Late last year, we wrote a three part series on our attempts to de-tether music synchronization between computer and phone.

The experiments were unsuccessful – all we found is that 3G data speeds are insufficient for the constant playlist churn that we like to experience on our phone. But it wasn’t entirely a loss.

In the process, iTunes – arguably the worst software for a Windows machine on the planet – was ditched from my computer in favour of the incredible (and highly recommended) Media Monkey. And last.fm entered our life.

But you’ve been on last.fm since 2009.

This is true. In 2009, I wondered what this whole “internet radio” malarky was about. I got myself a last.fm account, and wondered how many plays it would take (with me loving or banning as many tracks as possible) to go from a blank slate to an accurate representation of my musical tastes.

I did no scrobbling. I answered no – or, at least, minimal – questions about my musical likes and dislikes.

That experiment, by the way, was another failure. I did not possess the patience.

But my Android Music Adventure experiments got me scrobbling. And I loved it — I cannot resist a good set of data about myself, with which to analyze what I actually like and dislike, rather than what I think I like and dislike.

I’m wise enough to know that I probably don’t actually understand what I enjoy.

Having stats on every song I’ve listened to (pretty much) over the last half year, we would now like to report on the following surprises:

#50: Segovia

There’s a four-way tie for the 50th most played artist since my last.fm revolution. And alongside Creedence Clearwater Revival and Bjork, is Andres Segovia.

I’ve always been a sucker for great guitarists, and Segovia is certainly that. But it is, nevertheless, surprising to see classical guitar land itself in the top 50.

#31: Frank Zappa

While Segovia gets credit for landing so high, Zappa is occupying a surprisingly low spot.

Your blogger listens to a lot of Zappa, or so he thought. And Zappa’s seemingly endless catalogue of music is the sort of thing that prompts increased listening, as there is more to listen to without listening to the same things over and over again.

And yet, he’s down in 31.

First thoughts were that “Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention” would push him up … but not really. Barely at all. And he’s hardly the only artist to appear as two (or more) in the chart.

#17: Lily Allen

I know I like Lily Allen. I know it’s a bit weird – she doesn’t seem, on the surface, to fit with other music I enjoy. But enjoy her music I do.

It’s just a little bit of a surprise to see how much. Lily Allen sits between Radiohead and David Bowie on my “top artists” chart.

#7: Raffi

Not the only sign of fatherhood in the list, but the one closest the top.

Raffi music was bought (amongst other things) so that we had some music we could play for Maggie (this was before we learned that she loved Kanye West). And I have played this music so often that it manages to rank in my top ten.

All the music I play for myself – to and from (and at) work. While sitting and typing blog posts. On airplanes. Except for a small group of six artists, I’ve heard more Raffi in the last six months.

That, for the record, is an awful lot of Raffi. The more we get together …

#1: Pink Floyd

Fitting and ridiculous, Pink Floyd sits at #1 on the list of most listened to music.

If this were high school, I would be saying: No shit, sherlock.
If this were university, I would be saying: Not much of a surprise there.

I was way into Pink Floyd. Given that I was three years old when The Wall was released, I spent a large portion of my youth far more into Pink Floyd than I had any right to be.

I owned every album. I owned every video. I bought books, t-shirts, bootleg albums, anything I could get my hands on. I knew – still know, pretty much – every lyric and every note of music of every song.

My wife doesn’t like Pink Floyd. It’s easy to see why people don’t like it. Above, I’ve linked to an album written and recorded by a white, male, mutli-millionaire who has the good fortune to be able to write and play music for a living. When he feels like it. Because he’s so rich he only needs to work when he feels like it.

And that album? Ninety minutes of self-indulgent whining about how hard it is to play music for millions of dollars, and how he misses his daddy. It’s easy to see why the teenagers who listen to Kanye West are more likely to get laid.

I like it all the same. But now that I’m a wise old man, it seems like I don’t really listen to it that much anymore.

Seems like that means listening to it more than anything else, all the same.

We present to you: the incredible shrinking moon!

(via Things Organized Neatly.)

Now that jailbreaking is legal, Apple is working on ways to disable your jail-broken phone. The Big Bad Blog is starting to think that Apple does not think very highly of its customers — they seem to be out to break our shit.

Stats-heads: Here is an interactive graph about Lonodn’s cycle-hire scheme, looking at the time, weather, and number of bicycles in use.

Last week, I decided to finally upgrade my blog to the latest version of WordPress. I always try to avoid jumping in too soon on these things. That way, I avoid many of the little bugs and compatibility issues that tend to plague initial releases.

There is value to be gained by being an early adopter, sure. But there is also overhead, and free time is scarce enough without adding anything to it.

The Big Bad Blog has been doing “well”, I suppose, this summer. July was our first month with over 10,000 pageviews which did not feature the help of the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man, and the average number of daily views in August has been nearly triple that same number in March.

Here at the Big Bad Blog, we take the philosophy that these things do not matter — we write for us, dear reader, not for you. However, those who know the individual behind the intrepid blogger are likely unsurprised that he obsessively checks out the site stats. And, it turns out, when one obsessively checks such stats, one wishes for the counts to increase.

Thursday evening, we switched over to the new WordPress. You will see that on the right side of the following graph, just before the dramatic fall:

So what happened? Did the blog go down due to a bad upgrade? Did it need to be re-indexed by Google, causing search results to dry out? Was the brilliant SEO ruined?

The answers: No, no, and ha!

When I switch over to Google, and take a look at their analytics, I see the following:

The same thing is measured, but now the results over the weekend stay at that same high level (and at about triple the level from March), having only a slight drop-off, rather than a dramatic one.

So no, the site did not suddenly break or become harder to find (or — heaven forbid! — become less popular). Something changed in the way WordPress’s native stats application counts visits.

The numbers provided by Google Analytics have, historically, been considerably lower than those provided by WordPress. Google does a much better job of breaking down the numbers, but I have been hesitant to switch over for one simple reason: for the first six months of the Big Bad Blog, we did not use Google Analytics.

Because the numbers offered by the two differed strongly, I felt I could not change. How could I figure out if a new blog post was as popular as the Marshmallow March? The only way is to compare numbers that have been gathered in the same fashion.

The popularity of a website, of a blog post, of a search term, is relative. If I count in one way, and you count in a different way, we cannot compare our numbers. That your number is bigger means little if you counted some things twice and I counted everything once.

Now WordPress has done themselves in. From August 13, 2010 onwards, their own statistics are being provided on a different basis. They are now much closer to those being provided by Google — which would lead us to believing that they are more accurate. Unfortunately, their newfound accuracy makes them less useful — they have changed their apples to oranges, and I now cannot use their stats to compare the old with the new.

Website statistics are only useful when used for comparison — beyond that they are merely navel gazing — and comparing two things requires consistency, not accuracy. I do not care if my results are all exaggerated by 30% (or underestimated by 30%), so long as they are consistently so. Then I know if more people are reading, or less, or the same.

As a result we are moving to Google for our measurements, as they seem to have been using the same measure since we first signed up to their site. And while that might reduce July to a 5,000 view month, at least I know that when August comes in at over 6,000 pageviews I’ve had a 20% improvement.

Whatever that means.

Over the course of this first week, I have found myself spending a bit too much time checking out the stays for this blog. How many visits? What do my visitors read? Where do they come from? Et cetera ad nauseum.

The answers are this: You (the reader) like trauma and pain. Ow, my eye has been by far my most popular post, and the further we get from trauma, the fewer visitors.

Of course, the update to my statistics plug-in that I installed this morning broke the blog, so I had to disable it. This weekend I’ll look for a replacement. Even if I someday find a more popular topic, I may never be sure if you like it as much – unless my web host has sufficiently detailed stats, any comparison will be disjointed.

Although I suppose I could always poke myself in the eye again. For science.