Category: Music

Ron Sexsmith: The renowned songwriter nobody knows

Well, I know him…

Joe Strummer has died at the age of 50 of an apparent heart attack.

The Clash were probably my favourite punk band and my appreciation for them has only grown over the years. This is also sad news because Joe was still making music, having scored several films as well as recording with his band The Mescaleros. Another one of punk’s pioneers is gone. Godspeed, Joe…

I’m not nearly as much of a geek as I’d like to be. Over the past several months, I’ve attempted at least three times to install Kung-Tunes, an ingenious utility for displaying the currently-playing iTunes track, or a list of recently played tracks. For examples of how it’s been implemented correctly, see Todd’s or Neil’s sites.

All I want to be able to do is to put a list of the 5 most recently-played tracks in the sidebar with a link to the last 50 played tracks on another page. The common denominator on all the sites on which it seems to work is that they’re authored in PHP, a markup language I promised myself I’d learn, oh, about two years ago. Any instructions I’ve found have lots of mentions of <iframe>s and includes, two things I’ve learned nothing about.

Can anyone explain this to a numbskull like me?

UPDATE: Well, somehow I’ve got the currently-playing track working, and I think that’s enough for tonight. Part of the problem was that the whole thing doesn’t seem to work too well in Chimera, which is too bad since I was hoping not to have to use IE as much. Let me know what you’re seeing in your own browser/platform.

Just a heads-up that my favourite band, Spoon, will be appearing tonight on Late Night with Conan O’Brien. I’m gonna tape it in case I can’t stay up that late…You ought to check it out.

Spoon‘s fourth album, Kill the Moonlight, is getting generally rave reviews. You should definitely buy it.