It’s been at the back of my mind for quite a while, and yesterday I decided to do something about it. If you’re interested in reading reviews of books that I read, head on over to Outside Normality.

I spotted a post over on the Lifestream Blog which mentioned Simple Pie a while ago. Some people have been doing interesting things using Simple Pie as the backend to a personal lifestream, so I thought I’d do the same. However, my php skills are pretty much non-existent, so I struggled to really do anything with it. That was, until Steffen came to the rescue!

The above is a screenshot of my brand new lifestream using Steffen’s LifePie app. You can see my lifestream here. It’s still very much a work in progress, and it breaks on smaller screens at the moment, but it’s a workable model and I’m very impressed with it, it’s exactly what I’ve been looking for! Steffen is planning to release LifePie, so if you’re interested take a look at the post linked to above.

I will be adding to it over time, but you can already keep an eye on most things I do online via my lifestream. There is also a feed for the whole thing, I’ve used Afeeda to put that together – a great free service that allows you to mix up your own feeds from different sources.

What have I been busy with? A number of things really. My personal life has had a few ups and downs over the past couple of months, which has left me a little stressed out. But it’s not all bad – on the 8 July I’ll finally be realising an ambition that I’ve had for a couple of years now, I’m doing a one day course (along with lots of ‘homework’) to get my first degree Reiki certificate. I realise a lot of you don’t even know what that is (go here for more info if you want to find out), and those who do often give me a sidelong glance as if to say I’m nuts – but hey, I’ve been used to that all my life and I no longer care! Suffice to say it’s made a huge difference to my life, and I’m really excited to be finally completing the first stage.

I’ve also been attempting to learn Ruby on Rails, though I’ve gotten sidetracked a little with that. It’s been great fun so far, and even though I’m nowhere near having a clue what I’m doing yet I’m determined to persevere. I doubt I’ll get to a professional level with it but I love learning new stuff, especially new geek stuff. Though if by some miracle I did become a RoR expert I wouldn’t object to being paid to do it of course.

I haven’t been completely inactive around the web though, I’ve just been using different mediums. My latest obsession is Facebook, and since they brought out their applications platform I can say for definite I’m not alone. If you’re also on there feel free to add me as a friend. Just do a search for Jackie Plage, I’m pretty sure I’m the only person with that name on Facebook. Twitter posts from me also appear semi-frequently, though in the last few days I’ve been exploring – and loving – Jaiku. There’s probably a post about the differences stored up in the depths of my mind somewhere which I may do in the next few days. Despite outward appearances, they’re actually very different.

I’ve been neglecting my blog I know, but I’m not going to promise it’ll get any better in the near future. I’m having far too much fun doing other things right now. :)

Widgets

You can now use last.fm widgets on your blog / website. The widget choices we have are recently played / top artists etc., a quilt made up of the covers from your most listened to albums, a playlist player and a radio player. You also get four colour choices – last.fm red (which looks pink to me), black, blue or light grey. You can see the ‘recent tracks’ and playlist widgets in action on my sidebar. I was thinking of adding the album quilt too, but decided that might be slight overkill.

Playlists

Playlists themselves have been around for a while, but whereas previously they only played snippets of a song, they now play the full length tracks (providing they’re available in the last.fm catalogue). Using the aforementioned widget, that means you can easily share your taste in music with your site visitors. The only ‘catch’ is that your list will play in shuffle mode – this is presumably to get around licensing restrictions.

Charts display

It’s now possible to select different periods of time for the charts that show on your profile page. You can choose between your overall charts (as it’s always been) or 3, 6, or 12 month rolling charts. We’re also told that more customisation is on the way.

You can view the official announcement here.