This is the first part of a series (hopefully, anyway) on Ian’s various projects. This particular post is on his Google Summer of Code project, statusnet-music.

Ah, summer. Time for much-needed rest and relaxation; the time of year where one sits back, grabs a cold drink, and catches up on novels.

Right?

Oh. Wait, no. I’m thinking of retirement – summer is when we go nuts with interesting projects and take on way more than we’ll ever be able to sustain the rest of the year. And this summer, for me, was of course no exception. So, being thoroughly self-absorbed (and really having nothing much else to talk about at the moment), here’s the start of a little series on what I did with my summer. Lest it seem entirely like the first assignment of the year in any given elementary-school classroom, I should note that I plan to at least continue some of these – in fact, some of these are projects that only happened to be started during the summer and might be more justly named fall projects. So perhaps this is just a more-general update series. Who knows; you, dear reader, can decide that.

But, with no further ado: statusnet-music.
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This is a few days old at this point, but I had an excellent (and thoroughly unintentional) musical experience on New Year’s Eve. On my drive to Phoenix for the evening, I stumbled upon an intriguing interaction between technology and the world around me – delivered straight to my ears!

First, a bit of backstory: starting 2008, for New Year’s Eve I go up to Phoenix; a friend of mine there has one of the luxurious houses that sits on the side of the mountain, and the view from there is amazing – one can see four or five separate fireworks shows, all across the greater Phoenix area. It’s quite impressive.

In any case, Phoenix is a two-hour drive from where I typically am at holiday-time: Tucson. Being my usual unprepared self (and most of the CD burners in my house being broken or inaccessible), I didn’t burn any CDs to listen to in the car; neither did I have any handy, since most of them are in Massachusetts with me at college (and most of my music is digital anyway, rather than CDs). So, I turned on the radio. After some flipping and driving, I ended up on the local classical station, KUAT. It has a ridiculously strong signal, so I figured I’d be able to stay on it for many hours.

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