The new web address: 634942.com
The new XML feed: http://feeds.feedburner.com/634942
I don’t listen to a wide range of music. I tend to stick to just a handful of artists, listening to the albums I love over and over.
This gives the distribution of what artists I listen to a well-defined long tail, and I think Last.fm’s histogram doesn’t quite do it justice. With the assistance of the Last.fm API, the R wordclould package, a code sample, and some inspiration, I’ve generated a new visualization:
I think this more clearly illustrates the sheer difference in scale between the few dozen artists that I listen to regularly and the thousand others I’ve had opportunity to evaluate.
Dot stickers make an excellent tool for customizing the Apple aluminum keyboard.
ATP.
That’s what it stands for, right?
Rockbox has the ability to generate Audioscrobbler logs for later submission to Last.fm. A custom udev rule can be combined with a command-line Last.fm scrobbler to automate the process of submitting tracks every time the digital audio player is connected to the computer.
The udev rule is designed to call a script whenever a Rockbox device is connected:
# /etc/udev/rules.d/80-custom.rules
ACTION=="add", SUBSYSTEM=="block", ATTR{partition}=="1", ATTRS{vendor}=="Rockbox ", ATTRS{model}=="Internal Storage", RUN+="/opt/rockbox/upload-scrobbler-log"
Last.fm credentials can be stored in GNOME Keyring and accessed using gkeyring:
gkeyring.py --set --name 'http://www.last.fm/' --password 'YOUR_PASSWORD_HERE' -p username_value=YOUR_USERNAME_HERE,origin_url=http://www.last.fm/
The script will wait for the device to be mounted, retrieve the Last.fm credentials from GNOME Keyring, display a graphical notification using notify-send, call Laspyt to submit the scrobbler log, and then display a report:
#!/bin/bash
# /opt/rockbox/upload-scrobbler-log
# WARNING: This script must finish quickly because udev is effectively paused while it is running
# Run all this in the background and detach from the parent process
{
ubuntuuser="ak"
logfile="/tmp/upload-scrobbler-log.log"
backupscrobblerlog="/tmp/scrobbler.log.backup"
gkeyring="/opt/rockbox/gkeyring.py"
laspyt="/opt/rockbox/laspyt.py"
echo "Script starting at $(date)" >> "$logfile"
dapdescription="$(echo -e "$ID_FS_LABEL_ENC")"
echo "Detected $dapdescription at $DEVNAME" >> "$logfile"
# Wait for filesystem to be automounted
echo "Waiting up to 20 seconds for automount..." >> "$logfile"
counter=0
while [ $counter -lt 20 ]; do
grep -q "$DEVNAME" /proc/mounts && break
sleep 1
let counter++
done
# Abort if timed out
if [ $counter -ge 20 ]; then
echo "Unable to locate mountpoint; aborting" >> "$logfile"
exit 1
fi
# Determine mountpoint
mountpoint="$(echo -e "$(grep $DEVNAME /proc/mounts | awk '{print $2}')")"
echo "Detected mountpoint at $mountpoint" >> "$logfile"
# Identify log file
scrobblerlog="$mountpoint/.scrobbler.log"
echo "Using scrobbler log file $scrobblerlog" >> "$logfile"
# Get credentials from keyring
echo "Getting credentials from keyring..." >> "$logfile"
credentials="$(sudo -H -u $ubuntuuser \
env $(grep -v "^#" /home/$ubuntuuser/.dbus/session-bus/$(cat /var/lib/dbus/machine-id)-0) \
$gkeyring -p origin_url=http://www.last.fm/ --output username_value,secret)"
username="$(echo "$credentials" | awk '{print $1}')"
password="$(echo "$credentials" | awk '{print $2}')"
if [ -z "$username" -o -z "$password" ]; then
echo "Failed to get credentials; aborting" >> "$logfile"
exit 1
else
echo "Got credentials for $username" >> "$logfile"
fi
# Back up scrobbler log
echo "Backing up scrobbler log to $backupscrobblerlog" >> "$logfile"
cp "$scrobblerlog" "$backupscrobblerlog"
# Upload scrobbler log
timezone="$(date +%:::z)"
echo "Uploading scrobbler log file with timezone offset $timezone..." >> "$logfile"
sudo -H -u $ubuntuuser \
env DISPLAY=$(w -s $ubuntuuser | grep -m 1 " :" | awk "{print \$3}") \
notify-send --icon "/usr/share/icons/Humanity/devices/48/multimedia-player.svg" \
"Uploading scrobbler log" \
"Submitting $(grep -v "^#" "$scrobblerlog" | wc -l) tracks from $dapdescription to Last.fm as $username"
sudo -H -u $ubuntuuser \
$laspyt --file "$scrobblerlog" --timezone "$timezone" --clear \
--user "$username" --password "$password" \
2>&1 | sed 's/\x1B\[[0-9;]*[mK]//g' >> "$logfile"
# Report
echo "Done" >> "$logfile"
sudo -H -u $ubuntuuser \
env DISPLAY=$(w -s $ubuntuuser | grep -m 1 " :" | awk "{print \$3}") \
zenity --text-info --title "Scrobbler log upload" --filename "$logfile" &
} & disown
exit 0
Details from a run:
and confirmation on Last.fm:
To begin familiarizing myself with R, I’ve been experimenting with binned kernel density estimates using data from Ask Ubuntu.
The resulting plots aren’t very meaningful, but they’re quite pretty.
