I've made some progress with the automatic music collection aspect of my fancy backup system.

It hasn't quite reached the point where I publish the code and update the HOWTO, but it has reached the point where I now have access to most of my music as a shared iTunes library, which is pretty sweet.

With well over 10000 songs (a full month worth of non-stop playback, according to iTunes!), I at times find myself at a loss for what to listen to. Where to start?

So I play a game.

I type a random word into the iTunes search box and see which songs appear, and then listen to them in random order. Tonight's first word was "bottle", which had surprisingly few hits: only 3, two of which were actually the same song:

• The Police - Message in a Bottle
• Machine Head - Message in a Bottle
• Angie Stone - Bottles and Cans

I had forgotten about that Machine Head cover. It's pretty good. I'd never heard the Angie Stone song before, it comes from Annie's collection. So my game works.

I think I'll try the word "next", next.