Admittedly, I haven’t come up with any new stuff in the better part of half a year, mostly because I’m having trouble coming up with Really Neat Ideas and I’d just as soon not grind out yet another sequel to one of the series already in place.

At the very least, I’d like to get 100 compilations done at some point. (I’m currently at 90.) I’ve learned over the years, though, that it’s impossible to force inspiration.

A number of folks have come through wondering how they could get their hands on some of this groovy Wendex stuff. The answer: they can’t, really. I’m not going to put myself in the position of having two thousand downloadable songs in the face of ongoing threats from, um, intellectual-property types.

Remember: this is here to show you what you can do by showing you what I, among the rankest of amateurs, have done. But it’s like a cookbook: you have to bring your own flour and eggs and such.

This time it’s 2.6.1. (I have learned not to mess with the .0 versions.)

Addendum: And by “2.6.1″ we mean “2.6.2.”

We’ve upgraded to WordPress 2.5. If you see anything that makes less sense than usual, please advise.

Addendum: And by “2.5″ we mean “2.5.1.”

Yes, really:

Mixaloo is a company which allows you to create mix tapes or playlists from music tracks on the web. You can share these mix tapes in your blogs or social networking profiles, when someone buys these tracks you will get paid from the sale. The current share is 50/50 between you and mixaloo. Creating playlists is free and you can create any number of playlists, but if your visitors or friends wants to hear them they have to buy these tracks.

You can search for artists, albums or tracks and select the tracks you want to add to the mix. Mixaloo has around 3 million songs in their catalog so you have better chance of finding your favorite music tracks.

It took about an hour to assemble 15 tracks from the Mixaloo library, and about thirty seconds to hack together a piece of artwork. I really don’t expect anyone to shell out $14.85 (which is, by coincidence, 99 cents per track) for this mishmash, but what the heck. The results are on the sidebar. You’ll need Windows Media Player 9 or higher.

WordPress 2.2.2 is now in place. (When we get to 6.6.6, maybe I’ll get worried.)

WordPress 2.2.1 is now installed. Please advise if you notice anything weirder than usual.

This past week has seen an absolutely astonishing uptick in bogus TrackBacks. Spam Karma 2 is duly shuffling them off to Buffalo, as it should, but I do wish these people would go back to fellating farm animals and leave us bloggish types alone.

As of this moment, we are now running WordPress 2.1. If you see anything that looks any more out of line than usual, please advise.

I stumbled upon this piece, and decided it was far more thoughtful than anything I was likely to write this week, so I excerpt it here:

A mix tape is created to convey a number of sentiments such as an introduction to new music or a shared adoration for a particular genre. More often then not a mix is made to convey one thing and one thing only: Love. In all its splendid forms, a mix tape was most often utilized to clue someone in on raging crush or to further emphasize preexisting feelings. The reason that the tape is so heartfelt is because one must take a number of conflicting albums and mold a song from each into a cohesive entity. As the tape formation is under way, the creator is hearing how the music will mesh together to illustrate the concept that they want the recipient to garner from hearing the tape. A mix tape is an audio Valentine for any time of the year. One knows that there was a person not a computer pushing the stop and record button from the beginning to the end while the tape was being made. This fact is actually more important than one would think.

As technology has developed, cassette tapes have become obsolete and were replaced with mix CDs. Neither of the digital forms of music could truly replace the mix tape. Personalized covers can be made for both the tape or the CD but CD covers are usually produced with computer design kits. Some may choose to decorate their tapes with stickers or decals (I prefer heart and star stickers), this is not possible with a CD. A mix CD can be created within a matter of minutes while a mix tape is undeniably an hour project if not two or more. Compact discs will always last longer than tapes and will not wear out as fast but the more innovative technology becomes, the more depersonalized.

I admit to having put together a mix tape with romantic intentions, although it was more a theoretical exercise than anything else, since I am unlikely ever to find anyone for whom to make such a tape. (It’s also not available on CD.) And it takes me hours to do a decent CD, partially because I am seldom satisfied with my initial song selections, but also because I burn at the slowest speed I can manage, in the interest of higher fidelity and stability. (You may not care, but the stereo in my car is a trifle finicky, and this is where I listen to a lot of this stuff.)