November 2010 Archives

Free eBook (in PDF form, unfortunately) of the sci-fi short story collection called "Machine of Death". It is a group of stories based on this Dinosaur Comic:


Machine of Death � free PDF download of MACHINE OF DEATH

Related articles

• Machine of Death goes Creative Commons (boingboing.net)

My server is finally back online - yay! It was having some serious hard drive and/or memory errors, so I'm using a nice "new" hand me down server. I moved from FreeBSD 6 to Arch Linux and think I have everything (or everything I need, anyway), back up and running. Hope to get some more posts up soon.

I got tagged on Facebook wtih a "Random 25" meme where you hit shuffle on your MP3 player and report the first 25 songs that play. Well, I haven't updated my MP3 player (my G1 phone) in quite some time, so I figure I'll just use my computer collection. I don't really want to report the first 25 that show up on, though, because there are a lot of samplers and one time downloads in there that I wouldn't count for real. So I generated a random playlist from the nearly 10,000 tracks on my computer and picked the first 25 that I would consider putting on my player . Here's the list:

1. Lullaby - The Cure
2. Dancing in the Dark - Bruce Springsteen
3. My Shepard - The New Pornographers
4. Hey St. Peter - Flash and the Pan
5. Roy Rogers - Elton John
6. King of Pain - The Police
7. How Fortunate the Man with None - Dead Can Dance
8. Wham - Stevie Ray Vaughn and Double Trouble
9. South Bound Suarez - Led Zepplinhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Mason_%28ice_hockey%29
10. Suspicious Minds - Fine Young Cannibalshttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Mason_%28ice_hockey%29
11. Lost Highway - Johnny Horton
12. Shoot To Thrill - AC/DC
13. The Id Parade - Danielle Dax
14. Tin Drum - Big Pig
15. Love Is A Sign - The Go-Betweens
16. All My Steaps - The Black Heart Procession
17. A Dream within a Dream - The Alan Parsons Project
18. Penny Lane - The Beatles
19. Paper Planes - M.I.A.
20. Rudi Can't Fail - The Clash
21. Heart of Stone - The Raveonettes
22. Come Together - Aerosmith
23. Mexican Radio - Wall of Voodoo
24. I'm Mandy Fly Me - 10cc
25. All Come Down - Steve Mason

It's not a bad sampling, although it is very light on any real new releases besides the Steve Mason & The New Pornographers songs. Lots of older songs, plenty of 80s New Wave and some rock classics. Not too embarassing!

Restarting ross's The Friday [5], wherein I comment on [5] things in the world of media that have attracted my attention over the past week or so.

1. Barnes & Noble has a new feature where you can subscribe to a magazine or newspaper on your nook and get a 14 day free trial, so I took the plunge and subscribed (well, re-subscribed) to the Boston Globe. We have been getting it delivered for years and years, but at almost $600 per year (discounted even), it just was too much. So we cut back to just the Sunday paper, but I was going into withdrawals, not having my newspaper. And it just wasn't the same reading it online. But I have really been enjoying it on my Nook. It can be a little slow navigating, but it is still the Globe and I love it. It is US$10 per month, which is much more reasonable.
2. Really enjoyed Up. I added it to my Movie Watching Log, but I need to add a real review.
3. My favorite music discovery of the week is School of Seven Bells. You can get a nice sampling of their mystical, ethereal, yet substantive music on my music blog, Vehement Flame.
4. Speaking of Vehement Flame, check out my music-biz Daily, which uses the cool webapp, paper.li to generate a "daily" based up a list of tweeps I listen to via my @vehementflame1 account.
5. My favorite radio station is WZBC, which is the Boston College radio station. It has some really great indie and alternative rock, as well as its block of No Commercial Potential sounds in the evening. You can download the shows from the past 2 weeks in hourly blocks here and I enthusiatically recommend Alexandra's Friday morning show, Melody du Jour.

Related articles

• BN's Nook evolves into Android tablet (seattletimes.nwsource.com)
• Barnes & Noble announces the Color Nook (blogs.consumerreports.org)

• Adrian Peterson still hasn't crossed the goal line. Not when we watched it live (from that end of the stadium even), not watching it on myriad replays on Gillette's often malfunctioning big screens, nor watching it later on TV. Jerrod Mayo had a spectacular hit on him and he was well short of the mythical "plane". Heck, the TV announcers didn't think it crossed the plane either. Not sure what replays the officials were looking at but we wuz robbed on that one. And it knocked Peterson out for a series even - that's how hard he got hit in mid-air.
• On the other hand, Ben-Jarvis Green-Ellis was definitely in on his TD mid-air spin move. While it was on the other end of the stadium, it still looked good to us and replays showed it, although my home viewing did bring up the possibility of his elbow being down, which we didn't notice at the time. But even if his elbow did touch the ground, the ball was still over the line.
• What's up with Tom Brady? There were very few of the pinpoint accurate laser beams we've come to expect from Tom Terrific. Instead, it was a parade of throws to the feet and, most commonly, behind the receivers. One thing I could really see from my end zone seats were just how many wide open receivers he was missing. Sure, his spin-a-rama TD throw to Brandon Tate was a thing of beauty, but I wish he'd start hitting the easier passes a little more frequently. The bizarre juggling catch Tate had earlier in the game, on the pass that should have been intercepted, never should have been that close. Tate was wide open but Brady was late delivering the ball and it was still behind him. Injury to the shoulder or elbow? Maybe the knee is still bothering him?
• Speaking of the bouncing almost interception, what the hell was Childress thinking when he challenged the play? I'd love to know what he thought went wrong. The ball clearly just went through the defensive back's hands (you know what they say about defensive backs - if they could catch the ball they would be wide receivers), never came anywhere near the ground, and Tate most clearly had full possession when he was downed and even then never lost the ball. Very strange. Troy Aikman speculated somewhat incoherently that perhaps Childress was gunshy after blowing a few challenges earlier in the year, but I'm not sure that makes sense.
• Think it is about time one of the Patriot linebackers start covering the back coming out of the backfield? Wow, a couple of times there wasn't a red jersey within 20 yards of the receiver.
• Speaking of red jerseys, Troy said he really liked the look but as my friend said, they remind us too much of the bad old days. I actually prefer the away throwback jerseys anyway, white with red trim.
• Still unexplained are the two half-hearted quarterback sneaks from the 1 yard line as the clock wound down after the Law Firm's wonderful 20 yard run. I was hoping for some info, or at least speculation by the TV announcers, but they were prattling on about something or the other and not even paying attention to the play. The sneaks didn't look very serious, more like time killers. I know the Vikings were out of timeouts, and it shaved about a minute and half off the clock, but still - a TD there makes it a two score game and surely that's enough? But it was like they knew they could score whenever they wanted and just punched it in on third down. Still, a little weird.
• A lot of purple at the game. Not sure when the last time the Vikings came to Foxboro (it must be ten years or so), but the local Viking fans came out in droves. Probably the biggest showing for a visiting team after the Dolphins, who always have a ton of fans at the game.
• For some reason, they felt the need to burn a Moss jersey in the lot where we tailgated before the game. I'd say the crowd was ambivalent at best. A smattering of boos and applause for the one Moss catch. Not sure what ovation he was talking about in his postgame conference.

Related articles

• Pats knock out Favre and roll past Vikings (philly.com)
• Patriots Vs. Vikings: Tom Brady Finds Brandon Tate For Long Touchdown, Lead (sbnation.com)
• Favre, Vikes take it on the chin (msn.foxsports.com)