Archive for April, 2007

Now Playing (Part 2)…

After putting the “Now Playing” stuff in the sidebar, I’ve now added the clever stuff that links to Amazon. The code uses Amazon Web Services to pull back the album art (where it can find it from my iTunes artist and album tags) and a hyperlink to Amazon’s site. The URLS for the link and the art are cached in a local table at this end, so that I don’t overstep the limit of the number of requests that I’m allowed. Whatever that is.

Tangled Up In Blue

I tried out the new tent for the first time today. It took me THREE HOURS to put it up (including a break for lunch), but (with Vince’s help) about ten minutes to bring it down and put it all away again. Should be much quicker to put it back up when we do it “live”.

Tent

First Outdoor 10K Of The Year

It was misty first thing, so spent the morning indoors doing the housework; but when I finally ventured outside I felt the sun on my back and decided not to put it off any longer. Put my kit on and got outside for the first outside run of any kind in 2007, and because I felt good I decided to go for the full 10,000m.

Soon decided that I’d set off too quickly. Made the first kilometre in 5 minutes 30 seconds, which left me panting because there’s a steep climb up Handforth Road in that first kilometre. But I pushed on, taking the Turing route, and got back home in 56 minutes 2 seconds.

Now Playing…

Finished stage one of the “now playing” item on the right-hand column. This takes my iTunes Library, loads the track names into mySQL, and shuffles them to simulate a never-ending playlist reflecting, for better or worse, a snapshot of my tastes.

The next step will be to add a link to Amazon using the Amazon API.