

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The nice thing about digital books is that they are easily stored and accessible in very little space. The bad thing about digital books is that it can be hard to find things in a virtual shelf where you can’t easily see covers and authors and topics. There is something to be said for covers, when you can easily glance at a row of books and see the color combination that sticks out as “This is the book that I like”.

Tech books present a different problem, since it’s less easy to make notes or stick papers in important bits of code that you want to reference later. I usually resort to screen shots, but they become hard to sift through later the more screen shots there are. Especially since you usually can’t name files with useful names on a tablet or phone where you may be reading a tech book.

Despite a few tools out there to organize your files for you, probably most notable and easy to use is Calibre, I still prefer to sort things by a basic directory structure.

This is useful for a few reasons, one, if an organizing program ever breaks or I want to upgrade, things are still sorted at a base level. For the most part everything is sorted by base type, though in a few cases they are sorted by source. For example, the Packt eBooks are almost all tech books and almost all of them include zip files of code, so I’ve given them their own directory. Also a lot of them aren’t super great, so, while I like to have them around, I don’t need the clutter in my actual Tech books folders. Most were freebies from when Packt used to give away books daily.

Most of these folders have their own internal structure, For example, the image above is for Tech books. The comics folder has folders for series and publishers, the Foreign Language folder has folders for languages, the Fiction folder is sorted by series and genre. Etc. Etc. Etc.

This whole ball is the core archive. Most of the time I keep working folders with copies of these various books on my laptop or on a portable drive. The comics I am currently reading or the tech books that are actually useful, that sort of thing. All of the books in the archive are DRM free, so I can copy and read them as I want. I prefer to buy DRM Free books, Humble Bundle, O’Reilly, Packt, StoryBundle, Leanpub, Project Gutenberg, probably some others I’m forgetting are all pretty good for DRM free ebooks.

What complicates things are Nook and Kindle, which are both more proprietary. I had an early generation of the Nook for a while, but Amazon tends to have better deals on books, so I ultimately dropped buying from Nook. I hate having my library fractured across platforms. If I am going to buy DRM locked down books, it’s going to be one storefront, and Amazon has better sales. There are way to strip out the DRM but it’s a hassle to do regularly. Occasionally I update a backup archive of Nook and Kindle books to DRM free versions, in bulk, but it’s not worth bothering with on a single book by book case every time I buy a book.

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