Internet

I still love the Internet. I still marvel at it brilliance. I'm still in awe at how it has affected my life. Remembering Before Internet, the world seemed so much harder, things were difficult to find out, you needed sets of encyclopedia, huge books of "stuff you oughta know" things like that.

Oh, the amount I've managed to teach myself on the web and how easy it is to get hold of stuff that I never could have got my beak on Before Internet.

If you wanted to read French newspapers, or listen to Spanish radio you had to do a lot more than do a few searches.

Amazing new ways to perceive and interact with the world, yourself, your friends.

I'm still in love and in awe.

On Podcast Overload

I've been listening to and watching podcasts. I am being overwhelmed by podcasts. The iTunes podcast list is dizzying and is actually quite upsetting. There's so much stuff I have yet to listen to that I don't want to delete, but I don't want to immediately listen either. It's the podcast equivalent of bacn. There's about 220 feeds in iTunes right now. Some casts I want to mention here but the thought fills me with exhaustion. I've been checking out some ABC podcasts (Australian Broadcasting Corp.) and CBC podcasts, also the BBC is podcasting a few more programmes like the excellent Thinking Allowed (sociology, culture etc.) and their travel programme Excess Baggage. Find BBC podcasts info here.

There are many food and cooking casts out there, many of them video podcasts. Reading recipes is a lot more daunting than watching food being prepared and cooked - "They make it look so easy" 'n' all that. Also lots of tech/gadget video podcasts and how tos.

Too many gigabytes taken up with these things. I'm beginning to fear them.

Some Podcasts I Have Sampled - Eight

Munchcast - one of the newer TWIT podcast devoted to junk food (or as they call it "geek food"). Very interesting, my favourite episodes so far are the ones on ice cream (Ice Cream, You Scream!) and the episode at Powell's Sweet Shoppe. They go into all variations on the foods they discuss and revel in the sugary fattiness of the foods the cover. It's an somewhat ambivalent revelling though, proud to eat junk but with an apologetic air. The Powell's Sweet Shoppe visit was preceded by Cammy Blackstone (the host along with Leo Laporte) telling us that she was eating a beet salad before she went on her sugar trip. The shop sounds like some kind of candy wonderland. I'm liking listening.

New York Times Video: Style | Dining & Wine is a Videocast usually featuring the New York Times columnist Mark Bittman who likes simple food. In one episode he says that he keeps telling people don't cook food, just eat it. But obviously there is cooking involved in these casts, but it's not elaborate, so I likey. Some of the outdoor cooking is done on a kind of terrace in front of a luscious green park/cemetery. Mark has a fairly deadpan humourous delivery which I appreciate. The link to the site I above seems only to work in some of my browsers, I'm not sure why, you can look for the cast on iTunes. The page on the website offers more videos than the RSS feed I'm subscribed to.


Frequencycast is a podcast on things digital media in the UK. They discuss things like Freeview, Sky Plus, BT Home Hub, DAB and things of that sort, though they are starting to diversify into other areas of tech. I'm not keen on the in-podcast banter the hosts do, but it's worth listening as it's a fountain of valuable information. New or changed digital TV channels? Find out here, I only wish the podcast was more frequent as the show is very interesting if you're into UK digital media.

Lumix DMCFZ5

Lumix DMCFZ5
Originally uploaded by KCanard.

Here is a photo, an example of my new camera, from Flickr. Photo is of my old camera, the Lumix.

Added del.icio.us cloud

At the bottom of the blog page there. Oh, I bought that Olympus camera I wrote about before, am very pleased with it. How does a duck use a camera? aaah-haa this is a secret.

I'm Trying out Flock

Flock the social Web, Firefox based browser again, so far so nice. I am posting this from Flock. It has integrated Photo, Video, blog type things. I'm seeing what it can do. I like the media stream that can display photos, videos etc. in a row along the top of the browser.

Olympus E-510

I'm getting quite excited about the Olympus E-510, after reading some reviews I'm considering buying it.




It is fairly small for an SLR, it's got a moderately usefully "Live view" that allows you to use the LCD screen as a viewfider if you want. There's a lens kit with two good lenses (so I've read).
a 14-42mm f3.5-5.6 ED Zuiko Digital Lens
and a 40-150mm f3.4-4.5 ED Zuiko Digital Lens
it also has dust removal thing and image stabilisation. The vibes are telling me to go for the Olympus E-510 rather than the Canon Digital Rebel XTi (or whatever name they're giving it in the UK) or the Nikon D40 or 80.

So I'm reading all about it like here and here and here. And deciding.