most of my close friends know about my current crushes. i pluralize the word because there are always several, and i use the word “current” because i tend to fall in and out of “love” quite often. however, in the proverbial spinning rolodex that contains all the usually inadequate objects of my attentions, there has been one person whose contact card has not been crumpled up and thrown out. for obvious reasons, i won’t actually name this lucky fellow. i can imagine that if i did, someone who is acquainted with him would take a sudden yet totally innocent interest in this blog, see his name, raise their eyebrows in a somewhat high degree of incredulity, and bring it to this certain person’s attention. (more…)

i signed up to last.fm, the music community website, almost three years ago. i don’t know anyone really in real life that uses it, but to put it simply, it’s kind of like the website pandora and facebook would produce if websites could get married, go on a honeymoon, and bam! nine months later, have this beautiful social networking/internet radio baby. to use last.fm, you have to set up whatever media players you use on your own computer. this way, whenever you’re just working on your laptop and listening to music at the same time, last.fm is quietly working away in the background, keeping track of everything you’re listening to. this is called scrobbling. scrobbling lets you do lots of really cool things. for one, last.fm keeps track every single artist you’ve listened to and the amount of times a particular song has been heard. it also puts together a radio station just for you and everything it knows you love to listen to. however, not only do you get a radio station with the music you hear, you also get a station made up solely of recommendations, artists and songs last.fm thinks you would enjoy listening to. scrobbling also helps out by finding people with similar tastes and calling you neighbors. (more…)