Rhythmbox
I’ve started hacking a patch to Rhythmbox that will add adaptive listening akin to the IMMS plugin for XMMS.
Adaptive listening means that a song’s rating will decrease when it is skipped and increased when it is heard. When done right, it’s pretty handy for automatically figuring out the user’s tastes.
This is a feature I’ve wanted for a long time in a music player, and I’m glad I can have a part in its creation. Certainly beats rating all my songs myself. Plus, I’ll wager it’s more accurate than myself.
RSS
I’ve just now discovered the joys of RSS; I finally see why everyone else is so into it. I installed Straw and subscribed to all my usual haunts. A lot less manual labor is now required to keep abreast of news in open source land. I just wish certain sites would offer more details on each article.
[...] I’ve been using Rhythmbox for a while — in particular, I’ve been using its auto-rating feature that sharp readers will remember I wrote. My rated playlist doesn’t harbor many surprises. I’ve never been able to properly answer the question, “What music do you like?” beyond the knee-jerk reaction of “Why, MC Copulation’s sex rap, of course!” So, I’ve got stuff of all genres floating around. Some would call it a lack of taste; I prefer the term eclectic. I’d had hoped that auto-rating would be a bit more informative, but I guess getting what I expected means that it’s working. [...]