Music

For the most part, background noise from the television or talk radio are bad for my concentration when I'm at the keyboard working on code, writing documentation, tracking down bugs or designing new features. Even radio stations with easy listening or pop music can distract me to the point of uselessness. That's why I was happy to stumble across www.lounge-radio.com a year or so ago.

As their slogan states, this Internet radio station offers a "light summer-plate consisting of downtempo and fresh beats of nujazz - dipped into the warmth of brazil electro and finely served with a breath of ambient." Nice mix.

The great thing about their musical selections is that I can listen to it and still get my work done. In fact, I think it helps me get in a productive groove. It doesn't matter that songs are often in another language (French, German and more), in fact I think that helps in my case.

If you're interested, check out them out at:

http://www.lounge-radio.com/

I use the great open source (free) music player Songbird to listen. To do this, grab, install and run Songbird, then enter the URL above in the address bar of Songbird, click the "tune in" link (at the top left), click the "128kbit" link under the "Winamp" section and then sit back. If the audio gets choppy, you can try one of the other streams that shows in the Songbird lower panel (the first one that got automatically selected is most likely from Germany).

Tired of iTunes and other Apples software taking over your Windows system? Looking for some music software that's a little less proprietary and a little more open?

Give Songbird a try. It's an open source, cross-platform and customizable music player.

Go grab it!

I've been using the pre-release versions for what must be over a year now. I like it!