Switching Pandora Accounts to Avoid Horrible Music Choices

Over time, it appears that Pandora was gradually playing songs less and less related to the station I had selected. My station on the family account appeared to be picking random songs for some unknown reason. It seemed almost as if the station was corrupted. Luckily, I had set up my own Pandora account a long time ago and had barely used it. So I closed proprietary Chrome and loaded up Chromium with Pepper Flash because I figured that changing as much as I could might help get me back to the station as I liked it.

I went to the Pandora website and logged into my old account. It took me two tries to figure out what my old password was, because it had been a while since I last used it. I selected "The Beatles" station and (drumroll) finally got Pandora to pick good songs! Maybe Pandora, in an effort to prevent users from becoming bored with the songs rotating through the station, has decided to add songs to the station's playlist as time goes on. In general, this could be a good idea if the songs are similar to the station's theme.  However, when they have gone as far away from the theme as they did in my case, it does not make the user want to continue listening.

Unfortunately my Pandora ad blocker stopped working, but I can tolerate the ads for now. Plus, I quickly realized that it is now easier to get to, since I didn't have to open both versions of Chrome.

Bonus Tech Stuff: Seamless VM Integration

In some cases, Windows-only programs like Adobe Photoshop can prevent users from switching to Linux. Some programs will not even run on WINE. For problems like this, you have to use Windows. But that doesn't mean you can't use Linux.

These programs can be run with seamlessly integrated virtual machines. This can be accomplished with minimal overhead using tools like Xen which allow for graphics virtualization. Versions of rdesktop newer than 2013 have support for launching individual applications. Using these tools, you can set up application launchers in the standard launch menu, making them all blend in with the rest of the Linux programs. Seamless desktop could essentially eliminate Windows-only programs as a blocking factor for the switch to Linux. This would allow the user to transition away from Windows rather than having an abrupt change. There are limitations though - it is questionable how well RDP will be able to carry an intensive 3D game. However, games can be streamed through a system built into Steam.

#slice2016