Feed the Pod!

So I've got a fairly long commute...about thirty minutes one way. Long for me, that is. I don't like much on the radio, so I've started just MP3'ing it, or listening to audiobooks.

Lately, I've been checking out a lot of podcasts, and one I've been thoroughly enjoying is Pseudopod - a horror fiction podcast.

It has some really good stories, and various people have stepped in to read the stories, from authors to other podcast hosts to the site's own Ben and Alistair, my favorite narrators.

The authors are supported by donations - the aforementioned "Feed the Pod."

What I really like is the variety of the stories - some mainstream horror from faithful genres (zombie, vampire (my favorite), Cthulhu, etc), but it also has plenty of surprises waiting for the gentle listener.

Spurling's Virus was my first, and I was hooked since then.

Pseudopod is the horror branch of a trifecta of podcasts, the others being Escape Pod (science fiction) and Podcastle (fantasy).

Check 'em out!

Technorati Tags: Pseudopod,horror,podcast,audiobook,Escape Pod,Podcastle,vampire,cthulhu

National Novel Writing Month

I may have mentioned it here before, but next month, November, is National Novel Writing Month.

 

There is a large website and community dedicated to working on what I've wanted to do for a while - write.

What it boils down to is taking thirty days to write 50,000 words. While this might seem like a Herculean task, it's really more of a sprint than a marathon.

The goal isn't to have a finished, highly polished manuscript that will pop up on Oprah's radar on December 1. It's more about accomplishing a task that many, many people think and talk about, but don't do it. It's quantity over quality, but that's not necessarily a bad thing.

What if you only make it halfway - 25,000 words of ridiculous characters, contrived settings, and a plot more reminiscent of an after-school special than the next great American novel?

Guess what? You just wrote 25,000 words you used to only talk about.

I put a NaNoWriMo widget (which will track my word count) above my profile, and I've joined the Austin region group, so expect more pictures and thrilling blog entries about my progress. I talked the talk last year, so I'm hoping to do a lot of walking this year. Drop me a line if you sign up!

Technorati Tags: NaNoWriMo,National Novel Writing Month,books

World War Z

I recently finished an audiobook as well - World War Z by Max Brooks.



It's by the same author that wrote the Zombie Survival Guide, which I've seen and flipped through, but never read.

World War Z was my first audiobook, and I listened to it on my ~20 minute commute. It was very well...written? Read? Both. I'm not sure how the dead tree version is, but this was made up of interviews from survivors of various nationalities and professions. I immediately recognized Henry Rollins and James Woods, but there are a few more that I new but couldn't place a face with the voice. I found the multiple actors a definite plus to the experience, but I wonder if that is due to the interview style of the book. I don't have any prior audiobook knowledge to compare.

If I didn't have 40 minutes per day alone, I probably wouldn't have even tried it.

I got it from emusic.com, for which I had a coupon for some free music and an audiobook.

Cryptonomicon

A few weeks ago I finished Cryptonomicon (more info here), by Neal Stephenson.



I really enjoyed it. Without giving too much away, it deals with cryptography, World War 2, Alan Turing, math, society, global finance, intrigue...I could go on, but I won't. If you have any interest in any of these topics, or none of these but you like a really good book, pick it up!

I've also read Stephenson's Snow Crash in college, and it was excellent as well.

3/4 update - we were in Goodwill last night and I picked up Snow Crash for $2.99!

Check and mate! Finally something worth blogging about!

My oldest son was accepted into his school's chess club yesterday!



So what's the big deal? Normally they don't allow first graders into the chess club. That's one smart cookie, and I'm one proud daddy!

I found this book of chess for kids at Half-Priced Books for some ridiculously low price, and it is a good one for a chess beginner or semi-beginner. It describes each of the pieces, has some basic strategy and one or two opening gambits.

Anything else about chess? Sure! One of the tattoos I've been preapproved for is a Knight's Tour, which is having a knight move according to the rules of chess and landing on every square exactly once.



Sort of like this, but I would have to use my rippling muscles to make it move.

I would love to find some sort of chess applet that I can put in the sidebar of my blog for ongoing games, but so far I've found some graphics that I can manually update only. Oh, the humanity! If anyone has found something else let me know!

Presenting Data and Information course by Edward Tufte

Monday I went to a seminar on how to effectively present data by one of the masters of visual information, Edward Tufte, with more info here.

It was in the Doubletree Hotel, and I parked in the parking garage and decided to walk down the stairs instead of taking the elevator. This corridor is straight out of the movies.



I figured if something was going to go down, this was the place. Luckily (for them), nothing happened.

The seminar was in a conference room, and they had some surprisingly good coffee.





Here is another "review" of his seminars by someone else that went - some great details that I left out.

ET, as he is known online and to the community, is a great presenter, and I liked his style. Most of it was him talking with a little bit of some multimedia stuff. He's a Mac guy, but he doesn't come off as pretentious.

Patrons of the seminar received four of his books, which I heartily recommend. They are fantastic references as well as just plain great reading.



I also picked up a copy of his mother's book, Artful Sentences.

So why did I take this course? I have to present a lot of data, the lion's share of it is performance data, and my customers are engineering, marketing and sales. Whatever I can use to make what I show more effective (and have them come back to me less) is a win!

Harry Potter and the License to Print Money

I picked up the latest Harry Potter book Sunday. I was worried that everyplace would be sold out, but our local grocery store had stacks for the cover price of $35.99. Even for a hardback, that's a lotta lettuce. Sunday's newspaper had a Target ad that had the same hardback for $17.99. How could I afford not to get it? I've been careful to avoid spoilers, but I had my own theories on certain plot points.

I read about 120 (out of ~780) pages Sunday night and went to a doctor's appointment Monday morning. The receptionist and one of the nurses were all atwitter about my book (which I took with me, naturally), checking my progress and wishing they could have stayed home to read all day. I agreed, and regaled them with my tale of saving half the cover price. The nurse told me that The Beast had a similar deal for a similar price.

Later that day I was picking up some lunch at another grocery store...again with the book in tow as I was using every spare moment to read it. A lady behind me asked if I had skipped ahead to the end to read it. I had to resist rolling my eyes - who would do something that ridiculous? I told her no, and that I was trying to avoid hearing any details before I finished the book. Internally I was preparing my "na na na na IDON'THEARYOU" defense in case she dropped a spoiler-bomb, but she just looked off in the distance wistfully and said that she kept hoping someone on the news would reveal the end. I was like, "Okay...." and checked out.

I finished it Wednesday, and I liked it. I'll avoid any kind of review and won't reveal anything.

Too...Many...Books!

Wow. Yesterday I added a bunch of books that I wanted to a List (Blogger Page Element) and I guess I didn't realize how many books I wanted. Now I have a huge list on the right that pushes my other Lists down into nigh obscurity.

I'll switch those over to a Froogle Wishlist, which Blogger can accomodate easily, but I believe it is only in my Profile. I started a Wishlist but never did much with it. I wanted to add these books to my blog so I could access the list from anywhere (current softcopy of the list is on my work PC).

More book recommendations

So I'm a pretty voracious reader. I. Love. To. Read. I'll read just about anything, though lately I've had to curtail most of my reading to either work-related (specs, product definitions) or school-related (Assembly language textbook). I do manage to squeeze in a few books every now and then, and here are two good ones that you should check out.

The Club Dumas - I bought this book probably two or three years after I saw The Ninth Gate, and I had no idea it was the basis of the movie. I kept finding similarities and it was driving me crazy. I started and finished it on an airplane, and I had to wait until I got home to look up the connection. Whether you liked the movie or not, the book is worth picking up. File this one under "Books about books, secret societies, dabbling in the unknown, and any more would be spoilers."

Battle Royale - Another instance of seeing the (great) movie first, but I had no idea it was originally a book. One can compare it to Lord of the Flies, but not exactly. It deals with kids, who happen to be on an island, but they are part of a government program where they are forced to eliminate each other with various items that may or may not be weapons, until the last one alive is "the winner." This edition is translated from the Japanese, and is a very good, albeit sometimes depressing, read.

The Professor and the Madman

I recently finished a really good book - The Professor and the Madman. It's about the herculean task of creating the Oxford English Dictionary in the late 19th century and details the main editor and contributor. One might think that reading a book about a dictionary is barely above reading the dictionary (which I like), but I thoroughly enjoyed this book.