Oh man, this Mac vs. PC parody by a couple of friends of mine is awesome! :)
Hilarious! Nice one, guys. :) You are both made of awesome and win.
( If you don't know who Mur and J.C. are... )
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highly amusedI had the rather impressive honour earlier this week of being asked by the esteemed J.C. Hutchins to do an ID/intro for episode 12 of 7th Son, Book Three: Destruction! Wow. I mean, seriously... wow. That was so frickin' awesome. 30,000 listeners! I'm in pretty impressive company, too. :) Even more mind-boggling was that J.C. came to me and asked me to do it. You rock, J.C.!
7th Son is one hell of a roller-coaster ride of a story. Plus ... guess what? Free! Yes, a free podcast audiobook. Give it a listen. Do yourself a favour and start with Book One: Descent.
A bunch of podiobooks (podcast audiobooks) I read are finishing up soon! Yipes!
J.C.'s 7th Son (not only the current book, but the whole trilogy), Seth Harwood's Jack Palms II: This is Life and Phil Rossi's Crescent are all within 4 episodes of being over. All getting in to their exciting finales!![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small}
urox and I are also within 4 or so episodes of the end of Matthew Wayne Selznick's Brave Men Run, though Matt's novel finished being podcast some time ago. :)
All of these are fantastic books. 7th Son was the first podcast audiobook that I ever listened to, and I've been a big fan all along. I've met, hung out with, and become friends with J.C., Seth and Matt. They're all great guys. I've not met Phil, but by all accounts he's a good guy too. :-) A sick, twisted guy, but no more sick than Scott Sigler, another really nice fellow who writes disgustingly horrible stuff at times. =)
Matt's book is also published in both paperback and eBook (not encumbered with DRM) forms, by the way, but the podcast version is still free.
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excitedHi all!
I've had no time to update. I thought I might update during our trip to Japan, but no frickin' way. No time. Too much fun stuff to do/see. Since then, I planned to update, including writings about our trip, but I haven't had any time (when your boss greets you with a too-enthusiastic, "Welcome back!!!", that's an, "Uhoh...", moment). I have my "trip report" about 1/2 written. I'll try to get to the rest soon-ish.
I've had no time to read LJ either. Alas, I think I'm well over a month behind. I doubt I will come close to catching up, but I'll see if I can get back to keeping up with the present at some point, at least.
I am now on twitter. It's sort of like LJ for IM. ;) You can use it via the web site, via your existing IM account/client, or via your SMS-enabled phone (if you're crazy). I use it via the web site and via Google Talk. It's kind of nice because 1 IM window covers all of one's twitter interactions. It's silly, amusing, and fun and stuff. Definitely not so much of a useful tool. I don't have too many friends on it, so it doesn't generate much traffic for me to pay attention to. Feel free to friend me if you're on twitter, or if you join.
I have uploaded some pictures from May 5th -- from the Silicon Gulch Browncoats meet-up, from making of chocolate-dipped strawberries for a Cinco de Mayo party, as well as other miscellaneous shots -- for "24 hours of Flickr". I chose to submit this photo to the pool (limited to 1 per person).
BTW, here's some pimpage for the SF "Can't Stop the Serenity" charity screening:
Hopefully we'll also be getting a south bay one, but it will be on a different night, so if you're really dedicated, you could go to both... :) I know I'm tempted. I haven't seen Serenity on the big screen (or at all, actually) in a long time.
-me
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busySo, we spent the weekend (except for attending a party at wendelina2's place on Saturday night) up in San Francisco, at WonderCon 2007.
We got to see the first public screening of "300" (as mentioned in my last post), attend some interesting panels, collected some pretty cool schwag (including "driver's licenses" of the main characters from Tim Minear's upcoming [April 15th] show, Drive and cool metal Transformers pins [autobot and decepticon logos]). We got autographs from Jane Espenson (yay!), as well as getting to chat with her a fair bit. Jane is so cool. :) We got to hang out and chat with Richard Hatch a bit too, and get his autograph also. We both managed to get (though not quite the way we were meant to get them [which is to say, drawing the magic tickets]) special wrist bands which allowed us to get Nathan's autograph, along with his co-star Kristin Lehman! Studio provided item (really nice glossy promoting Drive), and got to chat with them for a minute while they were signing.
Panels:
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exhaustedSo, there's a new promo spot for Tim Minear's "Drive", with Nathan in it!
Wal*Mart has apparently just launched a video download service. In Firefox, it looks like this:
Isn't it a good thing they only support IE/Windows/WMP10?
Steve Jobs has spoken out on DRM and selling music on-line. I am quite surprised to see him write so frankly on the topic, when it seems like a large portion of their revenue stream relies on big music companies deluding themselves that DRM really works.
A former colleague of my father's, Aftab Khan, has been honoured with a prestigious award from the Royal Astronomical Society (RAS). Very cool. He deserves it.
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cheerful... by a friend of mine. :)
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gigglyThis post is my attempt to keep a somewhat comprehensive list of links to people's photos and accounts of the Browncoats' Backup Bash, a set of private events held by and for Browncoats (along with some wonderful TV stars and other helpful people!) when Flanvention II was canceled at the last moment by Booster Entertainment LLC (aka Booster Events). Obviously it won't really be comprehensive, but I'll make my best effort! Please help by forwarding URLs to me! :-)
Browncoats' Backup Bash (B3) in the "news":
bdbdb's account of B3 also has a set of links to other people's photos, accounts of the event, etc., much like this entry. bouncyCalifornia Browncoats - http://www.californiabrowncoats.org/ - are working on backup plans for if Flanvention II does in fact end up cancelled. I don't know what's going to come of them, but some people (James, Lynn, Adam, Karla, Arielle, Louise, ...) are doing their darnedest to make sure that something worthwhile happens if Flan II doesn't happen in any official capacity. In "honour" of BE (Booster Events), some are referring to the backup plan as BEscrewed, though I suspect that's not an official name in any sense of the word.
It's heartening, anyway, to see so much effort being put in regardless of what comes of it.
Hopefully on Friday we'll find that Flan II isn't cancelled after all, they won't have to put the backup plans into operation, and I won't have to start calling my credit card company. I'm not hopeful, but we shall see how it goes.
impressedSince Sunday.
bouncyShun Classic 8-Inch Offset Bread Knife = TEH AWESOMES!tamino = Also teh awesomes!
impressedPhotos from the Browncoat Ball, 2006
The following is a collection of links to photos from the Browncoat Ball posted by a whole slew of people (including me!), since this is easier to keep track of than hundreds of e-mails. :) I know waywardbound said he'd post a list on browncoatball.com at some point, but I can't find it yet, so I don't know if it's up yet or not and, well, maybe he can use this list to help populate it. :)
happy/tired/sickTwo of my left toes (big toe and toe next to it) hurt. Enough, following their unintended meeting with one of the steps of the stairs up into our apartment, that we went to urgent care and had my foot x-rayed. Apparently nothing broken, but they may have missed a hairline fracture, or that's urox's theory. They bloody hurt.
P.S. The Browncoat Ball rocked! Met friends old and new, and danced a fair bit, including at least three instances of Congress of Vienna.
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ow
That is all.
looking forward to it!The Browncoat Ball is fast approaching (5 weeks from now). Time is running short to purchase tickets, and now there's 1-day tickets available for Friday and Saturday in case you don't want to attend the whole weekend. Sign up now! =)
( Full text of update about Browncoat Ball )
anticipationIf you call yourself a Browncoat, or if you like to dance, or if you just want to hang out with a fun group of folks, The Browncoat Ball is the place to be. Seriously. We'll be there, anyhow! It looks to be one heck of a lot of fun. Plus, well, 4pm-6pm free cocktails at the hotel. ;) It should seriously be an awesome weekend!
If you haven't already bought your ticket, what the heck's keeping you?
If you have "bought" a ticket but haven't sent in payment yet, really, please do so. Ray and Co. are working their collective posteriors off, and having to follow up with people who haven't paid for the tickets they ordered is extra work they really could do without.
anticipationI was already pretty much at the point of having decided that I really couldn't afford to spend the time or money travelling to Atlanta for Dragon*Con over Labor Day weekend. I really would love to go, but it's just not practical. :( It's a real pity because I would presumably have got to hang out with irtluhc and maeglin73, in addition to hanging out with fun Browncoats, seeing Firefly/Serenity cast members, going to the live version of The Signal podcast, going to parties, and so on. D*C was a tonne of fun last year, and I think it would be fantastic this year too.
The fact that flying is going to be such a huge pain in the posterior has made it a whole lot easier for me not to keep rethinking my decision.
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disappointedI was 944 miles late for it, but I just got my car's 142.5k mile service done.
In addition to the usual service stuff, I wanted them to check into two things.
relievedWe attended lyssabits and careg's (quite beautiful) wedding today (ur, for Saturday values of "today"). Just got back a short time ago. It was cool to see lianthe, lyssabits, lessachu and Yar (LJ unknown if any!) and fun meeting various other cool people, including lianthe and lyssabits's father and mother (though I actually met her this past Tuesday also). We are full of Chinese food. Oh, hey, and got to try abalone, so my own wedding won't be the first time I try it. =) That seems like a good thing. It was really interesting. Much meatier than any other molusc I've tried. Not half bad. They had the coolest wedding favours -- USB thumb drives apparently (I haven't checked yet, as we just got back) containing engagement photos. So frickin' geeky. So frickin' cool! I think I have wedding-favour envy...
Oh, right. I caught the garter! ... which lianthe and lyssabits's mother then told me I should wear on my sleeve, so I did (actually, still am, since I'm still in my formalwear). It means I'll be the next to be married, as I understand it, which is ... well, nice confirmation, since we are getting married soon. :-)lianthe caught the bouquet, so I guess she's destined to be next! Heehee!
On the topic of our own wedding, we sent out the majority of the invitations over the past couple of days. Finally got them back from the printers and did huge amounts of work getting them ready to send out, but it was worth it. That much closer! :)
When we got back from the aforementioned wedding this evening, we checked our mailbox, and we got our very first RSVP card back! Woot! A response in the affirmative. Yay! Our friends Steve and Kim. Yay!
Oh, well, sort of the second. The first was handed to me about an hour after I handed it to one of its recipients (crankyfool), but was then begged back to show the other recipient, his fiancée!.
elated cracking up laughingNot like last time. =) Only just a tad tipsy now. Fun evening relaxing, and irtluhc visiting.
Alas, tomorrow must go to Colorado for a couple of days for work reasons. D'oh.
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drunkI just created a Frappr map. Exciting!
accomplished (very minorly)Things that are awesome:
Today included all of the above. Funtastic! Got home at 4am fromwaywardbound's place, having watched the movie mentioned above, after bowling with a bunch of greatly fun Browncoats who we had had dinner with at the wonderful Dynasty (a wide assortment of authentic [read: not Westernized] dishes selected by urox), before which several of them visited and played board/card games. Fun day! Oh yeah. Hmm... it's almost 5am. Definitely need to get to sleep ASAP. exhasted/happyPerhaps friends don't let friends make drunken LiveJournal voice posts, but other friends think they're frakking awesome and listen to them gleefully! You rock, brianrubin. =)
Haha! Fooled you! I didn't make a drunken LJ voice post!
giddy/exhausted/amused
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