Remember Me

A couple of years ago, a young man named Joe Murphy died from a rare and nasty form of cancer. I didn’t know Joe. Rather, I knew him only from the podcasts he co-hosted and I was a fan. During his illness and after his death, fans of his work made a [...]

Essential iPhone Apps (‘Cause Everyone Else is Doing It)

It’s June. That means I’ve had my iPhone for about four months and it has already become extremely hard to live without. In fact, I have no intention of trying to live without it. Not only does it sit in my pocket for most of the day, it recharges right next to [...]

Wolfram Alpha

Wolfram Alpha has been around for a few weeks now, having debuted to a squawking chorus of voices. The initial reports from Mashable and Lifehacker sounded intriguing and promising but the talk on podcasts like TWiT and the virtual water cooler that is Twitter was more confused than relevatory. The single most coherent [...]

Study

I’ve never been one for lyricless music.  The words to a song are more important to me than the actual music.  Often the first thing I connect with when looking for new music is a phrase or word that seems to say something I like.  And I realize I’m not unique in this respect, I [...]

Mario and His Stars

I am the proud creator / owner of a Super Mario Galaxy save-file in which the full complement of 241 stars have been collected. And when I say proud, I mean bring it up in conversations at cocktail parties and show strangers my photos of it because I’m so proud.
Now, as to why I [...]

Nirvana featuring…

Shortly after Freddie Mercury died musicians from all over the rock ‘n’ roll world gathered in the U.K. for a tribute concert. It was shown on t.v. around the world and the CD sales numbered in the millions. It was an awesome, awesome show.
Slash, Elton John, George Michael and the surviving members of [...]

The New York Times Crossword for iPhone / iPod Touch

There is something compelling, even obsessive about a good crossword puzzle. And the New York Times is one of the best crosswords around. So finding out that they had put together an app for the iPhone was fantastic news. However, the price tag, a hefty $10, left a me little cautious. [...]

Refinements

The last time I went book shopping I didn’t actually buy anything. Instead I took pictures of the things I wanted then went back home and got online: Wikipedia to Amazon to iTunes and back around comparison shopping and information gathering until I found the best deal and best format for the book [...]

Setting the Pace

Over the past few months I’ve been feeling a bit, well, blogged out.  Maintiaining a post a day blog takes a toll and I just feel like I have more important things to do.  However, as we move into the third year of this blog, I kind of feel like this has some momentum and [...]

Flash Post 6

Here are two links to recent finds of mine on eMusic.com, which I would recommend to the right people, who would be, in turn, in the right frame of mind:
This Is Metal’s Most Covered Moments of the 80s – Particular favorite tracks are  “Fallen Angel” performed by Bret Michaels (of Poison), [...]

TED

A while back my friend the One Man blogged about the TED Conference.  This is just a quick note to say thanks.
I’ve been taking the time to watch just a single presentation per day, but it is among the best twenty minutes of my day every time.
The TED Conference is, essentially, to paraphrase the One [...]

Xombified

For those fans of Flash animations out there, I came across Xombified.com a while back and fell in like. I do not know much about the series and have not taken much time for research beyond watching the seven episodes available, but I am looking forward to the next one, I can tell you [...]

Joe’s Goals

Well kids, it’s been a while since I told you all about the latest Web 2.0 / Social Internet sites I have been playing with, so here is a quicky post all about one of my current favorites:
Joe’s Goals, located at, funnily enough, www.joesgoals.com, is an online goal tracking system. It has a really [...]

Mythlandia and Other Links

Just a couple of quick links tonight.
First is an incredibly cool, interactive map called Mythlandia, made by artist Julian Hector for his senior thesis.  I had not previously heard of Julian Hector but he has an amazing site and it looks like his books will definately be worth a read for those of you who [...]

Speakeriffic

By the way, I picked up one of the Logitech mm50 Portable Speaker for iPod last weekend. It’s fantastic. If you have an iPod and want a cheap, easy way to get some good sound, this is it. It’s small enough that I can carry it all over the house and strong [...]

Social Drinking

In recent years, I've been drinking a lot less than I used to, for a variety of reasons.  Health, finances, general acting-like-a-grown-up, stuff like that.  There have been some side effects, naturally – I have more money, get fewer headaches, and am generally a lot more pleasant to be around.
One of the unexpected side effects [...]

Killer Bunnies, Dude

Finally, we got our copy of Killer Bunnies!  Woot!
We were introduced to the game by friends of ours who brought it with them when they came for our wedding last September.  We had a great time learning to play the game and decided to buy our own copy.  
The problem, we found, was that the [...]

The Best Class I Have Ever Taught

Tonight’s class was the easiest class I have ever taught. It was also one of the more fun. I had only two students and none of us felt like doing much in the way of proper study. So we watched Superman cartoons.
Yeah, Superman.
Along with all the podcasts I subscribe to are a few [...]

Blogged Out

At last count I have something like 12 blogs. I’m not using them all, by any means, but they’re all there, available to me should I want them. Hell, some of them (Bloglines) are available to me whether I want them or not. Add in the various social bookmarking and networking [...]

Great Artists Steal

“Good artists borrow, great artists steal.” – Picaso
Or maybe it was TS Eliot. They’re both credited with originating the phrase by various sources, but that’s not really the point. The point is, every starting artist has to beg, steal, and borrow, from any sources they can in order to learn how to put [...]

Pod People

One of the projects I’ve been working on, one that is taking up an extraordinary amount of time, is finding podcasts for work.
I teach between 12 and 15 classes a week, all focused on either Public Speaking and / or Debating, Marketing, Business English, and Conversational English. It is classes in the last category [...]