Cranky Geeks 136

Had the honor of being on John C. Dvorak and Sebatian Rupley’s wonderful Cranky Geeks round table again along with Chris DiBona, open source program manager at Google. John felt the episode was weird. I think in a good way.

Follow this link to watch the episode

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#012 – The S&L Podcast: Biggest book pick ever!

Welcome back everyone! So, I’m still trying to figure out why my audio sounds like crap, while Tom sounds great. It’s especially grating since, you know, I’m supposed to be an audio producer and all. How embarrassing! We’ll work it out soon, I promise. Anyhow, here’s the show:

Book #8 is going to be Anathem, by Neal Stephenson. The two interesting things about this book are that a) it’s super long and b) it’s only available in hardcover and Kindle versions. We’re also going to give everyone some more time than usual to get through this 900-someodd page book.

CONTEST

Here’s the poll for the Best Closing Line Contest! Here are the choices:

1. Michael H. — A smile crept into his eyes and with his walking stick in one hand, and the orb faintly glowing in the other, Gabriel set off across the street, scanning the horizon for traffic, and making a mental note to take better care next time he bought a tchochki from a Devonian Barkeep.

2. Michael M. — With palpable relief Schuman slumped over the rail waiting for the pool of magma to close over the briefcase and reflected to himself that he still hadn’t had a cup of coffee.

3. Shane G. — And it came to pass in the last days of the lost colony that the swords were broken and the lasers died and the people cried out to the unhearing heavens from which they had come saying, “If any remain among the stars, for your lives, do not part the quantum jelly!”

4. Gregory F. — After the dust had settled and the sound of battle waned, Sabrina and Julia found each other amongst the ruins.  The sisters then knew they had won, and once again evil would sleep.

Note: There is a poll embedded within this post, please visit the site to participate in this post’s poll.

The winner gets a Logitech USB Headset!

FROM THE NING GROUP

Music while reading

Frogg
Lately, I have been doing a good chunk of my reading on the bus on my way to work. Whenever I leave the house, I always have my iPod on me, so I find myself listening to music while reading. Does anyone else do this, and if so, what do you listen to?

I usually shy away from anything with lyrics. It makes it hard to concentrate if I get caught up listening to the words, so most of my reading is done listening to post-rock stuff like Godspeed You! Black Emperor, Thee Silver Mt. Zion, Esmerine, etc. Recently I have been on a William Gibson kick, and ambient electronic music such as Boards of Canada or Apparat go very well with it.

terpkristin
I can’t listen to music while I read, even something without lyrics. If I try, I soon find myself humming along with what I’m listening to and not paying attention to what I’m reading.

I do write with music on, though, typically something electronic.

How Where Do You Like to Read


CHECK OUT AUDIBLE!

Journey to a world beyond words with Audible Sci-Fi & Fantasy. Check out Audible for exclusive access to your favorite sci-fi and fantasy authors and exclusive commentary.  In addition, the new imprint, Audible Frontiers features new and sometimes previously unavailable audio books made available for the first time in audio.  Click here for a free trial offer and get your first audio book free.

Stay tuned for more info on METAtropolis, from Audible!

Featuring:
Battlestar Galactica Cast Members:
Michael Hogan
Alessandro Juliani
Kandyse McClure

Legendary audiobook narrators:
Scott Brick (Frank Herbert’s Dune)
Stefan Rudnicki (Orson Scott Card’s Ender’s Game)

Phileas Club 6: The world almost ended. Twice.

Was honored to be asked to join Patrick Beja’s Phileas Club podcast this month. I spoke from the US perspective, Patrick from the French and his other guest was Turki from Saudi Arabia. It’s a political podcast so it’s all world events and very little tech. But we did talk about the Large Hadron Collider and I tried my best to explain why it won’t kill us all.

Get the episode here

Scam School 27: Cheesy Beer gags

My wife produces the show Scam School for Revision 3, so I tagged along at one of their shoots and got pulled into some cheesy goodness. Involving beer. And if you watch through to the outtakes, I almost ruined the trick.