RESMONT

Resmont is a new word and I am definitely sure about it because I see a red underline as I type this blog post using Imagine for Mac. I am a playlist happy music listener. I have a lot of music just like most of us, but I keep improvising on my playlist making. So one day, I went extremely crazy and brought out this wonderful playlist for shuffle listening – RESMONT. I started by creating individual smart playlists in iTunes.

To start with, a top 25 songs of what was recently played from your library and I called it “Recently Played”. Quite a simple playlist that iTunes has by default but it gives a good picture of what you had listen to latest. For example I have “Chithirai Nila” from Kadal, topping this list. Let us call this RE.

Sometimes I skip songs. If I don’t have the mood to listen to a particular song now, I just skip it. But iTunes is clever and it keeps track of how many times I skipped a song. So I created a playlist that will hold Top 25 of my most skipped song. Well what did I know, I had skipped “Hoshwalon” from Sarfarosh for 384 times all time, even though this song is my favorite with a 5 star rating. I had been unconsciously cruel to some great music, looking at this playlist. Let us call this S.

Now, I like some songs a lot and lean towards listening to them while on Computer, on iPods and also on Apple TV. So they get the most played count. Lo behold, a new playlist called Most Played to hold the top 25 most played songs. Let us call this MO.

What you add recently to the library from purchases in iTunes or Flipkart’s Flyte is something you may want to listen to often. I take the top 25 just added and make a playlist “New add”. I recently added a wonderful soundtrack music “The married life” from the Pixar movie UP, bought for 12 rupees from iTunes. Let us call this N.

Finally, to cream up the selection I thought I could create a playlist called Top Rated (default in iTunes with 4 stars and above) with all music with 5 star rating. Seems I had only 2 of them. One is Hoshwalon from Sarfarosh, which is also the most skipped and is beyond my understanding, why a 5 star rating song was skipped so many times. Oh vasantha raja from Neengal kettavai is the other 5 star song. I just seem to be lazy to give star ratings or it is rare for any music to reach 5 star rating from me. Let us call this T.

Simply put all of the above together – RE S MO N T, is a new smart playlist that holds songs from all these 5 playlists. You got the Resmont playlist ready to be copied to your iPod shuffle. I have been listening for more than a week and it has been full of surprises and discovery of music from my own library.

Share your own playlists creation and help the world rejoice in music listening.

One Act Play: Techno Wizards of Time

Characters:

Dinesh – Yours Truly.

Dinesh’s Wife.

Marconi – The guy who invented Radio.

J.L Baird – The one who gave us TV.

Time: Late evening on a Summer day.

Place: Dinesh’s Apartment.

It was a relaxing evening, I sipped a cup of tea and parked myself on the couch with Remote control on one hand. I was browsing through the TV channels, finishing up my tea with noises of daughter crashing items in dishwasher and wife asking me to take her away from there.

Suddenly, a bolt of lightning struck outside the apartment and two men appeared. The men walked the corridor and disappeared into the entrance as I was watching them from my patio door. Within 2 seconds I heard a knock at my door. A look at the peep hole showed those two men standing outside with one man restlessly standing. I opened the door for them:

Me: “Hi, Can I help you”

Restless man: “Can I use your restroom please? very urgent”

Another man: “Hi, I am Baird, Inventor of Television and he is Marconi Inventor of Radio.”

Me: “Yeah right!”

(TV Background: In a startling turn around of events, Steve Wozniak, the Co Founder of Apple inc, disappeared from his home. He is unreachable on his cell phone and no one knows where he is. He seems to be missing)

Marconi: “Please believe us, I need to pee. Here is a 100 dollars!”

I push the money away and politely ask him to enter in to use the Restroom.

Me: “So How did you guys get here?” I asked Baird.

Baird: “Oh, Marconi came to my home and we hopped in this time machine that he brought and We came straight to your home, since you were the chosen one.”

Baird was pointing me to a Hummer that was parked in front of the building.

Me: “That’s a Hummer!”

Marconi walks out of the restroom as I exclaim that.

Marconi: “I know, It was modified into a time machine by a great computer engineer.”

I was about to ask who was that great computer engineer but Baird bends down and exclaims at my TV.

Baird: “So this is a high definition TV? This looks very sharp. I am glad my concept has come a long way. This is so slim, and whoa that’s a lot of wires in the back”

Me: “Actually there better and bigger TVs, this is just a small one 26 inch, middle of the line”

Marconi interrupts Baird’s curiosity.

Marconi: “We just wanted to travel in time and see how things have advanced. Do you listen to Radio?”

Me: “Not much. I used to, but now I have a huge collection of Music library, so I don’t need a radio. Besides, they just talk too much on the radio before playing any sensible song. I listen to online radio though!”

Baird is still looking around my TV set and admiring the picture quality.

Marconi: “Online Radio? What is that?”

Me: “You see I come from India and the language from where I come from is Tamil. I like to keep tab of a few online Tamil Radios and listen to them once a while. They play random songs without any commercial interruptions.”

Marconi: “How do you listen to it?”

Me: “Well it’s easy really. I go to the site where I have the internet link for the radio and download a little pls file. Usually they call it launch.pls. A Pls file is a continuously streaming playlist file. I then add that file to iTunes on my computer. iTunes is a easy to use Media Juke box. iTunes then syncs the file to my Apple TV in the living room and voila, I can now listen to Internet Radio on my TV”

Marconi: “Radio on TV sounds very interesting! Baird, We are now put together, did you see!”

Baird rises from his squat position, as he finishes up examining the TV.

Baird: “I am thrilled to hear this. My friend Marconi, I can’t believe how times have changed and how people are putting these things to use in various ways.” he turns towards me as he shakes hands with Marconi and pats his shoulder, “So, what radio stations do you listen to?”

Me: “Oh, I love Geethams. They play classic Tamil Ilayaraja songs all day interluded with some new numbers here and there. They are very focused on playing melodious songs, a good day-starter and night-put-to-sleeper.

I like Jore FM a bit, because they play with a request queue and it is interesting to see what people request.

Mudhal FM and Nila FM are also good and play nice songs. Even though I have a lot of songs in my library, Once a while I like to enjoy the randomness and the sense of not knowing what is going to play next. It is exciting and Fun to listen to, especially that I can sit in my living room and do it.”

Marconi: “This is so fun to talk about. I love what you are doing and we are glad that our inventions have been put to great use. We must now take leave. Thank you for your time!”

Marconi and Baird slowly walk towards the door and open it, I stop them for a question.

Me: “Can I ask you who invented your time machine?”

Marconi: “One of the greatest Computer Engineer of your times, Mr. Steven Wozniak, Co founder of Apple Inc. He came to my house a few days back and wanted to tinker with my Radio Invention and in return I got to travel in his time machine into the future! I picked up Baird on the way”

My mouth was open but unable to utter a word in bewilderment. Marconi and Baird looked at me with a smile and waved good bye. I was still trying to come out of bewilderment and said, “Goodbye to you both, It was nice meeting you”

Marconi & Baird: “Nice meeting you too, and oh what is your name?”

Me: “Dinesh!”

Marconi and Baird kept walking away in the pavement towards their time machine.

Marconi: “What? I can’t hear your name”

There was a roaring sound in the background and I was shouting my name as Diiinnnneessshhh. Marconi and Baird hopped onto the Hummer and disappeared in a flash of light towards the sky. I didn’t know if they got my name, but I am now hearing someone yelling my name at me. Then came a huge shake of my shoulders followed by another yelling Diiinnnesssshhhhh.

It was my wife: “You dozed off after you had the tea. Were you dreaming?”

Me (Yawning): “I guess. I dreamed like Mungerilal from Mungerilal ke Haseen Sapne!”

Wife: “You are weird, come down now, dinner is ready!”

We picked our plates and started having dinner as we alternatively fed our daughter from our plates with the music of Ilayaraja from Geetham Radio softly playing in the Background.

It is amazing to see how technology has grown over the years. A Haiku for this realization:

Sound of Radio,

Picture in Television,

Time caused their fusion!

PS: The Haiku that I wrote before are not really Haikus. Haiku is supposed to have 5-7-5 syllables structure and I was doing 3-5-3 for some reason. So it was just Hai, not Haiku. I apologize for this mistake, from now on I will have it in the proper format.

PPS: This is an arbitrarily weird attempt at showing that one can listen to Internet Radio on your TV using Apple TV. Of course I could have simply outlined the steps like a tech blog, but since this was a personal blog I spiced it up by bringing Marconi, Baird, asked Steve Woz to convert a Hummer into Time Machine and reminded myself of the old Doordarshan serial Mungerilal ke Haseen Sapne. I had fun writing this and I hope you enjoyed reading it