randomduck

I got this from sprite, who got it from Sweetpea, who got it from….

Here’s the drill:

Just start your iPod, iTunes, or whatever music player you use, and write down the first ten tracks that come up. No cheating and skipping around until you get the cool songs.

So, here’s the outcome:

1. “The W.A.N.D.” by The Flaming Lips (from At War With The Mystics)
2. “Digging In The Dirt” by Peter Gabriel (from Us)
3. “Your Cheatin’ Heart” by Patsy Cline & The Jordanaires (from The Patsy Cline Story)
4. “In My Life” by The Beatles (from Rubber Soul)
5. “One Man’s Ceiling Is Another Man’s Floor” by Paul Simon (from There Goes Rhymin’ Simon)
6. “The Girl From Ipanema” by Stan Getz with Astrud Gilberto (from Getz/Gilberto)
7. “Galileo” by Eddie From Ohio (a cover of the Indigo Girls tune, from Live at Lewie’s - Bethesda, MD)
8. “Island In The Sun” by Weezer (from Weezer)
9. “Comfortably Numb” by Pink Floyd (from The Wall)
10. “Carry The Flame” by Aretha Franklin (from Salt Lake 2002 Official Music Of The Games)

Any surprises? Well, I haven’t heard Patsy Cline come up on my iPod (or iTunes at work) in a long, long time. Same goes for “The Girl From Ipanema” - a classic, and somehow fitting for the mood of the day. And I haven’t heard the Aretha track in a long time - probably since I ripped the Salt Lake 2002 CD into my iTunes library - it must rest in the most cobwebbed corner of my iPod. The contrasts in the mix are really fun, eclectic, and true to the name of this blog.

And it’s fun to see how this list compares to the two posts I made for the 2005 music meme (here and here) - just more food for thought, right?

By the way, you can always see what I’ve been listening to (mostly at work - and it pulls data from the iPod if the unit is docked to my computer) by looking at my Last.fm stats. The five most recent plays are on the right-hand column of this blog, too - but the actual Last.fm page has more cumulative data.

Popularity: 38% [?]

Activity: road cycling
Location: Dupont Circle > Potomac/Great Falls, MD > Dupont Circle
Distance: 36.8 miles (moderately hilly)
Duration: 1:56
Weather: sunny, 73 degrees
Avg HR: 148 (max 178)
Type: aerobic

PPTC “Downtown Breakaway” ride. Good, big crowd today, with lots of A, BB and B riders - a first for this ride in the past couple of years! We didn’t hammer quite as hard (Wolfgang is in Germany), but Steve and Mike drove the pace. Did Great Falls this time, and did fine going back up. The paceline returning to DC was fast and furious - and about 15 riders deep.

Popularity: 28% [?]

Just finished watching the season finalé for Heroes, and…. wow!

I’ll put the rest below the cut for those who haven’t yet seen the show.
Read the rest of this entry »

Popularity: 30% [?]

The data for week three:

* 10 rides
* 118.3 miles

And for the month so far:

* 27 rides
* 384.4 miles

Didn’t do any big rides this past weekend - too much on the plate (including work on Sunday), but it was a nice week of riding.

Popularity: 25% [?]

Activity: off-road cycling
Location: Georgetown > Great Falls (C&O Canal Towpath)
Distance: 28.8 miles (flat)
Duration: 1:54
Weather: sunny and pleasant, 73 degrees
Avg HR: 145 (max 165)
Type: aerobic

A wonderful post-work ride on the C&O Canal Towpath. I went all the way out to the Great Falls Tavern, which is a typical turnaround point for the Tuesday night road rides. The National Park Service has done a lot of trail work, so a formerly rugged (and impossible to ride) section is now boardwalk-enhanced - nice. I saw lots of wildlife:

• four nesting pairs of Canada geese with goslings in varying stages of maturity, from tiny to gettin’ big
• many turtles of all sizes
• spawning bass
• seven blue herons
• two night herons, which look like penguins when they’re sitting on logs
• a wood duck with five tiny, puffball-sized ducklings

I wish I’d taken my camera - the ducklings were adorable.

Popularity: 27% [?]

Today was Bike To Work Day here in DC, as well as in many other locales around the United States. Thousands of cyclists descended upon downtown DC this morning, both as a sign of solidarity and to pick up freebies: t-shirts, water bottles, bagels, bananas and coffee.

Amazingly, motorists in downtown accepted the myriad intruders into their usual steel cage mix. And equally amazing was the fact that most of the cyclists were on good behavior: obeying posted signs, signaling turns and stops, and riding predictably.

For one fleeting moment, cycling was an accepted mode of personal transport in the District.

If only that could be a more everyday occurrence.

Popularity: 32% [?]