The Glory of Sound

As I have made a few work friends since starting my new job at DBM, I have been inducted into the all-too-familiar realm of office gossip, and, more importantly, DBM employees' particular brand of time-wasting (or maybe it counts as effective time usage, as something has to be done whilst one is waiting for the fossil of a color printer to spew out one's documents at a slug's pace, after all). Yesterday, one of the consultants (a cool Aussie one with a penchant for photography and chocolates) snuck stealthily into my desk area to tell me about an awesome website that offers exactly what I've been needing lately. And, no, banish those dirty thoughts, it isn't *that* you sicko. It is a personalized online radio station, pumping endless new and exciting tunes through your desktop speakers for FREE. Apparently, some super-serious music lovers started this thing called The Music Genome Project, which is a valiant effort to map and categorize all the music ever created...ever. And so, by way of this splendid scientific phenomenon, this wonderful group of music-lovers have found a way to create a virtually endless stream of tailored musical truffles that sonically resemble the music you already know and love. You just type in a favorite song or artist, and the musical mechanism assesses the particulars (whatever they may be) of timing, vocal tracks, and each instrument in turn, and, like magic, matches them to other songs with similar components. The first ten hours of this service are free for every computer that uses it, and you're pretty much guaranteed to like everything you hear. So go to it!