I recently picked up the guitar again after a few years of hardly playing and have been getting back into playing. I started playing when I was about 14 years old, being taught firstly by a neighbour, then having a few lessons at school, and then mostly learning by listening to music and playing along.

Luckily I still have 2 Epiphone guitars that I have kept in good condition over the years. Hopefully with a little more practice I’ll get back to previous form and possibly even improve.

This morning I integrated a cool little piece of functionality into the blog section of Hungry Browser. In a nutshell the functionality allows me to listen to my music on my MacBook Pro through iTunes and seemlessly publish what I am currently listening to on this website. Users can click on the image for each album and will be taken to Amazon where they can purchase the album/track.

The reason for integrating this was to effortlessly share the music I am listening to with others, without having to log in to a web-based service such as last.fm.

There are two parts to this functionality, both originially developed by Brand Fuller. The first part is the iTunes integration where you install a plugin to export the music you are listening to into an external XML file that can be uploaded to your website. The second part (which I have adapted) is a PHP script that looks into the XML file and then takes the data and outputs it as HTML.

In conclusion a nice little bit of functionality.

I’ve been a big fan of John Mayer for quite a few years now. He is exceptionally talented with his amazingly textured and diverse guitar playing, soulful voice and great song writing ability. It just happens that he has a new live album out: Where The Light Is, it is amazing, with all my fave songs on there with extended live versions. Go check it out!

It’s been a while since Pete Murray has released any new music, but after a few years of waiting (and contently listening to See the sun and Feeler) his latest album “Summer at Eureka” is here and it is well worth the wait.

I first stumbled across Australian Pete Murrary’s music when I was travelling round the world surfing, back in 2006. He has a great voice and writes really good, moving lyrics bIended with skillfully crafty guitar playing. I would thoroughly recommend checking it out.

I first came across Tru Thoughts when I first discovered Bonobo about 5 or 6 years ago and have been a fan of their artists (Alice Russell, Quantic etc) ever since. I was looking at their (nicely designed and developed) site this evening and came across a few new artists that you should check out: TM Juke, Belleruche and Saravah Soul. You can listen to snippets of each track, read up on the artists, check out gigs, and buy their music in the online shop!