Check out Perdido Street Station. I’ve been reading mediocre heroic fiction for about the last year and a half, intersperesed with batches of superb manga. I had lost sight of how engrossing a truly excellent novel can be. The story follows the adventures of a cast of characters in a sort of steam punk alterna-history london with some aspects of tolkien-inspired fantasy mixed in. Yes, it is that bizarre 😉 Two thumbs up from me though, by all means check it out if you’re looking for something interesting to read.

Buried deep in a mefi thread was a post about The ’74 cockroach attack. It sounded too interesting to pass up, so I didn’t. Worth a look for a short laugh. In brief: jackass army researchers inadvertantly unleash a horde of hard to kill giant cockroaches on a small town. Residents get pissed, the army denies, citizens ultimately prevail.

I was mulling over theGoogle Answers service and thinking of other models along the same line and came up with an idea. In case you’re not familiar with it, you can use Google Answers to find answers to questions. Any questions. Want to know what Babe Ruth batted in his rookie year, and you can’t find the answer? You can ask Google Answers, offer a sum of money for the answer, and if one of Google’s experts knows the answer or how to find it and thinks your fee is sufficient, they will find the answer, tell you, then take your money. It’s brilliant. It remains to be seen whether it is sustainable or not, but in theory it’s an excellent concept. We’ll call it….
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A few months ago my brother and I had an argument about satelite radio services. He thought they were a great idea, I thought they were doomed to failure. While both of them have been struggling, the jury is still out on their longterm prospects. One of my central points in the debate with my brother was that there was no way I would pay $10 or so a month for access to satellite radio when I get what I need for free already. Among his counterarguments was the quality (which isn’t there – they’re streaming 96kbs MP3 files. By way of comparison, I won’t play anything below 192kbs on my stereo) and breadth of programming. Which is actually true. But still, I was adamant – I wouldn’t pay and I seriously doubted that enough people would pay to make satellite radio commercially succesful.

I still think that. But the irony lies here – today, I sent $10 via paypal to Radio Paradise. Why? Because they kick ass. They’re tremendously better than anything I can get off of broadcast radio. They’re exposing me to new artists that I like, something that I’ve been trying to do myself, largely unsuccesfully, by hunting through usenet for recommendations. Yet the quality is not that good, it’s prone to interruptions, and most importantly, I paid for it. And I’ll likely continue to pay them periodically if they continue to deliver.

So I’m guilty of intellectual dishonesty I guess, or at least of inconsistency. But do give Radio Paradise a try. Check out their website too, it’s got a great ‘community ranking’ feature similar to ones like Game Rankings that I’ve linked to in the past.

I went down to Andrew’s house this past weekend to deliver his Robotron machine, which had been living in my basement the last couple of years. Andrew managed to bribe Paul into driving the machine down to Andrew’s new place in MA. I came along for the ride. As a bonus Andrew and Patty cooked us up a feast and we got to check out their new house. Instead of reading about it you can checkout the pictures:

here

I would definitely look like this:

From the nifty barcode generator

The Washington Post just completed an excellent 5 part series on the fall of Enron. It’s literally been years since I found myself turning to a newspaper for news. This piece has reminded me why newspapers actually have value in the modern information flow – the in depth investigative piece. Well worth a read if you’re curious how and why the current business scandels are taking place.

I spent the weekend plus a few days down on Long Island. Two of the days I went to the ocean and boogie boarded and body surfed. It was awesome. I put together a:

photo album

Check it out if you’re interested. Note that I’m still using Image Rodeo for the galleries. I love the software but not the templates to the pages look like…well….ass. But the photos are cool 😉

The family has conspired to make a little photo album for Jesse’s amusement. Feel free to scope it out if you like here:

Dad’s album

Though it’s mainly for family and no one else is likely to appreciate its goofy sense of humor 😉

Check this guy out. With his legs stretched out he’s as big as my hand. He just moved into my bathroom. At first I was going to boot him outside, but I have an insect problem in the house every summer anyway, so maybe he’ll help get them out of the bathroom.