I just passed the 120,000th song scrobbled/listened on my Last.FM account a few days ago. Usually when I pass these "milestones" of sorts I randomly decide to do some kind of analysis on my listening whether it be my top ten songs, bands, trends, etc. This time I decided to look at the playcounts across my top ten albums (according to LastFM). More specifically, I wanted to see what the general trend in playcount was as the album progressed. I knew that I most frequently swapped albums about halfway through and expected there to be a decrease in playcounts after that point with a fairly constant playcount leading up to that.
I used playcounts for each of the top ten albums from LastFM itself because my iTunes has been reset and songs replaced with higher quality versions over the years (thus disrupting the playcounts). This was unfortunate because the easiest way to get that data into Excel was manually copy from my library page into the spreadsheet. So here's the result (click to see the full-sized graph)
Clearly my trend prediction was wrong. In general I listen to songs less the further into the album they are. The black line represents the best fit of the average of all ten albums. Granted I don't listen in a truly linear manner as there are spikes in all of the album lines, but on average I kinda do. That kinda sucks because I know that many of my favorite songs appear on the latter half of albums, so if I'm specifically listening to the album, there is a good chance I won't make it to that song. That's where playlists and shuffling come in I guess.
This ends my first three months of living outside the University of Washington dorm program and the HFS food system. Everyone knows that the food in the cafeterias on campus are rather outrageously priced, but there's not much you can do about it when you live on campus. Last Fall Quarter I spent about $1,200 on food within the HFS system. This doesn't include eating out or anything we bought at the grocery store. Since we didn't have easy access to a stove or a sizable refrigerator, cooking for ourselves was pretty much out of the question.
This Fall Quarter I only spent about $340.85 for three month's worth of food. That's 3.5x less than what I spent last year in the dorms. I'd be willing to say that I also ate more food this year compared to last year too. Once again, this doesn't include any eating out, which I definitely have done less this year. How exactly the dorms can inflate prices so much is beyond me, but I'm glad to be out of that mediocre, expensive food nightmare.
This hellish quarter is finally over. I'm going to avoid taking four math/science intensive classes at the same time in the future. Seriously, two bioengineering classes, physics, and organic chemistry don't mix well.
Next quarter will be substantially less hectic as I'm only taking two bioengineering classes (BIOEN 303 - Signal Processing and BIOEN 305 - Physiology II) and an honors science class on Astrobiology. I'll also start working in the Thomas lab in the Bioengineering Department on the design of a force-sensitive fluorescent protein. Should be fun.
Today is the eighth anniversary of the release of the original Xbox and one of the greatest games ever made: Halo. I can't even begin to guess how many hours I've spent playing that game and its sequels over the years. I'm sure it would be considered unhealthy. For all that Halo has now become, it all started with the vision of a few at Bungie, an overpowered pistol, some vehicles, and the sound of chanting monks.
H1 >> H2, H3
My junior year so far has been much more time-consuming than either of my prior years here at UW. I haven't had time to watch The Daily Show or Colbert Report in weeks, which is a disappointment. I guess that's what happens when you take four different science/math intensive courses at the same time.
My brain is about to explode trying to memorize the amino acids, hormonal control of the digestive system, random physiology stuff, and physics stuff for two exams tomorrow. Then I get to swap to ochem for an exam on Monday.
Hooray.
