Saturday, December 19, 2009

A Pleasant Saturday

There's chili simmering in the crock pot, just shy of spicy hot, some cinnamon to balance it. Good stuff even if I have to say it about my own cooking.

No golf as it hasn't hit fifty all week (and from the forecast, won't for the next week). And it's rainy. Yesterday a cold, windy, clammy rain. Today, not so much. The kind of day you want a fire going.

Instead, with the help of Bill the Engineer, I got Airport Express, Airport, Airfoil (beyond the first being a kind of modem you plug into a power outlet, the second being Mac's wireless name and the third being a program that lets non-Apple stuff talk to Apple stuff (courtesy of a tip from Fermi), don't ask me what they are) and the Macbook to talk to the speakers and play Pandora streaming music. I could do that sentence again but I'm too lazy; and, I think it is grammatically correct.

There are a couple of drawbacks on Pandora. You choose an artist, a song or a genre and it creates a "channel." You get the artist; song type or genre but, you don't get him,her or it all the time. You get what the software thinks you will like based on you liking him, her or it, along with him,her or it. Like everything in life, the software isn't always right. Though mostly it is. Next drawback, a very short ad is inserted between every fourth or fifth song. Google is spending money today to advertise its Chrome OS. And, on the free version, you are only allowed to skip so many songs in any given period of time. So far, I'm saving my skips. My early opinion, it's an intelligent jukebox.

After a chili dinner, it will be a Netflix movie. Hope you are having a good day too.

1 comment:

fermicat said...

Pandora does pretty well if you spend some time "training" it on your stations. I went ahead and paid for Pandora One because I listen to it nearly all the time at work and found the ads and time limitations less than ideal. I don't mind paying for a service that is useful, and Pandora is.

We're doing an herb-crusted roast beef tonight and chili con carne (the spicy hot variety) is on the menu for tomorrow night. Pretty sure it will still be cold...