I need to develop something

Jim of Seattle · Post by **Jim of Seattle** » Fri Nov 19, 2004 1:51 pm

So part of my job means keeping up my .Net web development skills. I do this when there's nothing better to do with customers and such. So I'm all ready to build some killer web application, but I don't have a (good) idea what to build. I'm thinking there could be some cool Songfight app that I could build and then post and then people could actually use it. So I was going to write "Review-O-Matic", where the user just checks boxes and picks items off lists and the app writes a review of a song for you. But I think that might suck.

So any ideas?

Adam! · Post by **Adam!** » Fri Nov 19, 2004 1:57 pm

Sounds Awesome. Make sure you include a radio button like this:

[X] Sounds like They Might Be Giants

In fact, just make it always checked.

Bell Green · Post by **Bell Green** » Fri Nov 19, 2004 2:22 pm

Groovy man. That would be cool. Doing reviews is like work. I just leave it and leave it, then miss the deadline. I have to do reviews if I have entered a song, so this would be great. Do it man.

That reminds me, I have to do some reviews.

Hoblit · Post by **Hoblit** » Fri Nov 19, 2004 3:07 pm

Yeah, that actually sounds cool... but you'd still need a 'comments' feild.

Otherwise you'd just have a combonation of half truths as people would pick 'the closest' available variable no matter how innacurate.

Besides, a bunch of posts with:

dude: sounded like TMBG, EQ too high end, you suck, too angry, vocals need work.

duderino: EQ too Low end, you suck, sounded like TMBG

dudez: vocals need work, EQ too Low end, Sounded like TMBG

see where i'm going with that?

Rabid Garfunkel · Post by **Rabid Garfunkel** » Fri Nov 19, 2004 3:09 pm

Still tripping through my first pot of coffee, so please to forgive the truly weirdy bits...

While the Review-O-Matic is a nifty idea, I think it'd kill the joy I find in reading how many different ways people can say "your lyrics are cliched/I hate your voice, never sing again", heh. Besides, I'd rather be reached out and touched by a human, than have the extra layer of remove the genericizer would create. So... on a parallel evolutionary track, I present to you, the Recommendinizer, a sort of "if you dig this artist, give this other one a try".

Somehow, somehow, you'd have to get the reviewers (and anyone else who wanted to play along) to kick data back to you on a song by song basis for whomever they felt like.

Deciding the elements/variables used to describe/classify every song would be a challenge. Pro'lly an either/or sort of scale for pairs of opposing vars (like, say, the Hot or Not thermometer-type of thing), and more than one set.

Obviously, (maybe?

) it's gotta be broken down into three-ish parts: the assigning/categorizing of each song by the artist to make that artist's gestalt; the assigning/categorizing of each browser's preferences and tastes; and, of course, how to make it so people can do it all, more or less seamlessly, invisibly, logically.

Baby needs more coffee, thanks for the outlet JoS.

Jim of Seattle · Post by **Jim of Seattle** » Fri Nov 19, 2004 3:25 pm

Hoblit, I am well aware of that downfall. My idea was that you'd pick a song attribute from a big list, containing everything, like lead guitar, rhythm guitar, piano, lead vocal, bg vocal, sound effects, reverb, EQ, sousaphone, then you'd pick an opinion off a list of possible opinions, such as out of tune, too heavy, totally rocks, whatever (this second list would be filtered based on what instrument you'd picked, so you couldn't say, for example, "the EQ was out of tune"). Then there would be a database of actual statements pairing those two things together. The fun part would be that I was going to let people contribute their own data to the R-O-M, so that if someone came up with a clever way to say the tambouriane was too loud, they could enter it, and someday they might see a review using the phrase they made up. So it would be an ever-evolving database of review comments. Also, the resulting review would just be a big clump of text in a box that they would cut and paste, so they could change it however they wanted.

Even with all this I still thought it was a sucky idea. But from this response maybe I'll do it anyway. I'll need beta testers.

Rabid, do YOU want to come up with some all-encompassing list of artists that someone might sound like? Anyway, 85% of the time the artist compared to isn't someone the artist being compared has heard of anyway.

Hoblit · Post by **Hoblit** » Fri Nov 19, 2004 3:36 pm

NO...you should ask ALL of us...

some comparisons from the past:

Bands:

David Bowie
They Might Be Giants
NSYNC
Ozzy
Bob Mould
They Might Be Giants
The Cure

Times:

20's
50's
60's
70's
80's
90's

Places:

Orange County
New York City
California (neverminding that orange county is IN California)
Delta
Seattle
South
English
Irish

Bjam · Post by **Bjam** » Fri Nov 19, 2004 3:40 pm

What if it was just like a form with a load of comment fields. Y'know? Like:
Sounded like ___
Needs work ____
Vocals were ___
I hated this song with a fiery flame because of ___

Or something. *shrugs* A guide, but easier. I dunno.

Rabid Garfunkel · Post by **Rabid Garfunkel** » Fri Nov 19, 2004 3:41 pm

not an engine to tell users who X sounds like, (SF specific, by the way, not external) but to suggest fighters/songs at SF that the user might also enjoy based on what they thought of songs/fights they've entered data on. Refer to Netflix's recommendations engine for, well, the primary example of what I'm trying to get across.

this would be to turn people onto fighters they might not have heard before, is all, by which other fights/ers they liked and what they liked about them. The simple 0-5 star rating wouldn't work for this, there'd need to be multiple aspects for each song to be rated to enhance the data set.

I can't code, and my wild ideas illustrate that fact very clearly

edits in italics

HeuristicsInc · Post by **HeuristicsInc** » Fri Nov 19, 2004 3:47 pm

these sorts of things are pretty cool.
one just for songfighters / songs could be an interesting experiment.
-bill

Post by jb » Fri Nov 19, 2004 4:06 pm

build us an automatic bittorrentizer for fights or something useful

Hoblit · Post by **Hoblit** » Fri Nov 19, 2004 4:17 pm

songfight pr0n search

Leaf · Post by **Leaf** » Fri Nov 19, 2004 6:55 pm

why don't you build a map that pinpoints where any given songfighter is at ANY GIVEN TIME.

Post by **Lunkhead** » Fri Nov 19, 2004 8:32 pm

I'm with JB on this one, if there were a way to automatically make a bittorrent seed of the fights, that would rock. Then we could get all the songs for a fight as one speedy download, and it would ease the bandwidth usage of http://www.songfight.org, making it good for the admins.

Jim of Seattle · Post by **Jim of Seattle** » Fri Nov 19, 2004 11:14 pm

Thanks for the idea, jb. I'd put anything coming from the fightmaster collective at the top of my list, because I'd love to make something actually useful.

thehipcola · Post by **thehipcola** » Sat Nov 20, 2004 5:04 am

I think the bittorrent idea is a great one.

related: I read somewhere that bit torrent files now account for 2/3 of all internet bandwidth. Pretty surprising when I consider that most people I know don't even know what that is!!! Not so surprising when I figured out that alot of bit torrents are movies...won't be long before the RIAA and co. start poking around...

HeuristicsInc · Post by **HeuristicsInc** » Sat Nov 20, 2004 11:24 am

wait, i thought it was spam

-bill

Oracle · Post by **Oracle** » Mon Nov 22, 2004 5:27 am

Actually, the RIAA are quite aware of bittorrent and recently announced charges against a few people they specifically decided to go after for copyright violations because they were only detected ever downloading one thing, a tracked copy of Spiderman 2 (the movie). Also, rumor has it that VALvE (game company) intentionally released HalfLife2 over bittorrent so they could see where it went for some as-of yet unknown reason. Just remember, I have a friend that downloads stuff almost constantly... bittorrent has others like him.

Aside from the bittorrent tangent, I'd prefer if you made a program that was unrelated to the site seeing as how the best idea we can come up with is some sort of "not-automatic but automated reviewing thingey" (or N.A.B.A.R.T. for short). I'd love it if we could come up with something interesting or useful but aside from the momentary entertainment value associated with copious inside jokes I see little other than the exercise of your programming skills benefiting. If, however, that was all you wanted, have at! Perhaps the practice is needed, and if executed artfully I'm sure we'll all have a laugh or dozen. Hmmm... {considers the Jargonator he once saw} maybe make a program we can put our review into that will then "spruce them up a bit"?

j$ · Post by j$ » Mon Nov 22, 2004 5:38 am

JoS - I don't think you need to be that particular - unless you want it to be an elaborate prank, of course -

A form that came up with the list of people in the fight, and a comment box would be dilly-dally-doo. You could have a list of things which appear in the subject field (like reminds me of:, Production issues:, etc) that don't appear if the box is left blank. The problems with that in my mind are two-fold. Fristly, it might be too easy for you to waste yr time on. Secondly, I don't like reducing everything to a 'school essay'. I don't like out of 10 reviews/comparisions between fights/breakdowns in this fashion because I don't like the idea that creativity can be reduced to a mathmatical construct. But hey!

I tell you what we COULD do with, if this is the sort of thing you can do - a REVIEW ARCHIVE INTERFACE. I.e. you put in 'Puce' and [some song Puce did] and it comes up with all the pertinent reviews. Kind of like the fabulous song archive interface PLAT (edit for typo) did. This could actually incorporate a simple review writing form as well, I guess.

If it was adaptable, then we could add in just about anything else that was relevant over time, including tabs, chords &c. Just a pipe dream!

j$

Post by jb » Mon Nov 22, 2004 12:03 pm

a new improved lyric archive might be cool, if people want that. something all databased up. then if (IF) we ever get around to doing up a good entry script we could import whatever lyrics have been put into jim's thing.

Jim of Seattle · Post by **Jim of Seattle** » Mon Nov 22, 2004 1:21 pm

Yeah, OK, I thought of something like that too. Like just a list of songs with big text boxes where reviews get typed in, then it can output a nice formatted final text for you to paste into the boards, and also the reviews could then be archived, so people could go back and say "I want to see all the reviews of Doctor Worm's 'Funny Enough for You'" or "I want to see every review Johnny Cashpoint has written for Liechty", etc. Is there some archive of existing reviews that someone put together when they transferred all the reviews from the old board?

It would be a simple matter to incorporate lyrics into it if it turned out to be a good thing.

Plat · Post by **Plat** » Mon Nov 22, 2004 4:52 pm

Jim of Seattle wrote:Is there some archive of existing reviews that someone put together when they transferred all the reviews from the old board?

I started something like this, but I'm still waiting for Spud to update the archive.txt to point to the correct review threads. Meanwhile I'm slowly losing personal interest in it. If you want to talk, or use any of my code (I have some parsers you might find helpful), let me know.

I don't have much in the way of parsing reviews (besides a bunch of theory), and I have some code to parse the old lyric thread (nothing new from this board), and a bunch of cool stuff to parse up the archive.txt file (to get URLs, artwork info, etc).

http://www.dillfrog.com/tools/songfight_explorer/

Let me know if you want any of it.

See also: http://www.songfight.net/forums/viewtopic.php?t=69

I need to develop something

I need to develop something

bit torrent tangent