Sort of about music

I've been away from the blog for so long that firefox deleted its URL
from my history. In order to ease back slowly, here's something content-free.

When I was in middle school my dad decided to make things easy on
himself, and at a pre-appointed hour, would enter my room, turn on my stereo, and leave. At that point in my life, I was embarrassed by making my preferences publicly known and only listened to music using headphones and a portable player. So it was three months of Greenday's Insomniac. This was a very bad time. Nevertheless, my dad had the right idea. Waking up is the most unpleasant part of my day, and to compound that by involving an alarm clock would be too dreadful to contemplate. In contrast, my computer is very considerate about the entire process, gradually increasing the volume over the course of five minutes (alarm clock plug). So here are a few songs I've used in the past.

• Radiohead - Everything in Its Right Place
• Xploding Plastix - Treat Me Mean I Need the Respect
• Ratatat - Seventeen Years
• Nirvana - ??

I listened to these four in sequence.

• Radiohead - Everything in Its Right Place
• Gorillaz - Last Living Souls
• Mogwai - Golden Porsche
• The Orb - Earth Orbit One - Little Fluffy Clouds
• Tortoise - TNT

Of these, I recommend any of the standalone songs, though don't try Gorillaz for the first time when you have anything important to do--I always slept
through it. After being woken up by a song for long enough, it
will tend to wear on you: to some extent, that's what happened to me
with the Radiohead and Mogwai, so the Orb and Tortoise are new
additions: hopefully I can find a few more to put into a rotation. Any
suggestions?

Incidentally, you're going to want to get the Xploding Plastix album and listen to it constantly.

Ratio of Lifehacker Visits to Ideas Implemented ~30 : 1

So, I finally broke down and installed Invisibility Cloak which blocks time-wasting websites. More precisely, you list the worst offenders and it prevents them from loading prior to a certain time of day. I had previously resisted the software based on the important principle that I really enjoy wasting time.

The script exhibited a sad lack of professionalism: it has a built in variable specifying the time of day after which the cloaking stops taking effect, but no opposite variable. Perhaps they assumed that anyone who is awake after midnight is just too degenerate to embrace this sort of productivity enhancing tool. As a result, I was forced to alter the code so that I won't be stripped of my diversions after midnight. Since I've never even previously looked at javascript, the chances of this failing are approximately 100%.

A more insightful post than this would have noted how this hack is really just another instance of applying a high-powered technical solution to avoid applying any concept of personal responsibility, but I'm too lazy for that.