Pandora's Jukebox Almost certainly showing my age as I remain well behind the techno-curve, but I was just tipped to Pandora.com yesterday and so far I'm encouraged. Pandora's a free service that allows one to create a sort of custom Internet "radio" feed of music. Registering is extremely basic - email, password selection, year of birth and sex - and one starts with a song or an artist, leaving it to Pandora to choose songs one might like based on that initial selection. As each one comes up there's the option to give it a thumbs-up or down. It claims that if one gives the song a thumbs-down it shouldn't be offered again. The user's free to make as many separately-themed "stations" as one wishes, and there are options to add variety to a given station by typing in a song or artist so that Pandora's search for new music is expanded. I'm only into day two of it so it's too early to report on the nuances other than to say that ...
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The Post-Holiday Re-awakening: The Ingrate Speaks! It's a difficult transition back to the workaday grind -- it's always stunningly frightening how any stretch of time off from work goes. Here we are again, on the far side of a rare, rare block of time off, head whirling with how it could have become now so soon. An old, familiar story. Still, that's another set of issues. What I'm here for now is an overdue end-cap to the December 25th post, something I should have gotten to in one or two installments during the holiday stretch as they involved holiday gifts and kindnesses that didn't roll around until days after Christmas. Chicago-based buddy Grant sent me one of the Super Rare (always looks and sounds silly, but that's its technical rarity class) pieces I'd missed pulling from the Heroclix Arkham Asylum set -- The Flash. It's a fun Jay Garrick sculpt complete with his Cosmic Treadmill. I'm one of those who could have done without the extra bit...