the pod bay door

:: I finished reading Bill Bryson’s book, A Short History of Nearly Everything, earlier this week. It’s a great read, a long book of almost 550 pages, but never a dull moment. Bryson spent three years learning about the origins of geology, astronomy, physics, chemistry, paleontology, evolution, and many more subjects, condensing them to short chapters that feel much more detailed as you read each one. His writing is clear, concise, and he avoids the use of scientific and technical jargon that might alienate a reader not comfortable with science writing. Highly recommended.

I worked out this morning, and yesterday morning as well. Historically I have not been a morning workout person. I would find myself becoming light-headed as I progressed through the exercise routine. This time, before each workout, I ate a banana to get a few extra carbs in my system before doing 30 minutes on the cross-trainer and then a brisk, 15-minute walk on the treadmill. I experienced no light-headedness, and felt good afterwards. My lower back continues to give me some problems, however. I followed the routines with a series of stretches for my lower back.

:: Entries are few and far between of late. On the other hand, Tony is on a blog roll, so to speak, creating interesting, diverse, lengthy, and intelligent posts on various topics. It is a long weekend in Alberta, and in other parts of Canada, I believe. On Saturday morning, I rehearsed with Amelia for a concert we are performing on Wednesday, Feb 23. Last Thursday evening, I jammed with Hardy Drew and the Nancy Boys’ drummer David Leigh, just the two of us. We ran through the twelve songs I’ve learned since joining the band in November, now down to two people. I’ve decided to continue playing with David as he recruits another bass player. The truth is, the practices and rehearsals in December and January were becoming more and more enjoyable, and I was having fun creating loud, angry, noisy, interesting electric music again. I don’t have a lot of fun, or to be more exact, probably don’t allow myself to let more joy enter my life. I remain too guarded.

What has happened in these practices is that the rock musician deep inside me is stirring, wanting to remerge again. I’ve played guitar for 38 years, most of it acoustic, but I’ve always felt I was an electric guitarist at heart. I hope David can find a bass player soon; he insists he has a number of candidates interested in joining up. I am impatient for progress on this front. I want to play live again and have fun.
Read more »

:: Charlie Rose discusses blogging on his show tonight with four well-known bloggers: Andrew Sullivan, Ana Marie Cox, Glenn Reynolds, and Joe Trippi. This group represents political bloggers, and Trippi hasn’t updated his site since February 6th. Should be worth dialing up, nonetheless.

Update: I watched the first fifteen minutes of the segment (will watch the rest tomorrow), and it was good. One point made: that blogs allow the submission of comments by readers, immediately after reading the blogger’s post(s), thus connecting reader and writer in real time, as opposed to, say, a magazine or newspaper column, which can take days or weeks, or months in some cases. Readers can provide feedback and opinion, point out errors, make suggestions, etc. What’s interesting is that of the four bloggers on the show, only Joe Trippi’s blog allows for immediate submission of comments. Sullivan’s site allows for submission of e-mail for publication, which are then published anonymously, if at all. The most recent e-mail published is dated 31 January 2005. Reynold’s and Cox’s blogs do not allow for immediate comments either, but accept e-mail feedback. And who’s linking to whom: Cox: links to Sullivan and Reynolds. Sullivan: links to Reynolds. Reynolds: links to Sullivan, Cox. Trippi: links to Cox.

:: I have been extremely busy at work the past while, preparing a couple of major presentations, one on Friday, one next Tuesday. I will resurface soon. Also, regarding the rock band, I’ve decided to stick with it and see what happens. More on that later.

:: A few weeks ago at practice, a fellow band member mentioned the revived, or as it is being called, reimaged Battlestar Galactica series, speaking favourably of the new version. (Canadian site here.) I was vaguely aware that a mini-series version had aired in 2003, but paid no attention to it at the time. When the original series first aired in the late 70s, I detested it, with the exception of having a major crush on Maren Jensen at the time, which caused me to watch more episodes than I care to admit. The show was pure camp, featuring characters with horrid names like Starbuck, Apollo, Athena, Adama, Boomer, and Cassiopeia, combined with bad acting and writing.
Read more »

:: I haven’t been blogging a lot lately here, more so on STLQ. (I’ve been asked to speak on a blogging panel at the Canadian Library Association Conference in Calgary in June, 2005.) Lack of inspiration and other things, heavy workload, etc. I’m also trying to catch up on e-mails dating back to last fall, and found a few items that may be of interest, some or all of which may be old news to you already.

• wwiTV: World Wide Internet TV, “an index to streaming media available on the web.”
• MSN Spaces: MSN has its own blog service, to compete with Blogger.
• Seeshare.com – the Edmonton Moblog Community. “It’s a weblog of photos taken by Edmontonians with their camera-phone & digital cameras sent via MMS or email to this website.” MMS means multimedia messaging service, and not owning a cell phone, I’m not surprised that I don’t know what MMS is.
• The Pew Internet & American Life Project has released a number of interest reports of late, including The State of Blogging, The Future of the Internet, A decade of adoption: How the internet has woven itself into American life, and Artists, Musicians and the Internet.
• blinkx.tv: “blinkx.tv allows you to search the web for video and audio clips. Unlike other search providers, blinkx.tv not only lets you search using standard keyword and Boolean queries but you can also use conceptual search. This type of search is provided by blinkx only, and allows you to enter normal text for which blinkx.tv will return results whose content is conceptually similar to your search text.”

More to come.

:: I have been waiting for almost two years for someone, anyone out there, to try the Skype program with me. This afternoon, my dear father downloaded and installed the program on his machine in Winnipeg, and we spoke to each other through the VoIP program, using headsets. VoIP=Voice Over Internet Protocol, used in IP Telephony. I was amazed at how clear the sound was, much better than my telephone. What are the rest of you waiting for?? All computer-to-computer calls are free to anywhere in the world! Put your headset on, start a call, and the damn thing even rings like a telephone!

I purchased €10.00 worth of time to use SkypeOut, which lets you call landlines or cell phones. Using Skype, I can call a landline or cell phone in the States for $0.032 per minute.

Thanks, Dad. Anyone else care to try?