Okay, I know the site isn’t really dead but it’s dead to me…! *cries* And only because I live in the UK. Pandora got threatened asked nicely to stop people from outside the US using their service a while ago. Quite a long while ago actually so this is news to no one but…
I found a replacement.. kind of. It’s not the same but MeeMix.com does the same kind of thing as Pandora used to. Sure, you could get on a proxy server based in the US to circumvent Pandora’s IP filtering but I’ve found that to be extremely unreliable and slow.
Guess how I found Meemix though? Via a Facebook advert. I don’t know if that’s a good thing or a bad thing! The interface is kind of clunky and overly flash-based. They’re trying to make it more of a social network type site which is horrible so steer clear of that bit of it. I don’t know if it works using just user responses to decide what song to play next or some elaborate algorithms but hey, it works in the UK so whatever.
Actually, MeeMix has some pretty neat stuff which Pandora didn’t have.. The “mood control” bit allows you to fiddle with two settings which change the selection of tracks. “Surprise Me” and “Pulse”. The higher you set the “Surprise Me” slider, the more likely songs selected are going to Surprise you. *BOO* <- Not like that. The higher “Pulse” is the more the selections go “party time” and the lower it’s set, the more relaxing. Also, MeeMix has integrated YouTube videos of the current song a click away and believe-it-or-not a bunch of links to share the content on your favourite social network.
It’s okay, but it’ll never fill the void Pandora has left behind… 
For me it is only partly true, I’d say. My desktop is covered in mainly downloaded video/audio/image content, screenshots (ironically), scripts I’m testing at the moment, folders full of stuff I have yet to properly organise nicely into my home directory, random files of interest and just rubbish! Time for a spring clean I think…
What’s 
Spam Increase
Spam is probably one of the things I hate most about the Internet. I despise it, who doesn’t?! It’s a lose-lose situation and yet it thrives. Companies out there are paying people money (probably quite a lot too) to spam which while not illegal is a really unethical business practice but where’s the return on their investment? Unless I’m the only person who doesn’t click on all the links in my spam emails and comments? How can it be worth their while spending all this money for something which 99.99% of their target audience are going to ignore… and so some people go to extraordinary lengths to filter spam, the spammers still slave away figuring out ways to do their evil deed.
It’s interesting watching the spam start to build up on here since it has moved to the new location. I got hit by 20 or so very similar comment spams yesterday and 5 since I removed those just now. Akismet was doing a perfect job of protecting against them but no spam filtering system can be perfect and it let one through the net, I suppose I can’t complain though.
It’s shocking that, according to Akismet statistics, only 10% of blog comments are ham (aka. not spam!)… So keep sending me your ham, not literally obviously - that wouldn’t work. Just be aware, I’ve got comment moderation enabled for your first-time ham comments but any comments after that should get through without a hitch