So there’s a ridiculous new service coming out that will identify a song on the radio for you, here’s how it works:

You hear a song on the radio, haul out your cell phone and dial 411-SONG in a sweaty panic. Wait for the beep, and hold your cell phone out to the radio and it will text message you back with the information about the song title, artist, etc. Wow, cool, you think. Wait, it costs .99 per song for the first 5, and I’m sure it only goes up from there? Great! Where do I sign up?

But actually people, despite the fact that this service is completely retarded, there’s more to the game. I propose that this service could be used to play Texas Hold’em Karaoke (or that’s what I think it could be called). Here’s how I envision it:

You and the other player “bet” by naming songs that you think you could sing into your phone and have accurately identified by the service. If you win the bet (meaning the other guy calls), you use your cell phone to place the call and belt out the tune. If the service correctly answers the song, he pays up.

Whaddya think? Anybody wanna go Idol-a-Idol?

Oh, it’s only available in the States. Oh well.

More strange news from Space.

Apparently the air above Mars is getting a little crowded. One of NASA’s Mars orbiters photographed another of NASA’s orbiters in the first such occurrence, but very likely not the last. They just happened to be whizzing past each other and one sort of popped into the frame. How long before the very first interstellar fender bender? We obviously need space traffic reports to go with our weather reports.

How many frigging satellites and rovers do they have up there? It must be like a swarm of blackflies around the planet, and equally annoying to the Martians. Is it wise to annoy our celestial neighbours? I mean really, don’t give them a reason to come over here and smack us with some Martian virus, or worse.

I can only imagine the stoppage of creaky scientist hearts involved in looking at those picture for the first time. The mission control floor defibrillator got a workout that day.

I probably should have mentioned that the phone line at home is back up and running, it came back all by itself about 2 days after it died.

I’m sure it was just a coincidence. Or maybe 2000 Bell technicians routinely read Mundane Ramblings? Could it be?

Nope.

If you are perceptive, you may notice that the blog looks a little different today. If you aren’t perceptive, then you won’t notice a thing, and reading the rest of this won’t matter a bit to you. You can go.

If you are still here, that means that you are 1) not colour blind, and 2) not a moron. I managed to get Movable Type going on the weekend and I think it’s a big win. Hasta la Vista, Blogger. For a free service, they really treated me like they never took a dollar from me or something. It’s like they didn’t owe me anything, the way they acted. Sheesh.

Anyway, Movable Type is a real software product you can buy, or you can completely cheap out and run an older version for free. Knowing me as you do, you can be sure that I value the work that goes into a product like this and the sheer nerve of not rewarding that effort made it a clear decision in my mind to do the right thing.

So, I cheaped out and picked the free one, and it really rocks.

I still have some setup to do on the templates, getting the tracking back and the Flickr badge which I think is fun, but mostly we’re up and running. The look is a bit different, I’m open to suggestions and feedback of course, which I will immediately ignore because I’m like that.

Anyway, that’s that, blog life should be good as long as the router stays up…

Yet another whirlwind post when I really should be thinking about getting on the bus. Work is too busy, or I am too slow, one thing or the other. Nikki is a patient woman, that much is sure.

Now that we have that awful spring forward crap out of the way, and I am ever so slowly clawing my way back to a normal sleep rhythm, here’s a couple of alarm clock innovations that I could have used this week.

First, we have the friendly-touchy feely hippy alarm clock known as the SleepTracker. This watch is supposed to be able to keep track of your sleep patterns and only wake you when you are at the lightest portion, which is supposed to leave you feeling rested and fresh. The review was actually glowing, so maybe there is something to it.

Here’s a link to the company site, and a link to the product review.

Then, we have an alarm clock that is a little less friendly. In fact, it is a diabolical device that I would most certainly smash to bits within a week. Basically it’s an alarm clock that has rubberized wheels. Once it goes off and you hit the snooze button, the wheels engage, and it rolls off your bedside table, randomly bumping into things until it finds a hiding spot. Then when the snooze timer ends, it goes off again, only this time you have to get out of bed and find the damn thing to shut it off. The idea is once you do this, you are fully awake, and enraged. The designer made it furry in the hopes that you would find it too cute to smash, I guess. I would happily heave it out the window once I found it the first time, I would expect.

Anyway, here’s the link, you decide whether you are really that narcoleptic to need something like this.

I’m an iPod guy as most of you know, it’s an essential bus device now, I would probably pitch a huge, hairy fit if I had to ride the bus without it. It’s a soother for grownups. Anyway, with the iPod comes using iTunes to manage the music, which of course absolutely rocks. It really adds a whole new level of geeky when to listening to music; statistics. Let me explain.

iTunes keeps track of the last time you played a song, and how many times you have ever played a song. Combined with the simple 0-5 star rating system, this can give some interesting insights into your own musical tastes. The song I have listened to the most is easily Sunshine So Fine by the Barsool Prophets, 17 plays. In #2 is Are You Gonna Be My Girl by Jet with 14 plays. Ok, that’s not too weird yet. What’s most interesting is the third most often played song on the iPod: East Bound and Down by Jerry Reed, 12 plays. Man, that’s weird even by my tastes. I had no idea I was playing that sucker to death like that. I mean it’s a good song, there’s no better ditty to put on when you are running to catch the bus when you are late, it’s a natural for chase music. Anyway, so there you go. I learned something about myself. It’s a personal growth thing.