TOP 20 RECORDS OF 2014:

1. Johnny Marr - Playland (United Kingdom)
2. Rebecca & Fiona - Beauty Is Pain (Sweden)
3. The Flashbulb - Nothing Is Real (United States)
4. Murya - Triplicity (Iceland)
5. Kent - Tigerdrottningen (Sweden)
6. Welle Erdball - Tanzmusik Für Roboter (Germany)
7. Morrissey - World Peace Is None Of Your Business (United Kingdom)
8. Philippe Katerine - Magnum (France)
9. Roman Rain - Стереокино (Russia)
10. Röyksopp - The Inevitable End (Norway)
11. And One - Achtung 80 (Germany)
12. Blondie - Ghosts Of Download (United States)
13. Boris Blank - Electrified (Switzerland)…

This year was not bad but the less I am staring at my monitor the less music gets added to the library - a fact. I'll let the statistics speak for itself.

TOP 20 RECORDS OF 2013:

1. Depeche Mode - Delta Machine (United Kingdom)
2. Daft Punk - Random Access Memories (France)
3. Big Black Delta - Big Black Delta (United States)
4. Jérôme Minière - Jérôme Minière Danse Avec Herri Kopter (Québec)
5. Midnight Juggernauts - Uncanny Valley (Australia)
6. Karl Bartos - Off The Record (Germany)
7. David Bowie - The Next Day (United Kingdom)
8. Alison…

Not sure where to write about it, it doesn't really fall into any known category so let it be here for now.

Apparently, North Korea state news agency has a website facing the external world here: http://www.vok.rep.kp/CBC/english.php

For the matter of web scraping I decided to download their audio reports for my own purposes. Turned out, every link to an audio or video is on kms:// protocol, an invention of Pyongyang labs. To play it one has to install a separate application that runs outside of the browser and intercepts kms links. KMS, I believe, stands for "korean media stream".…

Year 2012 was heavier and more fundamental in terms of music collecting than any other recent year. Here's some dry statistics generated by aulismedia.com.

TOP 20 RECORDS:

1. Скрябін - Радіо Любов (Ukraine)
2. Pet Shop Boys - Elysium (United Kingdom)
3. Lana Del Rey - Born To Die (United States)
4. Songsworth - Launchland (Finland)
5. The Flashbulb - Opus At The End Of Everything (United States)
6. Центр - Мне Хорошо. Часть 2 (Russia)
7. Sebastian - No Red Line (Sweden)
8. Краснознамённая Дивизия Имени Моей Бабушки - Гобой (Russia)
9. Kent - Jag Är Inte Rädd För…

In the last few weeks there had been an intense endeavor to push my iOS app to a higher altitude. As a matter of fact, everything started as a effort to import entire history of last.fm playbacks into a local database, matching 140.000 listens to definite database track id's took 3 weeks of non-stop calculations on a 12-core cluster. Afterwards, having a new (or rather old but extended 10 times ) layer of data led to certain conceptual changes in how to generate playlists, how to use historical data and how to help myself listen better and healthier. Sounds almost…

Моё грядущее не закреплено акциями нефтекомбинатов и оффшорными заначками. Оно турбулентно, непредсказуемо и, возможно, муторно. И самое страшное, что в нём может произойти, это если впереди поджидает засевшее в засаде моё собственное больное надрывное прошлое. По слабости преданное мной самим пропадать в забвении. От которого я сбежал ранним утром, даже себе в этом не признавшись, как дитя войны, беспомощный, исподтишка, ради бегства куда глядят глаза. Преданное со всеми своими нежными и жалкими сокровищами, переставшими интересовать возлюбленными, до неудобства наскучившими друзьями и сиротской семейной жизнью. Словно выброшенное на ходу из машины, без средств, мной, чаявшим выкарабкаться из оцепенения памяти, из душевной…

This totally brilliant year from many standpoints has also brought lots of great music to my attention. Here's a bit of statistics from aulismedia.com.

TOP 20 RECORDS:

1. System - Circle Of Infinite Radius (Sweden)
2. Keren Ann - 101 (France)
3. Melody Club - Human Harbour (Sweden)
4. Benjamin Biolay - Pourquoi Tu Pleures (France)
5. The Shiffers - The Incredible Soundtrack Adventure (Italy)
6. 047 - Elva (Sweden)
7. Alex Beaupain - Pourquoi Battait Mon Cœur (France)
8. Mujuice - Downshifting (Russia)
9. Neo Retros - Listen To Your Leader (Poland)
10. Freezepop - Imaginary Friends (United…

You can use this program to export Last.FM playback history to anything. Just run it, supply with your account name and offset page number (or skip this one if you want an export of your entire library).
Add your functionality around lines 114-115 to either write a text file or CSV or push to the database, it's your call really. You are welcome to use it anywhere you want.
Courtesy of Largest Music Library Ever.

Download the sourcee here: http://www.aulismedia.com/tmp/LastFMExport.java (since Last.Fm's formatting can screw the source code here below)

package com.aulismedia.utils;

import java.io.BufferedReader;
import java.io.InputStream;
import java.io.InputStreamReader;
import java.net.URL;…

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yeYA1hDufEs

Je veux faire un film avec une femme nue et des handicapés
Я хочу снять фильм с голой тёткой и калеками

Pourquoi je veux faire un film avec une femme nue et des handicapés ?
Почему я хочу снять фильм с голой тёткой и калеками?

Pourquoi?
Зачем?

Je ne sais pas
Даже не знаю

Est-ce qu'il vaut mieux le savoir ou pas?
Стоит ли разобраться или может лучше не надо?

Il veut faire un film avec une femme nue et des handicapés
Представляешь, он хочет снять фильм с голой женщиной и калеками – Да, папа.

Pourquoi il veut faire…

So, it is done — more or less. Never to be released publicly though for certain obvious reasons. The app behaves very much like iPod music player but streams everything from home on demand, all the tracks are being transcoded in real time when they are requested for. Works on 3G networks around the globe. No hard load on networks, it uses AudioQueue API (which is probably one of the most messy APIs out there but it's ok as long as it does its job). Sqlite is used for local data storage, some PHP on server side for "likes" and…