WIJFR: Overclocked: Stories of the Future Present

In these quirky, brashly engaged “stories of the future present” Cory Doctorow shows us life from the point-of-view of the plugged-in generation and makes it feel like a totally alien world. — Claude Lalumiere, Montreal Gazette

“Overclocked: Stories of the Future Present” is a collection of short stories by Cory Doctorow. It consists of:

  • Printcrime
  • When Sysadmins Ruled the Earth (my personal favorite)
  • Anda’s Game
  • I, Robot
  • I, Row-Boat
  • After the Siege

Since Cory publishes all of his work under the Creative Commons license, you can download all the short stories for free, in various formats. I read all of them on my Treo 680 using iSilo.

If, after reading “Overclocked” you want more, I highly recommend “Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom.” You’ll never look at Disney World the same way again.

A night out at the ballpark … at home

Since I couldn’t get tickets to the first two ALCS games here in St. Pete and today’s Game 3 was early, we decided to do baseball night for dinner.

I fired up the grill and cooked some hamburgers (well, turkey burgers) and hot dogs, we baked some pretzels, served some drinks (I had a beer) and then turned on the surround sound and watched the game in HD in the family room. It was just like being there … except without annoying Boston fans, people constantly crawling over you to get out of the row, lines for the bathroom, and much comfier seats. 😀

What a game … total domination by the Rays in Fenway as they win 9-1 and take a 2-1 game lead in the series. Go Rays!!

Now I’m watching the Brows on Monday Night Football … the first time they’ve been on MNF in five years. They’ve taken an early 3-0 lead over the defending Super Bowl champion New York Giants, but as a realist (and lifelong Cleveland fan), I don’t expect that to last.

WIJFR: Mariel of Redwall

Heaved off her ship in a pirate raid, Mousemaid Mariel is washed up on the shores of Mossflower. With no idea where she is, or indeed who she is, the young warrior mouse embarks on an unforeseen adventure that will take her to the very heart of Redwall and into the arms of the people who live there.

So I’ve finally caught up with my daughter and finished the fourth book of Brian Jacques’ Redwall series, “Mariel of Redwall.”

Just like J.K. Rowling’s first few Harry Potter books, I’m beginning to see the pattern in Jacques’ novels:

  • new enemy/bad guy is introduced
  • all is peaceful at Redwall
  • an event occurs that requires some Redwallers to leave on a perilous quest, directed by the spirit of Martin the Warrior and mysterious Abbey writings/poems/riddles, joined by other friends along the way
  • while the questing party is gone, Redwall comes under attack and must be defended by the peace-loving Abbey dwellers
  • the Abbey is successfully defended, though some lives are lost
  • the questing party returns successfully to the Abbey
  • a final journal entry by an Abbey dweller sums up the final events and links to the other books in the series

The one difference in “Mariel” is that the main protagonist is a female mouse. Otherwise, the book falls into my outline above as follows:

  • Gabool the Wild, king of the sea rats, has captured a magnificent bell intended for the badger lord of Salamandastron.
  • Redwall is still being constructed, with the current project being the bell tower (hint hint) 😉
  • Mariel the mousemaid arrives, discovers an old poem that describes how to get to Terramorte Isle, and then leaves on a quest to kill Gabool and avenge her father Joseph the Bellmaker. Dandin (mouse), Durry (mole), and Tarquin (hare) accompany her northwards.
  • a gang of sea rats, led by Graypatch, decide to besiege the Abbey intending to be the new rules of Redwall and enslave its inhabitants.

I can’t really go into the final points without giving away major plot lines or spoilers, but suffice it to say it follows the pattern. 🙂

While these are primarily books for younger readers, I have enjoyed them. While I was reading “Mariel” I was giving my daughter daily updates on my progress. She was always excited to remember certain sequences or events and discuss them with me. She was also very good about not spoiling any upcoming surprises. She also loves the maps in the front of each book, which show a little bit more of Mossflower Woods and the surrounding lands in each story.

Next up is “Salamandastron,” which we’re going to read together like we did with the first two. It takes a little longer, but it’s our fun bedtime activity.

Take On Me, the literal version

a-Ha’s “Take On Me” was a groundbreaking music video. I still remember seeing it for the first time on MTV at my grandmother’s house back in the 80s (we didn’t have cable at home). Here’s a hilarious version of it that explains what’s really going on. Pipe wrench fight!

I won’t get to use my Game 5 tickets …

… but that’s because the Rays beat the White Sox in Game 4 to move on to the ALCS!!

I had the chance to purchase ALCS Games 1 & 2 tickets today but was so busy at work I didn’t get a jump on the purchase at 9am like I did for the ALDS. As a result, the games were sold out (online at least) by the time I tried to purchase my tickets. I’ll just have to hope I get chosen in the lottery for the later games.

Way to go Rays!

MLB Gameday … how do they do it?

mlb-mini-770037A friend pointed me to MLB’s Gameday application this afternoon during Game 1 of the ALDS between the Rays and White Sox (the Rays are up 4-3 as I write this). This thing is amazing … how do they do it?

The mini version is shown to the left. It gives you the pitch-by-pitch details, shows the location, trajectory, and speed of each pitch, and then the play-by-play details … for free and in near real-time.

The full-blown 3D version lets you use your mouse to change the camera angle and zoom in/out while viewing the graphic pitch overlay. I didn’t try this but apparently after a play you can click on a hyperlink and see the actual video footage of the play.

That’s some seriously cool technology … I would love to know how it works. They have a blog and it appears that they just launched this 3D version back in June.

Shaping up

Ever since getting the Wii Fit back in May and having the balance board pronounce me “overweight” I’ve been more focused on my personal fitness: I’ve been watching what I eat, eating less, and exercising more.

When my eyes were opened by the Wii balance board, my BMI was 26 and I weighed 200lbs. Earlier this month, after working hard for the past 5 months, I finally got my BMI back into the “normal” range (below 25), am down to about 182lbs and am still working on losing more. If nothing else, Wii Fit has given me an easy, fun way to track my daily exercise and keep me motivated. I’ve lost count the number of times I’ve wanted to eat something and then thought “man, the Wii is going to yell at me if I do this.” 😉

Yesterday I placed a pre-order for the $99 Fitbit that is coming out in the late-December/early-January timeframe. I had heard Leo Laporte and Jason Calacanis discussing this new company on a recent episode of TWiT and seemed to vaguely remember hearing/reading about it shortly after the company announced its product at the TechCrunch50 conference earlier in September. I have a thing for gadgets, and since the Wii Fit started me on this path of weight loss and general fitness (and has kept my interest so far) I figured this little gadget might help keep me going.

It’s basically a souped up pedometer that you can wear unobtrusively on your person. It tracks your steps and calculates how far you’ve walked and how many calories you’ve burned … nothing new there. Here’re the cool parts. You can also wear it at night and it will track your sleeping habits: when you fall asleep, how long you stay in deep sleep, how often you wake up, etc. It’s also wireless so you can sync the data it collects back to your PC (and from there to your account on the Fitbit website), and has a rechargeable battery which you charge via the included docking station.

Sounds cool, right? I can’t wait to try it out, but until it arrives early next year I’ll have to stick with my Wii Fit/Dance Dance Revolution exercise plan. 🙂

TiVo on your PC

TiVo and Nero today announced LiquidTV, a package that brings the TiVo experience to your Windows-based PC available on October 15.

There are plenty of great blog articles covering this new product, like Megazone’s over on Gizmo Lovers.

It looks pretty slick … it’s basically the TiVo interface on your PC, something (some) people have wanted for quite while. It looks like it will still require a subscription to the TiVo service (you get a year free when you purchase the software), so that’s one thing against it when competing against the other media center software out there. Hopefully the superior interface and features will separate it from the pack. Personally this is not something I’m interested in since I already have plenty of TiVo boxes but it’s good to see TiVo branching out.

Got my tickets!

I was selected in the lottery to be able to purchase Rays playoff tickets for Game 5 of the ALDS at Tropicana Field. Hopefully we won’t need to play a fifth game, but I’ll be there at the Trop if we do!

We’re still waiting to see if the Rays will be playing the Twins or the White Sox. If the White Sox win their make-up game against the Tigers tonight, they’ll have to play a tie-breaker game with the Twins to determine the winner of the AL Central.

From worst to first!

ps_logo_270x100-707183It didn’t happen quite the way they it wanted to, but I suspect they’re not going to complain.

With the Red Sox loss to the Yankees last night, the Tampa Bay Rays clinched their first ever American League East division title. After finishing dead last last year at 66-96 and never having won more than 70 games in their entire existence, wining the division and having a 96-64 record is an amazing accomplishment. Not to mention this is the first time since 1997 that a team other than Boston or New York has won the AL East. Wow.

The magic number to clinch had been at 1 for the past few days, ever since the Rays swept Baltimore in four games earlier this week (including their first ever double-header double-win). But then they just couldn’t win against the Tigers, and the Indians weren’t helping out by losing to Boston. So it’s unfortunate (to me anyway) that it was the Yankees that ended up helping out, but the divisional title is the divisional title. With only two games left in the season that was cutting it a little close …

So, bring on the Twins or White Sox … GO RAYS!