Hopefully this will give you a little laugh
*note I do not own this image

I'm ready.... for a break

I apologize for constantly complaining about school but I can't help it. I feel like I've been here way too long and I'm just ready for a much needed break. I'm ready to sleep in, to eat whenever I want, to not worry about that quiz or test coming up, and most of all, just to relax. I feel like my entire life just revolves around school and not much else. I don't even have time to waste time in the afternoons. For instance if I come home and exercise or watch for TV for a hour I better be ready to not go to bed until 11 at the earliest. Christmas break can not get here fast enough. To top everything off I get to take 5 exams this semester thanks to my schools new exam schedule. Awesome.

Taylor Swift Leading in Country Music.

So Taylor Swift all together has sold over 13 million copies of her CD. Yeah no big deal right? Very few people can say they were ranked on Billboard's Top 100 artists of the decade. Swift is one of the highest ranked country stars. I don't really like to consider Swift as a country singer because honestly I don' think her latest albums sound country it all with the exception of some guitars and twang in there. I do like Taylor Swift but I would consider her as more of a pop star. I like her because she isn't afraid to express her opinions in her music.

The Social Network Review

This past weekend I was really excited to see The Social Network, then the movie started. It starts off with the creator of Facebook, Mark Zuckerburg, talking to a girl he is going out with. Not a bad beginning right? It wouldn't have been bad at all except for the face you couldn't understand a thing Zuckerburg was talking about as he strayed from one non-understandable topic to another. The movie had it's dry funny moments, comparable to NBC's The Office. I feel like the producers made Zuckerburg's character shallow and a jerk in the movie instead of portraying Zuckerburg in a more life-like way. Overall I would give the movie a "C" not that great, but not horrible either. I think it was well made and had a good plot. Another drawback was the ending, definitely not the greatest ending I have ever seen.

oh how i love my iPod

I don't know how I survived life before my iPod. Now I use it all the time anywhere from road trips to in my room. On long road trips, I just plug my iPod in and listen to it and sleep. When I'm doing my homework I will sometimes listen to it or Pandora. I'll plug my iPod into my car when there is nothing on the radio. Honestly my taste in music is very different from the music they play on the radio and having my iPod lets me listen to the music I want to listen to. If you were to go through anyone's iPod I think you could see a whole other side to that person. Sorry the post is a little scrambled, my mind just kept jumping to different thoughts.

Recommendation Engines

We all use recommendation engines whether we know it or not on websites such as Amazon, Youtube, and Netflix. One of the most common recommendation engines we use is Pandora. All we have to do is enter in a song or artist that we like and it creates a whole playlist of songs for us that we might like. Every time a new song comes out a “musicologist” goes through and analyzes different aspects and this process takes about 20 minutes.  Doesn’t sound too bad right? Well Pandora currently has added over 740,000 songs to their website over the past ten years.

Recommendation engines are changing our culture as well. We used to have our friends and other people suggest new things like television show, music, and art to us but now we learn them from software. After we watch a Youtube video it will suggest another 10 videos that we might like. On Amazon as we are about to make a purchase it will suggest something to go with or something like the item we are purchasing. Pandora kind of works like a human, it knows something about one song that you like then tries to recommend something similar to this song.

Netflix had a movie recommendation engine call “Cinematch.” This engine was not very accurate with suggesting movies and was super complicated. Netflix then held a competition to the public to help improve their engine by ten percent. The eventual winners of the competition came up with a software that knew nothing about movies and was based on the audiences reactions.

Recommendation engines have come along to help us out in a world full of too many choices. Sometimes we just do not know what is all out there and we need someone, or should I say something, too help us figure out what we like and want.

"I wanna free fall out into nothin'

Oh I'm gonna leave this, this world for a while

Now I'm free, free fallin', fallin'"

-Free Fallin' by John Mayer