The article's teaser paragraph:

…the classical music critics of The New York Times find themselves in a confessional mood and have decided to reveal some of their secret musical passions: works and performances they listen to for sheer pleasure — but perhaps not loudly when neighbors are around to hear.

Wow, I thought. Juicy. These forbidden pleasures are further described as "trivial," "scorned," and not at all "high-minded." Cool… so which one of the New York Times classical critics is going to come out as a Black Eyed Peas fan? Well, no such luck.

So which artists and pieces are the subject of these shameful confessions? Prepare to be scandalized:

• Pop orchestral composer Leroy Anderson (want to make something of it?)
• Composer and pianist Federico Mompou (a fatal attraction!)
• Thomas Beecham's version of Handel's Messiah
• Vladimir Horowitz performing Scarlatti (cringeworthy!)
• Violinist Mischa Elman (manipulative!)
• German soprano Simone Kermes (sinful!)
• Otto Klemperer's version of Bach's St. Matthew Passion (perverse!)
• von Karajan's version of Mozart's Requiem (politically incorrect!)

I know, right? I mean, when Mengelberg conducted Mahler he was, like, totally not following the score at all! If I overheard that coming out of Allan Kozinn's window, I would certainly dictate a very indignant letter to the editorial board of the Times. I assure you that it would be extremely strongly worded.

Oh well. Still, I'll bet you anything that one of those critics rolls out Foreigner or something now and again. You know, when nobody's around to hear.

As time progresses, the probability of the playlist being entirely populated with Outkast and Ludacris songs approaches one.

Just watched the Sopranos finale last night on DVD. I successfully managed to avoid spoilers for over seven months.

I recently discovered metapixel, a tool for making photomosaics - it takes a single source image, slices it up, and replaces each piece with a similar image from a larger gallery of images. So you end up with a version of the source image that is composed entirely of smaller images.

The resulting images are very cool, because unlike most digital images, they actually have higher resolution at lower sizes. When zoomed out, or seen far away, they appear to be very close to the original image. But as you get closer, the smaller images become apparent, and you start to lose sight of the larger picture.

I use Amarok to manage and play my music collection, and it has stored the cover artwork for nearly every album I own. So I had the idea to use metapixel to make photomosaics of album covers, using the entire cover collection as the gallery.

I won't get into the technical details much here (perhaps I'll post later on code in the ruins), but I'll post some of the results. It turned out pretty well, I think. Click on the thumbnails for the full images (note: they are fairly large: 7 to 24 MB).

Any requests? Let me know.

Apparently, women like guys who can play the guitar. Who knew?

From my last.fm profile last week:

In my inbox just now:

THANK YOU FOR ORDERING IN RAINBOWS. THIS IS AN UPDATE.

YOUR UNIQUE ACTIVATION CODE(S) WILL BE SENT OUT TOMORROW MORNING (UK TIME). THIS WILL TAKE YOU STRAIGHT TO THE DOWNLOAD AREA.

HERE IS SOME INFORMATION ABOUT THE DOWNLOAD:

THE ALBUM WILL COME AS A 48.4MB ZIP FILE CONTAINING 10 X 160KBPS DRM FREE MP3s.

In Rainbows is, of course, the new Radiohead album. I am beside myself with excitement about this. For me, any new Radiohead album is cause for rejoicing; but this one comes with an added bonus: this is the first album that Radiohead has released outside of a record contract. Because of this, they can offer the music as a DRM-free download under the "it's up to you" pricing scheme. This is exciting in itself; In Rainbows is a valuable opportunity to find out what major-label music is like without the major labels.

I thought a lot about what price to pay for this album. I believe records are overpriced, because I believe that the services record companies offer to musicians are overvalued and encourage the production of crappy music. I think artists are not compensated enough for their work. And I've always talked about how great it would be if there was a way to send money directly to the artist.

I certainly wasn't going to pay the minimum price (1p) - I'd find that pretty insulting as an artist, I think; and besides, that would just give the record companies cause to shout about what would happen if everyone cut them out of the process.

I thought about paying what I think records ought to cost - say, roughly about $10 (with a significantly larger percentage going to the artists). That would be fair, certainly - Radiohead, after all, would see nearly all of that, instead of the minuscule cut they'd get from a label album.

But In Rainbows is more than just the music. It is, as I've said, an opportunity to try something new in music production and distribution. Everyone knows the old system can't sustain itself. The Internet has empowered the artist again - it's the biggest distribution and marketing network ever created, and you don't have to pay to play. It is entirely conceivable, these days, that a determined artist could go from unknown, to cult favorite, to international superstar, entirely without the involvement of record companies. It hasn't happened yet, not really, but it will; and it is going to take bold moves by artists like Radiohead, Prince, and Nine Inch Nails to pave the way. They can afford to drop their contracts and experiment with alternatives, and once we figure out what works, it's going to become a lot easier to get noticed on the Internet.

I want Radiohead's grand experiment to be successful, and I want people to take notice. I don't want it to make as much money as a label album; I want it to make more. And I want to express my appreciation to Radiohead for doing this.

So I'm proud to say that I paid £20, or just over $40, for In Rainbows. It's already worth every penny to me, and I don't even have the record yet. Tomorrow morning, when I stumble out of bed and start downloading it, is going to be the start of a new era in the music business. And I'm beside myself with excitement.

I love that the page for The Doors on FoxyTunes Planet pulls pictures of doors from Flickr. Right now it's some garage doors from different angles.

It would even be better if the page for Riders on the Storm had pictures of storm doors, and the page for Light My Fire had pictures of fire doors. But they don't. But it would be cool. You know, if they did.

I'm really curious what Flickr would have for The Revolting Cocks. But I can't bring myself to look.

Tony Gambone,

As someone who has purchased or rated books by Stephen King, you might like to know that Trust the Process: A History of Clinical Pastoral Education as Theological Education will be released on September 28, 2007. You can pre-order yours by following the link below.

Trust the Process: A History of Clinical Pastoral Education as Theological Education
King Stephen
Price: $29.00

Release Date: September 28, 2007

I like that this probably just got sent to untold millions of people.

I wouldn't normally post something just because it's incredibly cool, unless I had something to say. Well, I have nothing to say, and these are incredibly cool:

A Single Sheet of Paper

That is all.