iTunes via Ruby

So I had a bit of a failed attempt to kick start a blog around Ruby, but I’ve a couple of ideas with what to do with that domain name. We’ll see. I think I’ll just include bits and pieces here, since I doubt I’ll be all that prolific anyway.

So the other day I was looking at iTunes, and I’d started rating songs in a mostly arbitrary way, so I decided to try out controlling a Win32 app from Ruby. The purpose of the script was to calculate my favourite albums based on the individual song ratings, and would it match what I hold in my head as being my favourite albums. It turned out that the script would be the work of a moment.

Something I found out: internally, each star in the five star rating is worth 20 ‘points’, so you’re actually marking each song out of 100. I’m not sure why Apple chose to do it in this way, but it might be nice if they had half stars available. Or maybe not, I’d probably only abuse them.

Once I’ve imported and subsequently rated lots more choons, I’ll post the results of my fascinating psychological experiment. Feel free to do the same for your own playlist, if you’re bored and have nothing to do for about 30 seconds.