General

Wow, to think I call myself a music fan and didn’t know about this fantastic service available online! Have I got your attention yet? I decided that I had better write a blog post about a most excellent music service available for free on the good ‘ole cyberspace. I’m talking about Pandora, and my best advice to give any readers right now is to just go there and learn about it. What’s that? Not enough information you say? Okay, how about this in a nutshell: Pandora is a music-matching service of sorts, call it musical ESP. You like a certain song or band? Well, pop in that name, and instantly, the service creates a ‘radio station’ for that kind of music. First, they play you a tune you likely know very well, then the fun starts. Pandora will follow that up with different songs and artists which fit into the musical genetics of the song or artist you input. How is this possible you ask? Well, the roots of this service has to do with the Music Genome Project. To quote wikipedia:

The Music Genome Project, created in January 2000, is an effort founded by Tim Westergren, a 1988 graduate from Stanford University and spearheaded by a group of musicians and technicians to “capture the essence of music at the fundamental level” by using over 400 attributes to describe songs.

Yup, each an every song in the database is catalogued on many different levels to classify it, like a unique living creature. This enables the new stations you create in Pandora to play music you are highly likely to enjoy.

Yup, as the picture suggests, I’ve now turned into one of ‘those’ people. I’m a pod person. I’m now the proud owner of a new toy, in the form of a 30 Gig, 5th generation video iPod. I came to own this little beauty in a spontaneous, roundabout kind of way. Last week, I showed up at work, and we were having a silent auction at lunch to raise funds for charity. There was quite a few unimpressive ‘prizes’ like logo’ed shirts from phone and broadcast companies, some dvds, cds, and sports tickets, but there was also this nice little iPod. Of course, I was well aware that it would fetch quite a few bids, and I wasn’t even convinced that I wanted it. In the end, I put in a bid of $250… and won! Overall, I’d say I did get a reasonable deal. They sell for $300+tax online and in stores, so I saved about $90.

Welcome to the new face of ActiveSteve.com. Although the old website design that I had been working with was fine, I thought it was time to present a new face for my place on the web. You’ll notice that this new site boasts a number of new and interesting features. On the top, you’ll notice that you can select different background colors to suit your taste. You can also make the main text area wider or narrower, as well as select a larger font spacing for ease of reading. That’s just for starters. You’ll also see that I’ve put in a neat-o menu along the top to access sub-content areas of this site. You’ve now got an easy way to check out the other great features of this site, including my events section, a section highlighting all my race results, and links to view posts specific to racing, travels, and general posts.

Hello all. This will be, for all intents and purposes, a short blog entry. This past weekend was spent getting ready for our upcoming vacation in Argentina, as well as spending some time with family, including a visit with Andrea, Patrick, and Helena (now 6 months old!), as well as a couple hours chatting with dad. We talked about blogs and other seemingly innocuous things. It got me thinking about my family history, and why I am who I am. The answer is fairly obvious, it seems. My father (who by the way, is indeed an inspiration to me) shares with both Andrea and I a never-ending desire to explore the world around us. I was talking about my upcoming 6-month odyssey in New Zealand, and I’m pretty sure there was a bit of pride on behalf of my father, seeing that the man I’ve become is truly linked to him in both body and spirit. In the ‘spirit’ of that, I invite you to read more about my father, and his youth, at his blog. Yup, at 65 years young, my dad is always ready to learn new technologies and their use. Last week, he gutted his old blog site, and started a new website on his own domain. The result is what I hope will become an archive of sorts for both his present-day, as well as past tales. Curious? Click on over to his blog for the latest stories. Most interesting (in my opinion), is his brief personal autobiography, as well as the developing short stories section.