Matt Meshulam's Brain Dump

Whenever I’m feeling down, I read through the comments on my blog that got blocked as spam. Apparently the new trend in spamming is to post legitimate-sounding messages, simply entering the website being advertised as the commenter’s website in the comment form. The result is a treasure trove of flattering comments, a selection of which I’ve reprinted below.

In response to Dynamic link to currently playing Last.FM artist, football trading system writes:

Thank you for this valuable post. It changed my idea.

I’m glad I could change your idea, FTS. Your original idea probably wasn’t that great anyway.

By some extraordinary coincidence, both Leonard Gleisner and ELC posted the exact same comment on Job Posting of the Day:

I am really enjoying reading your well written articles. It looks like you spend a lot of effort and time on your blog. I have bookmarked it and I am looking forward to reading new articles. Keep up the good work!

Thanks for the feedback, guys. It’s great that both of you feel the same way about my blog. I do put a lot of effort into my writing, except for the posts where I quote other sources at length and then make snarky comments.

cindi commented on Passive Footswitch to MIDI Using Your Soundcard:

Your Post Matt Meshulam’s Brain Dump » Blog Archive » Passive Footswitch to MIDI Using Your Soundcard is really Nice.I love reading Posts on knob hardware…Thanks.

I don’t even know how to respond.

Last night I attended a white elephant-style gift exchange hosted by one of my friends. I think I made out pretty well; I gave a bottle of the finest brandy within the specified price range, and came out with the hottest gift of the 2009 holiday season: a Chia® Obama. (See Figure 1, below)

Figure 1: Bottle of brandy (left) and Chia® Obama

According to the Internet, there’s been a bit of controversy over the Chia® Obama (henceforth ChiaBama). Some people feel that the natural propensity for Chia® grass to grow into an afro-type hairstyle means that the ChiaBama has racist undertones. Or rather, some people feel that some people feel that the ChiaBama has racist undertones. Back in April, Walgreens decided to stop selling ChiaBamas  because it received complaints. But after reading the inane comments on many online articles covering the story, it seems like more people are simply disgusted by someone cashing in on the President’s popularity by slapping his likeness on a tacky gift item. Better not tell these people about the Obama bobblehead doll.

Joseph Enterprises, creator of the Chia® brand of zoomorphic botanical gifts, has even set up a separate website, AmericanChia.com, to capitalize on the buzz from the ChiaBama. In a way-too-deadpan commercial, the announcer introduces their new patriotic line of Chiae: Obama, Washington, Lincoln, and the Statue of Liberty. Apparently, they’ve also added a Hillary Clinton Chia®, presumably after the PUMAs initiated a letter-writing campaign.

Figure 2: Homepage of AmericanChia.com

I just hope that next year I can be the proud owner of a Chia® Chester A. Arthur.

Obligatory acknowledgment of lack of posting recently. I hope to be updating my blog more regularly. Also, look for a redesign in the near future.

I wrote a simple PHP script that redirects to the Wikipedia page for your most recently played artist on Last.fm:

http://meshlabs.net/scripts/lastwiki.php?user=capzloc

This could be useful if you save the URL your bookmarks toolbar; simply replace “capzloc” with your own Last.fm username.

I’ve posted the code below. Not much to it, loads the recently played XML through the old last.fm backend, audioscrobbler. Then performs an I’m Feeling Lucky Google search for the most recent artist on the wikipedia.org domain. It could be easily modified to redirect to the Last.fm page, Amazon album page, etc.

lastwiki.php:

< ?php
/* lastwiki.php
 * Redirects to wikipedia page for currently playing artist for specified last.fm user.
 *
 * Usage: lastwiki.php?user=putUserHere
 *
 * http://meshlabs.net
 * Matt Meshulam
 * Public Domain
 */
 
$user = isset($_GET['user']) ? $_GET['user'] : "capzloc";
 
$file = "http://ws.audioscrobbler.com/1.0/user/$user/recenttracks.xml";
$xml = simplexml_load_file("$file");
$currArtist = $xml->track[0]->artist;
 
header( "Location: http://www.google.com/search?q=$currArtist site:wikipedia.org&btnI=I'm+Feeling+Lucky" ) ;
 
?>