Jango

Recently I managed to get all of my CDs ripped to MP3 and reasonably organized into about 100GB of disk space (I probably should go back and re-rip to OGG Vorbis). I've always been a fan of album rock and prog rock, so I'm not to hot on shuffles. I also have pretty diverse taste, so a shuffle could give me Metallica followed by Brahms. Generally, I've been displeased by the end results and almost prefer the idea of sticking a CD into the CD player.

Then I found Jango. Kind of like Pandora but a little more customized, Jango let's me build "stations" based on artists and interjects occasional songs that it thinks are similar. So I get all the goodness of a fixed group of artists with the occasional randomness of a new artists but no commericals! Unfortunately, it's still ruins the concept of album rock and many of my favorite artists aren't available.

On the positive side, it lets me further explore eliminating the things that I keep that I mistakenly think "define me". I recently routed through my bookshelf and removed all those books that I kept because I felt that, if someone were to browse my bookshelf, they'd get some clues as to who I was. Of course, I realized that person might just think "this guy has too many books"!