On a Hot Tin Roof

If you'll allow me another slightly snobby post...

Saw a man enjoying a book called "'Easy' Crossword Puzzles." I mean really just loving it. And he was a normal looking guy, maybe even wearing semi-professional clothes.

I checked out one of the clues over his shoulder. 5 Down - "__ on a Hot Tin Roof."

C'mon. It doesn't have to be a collection of Mensa brain teasers but stretch your mind a little dude.

Tamiflu for the holidays

One of my more interesting holiday gifts this year was a supply of Tamiflu. This flu medicine has proven to be somewhat effective against avian bird flu, so i guess it's good to have around just in case.

Hey, i also was given a gift of cipro during the anthrax scare a few years back.

Give me a shotgun and some canned goods, I'm ready for the next pandemic!

That's one popular avatar

Over breakfast, Robin Harper mentioned that if you Google search her name, you get mostly listings associated with a Scottish Parliament member. But if you Google "Robin Linden," the name of her Second Life persona, there's a ton of search results.

Robin is quite the accomplished professional, having held a number of executive jobs at companies such as Electronic Arts. So it's especially amusing to me that, by web measure, her avatar is more famous than she is.

How many people in the world are more prolific via their screen name than their real name? Hundred? Thousands? Is there a word for this?

Fool the cabbie

With a hat-tip to Jon's "My Fantastic Ideas," here's something i think we can use. A fake spouse/family member you can hire to wave goodbye as the cab comes to take you to the airport. For those of us who are convinced that the cabbie is coming back to rob our house since they know we're gone.

Fred Norris Flickr Stream

Fred Norris, of the Howard Stern Show, took some photos of their last show this past Friday.

Satellite Radio: A Possible Solution

So after grousing about the limits of the Sirius S50 device someone turned me on to timetrax, a hw/sw solution that enables recording of Sirius or XM satellite radio. It looks like a reasonable product w/ relatively stable software.

One fear is that the satellite companies, on their own accord or under pressure from RIAA, block this type of product. Another drawback is that the satellite receiver isn't a device that can really be used anywhere but alongside your PC - i.e. no way to take it in the car, to the gym, etc. So i'd really just be recording and dumping to my ipod.

But that might be a fine solution and so I'll spend some time this weekend checking out what the forums have to say about timetrax.

Something in the Air

Saw a WFI truck in Mountain View today putting up wifi boxes.... awesome

Courtroom Shoutout #1

"I'm glad to get the situation over with so I can get right back out here and make good music," said Young Buck, who hugged his attorneys as he left the courtroom. "Look out for my new album, it's gonna be in stores summertime of '06, Bad Influence, and you can hear all about the situation. G-Unit!"

The URL pool of hopes and dreams

These days if you register a domain with a registrar but don't develop a webpage on the site it becomes what is known as a "parked page." Visitors to these sites don't get a 404 error or that old "under construction" sign but instead ads related to the URL and provided by Google, Yahoo and others.

For me, these pages represent the beautiful, entrepreneurial, random nature of life, because you just know that many were registered with the hopes of building a website or business but the owner never got around to it. Maybe they realized that OneHourSofas.com was just a bad business plan or they broke up with their girlfriend before Jennyisawesome.com could be finished.

And let's face it, i'm no different - I hold (or have held) a bunch of random domain names after fleeting moments of inspiration. This explains my recent pursuit and registration of Staycation.com after many months of stalking. For the uneducated, staycation is a phrase of limited popularity used to describe the act of taking time off but hanging around your home/home city in order to take care of stuff that you never do while working.

What do i want to do with Staycation.com? I have no idea - likely nothing. But just as the cost of a lottery ticket gives you license to dream about the jackpot, owning a domain name is a relatively cheap option value on the idea of building something to share with the world. And at <$10/yr, who can argue with that?

Family Guy + MySpace

Very interesting - Fox is going to produce web-only Family Guy episodes to air on MySpace (which they own). According to a Fox VP, there will definitely be an advertising component and perhaps even a direct payment option. Premium and semi-premium content owners are going to be experimenting with a bunch of different video monetization options in the coming months.

For my new friends at Williams Sonoma, Pottery Barn, etc

Hello to my new friends from Williams Sonoma and associated brands.

Just in case you actually did follow-through on your promise to Google search my name and click on my ad :-)

I want to give my money to Sirius

I want to give my money to Sirius but they won't let me.

Having grown up on the East Coast I've been a happy Howard Stern listener for almost 20 years. No, i don't really like the strippers and poop jokes, but the celebrity interviews, refreshing honesty and opinions on daily events are some of the best radio ever recorded. Howard is moving over to Sirius and I'd like to follow. But here's what I want:

1) A portable Sirius radio
2) The ability to record programming (or in a perfect world, just download or stream via PC)

The newly released Sirius S50 was supposed to be my salvation, until a set of ridiculous restrictions neutered the device with arbitrary limits on recording. No recording more than two hours long, no more than 20 recordings, etc.

I will gladly pay 2x the monthly subscription cost. I'll watermark my recordings and post a $1000 deposit to be forfeited if my recordings ever turn up on the web. I'll tether them to my device with whatever DRM solution they want.

But no. Again, systems which assume everyone is guilty of bad behavior often incent what they hoped to prevent. So instead I'll be combing fansites for MP3 downloads come January.

Thanks, but i read the movie

Caroline and I are planning to see The Ice Harvest later tonight, a book i first encountered several years ago. I have a low tolerance for bad fiction so I'm gunshy and don't read lots of novels without trusted recommendations.

The Ice Harvest was a relatively short trade paperback - noir and not a best seller, but good. Now inevitably the book will be rereleased in mass market paperback with Billy Bob and Cusack on the cover and some "as seen in theaters so buy me" headline blaring out from the top of the edition. [Note: yup, here it is]

Is it petty for me to feel somewhat superior for having the original copy? Maybe that would be a good snobby rule: If you have a book in your bookcase with a scene from a movie or the photo of an actor on the cover you are NOT a reader.