Posts for November 2005

Amigofish lives!

Dave Slusher (of Evil Genius Chronicles fame) has finally taken the wraps of his newest project, Amigofish. It's a podcast directory and recommendation service; rate what you listen to, and it'll give you new stuff to try that you should like. I've been using it for awhile (alpha tester...w00t!) and I have to say it's been pretty useful...I've found multiple new feeds that I like. Give it a whirl!

And now I can put my "amigofish" tags back into my del.icio.us feed. (Dave asked that things be kept under the radar until he was ready to release.) Joy.

November 30, 2005 permalink | Comments (0)

NerdTV has a real live GIRL!!

NerdTV is a new multimedia interview series by Robert Cringely (of i, cringely "fame" -- he's a PBS technology columnist, and far from the worst one out there. Yes, I mean you, John Dvorak. *grin*)

i, cringely is standard web stuff; a weekly column/blogpost, in effect. NerdTV is a (per the website) "weekly online TV show ... essentially Charlie Rose for geeks - a one-hour interview show with a single guest from the world of technology". It's not bad; I've seen the standard folks like Tim O'Reilly and Bill Joy, but Cringely has also roped in some slightly less well-known (but interesting) folks, like Max Levchin (29-year old co-founder of PayPal), and Brewster Kahle (founder of the Internet Archive). Good stuff, overall, and they put it out as video, MP3, AAC, OGG...about any way you want it. They've got RSS feeds and Bittorrent seeds as well, so they're using all the buzzwords.

I...umm...didn't have high hopes for this week. The guest was Anina; a 23-year old European fashion model who "represents the new European tradition in mobile Internet development", and whose voice sounds like, well, a 23-year European fashion model. I'm thinking...WTF? But hey, I trust ol' Bob...so I drop the MP3 on my player for my run yesterday. And it wasn't bad!! At all! Here's Anina, talking about the classic hacker's "scratching the itch" (nothing pervy there...I really do mean the hacker sense of it!) when she wants to tweak apps that her phone uses. Downloading the developer's kit and hacking around until 3am before she goes out for a shoot. I laughed out loud! This interview rocks! Hackerdom is alive and well in places (like European nightclubs) far beyond the purview of MakeZine! Things are maybe looking a little better.

Great podcast. Recommended.

November 13, 2005 permalink | Comments (0)

Accelerando Glossary and Crib Notes

The Accelerando Technical Companion is an excellent idea -- it's a wiki-style guide to the terms, themes, and concepts of Charles Stross' awesome read. This sort of thing is pure genius.

November 10, 2005 permalink | Comments (0)

plotpatents.com

Plotpatents.com: You can now patent a storyline? -- I am not even going to discuss this, beyond saying that if it is granted without challenge and opens the floodgates for "patented stories", I will seriously consider whether staying an US citizen is worth it.

November 4, 2005 permalink | Comments (0)

What the hell am I thinking???

I need something else to procrastinate on like a need a hole in my head. But what do I do?

  1. I read a Second Life IM about Cory Doctorow showing up ingame tonight to talk up NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month).
  2. I think "oh yeah, I remember reading about that last year. Cool."
  3. I flip over to the website, to "check it out" (you know what's coming...)
  4. I SIGN THE FUCK UP! What did I just do? Yoikes!! I've now got 27 days and 38 minutes (they have a countdown timer on the site; excellent!) to write a 50,000 word novel. Crap.
  5. Eh, let's try to share the misery; I'll send my buddy Lee a challenge to do the same. *grin*

Here we go!

November 3, 2005 permalink | Comments (0)

I don't know whether to laugh or cry...

Check out Tamiflu.com's Desktop Flu Tracker. I have to admit, though...I stuck a local zipcode into the associated Zip Code Tracker just to see...

November 3, 2005 permalink | Comments (0)

I don't have the dead tree version yet, so no pic...

I just finished Charles Stross' Accelerando, a marvelous read that I snagged as a CC-licensed ebook from his website. I was already a fan of his from other works, but I had somehow missed this -- thank goodness Vernor Vinge mentioned (and recommended) it in his outstanding keynote address at Accelerating Change 2005.

If you like cyberpunk / singularity / futureshock-style science fiction, I cannot recommend Accelerando highly enough. It is amazing. I'll be buying at least two copies; one for me, one to give away this holiday season.

November 3, 2005 permalink | Comments (0)

Try a different point of view...

To view the Earth as currently seen from a satellite in Earth orbit, choose the satellite from the list -- Very nice!

November 3, 2005 permalink | Comments (0)

Earlier posts -- Later posts