Almost Forgot...

I nailed a Books A Million Millionaire's Club Card and used it to hook up to their wifi. I walked around looking for magazines and listening to some streaming NPR on some ear buds. AWESOME!

Between BAM and the food court at the mall (has a Time-Warner booth, complete with open wifi) I am kinda getting into the wifi in public thing.

Most Listened To...

Lately, I have seen quite a few people throw up lists of their Top 5 (or 25) Albums. Unfortunately, I always draw a blank with stuff like this. I listen to things all the time, but to choose my favorites would be impossible for me. I go through intense sessions of love/hate with things... music, websites, books, games... I'll love it and think its the greatest thing ever and then a few days/weeks later I absolutely don't want to be around it.

Anyway, the boy got me thinking - I upped him an old iPod Shuffle I had laying around - he wanted it for when it would be too risky to tote his Touch. We talked about other mp3 players and he seemed to favor the Shuffle because it would maintain his play count in iTunes. Hmmm...

Much of my listening lately has been a huge hodgepodge - I discovered Pandora on both the desktop and the Touch via the Pandora app and have been listening to all kinds of things. For instance, I am currently listening to a station seeded with "Liz Phair" and currently playing No Doubt's "Simple Kind Of Life" - interesting. An earlier play was The Cardigan's "I Need Some Wine - And You Need To Be Nicer", which I thumb-upped. I am discovering much music that I wouldn't normally roll with.

Anyway - I got to thinking about the boy's play count - whole cd-wise, I have a few cd's that really top out... Mainly played at work.

5 - Collective Soul - Collective Soul

4 - Sheryl Crow - Sheryl Crow

3 - Third Eye Blind - Third Eye Blind

2 - Sheryl Crow - The Globe Sessions

1 - Dixie Chicks - Wide Open Spaces - By far, my most-listened to cd. I used to go to work and put it on and spin it for a solid 8 hours - and then do it again the next night, too. Times about a year and a half - till there was almost a rebellion.

As for the previously mentioned Pandora - I have been enjoying the genre stations - Hair Metal and Grunge lately. And Bluegrass...

Daily Show Mojo

Getting into news lately - I watch The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, The Colbert Report via hulu and download NBC Nightly News as a podcast and watch it on my iPod Touch. As for print, I do our local paper (when it makes it before I go to work), The New York Times (via the Touch App or the one on my desktop), and The Economist. I also listen to quite a few podcasts - 2600, twit, NPR's Most Emailed Stories, This American Life, etc...

Think

Today I watched two movies that depicted the tragic aftermath of combat death on the family at home - Grace is Gone is a John Cusack flick about a father of two young girls dealing with the loss of his wife who died while deployed to the Middle East and Taking Chance is a Kevin Bacon flick about a Marine Officer who accompanies the body of a fallen Marine home and delivers the remains to the family. Everywhere he escorts the Marine's body he finds that people are touched and they care. Very powerful stuff to think about.

And now for lighter stuff:

My iPod Touch has had quite a few new apps updated lately:

The New York Times app is now version 2 - and is much faster and seems much more stable. Great news app!

RSS Player updated to 1.2 and it now has so many more features, including search for podcasts by name and etc... very cool app - I am subscribed to about 15 podcasts now, and it works very well.

I also have gotten a few new apps:

Reddit is an app that allows you to view the Reddit site. It helps... the site is hard to read when viewed in Safari on the Touch.

iBlogger is ok - Supposedly will add pic posting for blogspot, but not messing with it much as it's a pain in the ass to tap out a post.

Twitteriffic is a cool Twitter client - I feel kinda bad, though. I have a friend that was tweeting every 20 minutes, and that made it so that all the tweets would push other less enthusiastic posters from view too quick, so I stopped following him. Sorry, sir.

Also, I am still loving Pandora - a friend even started messing with Pandora on is netbook - he likes.

AND NOW - a biggie! Amazon just released a Kindle for iPhone app! I downloaded it and browsed a bit. Unfortunately, the periodicals (which is what I was mainly interested in) don't seem to work yet. I did download a sample chapter of some Asimov, and that was ok. Waiting patiently on the periodicals - and with the already mentioned NY Times app, not sure why I am.

Messing with the Sansa Clip - when you open it up from My Computer it shows folders and all - if you stick a concert downloaded from the Internet Archive in the folder called audiobooks it seperates the thing out and will play it in order. AWESOME!

My MIL made coconut pie - seems like a pie crust with coconut and vanilla pudding mixed together and then whipped cream on top. Good stuff.

**UPDATE** The Amazon Kindle App will only do books according to Amazon - no periodicals. I hope that changes, because that is the main reason I was interested.

In praise of the flash drive

My latest enjoyment comes from the digital combination of Firefox Portable, flash drives to run it from, and browserables. By browserables, I mean Gmail (and all of it's offshoots), Pandora, Hulu, etc... Browserables are what makes the web browser probably the most powerful piece of software ever written.

From my flash stick and my Firefox Portable 3.1 Beta 2 I can stay entertained with music, video, things to read.

Moving on - mobile news is also getting my attention lately. On my iPod Touch I use The USA Today app, The NY Times app (SLOW TO UPDATE!) and I download NBC Nightly News video podcast, Common Sense with Dan Carlin, Hardcore History with Dan Carlin, NPR's Most Emailed Stories, BBC's Newspod, and The Dawn and Drew Show.

Thought for Apple and others - a way to subscribe to a show for free (with commercials or whatever) that deletes itself after a specified time. Allows for both portable viewing and the ability for the show to sell itself later.

I wish there were a way to cheaply (ie - free) download The Colbert Report and The Daily Show. I know - hulu (the links I put here) has them, but I am talking for the iPod Touch. I WANT A HULU PLAYER FOR THE TOUCH!

The NY Times also has a reader - I used the 30 day trial version about a year ago and liked (except for the $14.99 a month fee for after the 30 days). They now offer that reader in a limited edition for free. same thing, but limiting the content a bit. I like - loaded onto the laptop. Wish there was a way to load it onto my flash drive.

Again with the Random

The image to the left is done by my son - a part of a project he is working on. It is a fairly faithful representation of our local county library. I went to the library today to try to hook up to their wifi, just to do it. I figured I'd download some video podcasts on their fat pipe. Unfortunately, the pipe wasn't that fat. Thanks to the boy for letting me use his art.

I have been getting into Pandora allot lately. I have the iPod Touch app for Pandora loaded, and I sometimes bring it up on the computer, as well. I love how it plays music similar to the "seeds" you give it. Wish there was a way to listen to it all the time... I can listen around the house and out in the yard while walking Homer. Very enjoyable. Especially the bluegrass.

Bought the Wikipanion+ app for the Touch. I was using the free one, but this allows saving pages to read later (if I ever figure it out).

Getting into the buddies (store brands) more and more at the store. Going to try some beans tonight with some sausage dogs and potato salad. Should be good.

Bought a 20oz reusable "shaker" bottle with the intent to use it with those little packets of sugar free powdered drinks. Lets see if I keep with it. I hate buying drinks at work - can't get 20oz at the store and when you make the powders with a smaller bottle they suk.

Ender

Reading the Ender series by Orson Scott Card. Cool, so far.

The iBlogger app is cool. In a future update I should be able to add pics.

Girlscout cookies are in. Mmmm.

[Posted with iBlogger from my iPod touch]

Rockin...

The Solomon Burke - "Don't Give Up On Me"...