A Day in Paradise

Scott Sigler has brought his third Podcast novel “Infection” to a close. In the final episode of the podcast gorefest Scott announced his next Podcast novel ‘The Rookie’ which starts next October. He will also be working on “Nocturnal” which may follow.

In other news, Sirius satilite radio listeners will now be getting a fix of Scott’s podcast novels as part of the daily podshow lineup. Being the first of Scott Siglers novels, EarthCore is by far my favorite of Scott Siglers novels. So if you’re on Sirius make sure you get this in your ears! If not, you can subscribe to it at Podiobooks.com

Ok, so it’s time for the podcast awards, and I’m here to tell you what you’re going to vote for

When I don’t actually listen to any shows in the category I won’t list anything, so you’re free to choose whatever you like in that category

So browse over to PodcastAwards.com and get started!

[People's Coice]
No Choice

[Best Produced]
If Shadow Falls was there I would vote for it, even though they have only released 1 show it’s fantastic. Catholic Insider and Mad Money Machine would come a close second.

[Best Podcast Directory]
Totally Podcast Pickle! Not only do they have a GREAT directory but a fantastic community as well. Podcast Pickle Forever!

[Best Mobile Podcast]
I’m not sure what this is, but since Catholic Insider is the only show I listen to here, that’s the one to vote for.

[Business]
Of course Mad Money Machine. No discussion here. MMM totally rocks!

[Comedy]
Don’t listen to comedy shows

Skip over to

[Podsafe Music]
Accident Hash it the only option. I wish Best of the Worst Podcast made the list.

[Political]
Democracy Now gets my vote, although if Left Wing Nut Job was there I would have voted.

[Religion Inspiration]
Daily Breakfast - Father Roderick gets my vote on anything he does. He’s a true visionary in the field and has interesting shows with great production value.

[Sports]
Who listens to sports podcast? Although I did listen to an episode of the Phedippidations podcast and found that pretty good.

[Technology / Science]
Don’t listen to anything in this category… you would think that This Week in Tech would have made this category. That show is awesome!

[Travel]
Whatever you want

OK then fill in your details and hit submit! And we’re done

I wake up this morning, and like all mornings read my utterlyboring newsletter.

I click on the link to the story about The Bored Leg Cult (click 1). I follow the link to the Bored Leg Cult Photo Pool (click 2). I click on the Pool Members Link (click 3). I view the profile of Barry Price, which was on the first page of group members (click 4). Scroll down a bit to look at his Thailand 2005 Group (click 5). Then scroll down a bit more to find a picture of my good friend martin playing with some lizards (click 6).

Martin is selling a 130kg c-3PO on ebay, c-3PO was played by Anthony Daniels who acted in Star Wars with Garrick Hagon who was a voice actor in Balto with Kevin Bacon.

Now I’ve forgotten what this blog entry was initially about… oh well, it’s a small interweb!

Download the new weird al song - the story is that he couldn’t put it on his album so he leaked it to everyone else

This will probably come through my podcast feed if you’re subscribed to the main feed (not the specific podcast feed)

Adam Curry and his team at Podshow.com have been working around the clock to launch the new and improved version of the podshow system.

Slated for a July 4th “Liberate your Entertainment” release, the site has been replaced with several humorous “Please be Patient” flash videos.

I’m currently working on relaunching a major site, which has been in an “almost-ready” state for the last 3 months, so I totally understand the painful process of relaunching a site, and making sure all your bases are covered before you flip the switch. However, two days of downtime is a sign that you are nowhere near ready to launch and a lot of hacking is being done in the background which may get the site up, but will not benefit the product in the long run.

I was part of the beta testing team and ran some audits of the code (much of which is available as an opensource project on sourceforge), so I have no doubt that when podshow plus has made it through these growth pains it will rock big time.

Good luck with getting it up guys!

In other “is it up yet” news, I noticed that Ookles.com was up at Ookles.net, and is looking pretty slick, good luck with that launch as well!

FT.com / World / UK - First audio-only novel tells new story for authors

Now we have a “First audio only novel.” How is that different from what cavemen did around a fire?

Journalists these days… anything for a press release I guess.

Due to the abismal failure of Finland during previous Eurovision song contests, those clever Fins enlisted the help of the Klingons, who crashed the contest and brought the Eurovision song contest to Finland.

Seriously, this was one of the best Eurovisions in YEARS. I really enjoyed it. The quality of the music was better than usual, and the entertainment value of many of the acts was excellent. The only thing that really annoyed me was Maria Menounos and the continual screwups which seemed to worsen as then night progressed. I liked the new voting system, it made the show a lot shorter

Everyone is on about the political nature of the voting. I think that is just insane. Former Soviet republics voted for Russia, not because they missed their former overlords, but because the song was in a language they understood, and more than likely it had been playing on the radio non-stop for the past few months. Same with the former Yugoslavian countries giving each other 12 points, it’s not political it’s just that the people in those countries were familiar with the music/artists and voted for them.

The reason why England, France, and Germany did so bad is because they sucked, not because they people didn’t like them. I did feel bad for the French, they sent an amature singer/hairdresser and she totally tanked. Wasn’t eurovision an amature contest at one point?

If this Eurovision song contest said anything, it’s that people are fed up with the boring “commercially viable” music that is being fed to them on TV/Radio/Commercials. If it was up to me I would have voted for Lithuania, but I’m not entirely displeased with the final outcome.

So this weekend I indulged in a couple hours of my Second Life. As you may know parts of the podcasting community has become obsessed with SL. I am not sure what started it all, the first time I heard it mentioned was by Leo Leporte on TWiT, and since then it’s been a land rush with podcasters everywhere grabbing thier SL land.

I talked about my previous experiences meeting several Podcasting Celebrities. This week I decided to see where all the secret development was going on.

The Pickle island was annouced on the last Podcast Pickle show, the location is still undisclosed but by begging Pickle Radio, I got access. Pickle Island is still under heavy development, there are big peaceful grassy meadows which make great Drag strips. My poor VW Bug was totally outclassed by Pete’s awesome ride, so instead of racing we just drove around and chatted for a bit.

Pete, that was a lot of fun. After pete returned to his First Life I took the opportunity to wander around Pickle Radio’s new house. Great place, I showed Stella around as well, and we both enjoyed it.

The bathroom is nice as well, thankfully I found it just when I needed it. I hope you didn’t mind that used your facilities.

Unfortunatly, I didn’t notice until I was done that you hadn’t installed any toilet paper… Thankfully there was a bath ready, so I just hopped in and took care of that. I mention this because I couldn’t figure out how to flush the toilet, or let out the bath water once I was done, so you might want to do that before you move in.

Before leaving the Podcast Scene, I had to check out what was happening at the Podshow Palace and pay my respects to the Podfather himself.

We are not Worthy! We are not Worthy! We are not Worthy!

I can not describe the temptation there was to turn off that tap. If I would have had my video camera instead, I probably would have turned it off and then hid to film the ensuing hilarity

Played a bit of SL over the weekend… my graphics card can’t really keep up with it, that’s a good thing.

I hung around the Curry Castle, and of course bumped into a lot of other podcasters, Marcus Couch, P. D. Love and of course our favorite Bloated Lesbian.

Of course, as CSB points out there is no real way to ensure that bloated lesbians are in fact bloated lesbians.

The area is getting pretty crowded, it’s gotta suck to build a castle in what you think is a nice secluded corner of the world only to find towers, lighthouses and spa’s built right next to you (not to mention red couches being dropped on your roof).

I remember the WTF moment I had a couple years ago when Frozen Bubble was released. The game was nice but the awesome bit was the it was based on PERL, which was my programming language of choice at the time.

I had that moment again this morning when an email arrived in my mail box from Rubem Pechansky (The WinBinder Guy) where he announced his Worldcup 2006 card game which is based entirely on PHP5 and Winbinder.

The graphics are great, and on my machine there is no noticable speed hit, in my opinion it is right up there with any other desktop game around.

It’s been a while since I was playing with winbinder, but looking at this application and the possibilites for simple client side deployment makes me want to take another look at it. That is if I can find time now that I’m trying to beat the (exceptionally smart) computer. Check it out yourself.

You might as well signup for the Podcast Poker Challenge yourself.

Now I know I shouldn’t be doing this, but I wonder what will happen to this list if everyone who visits my blog clicks on this link. If anyone sees this term appear on the list, send me a screen shot

I know that’s very juvenile of me!

The 40 Year Old Virgin (2005)

This is probably one of the funniest movies I’ve seen this year. The title pretty much sums up the premise of the movie, there aren’t a whole lot of big surprises as far as the plot goes, but it’s still an enjoyable watch.

We watched the 133 minute unrated version, which while a bit too long, it had plenty of good laughs, and even had some jokes that I hadn’t seen done before. The song-and-dance ending was especially amusing.

First time I’ve noticed Steve Carell, and thought he did an excellent job.

Cool program thanks to My Heritage Happy Weekend

Update (this is too much fun!)

Stella is in Great company… mine is bit iffy :S