Prepare to feel all warm and fuzzy inside when you see the christmas eve 2005 pictures with me and my parents.

If you’re into music don’t stop reading because I’m gonna tell you about the two coolest instruments on the net to … uhm … “enhance your listening experience”.

The first one is Last.fm. This site contains a few really great tools. First of all there’s a fantastic search tool to look for similar artists. Let’s say you like Air, then you type ‘Air’ and the result will be a list of all artists played by the 100.000 Last.fm users who often play Air. How does it work? Simple, you download a plugin for Winamp and when you’re playing music, the info is uploaded to Last.fm. I must say that it really works cause i’ve discovered some really great music lately. And there’s more, just check it out.

The second instrument is even more spectacular! Jesus, what would I do without it?! So … you’ve got yourself a really nice collection of music. Come on, admit it… you’re the proud owner of thousands and thousands of mp3 tracks (or other formats). But it’s getting a bit out of hand. When you’re looking to play a few tunes, it doesn’t take long before you start feeling a headache. Too much choice? Don’t know where to begin? Or just feeling lazy? Then you have to try ‘MusicMagic Mixer’ from Predixis. It will create a playlist for you based upon one or more songs you select. After the first installation, MusicMagic Mixer (MMM) will analyze all your music. This means that MMM will scan the sound wave of all your music tracks, one by one, and create a fingerprint database. The first time this will probably take a long time depending on the size of your music collection. And then what? Let’s say I have to drive for a couple of hours or a few people are coming for dinner. What to do? Run MMM, choose a few songs you’re in the mood for, tell MMM you want a playlist of uhm …4 hours or 20 hours … whatever! Load the playlist on your MP3 Player or put them on a cd or dvd and that’s it. The playlists are amazing. I remember making a list based upon a few downtempo chill tracks from the last couple of years but MMM threw an old Roxy Music song in the mix. At first it didn’t seem to fit until I listened … it was a perfect match! Try it out, you’ll love it.