I've take a couple of well-deserved (if I do say so my damn self) weeks off from @parachord.bsky.social and Achordion work - but it's so f'in hot today I guess it may be time to get back to it.

Damn, I wonder how fast it can go outside.

I always find good stuff here.

Just cut off my long hair. Not sure how I feel about it yet.

It's only been out a few days, so I guess I should still be promoting my new song. I like it, particularly the back half of it. If you have a few minutes to spare, maybe you will too? open.spotify.com/track/4CUCN7...

Nothing like releasing a new song to smoke out some Achordion bugs in how it deals with tracks that still have incomplete identifier propogation (ISRC, MBID).

New song dropped today. If you are looking for a sort of cinematic retro indie rock instrumental (at this point I'm just sort of throwing words together) vibes maybe give it a quick listen from wherever you get your music? achordion.xyz/release-grou...

A couple of weeks ago I asked Spectrum to send me an upgraded modem. A new one showed up a couple of days later, but now they continue to send me new ones every couple of weeks since (3 so far). Anyone need a modern?

I'm the exact right age that it took me a minute to realize this wasn't right.

Guys, it had a hell of a run but it's time to put the brand out to pasture.

Breaking: The Supreme Court has - in addition to further attacking trans kids just trying to be kids - has also just empowered middle school and high school gym teachers to "verify" your children are cis-girls.

A decade ago: fan armies trying to artificially drive their favorite artist to the top of the Spotify Charts forces a change to the charting algorithm A week ago: fan armies trying to artificially drive their favorite artist to the top of the Last.fm Charts forces a change to the charting algorithm

What I did on my summer vacation..."

Gotta be honest, I'm really ready to be done with this. Not fun.

Tried to make it more obvious that those were streaming links in the flyout. The more people scrobble to ListenBrainz and the more @para.chord users, the more external links that show up. Because your music community should be bigger than your music service silo.

Check out this AI dataset search engine from @theatlantic where you can search for artists and see which of their songs are in various training datasets. www.theatlantic.com/category/ai-...

Idea: simple anonymous QR driven communication channel so that people "leave a note" on your car that you actually get immediately. "Can you move your car?" "You left your lights on." "Sorry, I hit your car here's my info..." Intention is to be helpful but too easy to be abused by bad people?

Some firsts today: played one on my songs live, with a full band, at a real venue, with people in the audience (at a local Guitarmaggedon). It definitely pushed me out of my comfort zone, but I'm happy I did it. I may even do it again some time.

TIL some medications have listed side effect of "emotional incontinence". So, there is a new phrase I will be working into my everyday conversations from now on.

Yesterday I started hashing out on an idea for a new app (not music related), and I'm actually pretty worried that I may start working on it.

Bot crawlers (presumably for AI training) coming from Alibaba data centers causing my monthly Achordion hosting costs to triple is not something I was expecting. Hopefully I've new slowed them down, but this is one of the reasons why we can't have nice things.

I've been busy with a bunch of other stuff lately, but this one is finally starting to come together. I feel like I'm in a bit of a Big '80s guitar thing right now, but maybe you all hear something different? 🔊

Huge shout-out to the people that take a second to just send a "thanks for your work" or "I'm a fan". Those carry a massively outsized impact - and just makes the world feel a little nicer at the same time. ❤️

I've spent a lot of time in the car recently — so even though no one else asked for it this is what you get. (Yes, I emdash on purpose to try and convince people I'm not real.)

LinkedIn: "5 people who work at Apple have viewed your profile recently" Thanks, but what are they *saying* about me?

Interesting low-key announcement that Last.fm is back to being independently run. Who has more details? support.last.fm/t/last-fm-is...

It will also include links to playlist mirrors on the streaming services when we have them from sync. If you want to time-travel back to my freshman year of college - this is what it would sound like if you walked down the hall of the basement of Newman Hall at Virginia Tech a thousand years ago.

My polyglotal Classics/Literary Studies double major son's professors when meeting me this weekend and realizing I can barely string together a complete thought.

I was skeptical, but now I'm in deep.

Wednesday: drive due north 3 hours, load Kid B and her stuff into car, drive home and unload piles into corner Friday: drive due north 6 hours load Kid A and his stuff into car, come home a couple days later and unload piles into different corners Rest of summer: try not to live like hoarders

Hot take: this will turn into nothing. Most people don't want to do this and even fewer want to listen to it.

Nothing quite like getting a 4GB OS update to get 8 new emoji.

In a previous life I worked at Analog Devices and - fun fact - people used to repeatedly come by the corporate office park and steal the "O" and "G" from the sign.

Been working on making Achordion feel a bit more socially alive... parachord.com/blog/2026/05...

Any time there is an Ebola outbreak I tell anyone who will listen about how there was one in my hometown of Reston, VA when I was a teenager (without anyone telling anyone afaik) and kids would break into the "abandoned monkey lab" for years afterwards because it was creepy. 😬

Song of the Day: achordion.xyz/recording/ae...

I've been making seasonal (roughly) playlists - mostly for myself - for the past 15 years or so. I even recreated some of my mixtapes from my college years. I just uploaded some of my favorites to my Achordion profile.

So if you have a @listenbrainz.org account and a @bsky.app account and link them on Achordion - you will get a notification when your Bluesky community does the same so you can connect with their music tastes. (At least in theory, I haven't been able to test it yet. Help?) achordion.xyz

Worked on a new feature today and educated myself that I've been scrobbling listening data for 20 years now. Happy anniversary to me.

As a longtime last.fm subscriber, I agree achordion.xyz/user/cxy > www.last.fm/user/cxyl

Also just pushed a pretty big Android beta update - including full Achordion support, basic Android Auto functions and the refactor that will enable much easier iOS builds. github.com/Parachord/pa...

Achordion now lets you link your @bsky.app handle to your @listenbrainz.org profile. Avatar, display name, and bio show up inline so people can find you across services. Completely optional, single field, deletable, no auth, no permissions — just a two-way bio handshake.

Exactly one week later and I have to say I think it's pretty eff'ing good - especially when combined with @parachord.bsky.social - a far better experience than Last.fm. If I do say so my damn self. achordion.xyz/user/jhersko...

One of my favorite things is listening along to what other people are listening to. Many of whom don't know and don't even know who they are beyond an anonymous user name. That said, I do want to add some cool feedback loops.

Achordion album pages now display critical response summaries - with links to editorial album reviews as well as user reviews (via new CritiqueBrainz integration). Power to the people.🫧📌

BRB, gotta help my kid with her homework.

Remember the good old days when people used to connect with each on LastFM and share their music tastes and recommendations? Let's bring that back - but in a more open, non-corporate, way. Here's me: achordion.xyz/user/jhersko...

You know how when couples get engaged they often get a puppy before they start a family to practice on? Well my neighborhood is full of those people 15 years later - and I gotta to say that a lot of the dogs aren't looking so good lately.

What's it called when you get obsessively focused on a thing - then in a brief moment of rest you get distracted and obsessively focused on a new thing, and then once you're done you move back to the first thing? Because, I think I've got that. Anyway, maybe check out my new, new thing?

How it started (yesterday). How it's going (this morning). cc @listenbrainz.org @musicbrainz.org