Wednesday, January 11, 2006

Pandora's Music Box

Just discovered this site today:

www.pandora.com

Essentially, you plug in either a music act or song you like, and it'll build a "station" that plays music that they think matches what you entered. It's pretty cool--I created the following stations:

Everything But The Girl - I was expecting all Electronica, all the time. I was pleasantly surprised that there was some music there that was close to the pre-Missing EBTG. There was this French song which I kinda liked, but I forgot the title already.
Gorillaz - Depeche Mode, baby.
Toad the Wet Sprocket - Morrissey?!? Come to think of it, some of Toad's songs are pretty depressing too. Windmills. Sigh. Still reminds me of something from way back.
Gin Blossoms - .38 Special. Hey, didn't they do Sister Christian?

What's nice is that I discovered some songs from artists who I never heard about, and may explore later on. Kinda like Launchcast from Yahoo!--hey, that's where I discovered Anna Nalick and Breathe (2AM). I know, I know, I'm turning into a wuss in my dotage.

I would've tried some more stations, but I was at work, unfortunately.

Wednesday, January 04, 2006

Coming Up Roses, Baby

So Texas won the 2005-06 Rose Bowl over USC. Pretty thrilling game, with Vince Young running in the deciding score. Wow.

Unfortunately, the game will be marred by controversy. Just like that OSU-Miami Championship game awhile back, with the late flag towards the end.

In this case, there were two critical calls:

(1) Vince Young's knee was down when he lateraled to another Texas player for Texas' first score, so the score shouldn't have counted--however, the play wasn't reviewed; and
(2) In the drive to bring Texas to within five points, a Texas player caught the ball and was hit. The ball came loose and was recovered by USC. However, the play gets reviewed, and they said the pass was incomplete.

The first probably wouldn't have mattered, because it was early in the game and Young would've probably run the score in anyway. However, the second one could've sealed the deal for USC--the Texas defense was sucking wind, and a TD would've made it a 19 point game (I think--someone correct me if I'm wrong).

You can bet USC fans are going to be crying and whining about this--just like Miami fans were a couple of years ago. However, USC made several bonehead decisions in the last two minutes or so, and were unable to defend against Vince Young.

Congratulations to Texas for being the National Champs!