Sam's L33t Journal

Two of my friends from high school, Matt and Dan, have started a political anti-debate podcast titled The Common Ground. It's a little rough around the edges (they still need to format their podcast feed correctly), but I think it's quite good. Check it out.

Last weekend was DJ and Michelle's wedding. I was honored to be in the wedding party. Many congratulations to the happy couple!

Work is still crazy. Last week got my promo feedback. The bad news is that I didn't get promoted, even though I'd thought my case was strong enough this time. The good news is I got more positive and more specific feedback than my last attempt: Work on larger projects with a broader scope, show leadership by doing things that facilitate / coordinate the efforts of a larger group. I've made some adjustments to my plans with those priorities in mind, and last week was wildly productive. I hope I can maintain that rate of productivity.

Today, I participated in a discussion of the book Oryx and Crake for the C-Realm Podcast. The book is worth reading if you like dystopian / apocalyptic fiction. Just checked the sequel out from the library.

The book group at work just finished a book of Joel Spolsky's essays, which was interesting but probably not very helpful in my day-to-day work. But our next choice is Working Effectively With Legacy Code, which I expect will be mind-explodingly relevant.

The weather is summery this weekend. Today was a beautiful day for biking, and I made it home just in time to avoid a torrential late-afternoon downpour. Temps getting up near 80 on Monday.

Julie is away this weekend visiting her folks for Mother's Day. Next weekend is my cousin Ben's wedding.

Last weekend, I took a jaunt to NYC with Julie. On Saturday, we ate amazing croissants in Harlem and caught up with a long list of acquaintances: Emmett (a high school friend and animator), his sister Clio (chef and pudding shop entrepreneur), kmo (podcaster and online acquaintence who I had the pleasure of speaking with in person for the first time) and Olga K. (kmo's girlfriend, also a podcaster), and one of Julie's college friends. On Sunday, we joined Nikki for brunch on the town and ventured to an out-of-the-way gallery in Brooklyn to see some unusual art.

Kickstarter is pretty cool. It's a site for the distributed financing of small projects. Pledges are collected if and only if the project is fully funded, so there's less risk of committing money to a project that will never have enough to get off the ground. The project creators can also specify different rewards for different levels of support.

Two of my favorite podcasters are using the site to get off the ground with self-publishing, so I encourage you to check out (and fund) their projects:

Douglas Lain of the Diet Soap Podcast is working on a book titled Pick Your Battle - Foraging as Revolutionary Self-Help, a self-help guide for the urban forager.

kmo of the C-Realm Podcast is working on a book titled Conversations on Collapse, a collection of interviews from the podcast.

If you're already up-to-date, please excuse my venting.

The situation in Gaza continues to deteriorate. A shelling of an UNRWA school (where civilians fled in response to Israeli evacuation notices) killed over 50 civilians, leading the UN to suspend relief organizations. Israeli soldiers kept Red Cross workers from a bombing site for several days, and when they arrived they found dying children lying next to the bodies of their dead parents. CNN confirms that Israel broke the cease-fire, an allegation which Israel responds to very oddly: They claim they didn't break the ceasefire, even though they don't deny shooting and killing militants in Gaza or that the retaliatory rocket attacks they claim did break the ceasefire happened at a later date. Also, note that the blockade of Gaza went on for some time before the current attack began

In related news, this week's Democracy Now episodes have been much more depressing than usual, although it was interesting to watch former ambassador Martin "I didn't agree to a debate" Indyk get utterly steamrolled by Norman Finkelstein in this episode.

I leave you with these images, one tragic, one hopeful (maybe).

As I mentioned before, I've been listening to a lot of podcasts lately. Here's my current list:

EscapePod - Sci-fi "podcast magazine" and one of the best podcasts on the internet (if you like audio science fiction short stories, anyways). Went through all the back episodes, there were quite a few even back when I first discovered it.

Podcastle - Another podcast from that family, this one for fantasy. Also high quality.

clonepod - Basically a clone of Escape Pod, done by some kids. The intros and outros are rambley and a bit annoying (at least so far as I've seen, I'm working through back-episodes since there are only a few). Still, I want to see where they go with it, and the stories are great. In particular, they got some new Union Dues stories by Jeffrey DeRego (a favorite series I first encountered on EscapePod). Haven't heard all the back episodes, since there's just too much.

Cory Doctorow's Podcast - Cory Doctorow podcasts a lot of his short fiction in progress, and it's really good. Episodes of other podcasts in which Doctorow is interviewed are often pulled into the feed. Took quite a while to listen to the back-episodes.

C-Realm Podcast - The C stands for "consciousness". Philosophy, ramblings, and interviews by kmo. Calm and eclectic. Can get a bit new-agey for my taste, sometimes, but it's thought-provoking, interesting. Have not gone through the back episodes because it's far too much. Only went a few episodes back when I first added it.

Barack Obama's Podcast - Was very good (wish all legislators did something like this), but he hasn't posted anything for quite a while.

This Week in Tech - A panel-style talk show. Didn't bother with back-episodes, since it's current-events discussion and there's a lot of it.

I feel I haven't even scratched the surface with podcasts, though. There's so much good amateur and new professional material, and even some of the old radio players are archiving and podcasting their stuff now (NPR's doing that).

So, how about you? Do you listen to podcasts? What are your favorites?