Shrinking the Tagless Netherworld

Last November, I posted about my Winamp song categorization method. I rate songs and give them extensive "tags" in the comment field, then build smart views (automatic playlists) based on a variety of criteria.

I no longer arrange the comment tags in alphabetical order, because that's just an unnecessary degree of precision (thanks, grad school prof).

The categorization method has been working really well for me, especially since I got a 120MB iPod for Christmas (thanks, Dad). I manage it with Winamp (using the ml_ipod plugin) and have all of my smart views set to automatically sync to the iPod.

Now, I carry my beloved smart views around with me everywhere I go. I can change the rating of a song on my iPod while listening, which might move it to a different smart view.

Here are some smart views I wanted to share:

Tagless Netherworld

Query: rating ISEMPTY OR playcount = "0" OR comment ISEMPTY

Songs: 10,888 of 'em right now.

In my previous post, I said,

Once I've tagged and/or rated a song, it's officially in the rotation and will be picked up by smart views I make in the future, never to be lost again in the tagless netherworld.

The playlist contains any song that is unrated, or has never been played, or has no comment. This is a better way to find songs that are out of the rotation than putting the entire collection on random.

Dark Instrumental

Query: comment HAS "Dark" AND comment HAS "Instrumental"

Songs: Mainly instrumental hip-hop and intelligent dance music (IDM), including Lukid - Onandon, Deceptikon - The Last Four Things, DJ Format - Black Cloud, and Futuro Primitivo - Where Sun Never Sets.

Pandora station: Dark Instrumental

I made the "dark" tag specifically for this playlist, for songs that sounded grim or foreboding or introspective (downtempo or minor key tonality). I can listen to this while I'm reading, and I need to listen to it while I'm reading challenging material. It helps me to concentrate.

Groovy Broads

Query: comment HAS "R&B" AND comment HAS "Female" OR comment HAS "Groove" AND comment HAS "Female" OR comment HAS "Jazz" AND comment HAS "Female"

Songs: Slow Train Soul - Mississippi Freestylin', Max Sedgley - Slowly, Linn & Freddie - L.I.N.N., Bitter:Sweet - Dirty Laundry

Pandora station: Groovy Broads

This playlist was born when I started hunting for danceable songs for friends who DJ for their tango group. I heard Alice Russell - Humankind and I loved it, but didn't know how to categorize it. I made a Pandora station from Humankind and figured out that the attributes I liked were R&B-style female vocals with a funky beat. Basically, it's happy Trip-Hop.

Wyclef

Query: albumartist HAS "Wyclef" OR title HAS "Wyclef" OR artist HAS "Wyclef" OR composer HAS "Wyclef" OR comment HAS "Wyclef" OR artist HAS "Fugees" OR albumartist HAS "Fugees"

Songs: The Fugees - Ready or Not, Lauryn Hill - Sweetest Thing [Mahogany Mix], Mya/ODB/Pras - Ghetto Supastar, Wyclef Jean - Sweetest Girl (Dollar Bill) feat. Akon, Lil' Wayne, & Niia

I have similar smart views for Beck and Lil' Wayne. If you initially wondered why I would make a smart view for an artist when I could just navigate straight to the artist anyway, I hope you answered your own question by looking at the songs I listed. If I wanted to hear some 'Clef, I wouldn't get all of his work by scrolling down to "Wyclef Jean" under "Artist." I used to just search the entire library for "wyclef" and play the list that resulted, but that misses certain attributes (such as Composer), plus I can't play search results on my iPod. Thus, artist-focused smart views were born.

Boring Smart Views

I also decided to create more pedestrian smart views, for genres and decades. A selection: Alternative Rock, Classic Rock, 80s, 90s, Electronic, Hip-Hop, IDM, Industrial, Nu Metal, Pop, and Post-Rock.

I began to enjoy these smart views less as they grew. I could play Alternative Rock, with 988 songs, but I prefer to avoid Gin Blossoms - Hey Jealousy and barely-heard tracks from Pearl Jam's latest album.

Less-Boring Smart Views

I solved the problem by creating two smart views for each large genre. The first is just the genre, and the second contains songs in the genre that are rated with 4 or 5 stars.

Hip-Hop

Query: comment HAS "Hip-Hop"
Songs: 1592

Hip-Hop (4star+)

Query: rating >= "4" AND comment HAS "Hip-Hop"
Songs: 235

It's like a radio station where I... own the station. I can listen to my favorites from Roots Manuva, Aceyalone, Nas, Sage Francis, Talib Kweli, and Cannibal Ox without being ambushed by 69 Boyz - Tootsie Roll or Lil' Boosie - For My Thugz.

I use my smart views almost exclusively when listening to music. I'd be lost without them. I have music for specific tasks and moods, and it's easy to burn a good mixed CD or find a playlist that will satisfy everyone in the room.

Related posts: Categorizing music in Winamp, Pandora removes pesky human aspect of discovery

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Pregnant women rap, kick ass

My heart sang when Amy Poehler capped that moose in front of Sarah Palin.

Not only because it was hilarious, but because it was inspiring. The timer was about to go off on that bun in her oven, and she was bouncing around like it was nothing.

Delicate condition? Pfft. She felt up to it (clearly) and went ahead with her performance. Poehler gave birth a week later.


Photo from Reuters

Later, M.I.A. performed on stage at the 2009 Grammys, celebrating her pregnant shape with skintight sheer polka-dot maternity wear while supplying the hook for one of the biggest rap songs of late.

Now, personally, I'm no fan of the whole pregnancy and babies thing, but Amy Poehler and M.I.A. have really given me the warm fuzzies. I'm proud of women.

It's almost cliche to say that women have been breaking barriers, fighting for recognition, et cetera. I remember just a few years back, every time more than one woman won a Grammy, the media breathlessly announced that this was "The Year of the Woman." Now, women just win awards like everyone else.

Women continue to face challenges--big companies are mostly run by old white guys, and jobs that have a nurturing component are pretty much pink collar. We're still trying to make the workplace friendlier, and the new Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay law will help with that.

It's not perfect yet, but most women don't have to worry about overt discrimination in the workplace. Instead, women have to worry about balancing work and family in a country with policies hostile to families. Guess which countries don't have paid parental leave? Australia, Liberia, Swaziland, Papua New Guinea, and the United States.

In Somalia, women can get 50% of their salary for 14 weeks while they're on maternity leave. In America, women get nothing, and we somehow think we value families more than everyone.

Women also battle much subtler issues. Pregnant women have been hidden, whitewashed, and infantilized by maternity wear with draping fabrics, bows, ribbons, and flowers. Maybe if we dress them up like little girls on Easter Sunday in the 50s, we'll forget that they've had sex.

Pregnant women have been seen as ticking time bombs of calamity, as pregnancy is constructed as a disease instead of a natural condition.

But women continue to progress, making individual life choices that redefine old rules and expectations.

For Amy Poehler and M.I.A., the show simply went on, and went on remarkably well. They have set an example for women everywhere, reminding us that it doesn't matter whether society approves--we can damn well swagga if we want.

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Academic Job Feeds

I've been working on a new project--Academic Job Feeds.

EDITED (May 21 2009)--I just took down the site because it was too buggy and I don't have the time/skills to make it awesome enough while fielding complaints from nervous job-seekers. I hope my idea can be used to improve the existing job search sites, because some of them are really crap. I'm keeping the Sociology Jobs pipe, so check it out if you like. -L

It's a website that aggregates listings of academic jobs (faculty and postdoctoral positions, mostly) by discipline from the many public job search sites available. Users can check the listings online, or subscribe directly to the feed for their discipline.

I'll be looking for a job in a year or two, and I've started paying attention to the job market in anticipation. I first only checked the ASA Job Bank, which naturally has a great selection of jobs because it's the professional association of sociology. However, the interface is clunky, requires a login, and doesn't provide email updates or a public RSS feed. Well, you can download a PDF of jobs posted in the previous month for free...yawn.

Searching for a more high-tech and less snooty approach, I looked up HigherEdJobs. I remember finding this site back in undergrad when I first thought about going into academia, and it's still my favorite among its ilk. The user can create a custom job search agent and have the results emailed, and there's an RSS feed for every discipline. Plus, it has quite a comprehensive collection of job listings.

There was still a problem, though. I looked at Chronicle Careers, H-Net, and a few others, and saw new jobs each time. Different colleges post to different job sites, and I'd miss something if I only checked one or two. I don't have time for this.

Looking at the feeds on HigherEdJobs gave me an idea: I could build myself a combined feed of job listings from any job search site that had a public RSS feed. I would only have to check one site per day, and I would have a legitimate reason to play with Yahoo! Pipes.

So I made my sociology job feed and loved it, and realized that other people might also want this service. Hence, Academic Job Feeds was born.

It's been fun--I add a new discipline and/or tweak some feed settings every few days. At first I only included sites that had custom feeds for each discipline (HigherEdJobs, Chronicle Careers), then I figured out how to filter specific results from the sites that provide only one feed for all jobs (H-Net, Career.edu).

I also found Indeed, which seems to have beaten me to the idea. It's a really good site, very slick, and it works for all kinds of jobs (not just academic). There is also Academic360, which is conceptually the same as my site, but difficult to navigate unless you just want to pay them money to click through to HigherEdJobs. My site is custom-built by an academic for other academics, and I think that personal touch makes the difference.

Now, I only have to check three places to be reasonably sure that I've seen every possible job: ASA Job Bank (the stodgy professional association site), Indeed (the seemingly exhaustive, yet vast and impersonal site), and Academic Job Feeds (the customized academic job search site).

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Blog to the beat of your own accordion

Read this article: Job Applicants BEWARE: You're Being Googled

This is NOT the usual "don't post drunk photos online" article--it actually ends up making a case for being yourself online. The more people have potentially embarrassing blog posts and photos picked up by Google, the more normal it will become, and thus have less of a chance of affecting your chances at getting a job.

In that same vein, it can't hurt to have a professional web presence that promotes your value to the type of employer you want to attract. If you have crazy pictures online, then counter them with something. Write a really simple page in Google Documents with a professional headshot and a paragraph or two about your skills, experience, and education. Publish it, and link to it from your Facebook. Then, your online persona will hopefully become that of a well-rounded individual with a balanced life, instead of a dude who always seems to be photographed with a ripped t-shirt and a cloud of smoke.

If you're in the academy or any other industry where your writing and ideas are part of your professional reputation, there is another element to worry about: your online reputation as an intellectual.

I'm a graduate student, and I have a professional profile page on my department website that hosts a blurb about my research and a link to my curriculum vitae. I also have a Facebook photo where I'm holding a giant bottle of rum. I'm not too worried about that. But I also have a post on my blog comparing Sarah Palin to Kyle's mom on South Park. The humor might fall flat, the subject might not be academic enough, the comparison might not be totally parallel, and the post may even be poorly written (thanks for the comments, Dad... :P), and I just shot my intellectual credibility all to shit by using an emoticon. And cursing.

It's not just me. Members of the academic community of graduate students, faculty, and other researchers and educators are worried about how they look online. We're worried about publicly holding controversial opinions that would make us sound biased to future students, or having ideas below the intellectual level demanded by our research.

We hide that we're Christians, atheists, Republicans, Southern (y'all try that accent at some of those conferences), gay, or working class, and that we enjoy crappy television. The job announcements, however, encourage women and minorities to apply. I appreciate the sentiment behind the statement--they want to encourage diversity. We should take that further and promote a culture of diversity in religions, ideas, orientations, and preferences as well as in sex and race/ethnicity. It's all socially constructed to some extent.

The job market is tough and professional networking helps, but some of us are knowledge workers because we like to investigate the world and share. Our ideas are sometimes personal and often won't pass peer review. But as long as we do quality research and excellent teaching, we should be valued in the job market.

By the logic in the article above, if more of us stop stifling ourselves and start being candid online, our revelations will lose their stigma.

So do your part and post your resume, then rock out with your cock out.

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Categorizing music in Winamp

Currently, music is one of my favorite pastimes, but listening to it is only one part of the hobby. I love categorizing my digital music collection. It strongly appeals to my personality type, ISTP, because it's an analytical and sensory activity and my top two cognitive processes are introverted thinking (which I use to categorize) and extraverted sensing (which I use to listen). I also arrange my books by genre and author, but this is much more complex and fun.

In fact, it has become very complex because my MP3 collection is currently over 12,000 songs--I've kept a largely digital music collection since 1997. This post contains my current strategy for music organization, categorizing my songs with the personal criteria of ratings and comments, and using that information to feed smart views.


Ratings

I rate songs from 1-5 stars in Winamp based on certain qualities, and roughly on how often I'd like to listen to them. I included the current number of songs in each of the top 3 categories, showing that I haven't even gotten close to categorizing my whole collection.

5 stars (157 songs) - top songs, just got them, I love them and wouldn't mind hearing them every day. I like to keep this list around 900MB because sometimes I sync it directly onto my 1 gig MP3 player. Current 5s: Funkdoobiest - Who Ra Ra, Jel - No Solution, Four Tet - ...And Then Patterns, Rjd2 - 1976

4 stars (355 songs) - great songs, would listen to them every few weeks, 5-star songs that got demoted, and old favorite songs that I've burned to mixed CDs in the past. Current 4s: Butthole Surfers - Pepper, The Sugarhill Gang - Rapper's Delight, The Chemical Brothers - Hoops, Michael Jackson - Billie Jean.

3 stars (1174 songs) - decent songs, would listen to them once a month or two, favorites of friends and family, radio favorites, favorites from more than 10 years ago, and classic songs I hear in movies. This approximates the cultural landscape of my life. Beck - Loser, John Mellencamp - Jack & Diane, Marvin Gaye - What's Going On, Silverchair - Freak.

2 stars - songs I only listen to as part of a full album. These are usually relics from back when I was a teenager and listened to one album over and over. Nirvana's albums, Oasis' (What's the Story) Morning Glory?, and The Cranberries' Everybody Else is Doing it, So Why Can't We? are in here.

1 star - songs I hate, but would rather tag with a warning than delete them because I might need to use them in a compilation for someone else. Current 1s: Gin Blossoms - Hey Jealousy, Justin Timberlake - Like I Love You. If I had any Britney Spears songs at all, they'd be in here.

Comments

The Genre field has always been inadequate--it only allows for one entry and it's not particularly standarized. I always get rid of that field wherever it pops up in any Winamp view.

The Comment field is infinitely more customizable--it's a simple large text field, and it doesn't change when I run AutoTag in Winamp. I model my comment tags after Pandora attributes, though my measures are crude by comparison. Sometimes I consult a song's page on Pandora for help classifying it in my collection. My tags are arranged in alphabetical order, separated by spaces.

Comment tag examples:
Populous - The Dixie Saga: Electronic IDM Instrumental Trip-Hop
The Visionaries - Sight for Sore Eyes: Funk Hip-Hop
The Roots - What You Want: Blues Funk Hip-Hop
Rage Against the Machine - Bulls on Parade: Guitar Hero Industrial Rock

Smart views

Smart views are my favorite feature of Winamp--they provide powerful customized playlists when combined with ratings and comment tags. You can create one by right-clicking under the Local Media heading within the Media Library tab and choosing "Add Smart View." Click the plus sign and then open the first pull-down box to start building a query.

I have a smart view for all 5-star songs (rating equals 5) and one for songs rated 4-5. My favorite new smart view is called "Fresh, tasty, broad": all songs rated 3-5 that have never been played or haven't been played in a month or more. It usually contains 700-900 songs, growing when I acquire and rate more good songs, and shrinking when I listen to songs. I can press "play" on this smart view any time and know I'm going to hear a wide variety of good songs that I haven't listened to in awhile. Winamp considers a song played if the song merely starts, so if I want to skip a song that comes up randomly, I won't be bothered by it again for at least another month.

I have other smart views for genres and themes that I've tagged. "Guitar Heroes" aggregates songs I've tagged because they appeared in a Guitar Hero game, like Bulls on Parade. A CD burned from this smart view makes great road trip music. Other favorites are "Funky Hip-Hop" (comment contains "Funk" and "Hip" and "Hop"), and "Ninja Tunes," a great jazz-hop label (publisher contains "Ninja").




Implementing the strategy

I tag a few songs nearly every time I listen to music at the computer. I try to tag songs shortly after I acquire them, and sometimes I go hunting for untagged gems by putting my entire collection on random. Once I've tagged and/or rated a song, it's officially in the rotation and will be picked up by smart views I make in the future, never to be lost again in the tagless netherworld. It's great to create a smart view with a certain definition and have it automatically populated with songs. My listening experience has improved remarkably as I've been able to tag and rate more of my collection.

Related posts: Pandora removes pesky human aspect of music discovery, Shrinking the Tagless Netherworld

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