pleased precariously

Peter Radavich, long time friend, former roommate, and fellow Hungry, is a runner-up in Violet Blue’s top ten sexiest geeks of 2005

Watch me as my head swells with pride. No, the other head.

the past couple days I’ve been dorking around with last.fm, which seems like a pretty good idea, especially if they add some pandora smarts to it.

Unfortunately, there wasn’t a plugin for my media player, Banshee. So I hacked one together. I’m still working on it, but now that it works well enough for my use and I’ve registered the plugin id/version with last.fm, it’s time to let others see it.

All sorts of disclaimers apply to this code. It’s multithreaded by virtue of all the async calls, but there’s no locking, anywhere. It doesn’t adhere to everything last.fm defines as good practices. It won’t make you more popular, and in some cases may cause your significant other to break up with you. You have been warned.

I suppose it goes without saying that you need CVS HEAD for this, but there, I said it anyway.

tar file (to be unpacked at the toplevel banshee source dir) is here.
diff to be applied to banshee sources is here.

unpack, apply, rebuild, install, done.

How do you turn it on, you ask? First, get a last.fm account, then enter these three commands (this user interface is pretty rockin’):

$ gconftool-2 --type bool --set /apps/Banshee/Audioscrobbler/Enabled true
$ gconftool-2 --type string --set /apps/Banshee/Audioscrobbler/Username <username>
$ gconftool-2 --type string --set /apps/Banshee/Audioscrobbler/Password <last.fm password in plaintext>

yup, a plaintext password stored in gconf. if this bothers you, i’ll accept patches for a real UI with a password dialog.

Anyway, you should be able to twiddle those settings even while banshee is running and have it do the right thing.

Enjoy, and let me know if you have any problems.

Does anyone know what happened to altcountrytab.com? I remember them having issues with money and/or bandwidth..

Some of you might have already seen the photo up on flickr. I feel I owe you an explanation.

Friday night we went to dinner theater. A typical murder mystery performance done between courses. I figured it would be fun to dress up a little, so I put on a button down shirt and sports coat (yes, I own a sports coat now.) We all met up at the office and headed to the place, somewhere in downtown Boston. Three Cheers was the name, I think.

As our group was sitting down at our table, an older fellow walked in, wearing what was perhaps the most striking jacket I’ve seen in a while. I took a picture or two so that I could take them to someone and say “I want this. Please help me find it or make it or something.”

All the drinking we were doing to make the awful dinner theater enjoyable emboldened us, and we put forth a representative to see how much it would cost for the man to part with his jacket. Negotiations proceeded, with us putting forth an offer we thought was more than reasonable, only to have it countered by a number three times as large. Needless to say, we were not to be scared off, and Nat and I headed to the ATM to get some more money. We got back to our table and JPR negotiated the exchange. The handoff was to take place after dinner. The jacket would soon be ours!

Many more drinks (and several sizable pulls off Nat’s flask) later, the show was over and everyone was standing up to go. I got up, and took off my sports coat. The older man did the same, and helped me into my new threads. Now, this is where the story gets interesting to me. You’d think people would laugh and smile and go on their way into the night. His wife was the first to congratulate me, express disbelief that her husband had given up the jacket he’d worn every Christmas season for the past 20 years, and welcome me to the family with a hug.

After that, a steady stream of relatives came up to meet me. There were easily 15 people all clamboring to talk to the man who was wearing their family’s jacket. I met sons and daughters and brothers-in-law and husbands and wives and grandchildren. There were tears flowing down faces (I’m serious), there were challenges issued (”You better be man enough for that jacket”), there was gratitude (”we figured it would go to goodwill in a few years, now it’ll live on in someone else”), there were attempts to set me up with 32 year-old single daughters (”I tell you, it’s a sign!”), there was even someone trying to get me to agree to life insurance (”Our family has insured the owner of that jacket for 20 years, I don’t see why it has to stop now.”) It was truly amazing, and more than a little overwhelming. I took a business card one of them offered me, and agreed to call the number on it should I ever not want the jacket, so that it might remain part of their family.

I plan on emailing them pictures of me wearing it every Christmas, so it won’t seem like they gave it up for nothing.

and really, don’t tell me it doesn’t look good.

If the weekend could be summed up in just two pictures, it would be these two.