I must sign up for accounts on innumerable websites; it seems barely a day goes by without my requiring to come up with a supposedly unique password for yet another account. Of course, I don’t have unique passwords, and I can’t imagine any but the most paranoid do. It would be simply untenable to remember them. This situation is self-evidently ludicrous. It would be much simpler if there were a single location which can verify my identity on behalf of other sites.

This is a very quick recipe for using a backend process with a Rails frontend. I’ve been experimenting with Rails at work and needed a long running backend process to keep the information displayed in the frontend up to date and to do house-keeping tasks.

I wanted to share models and helper code between the back and frontends, so required the ability to use Active Record outside the typical Rails environment. It turns out this is simple to do. I couldn’t find an example on the web on how to set this up, so I decided to write one.

Six weeks ago, BBC 6music first broadcast a new show called Introducing. The idea behind the show is fantastic, as articulated by Tom Robinson:

For one show let’s bypass CDs, pluggers and record companies and play new tunes by unknown artists as heard on their own web pages. The sound quality might not be the same as compact disc, but so what.

The standard of the music on the show is amazing, beyond anything I expected. Each week, without fail, I am entranced for two hours.

The twenty-first century has arrived in the house of Mike: I have bought some digital music online. It’s quite exciting, and now I’ve taken the plunge I’m finding it all too easy to spend money on music. Instant gratification is a powerful thing.

The provocateur of this was my discovery that CD Baby now sell mp3s alongside their CDs for many of their albums. I instantly snapped up Regina Spektor’s 11:11 and an album by Jill Tracy, Diabolical Streak, an artist who I found during some aimless myspace browsing. Tracy’s music is really lovely; dark and sensuous parlour music. CD Baby is awesome: for mp3 downloads, 91% of the money goes directly to the artist.

There are many reasons I am ambivalent towards Facebook. Most of these are half-formed feelings; one which isn’t is Facebook’s bland, impersonal look. I used to see this as “clean” and “unfussy”; now it is dull and tedious. Blue, blue, blue…

Myspace is garish, but it’s also exciting. The scope for customisation is ample opportunity for making the space your own. I have freedom on my myspace page to create a crazy, messy page; to have eye-straining purple stripes; to have some fun and express myself.