Music Methodology Migration

or, Minuscule Mind Misses Mark, Mixing Music Movies More, Must Ameliorate Material Maintenance

I must rescind my previous note that I had listened to 110K iTunes items, as I have discovered methodological problems which can no longer go unchallenged. I found the problems — or rather, found the problems to be intractable — whilst preparing my analysis of the most recent 10,000 songs/tracks/files/whathaveyou for posting on this site.

Put simply, the problem was this: Heretofore, I had maintained a so-called ‘Smart Playlist’ consisting of all items which had been experienced which I named “Already Played”. I also had the contrasting playlist, called “Never Played”. These two lists guided my apprehension of how many iTunes tracks I had heard. Malhéreusement, when I originally created these playlists many years ago, I simply selected “all media” as the domain upon which the rules were to be laid in returning the data. However, the disparity between ‘Music’ and other items in my iTunes has caused some difficulties, with the specific problem that I cannot in good conscience claim to have listened to (or “experienced” in the case of some items such as videos or movies) every single item within the “Already Played” playlist. This fact necessitates a change to the underlying methodology used to count how many tracks I’ve actually heard.

The specific problem stems from the fact that others in my household have listened to podcasts which, for reasons I shall not enter into, I have not heard. Though in the past I have tried to cull these items from my database — going so far as to delete these from my database along with the underlying files — I realized when perusing the full set of data that there would seem always to be a dozen or so podcasts which ended up in my “Already Played” playlist in spite of my efforts.

There were further problems with the old system. The inclusion of “all media” meant that every soi-disant ‘Digital Booklet’ which accompanied any iTunes Store album purchase would forever haunt my “Never Played” list. The various video files which I had watched sometimes (often, in the case of TV shows) had duplicates which somehow made their way into my system, with one item in 720p and the other in 1080p — both of which I was loath to delete given the fact that digital files once bought might not actually be available for later download in the future. And finally, the sheer size the video files tend to overwhelm the data size figures which have been a staple of my reports heretofore. Indeed, the 369 items in the new Smart Playlist I constructed consisting of the “Already Played not Music” files measure a hefty 121 GB — too great a proportion of the ~820 GB of all files I have ‘already played’ to ignore.

I therefore announce that from this point forward I shall only be considering those files classed as ‘Music’ within iTunes for my “Already Played” statistics, and its converse, those tracks not yet heard. Though only 15 podcasts which I know of a certainty I have not heard exist in the old version of the “Already Played” playlist, that number is too high, and the ongoing data scrubbing required too onerous, to justify using the former methodology. This means, of course, that earlier data will not be analogous to the numbers I use henceforth. I leave the question to some other data nerd, perhaps with a PhD in Economics and a devotion to ninth derivatives, to determine the weighting needed to conform the earlier statistics with those I shall promulge from this point.

I crave your forgiveness.

Diagram of Data Processing

Friday Vocabulary

1. bema — platform for public speaking, esp. in ancient Athens

Heady though it must have been to ascend to the bema, a new-formed philosopher assumed great responsibility when promulgating his doctrine, as the several prosecutions (and many more accusations) for corrupting the Athenian youth indicate.

  2. prodromal — premonitory (symptom)

The sufferer of oral herpes may experience a prodromal itching or tingling at the location where the lesions will appear.

  3. baize — woolen fabric with long nap, usu. green, resembling felt, frequently seen covering billiard tables

What I had initially taken to be a desk blotter was actually an inlaid baize band apparently used by Sir Roberts to better organize the documents he examined for signs of forgery.

  4. papule — small pointed swelling of the skin

The small dots seen as the first signs of chicken pox quickly develop into papules which will then support a clear vesicle at their center.

  5. mantissa — decimal part of logarithm; (obs.) small part or addition of little importance

A particular set of digits will all have the same mantissa regardless of where the decimal point is placed within that set of digits.

  6. selvage — finishing of woven material so that the edge will not unravel

The quality of selvage denim is greater than the non-selvage variety, due in part to the tighter weaves used in producing the former.

  7. teleology — the study of ultimate ends or causes

Most creationist texts exhibit a manifest projection of anthromorphized teleology upon the universe in general and biology in particular.

  8. colporteur — hawker or seller of books

The 19th-century colporteur evolved from a peddler of bibles to become an underworld vendor of French postcards and (in the next century) Tijuana Bibles.

  9. logorrhea — incessant loquacity; pathological talkativeness

We withstood the offensive flood of his painful logorrhea as long as we could, but eventually we had to simply take our leave — without, of course, getting a word in edgewise, for there was no space between his.

  10. antipyretic — tending to reduce fever

I gave her acetaminophen for its antipyretic effect, but you should stay with her tonight in case she suffers further acute intestinal distress.

Analysis: The 3rd Hundred Books

or, More Findings of No Ultimate Interest

As I said last week, I have now read 300 books of my collection since I started tracking my reading back in June 2015. Now follows a shallow analysis of the books in this last hundred books, eschewing (mostly) reference to books in the “Comics & Graphic Novel” category, of which I read only two since last report.

First we note (as previously said in the post hyperlinked above) that I read books at a staggering pace over the last 100 books. Merely 279 days elapsed during my last book century, giving me a blistering rate of a little less than three days to read each book (1 book per 2.79 days). Besides the fact that my page rate also soared (of which more anon), the speedy book reading means that my overall pace for the entire 300 books read also dropped to a respectable 4.6 days per book. This is in line with my pace for the first hundred books (4.83 days/book), which had crawled to only 6.19 days/book for the second hundred.

1 Book Read per 2.79 Days

Of course, if Comics & Graphic Novels are included, these reading rates drop even further — though only a couple in that category were read in this last set. The difference is most apparent in the 1st hundred books read, when 33 comic books and graphic novels were read, but the reading rate for the entire set (342 books all told) drops by half a day if these ‘picture books’ are considered.

Average Time to Read a Book

non-Comics All
1st hundred 4.83 3.63
2nd hundred 6.19 5.79
3rd hundred 2.79 2.74
All 4.60 4.03

I am highlighting the reading pace here because of a disquieting statistic I uncovered during my inquest into an error with my last analysis of the previous hundred books read. During that investigation, I found that I would not finish reading all of the books in my collection (at my then-current rate) before Pearl Harbor Day in 2124. I thus began reading with the explicit purpose of bringing my projected completion date more in line with currently expected human lifespans (though not my own, undoubtedly), or, failing that, at least within the present century. To this end I began reading much of my genre fiction paperbacks (as will be seen), which books I had yet another purpose in reading, as I was seeking to make space in my limited paperback shelving by retiring those books already read.

I should point out that the underlying calculation for ‘books read’ in my collection included those books which I have read before beginning this quite pointless endeavor in data tracking, but when I made my first stab at guessing my ETA for reading my last book I did not have many works marked as previously read. I have tried to denote those I have read before since that time (July of 2018), but … I found myself in a quandary. I am sure, for example, that I have read most of the Badger comics which I have, but am I positive I read all of them? Or, in another vein, I read a version on Melville’s The Confidence-Man online (what a terrific book!), but can I really say that I’ve read the edition I bought a physical copy of later? So … I decided that I will only mark as ‘read’ those books for which I am sure — entirely sure — that I have read in that edition, and that I read the entire book from cover to cover. More on this statistical kerfuffle anon.

All this prologue is merely an attempt to explain the ridiculous dominance of genre fiction in my last century of books. While over 40% of the previous hundred books were nonfiction works of one stripe or another, barely one tenth of the last hundred were nonfiction. Even Fiction itself was overwhelmed by so-called ‘genre fiction’ works read, contributing barely 5% of the total (and two of those books could more properly, if loosely, be labelled as ‘Horror’). The full breakdown is below:

Books Read by Genre

Mystery & Thriller 53
Science Fiction & Fantasy 31
Nonfiction 11
Literature & Fiction 5

And of course there is a chart

The breakdown of the not-quite-a-dozen Nonfiction books is as follows:

Nonfiction Breakdown

History 2
Poetry, Drama & Criticism 2
Children’s Books 1
Foreign Language 1
Humor 1
Language & Linguistics 1
Militaria 1
Philosphy 1
Religion & Spirituality 1

I’ll leave it for the complete list of these last hundred books for you to discover into which category I’ve placed Strunk & White.

Since I now have full data on page counts for each book I have read, I am able to track my reading over time more precisely, and so am able to see that I maintained a fairly steady pace over the past nine months, with few spurts or slogs. This can be seen by looking at the cumulative pages read:

The fast pace can be seen even more clearly by considering the average reading rate:

Though my pace got as high as 110 pages per day, the overall average turned out to be just over 90 pages per day.

90.13 Pages Read per Day

Just how drastically my reading speed jumped a gear is shown by the fact that my pace for the previous hundred books was merely 34.4 pages per day. I should point out that page count information is incomplete for that set of one hundred books, with ten books missing that datapoint, so the actual pace was higher, though obviously still much lower than that for the last hundred books. Aaaand … another chart:

I know, you’re thinking “Hey, wait a minute! That chart makes it look like the average pace was more like 35.5 pages per day! What gives?!?” You are eagle-eyed, aren’t you? Well, the truth of the matter is that I didn’t exclude the comic books from that chart, since I only read 7 of them, and since they didn’t really affect the pace that much. You don’t believe me? *Sigh* Okay, then, here’s the same chart showing the non-comics page rate, which diverges only slightly from the total rate:

Now are you satisfied?

Flipping the paradigm — or rather switching some axes — the page count per book slightly increased from last report (with the usual caveat about missing data etc., etc., blah, blah). While the previous set of books sported 236 pages per book, the just completed hundred books averaged just over 250 pages in length. Including the two comics read drops this figure to 246.5 pages per book.

Average Book Length: 250.5 Pages

Not only was the pace of reading increased, the actual number of pages read was also significantly greater, though this may have been more influenced than the ‘pages per day’ statistic by the lack of complete data in my previous report. Over 25,000 pages were read in this last tranche of books, even with comics excluded (which added 94 pages to the full total).

Total Pages Read (non comics): 25,052

The average rating rose slightly from last report, though here, too, some duds were to be found. Overall, the quality was quite good, which was a slight surprise since I was purposely choosing books which seemed as if they should be leaving my shelves for good. Many of the last hundred books read made my Best of 2018 book list. The average rating for all books was a respectable 3.96, or the only slightly lower 3.94 if the two comics are excluded.

Average Rating for Books Read: 3.94

I will return in the near future with the complete list of books read, after which I hope to delve into the question of when I might complete my collection of books (after which I guess I’d better get around to the analysis of the last thousand or ten thousand songs listened to).

Peccavi: Not Actually 110,000 (was One Hundred and Ten Thousand Songs (110,000)) [UPDATED]

NOTE: Due to recent (6 April 2019) changes in methodology, we can no longer support the contention that we have listened to 110,000 iTune tracks. In addition, the use of the term “Songs” in the original title of this post was misleading. Details to come in a new post describing the underlying problems with the former methodology and the new methodology for tracking this data going forward. When that post is written/complete we shall add a link here for your benefit. In the mean time, we are leaving this post in its original form with the exception of this note and the title changes. The initial posting was written in good faith, if poor data management, so we shall let it stand for what it is worth.

Yesterday morning I hit the milestone of 110,000 unique iTunes tracks heard at least once. Track #110,000 was “Kelly Watch the Stars”, a nice enough poppy little number from the first album by the French duo Air, Moon Safari. Yestereve I listened to the 110,001st track, some stage talk by The Clash from a 1976 London concert (shades of Consolidated!), included in the CD soundtrack meant to accompany Greil Marcus’s masterful Lipstick Traces: A Secret History of the Twentieth Century, which soundtrack you can listen to right now at UbuWeb for free!.

110,000 unique tracks makes up 821.02 GB of data, with a total duration of 442 days, 9 hours, 45 minutes, and 52 seconds (ignoring multiple plays). Left unplayed in my iTunes collection at the moment of impactful milestone crossing were 82,173 songs, which is only 291 less than last report (thus over 700 songs were added in the meantime (I finally got around to ripping my Christmas presents)). The unplayed tracks comprise 581.72 GB of data (↓ 3.26 GB) with a playing time of 331 days, 1 hour, 51 minutes, and 8 seconds (↓ 8.9 days).

To reach the 110,000th unique track, I listened to 1,297 songs (since track #109,000), which total 10.21 GB of data, and laid end-to-end comprise 11 days, 8 hours, 51 minutes, and 12 seconds of audio.

It took only 44 days to listen to the last thousand songs (less than half as long than it took to hear the previous 1k), meaning 22.72 new songs per day were heard. This is a significant rate increase (from 9.8 per day), putting me back on my usual pace. This was due to the fact that the Xmas CDs were finished, at least the listening part.

22.2 New Tracks Heard per Day

 
If we include the previously heard songs, we find that I heard 29.5 tracks per day.

29.5 Tracks Heard per Day

 

A fictional life event milestone such as this deserves some sort of analysis, so I will promise same, which I’ll get right on after I complete my analysis of my last hundred books read, for which I’m sure you’re waiting with bated breath.I am no longer promising further analysis, as I’m still owing the same for the 103Kth and 102Kth sets of iTunes songs, though that promise recedes and may be broken soon.

Friday Vocabulary

1. apostrophe — rhetorical figure wherein the speaker digresses and pointedly addresses some person or personified object

But twenty-first century man has made hash of all rhetoric, and even Childe Harold’s apostrophe to the sea has been overtaken by modern humanity’s ability to pollute even the oceans themselves.

  2. marge — margin

And thus the crepuscular light palely illuminates the marge of night.

  3. Aceldama — field of bloodshed (from the field bought by Judas with his thirty pieces of silver)

One can speak of the brilliant strategic victory of Marlborough at Blenheim, but the landscape was a veritable Aceldama once the fighting had ceased.

  4. snook — rude gesture in which one puts the thumb on the nose and extends the fingers

We all gave the snooks to the cop on the beat and then ran laughing up the alley and over the abandoned field to our hideout in the supposedly abandoned warehouse.

  5. guerdon — reward, recompense

Let these strokes of the lash be the guerdon for your treason and your betrayal.

  6. staunch — determined, steadfast, true to one’s principles or purpose

He was a staunch friend, as willing to hurry down to the bail bondsman as to help manhandle the corpse into the trunk.

  7. glebe — portion of cultivable land assigned to clergyman as part of his benefice

We found the rector tending to his radishes in the glebe behind the parish house.

  8. animadversion — criticism, esp. that implying censure

I had thought only to proffer friendly advice and helpful comments, not to cast animadversions at the work which has obviously cost you much effort in time and thought.

  9. deontology — study of duty or moral obligation

I am afraid you misapprehend me, for though my position as professor of deontology permits me to advise you on the best course of action, I cannot remove your painful tooth.

  10. holt — grove, copse

We found ourselves in a beautiful holt such as Chaucer described, so recently dead and dry in the winter, but now gloriously green from the spring rains.

300 Books

This morning I finished my 300th book since I started tracking such data back in June of 2015. The book which pushed me over this milestone was the surprisingly good anthology 101 Famous Poems, originally published in 1958. (Hence my surprise.)

This book had been sitting in the meditation chamber of my bedroom for some time; I highly recommend the practice of having a book of poetry in the bathroom. Finishing this volume — which actually has one hundred and eleven poems, plus 7 small pieces of prose — means that I have read another hundred books* since the last such milestone reached on June 16, 2018. Thus 279 days, or just over nine months, have rolled on their weary way since I completed 200 books in this purposeless project. On average, therefore, each book in this last century was completed in 2.79 days, a staggering drop from the 6.17 days per book of my last report, or even the 4.83 days required to finish each of the first hundred.

   1 Book per 2.79 Days   

As usual, I’ll be back with more detailed analysis after I have a chance to massage the data into me-friendly form.

*As usual, I exclude comic books and their ilk from my calculations, though I believe only 2 such books were read in this last pell-mell dash of reading.

Old Anthology: 2010’s Bleak

  1. “See America Right” – The Mountain Goats
  2. “The Lyre Of Orpheus” – Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds
  3. “The Thrill Is Gone” – B.B. King & Tracy Chapman
  4. “Oh! Sweet Nuthin'” – The Velvet Underground
  5. “Damaged Goods” – Gang Of Four
  6. “I Drink” – Mary Gauthier
  7. “Life As A Rehearsal” – Minutemen
  8. “You’ll Have Time” – William Shatner
  9. “Dig, Lazarus, Dig!!!” – Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds
  10. “License To Kill” – Cowboy Junkies
  11. “Drunken Sailor” – Roger McGuinn
  12. “Gimme Shelter” – Patti Smith
  13. “CCKMP” – Steve Earle
  14. “The Future” – Leonard Cohen
  15. “Run On” – Tom Jones
  16. “Souljacker, Part I” – Eels
  17. “When The Roses Bloom Again” – Billy Bragg & Wilco
  18. “Sleeping In The Devil’s Bed” – Daniel Lanois

Friday Vocabulary

1. palestra — (ancient Greece) place devoted to public teaching and wrestling and athletics

Epicurus knew well how divisive his teachings were and preferred to instruct his followers at his home, shunning outdoor schools such as the Academy where onlookers would kibitz as if at the palestra.

  2. ataraxy — state of freedom from emotional distress and anxiety

Though sometimes confused with stoical indifference, ataraxy engenders a calm demeanor due to the strong philosophical foundation of the person blessed by its presence.

  3. contumacy — perverse and obstinate resistance to authority

Though the modern age may hardly give credence, a person’s indulgence in contumacy was once seen as a greater evil than his actual criminal acts.

  4. Toby — jug or mug formed in likeness of fat old man wearing a tricorn hat

One thing led to another, she pulled when I pushed, and with a cry from both of us the brightly colored Toby fell from our hands to shatter upon the faux marble tile, revealing an aged parchment which had been concealed therein.

  5. cumshaw — gratuity, present, tip

The British agents were completely ignorant of the cult of cumshaw and missed every hint I made of a bribe to speed us along our way.

  6. imprecation — act of cursing or invoking evil upon

Despite the muttered imprecations from the sullen crowd surrounding us, we removed the police tape and entered the supposedly abandoned warehouse.

  7. brassard — decorative cloth band worn on upper arm

I quickly removed the sergeant’s brassard and whipped it over my own right shoulder, hoping that my khaki shirt and the dim light would let me pass myself off as a military policeman.

  8. footy — paltry, worthless

For all your vain plaints, you shall see that this footy search for crimes will come to naught.

  9. apotheosis — deification, elevation to the rank of a god

Jon McNaughton brings a problematic set of allusions and portrayals in his charged and political art, not least of which is his apotheosis of the current occupant of the White House.

  10. plenum — space conceived of as completely filled with matter (usu. opposed to vacuum)

Descartes argued that all motion in the plenum was necessarily circular, and required an infinitely small division of matter.

Friday Vocabulary

1. valetudinarian — person obsessively concerned with his or her poor health

Their daughter caught what I call the valetudinarian disease, her parents worrying her so about any possible vector for germs in her environment that she seemed to have built up no resistance whatsoever to even the simplest illnesses, and thus she was always sick.

  2. shabracque — saddlecloth used by European hussars

Our regiment’s brave green and gold uniforms were repeated upon our shabraques, where the regimental crest was detailed in lustrous golden threads.

  3. sunder — to split or cleave

He continued to defend his peculiar concept of liberty and in that moment of excited over-explanation our partnership was sundered for evermore and I realized that I must needs search for a new knifeboy.

  4. outwith — outside

They will have to learn how to function outwith the European Union’s regulations.

  5. flavescent — yellowish, turning a pale yellow

My ill mood was not helped by the dawning morn, as the fog clung stubbornly and gave the daylight a sickly flavescent aura that betokened no good.

  6. logy — dull in thought or movement

I pulled myself out of the couch where I had passed out earlier and trod with logy steps up the stairs, every muscle in my thighs and knees protesting.

  7. merlon — upright section of battlement between crenels

I ducked back behind the merlon to quickly reload my crossbow, turning the cranequin as quickly as possible, when I spied a small enemy party that had breeched the wall opposite.

  8. hobbledehoy — an awkward youth

Do not be fooled into thinking that these ideas are merely the vain musings of some hobbledehoy upon subjects outside his ken, for just as all youths grow and and some grow wiser, so may these ungainly ideas mature into persuasive thoughts which could set the pattern for decades to come.

  9. goffer — to flute or crimp by means of a heated iron

She sat in the dark with her costume discarded, save for the goffered collar always associated with the first Queen Elizabeth.

  10. slattern — slovenly woman or girl

We were served weak ale by a short, plump slattern who refused to serve young John until we gave her an extra copper.

Friday Vocabulary

1. clepsydra — ancient timekeeping device using discharge of water to measure time; water-clock

Like water through the clepsydra, so are the days of our lives.

  2. frass — insect excrement

The spider webs behind the appliances were spotted with frass that betrayed the unseen life forces which threatened the old homestead.

  3. burble — (aeronautics) breakdown of smooth airflow into turbulence

At this angle of attack our wing’s leading edge began to suffer from burble and I feared we would stall at any moment.

  4. combe — deep hollow or short valley

The fog lay heavy in the combe making it impossible to spy any enemy forces which might be sheltered there.

  5. sumpter — pack animal

I hired two horses at the livery stable, as well as a sumpter pony to carry our supplies and the mining tools.

  6. postern — side or back entrance

We left by the postern gate an hour before dawn, hoping to escape the notice of the watchers posted opposite the drawbridge.

  7. ordure — excrement, dung

The medieval alleys were plagued by heaps of ordure from chamberpots lying in wait for the unwary pedestrian.

  8. superficies — outer surface

“The territory of the thirteen original States of the Union comprehended a superficies of 371,124 English square miles.”

  9. ewer — wide mouthed jug

I poured some water into the basin from the ewer standing ready by my bed.

  10. wherry — light rowboat

I paid an oarsman to take me across the river in his wherry.