Geeky Fanboy: January 2007 Archives

Dr Who Tardis USB hub: the light on top works and it makes "the sound."

• It's ironic that so many girls were all over the snowboarder at an Abstinence Fundraiser.
• The writer guy is going to tell Simon that the reason he didn't want to do the Militant Fruit of the Loom sketch isn't because it's black, but because it's stupid and not-funny. Because it's stupid and not-funny -- you can see it in the rehearsals. His line, spoken so softly I have to turn up the television, will be something like "I'm not anti-black... it's just a dumb idea." That is my expectation.
• Danny will tell Jordan exactly when he fell for her, and it'll totally charm her.
• Matt will get metaphorically kicked in the man-parts by Harriet so hard that one of them will pop.
• HOWEVER, his introductory speech at the benefit dinner for her will be so insanely touching that her dolphin heart will grow three sizes anyway. Which effect will just make her angrier, or at least more frustrated.
• Where the heck is the gossipy chick that Matt was dating before? The cast member? She hasn't been on, even in the background, in ages.

That is all. Back about your business.

M. Night's Shyamalan just announced he's doing a movie based on Nikolodean's (wonderful, funny, inspiring) Avatar: the Last Airbender.

In other news, the Amish have decided they like browsing the Internet -- especially shopping for cars online.

The instructions were: Bold the ones you've read, strike-out the ones you hated, italicize those you started but never finished and put an asterisk beside the ones you loved.

1. The Lord of the Rings, J.R.R. Tolkien *
2. The Foundation Trilogy, Isaac Asimov
3. Dune, Frank Herbert *
4. Stranger in a Strange Land, Robert A. Heinlein
5. A Wizard of Earthsea, Ursula K. Le Guin *
6. Neuromancer, William Gibson
7. Childhood's End, Arthur C. Clarke
8. Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, Philip K. Dick
9. The Mists of Avalon, Marion Zimmer Bradley
10. Fahrenheit 451, Ray Bradbury *
11. The Book of the New Sun, Gene Wolfe
12. A Canticle for Leibowitz, Walter M. Miller, Jr. *
13. The Caves of Steel, Isaac Asimov
14. Children of the Atom, Wilmar Shiras
15. Cities in Flight, James Blish
16. The Colour of Magic, Terry Pratchett
17. Dangerous Visions, edited by Harlan Ellison
18. Deathbird Stories, Harlan Ellison
19. The Demolished Man, Alfred Bester
20. Dhalgren, Samuel R. Delany
21. Dragonflight, Anne McCaffrey
22. Ender's Game, Orson Scott Card
23. The First Chronicles of Thomas Covenant the Unbeliever, Stephen R. Donaldson (now if I could only strike it from my memory)
24. The Forever War, Joe Haldeman
25. Gateway, Frederik Pohl
26. Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone, J.K. Rowling
27. The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Douglas Adams *
28. I Am Legend, Richard Matheson *
29. Interview with the Vampire, Anne Rice
30. The Left Hand of Darkness, Ursula K. Le Guin
31. Little, Big, John Crowley
32. Lord of Light, Roger Zelazny *
33. The Man in the High Castle, Philip K. Dick
34. Mission of Gravity, Hal Clement
35. More Than Human, Theodore Sturgeon
36. The Rediscovery of Man, Cordwainer Smith
37. On the Beach, Nevil Shute
38. Rendezvous with Rama, Arthur C. Clarke
39. Ringworld, Larry Niven
40. Rogue Moon, Algis Budrys
41. The Silmarillion, J.R.R. Tolkien * (Sue me -- it's essentially a history book, but I enjoyed it a great deal.)
42. Slaughterhouse-5, Kurt Vonnegut
43. Snow Crash, Neal Stephenson
44. Stand on Zanzibar, John Brunner
45. The Stars My Destination, Alfred Bester
46. Starship Troopers, Robert A. Heinlein *
47. Stormbringer, Michael Moorcock *
48. The Sword of Shannara, Terry Brooks
49. Timescape, Gregory Benford
50. To Your Scattered Bodies Go, Philip Jose Farmer

As documented here, I went to the very good Casino Royale and returned to the internets gushing about the upcoming Pan's Labyrinth. I am not alone in my gushing; Guillermo del Toro's gothic fantasy has been named the best film of 2006 by the National Society of Film Critics. I can hardly wait to see it for myself.

Although I have been using feed readers for ages (rather than the blogrolling links featured along the side of my site), I hadn't heard of or made use of Google Reader, so it actually fell to Kate to forge the way into this new bit of lovely geek-toy-ery.

I love it. It's not a perfect reader by any stretch, but as there isn't actually a perfect news reader out there, that's not as big a problem as it might seem at first glance. One of the major benefits Google Reader has over its competitors is that (like GMail, Google Calendar, Google Spreadsheet, and the forthcoming Google-Everything-You-Will-Ever-Need) is that it is accessible anywhere you can access "The Internet." This is of great benefit to me, as I will routinely use four five different 'personal' computers to 'do stuff' in the course of any given month, so the less that I have to reinstall and try perfectly replicate my preferred tools on those five different machines, the happier I am. FeedDemon, which is what I've been using, is a fantastic tool, but it's also one of the programs that I MOST dread installing on a new machine, due to the fact that then need to reload all the different web pages I want it to watch.

NO MORE! I had Google reader import my FeedDemon settings this morning and new the deep, heartfelt satisfaction that comes from being really really lazy and, at the same time, knowing I had just added a significant task to the list of Stuff I Don't Have to Do Again.

Thus: Happy.