Tricky little bastards. I presently have an inner ear infection,
most likely CAUSED BY A VIRUS, that’s put me down for two days. I don’t
actually feel that bad in the “sore throat, cough, fever” sense…but
my inner ear is so wonked that I actually threw up on Saturday from
the sensation of walking around my house and turning my head quickly!
Ick! (See, the old “tell you what my cat ate this morning” bloggers
got NOTHIN’ on me, baby!) Can’t drive, can’t do much of anything.

I’ve learned how to sit and read in bed (and finally even at the desk
today) with my head remaining VERY still. It helps. (Plus, I’ve been
on Dramamine 24×7 since Saturday evening). Nothing to take for this,
since IT’S A VIRUS. The general timeframe is two to three days, so
hopefully I’ll be back out and about tomorrow. In the meantime, where
are the nanobots? I need anti-viral nanites, and I need ’em right now!

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.

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.

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.

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.

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!

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…

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.

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

Cool! I’m a fan of policy wonkage, and C-SPAN is a good place to find
it. In addition to live video, archived programs (for example, if you
want to see White House press briefings), and such, they’ve also
recently added podcasts!

Hey, I know it’s pure nerdly joy, but as Bruce Sterling says, Follow
your geekdom. I aim to. [Note: That’s a good overview link to Bruce
Sterling’s writings, but the hyperlink from that site to EFF for the
full text of that particular speech is stale. The correct EFF link is The
Wonderful Power of Storytelling].