So...

I've been listening to podcasts - some good ones. I will blog about them soon.

Some Podcasts I Have Sampled - Two

Coolness Roundup with Stephen Schleicher and Charlie White (Charlie White of Gizmodo). For tech, gadgets, things web and computer. There is a 2 minute daily - (is it daily?) show and a longer in depther show. The last podcast I heard by them (not the most recent) covered one of the hosts' refusal to use anti-virus products (seeing no need for them, he says he doesn't use them and has no virii) and his advice on how to go anti virus free "I think their (anti virus companies) applications are fraudulent" Charlie (I think it was he) says. Another feature on that show was search tips - stuff about Google and other engine searches that you may or may not know. In the glut of tech podcasts out there I still think this is worth a listen. Not heard loads about the Mac on there though.

Jason Byrne's Just Comedy (now defunct but a small archive is available) is one of the Times' podcasts. Each episode Jason interviews a comic (the ones I have heard so far have been Robin Ince, Mark Steel, Adam Hill and Jo Caulfield), beginning talking about their latest shows and progressing to talking about whatever things get on to. Funny and interesting. Jason Byrne now does a podcast called The Knowledge Podcast which is a what's on - music, films arts, entertainment etc. with other reporters on stuff. I'm not so keen on this one. I think more of Jason's comedy and charm was in the Comedy podcast. This one gives him little room to do more than read the stories. The comedy podacast would veer off in tangents unforeseen (as he remarked in the Adam Hill interview), but no chance for such interesting and amusing meanderings in this, and I'm not all that keen on what is left. But then again I'm not all that keen on entertainment news type programmes in general. Though I'll listen to a few more episodes to give a fair go - it's not execrable.


Science Weekly (Scroll down a bit on the linked page) on Guardian Unlimited hosted by Alok Jha. Yes, another Guardian podcast and yes it's interesting and fairly brief (half an hour or so) on the latest science news and just interesting science stuff. In a Guardian stylee.

All podcasting men this post. Most podcast hosts are male, or if there are women involved they are usually as some kind of sidekick (sometimes a female sidekick is there to laugh at all the hosts jokes). Though there are exceptions - Buzz out Loud Molly Wood and Veronica Belmont: Gadgettes Molly Wood and Kelly Morrison: Media Talk on Guardian Unlimited Emilyt Bell: The Chillcast with Anji Bee (Which I'll talk about another time when I've listened to a few more episodes) - there are other Podcasts but those are the first that spring to mind. It might seem from my quick list as though there are loads, but (in my reckoning anyway) men still waaaay outnumber women in the podosphere. If there is anyone out there reading (heh heh!) please instruct me to the contrary.

On silentmiaow And then Rambling on to Me

I have been noticing people noticing silentmiaow on YouTube. I first came across her blog Ballastexistenz on a link from Autism Diva (found on Mind Hacks blog). I then found silentmiaow from a link on Boing Boing. I also found a link to an MetaFilter thing on a link from submit response blog.

So some buzz. On MetaFilter especially. Some People responding to the opening post want to defend certain ways of comprehending, processing and understanding the world, valuing only certain ways and ignoring other ways. Though it is heartening to see there are many who are willing to open up to difference and that don't want to impose their limitaions upon everyone else's experience, and their right to their experiences.
Read Life's Infinite Riches (a post at ballastexistenz) to get a feel for what "other ways of being" I am talking about.

Here is a comment in reply to Life's Infinite Riches that I agree with. Or rather I read it in a way that it would agree with the things I have noticed. Namely that: the world around you and the stuff of the things around you (I mean like media, the objects around you, the things people say and the things they do) show you what you should do with your attention and, time and thoughts, tell you what is important and unimportant. If the way you are and the things that interest you are sanctioned/encouraged by society then this is fine, but if the way you are and your interests and things that you want to pursue are not sanctioned/encouraged by society then there is a whole part of yourself that, if you aren't aware, ends up atrophying. Otherwise why are we encouraged by those who make us realise that it is possible to do certain things, for a simple e.g. Edward de Bono and his concept of lateral thinking said that it's OK to spend you time doing these things and thinking in this way. I think that rather than having invented lateral thinking he made it more acceptable. If things can be shown to be useful to business then in our society that make it worthwhile, this is what he did/does with lateral thinking - Before it might be thought of as idle daydreaming, but now it could lead to money making so now there are people having meetings coming up with kerrzaay (!) ideas as part of a process. Anyway the point is not about de Bono it is about how we take our cues and we live our lives by what everthing around us tells us. And the things that tell us so by their shape (rather than explicitly) do so more powerfully.
Anyway this post is rambling along and now is about something else. All about me again.

New Style Blogger

I have upgraded my Blogger account to newly out of beta style Blogger. So we shall see how it goes.

edit: I haven't been able to get the template editing things going... so I'll add the label categories in the siedebar by hand. Later.

Some Podcasts I Have Sampled - One

Radio Times Podcast Guide can be found here - which has some good suggestions that I am currently trying out.

On my podcast quest I have found a few more good listens -

Guardian Media - On the UK media, often the BBC's doings, on TV, on "new media" (they don't like to use that term) about the newspapers hosted by Matt Wells and Emily Bell - (Emily Bell is the head of the Guardian's Online presence - Guardian Unlimited.)

Radio One's Best of Unsigned features some good bands - well the one I've listened to so far has anyway, I feel that I should be listening to more Radio One, for all the latest - Huw Williams and Rob da Bank and all, but I'm all netlabelled up at the moment - and podcasted.

The Naked Scientists is a long podcast - around about an hour - enjoyable, mildly amusing science talk, you know the kind of thing. Off BBC Local radio I think. I likey.

I'm trying to get away from podcasts that are driven by current media monoliths, but at the moment that seems to be my bag - Guardian, BBC, The Times (I'm checking them out at the moment), O'Reilly etc. And I'm keeping a wider eye open for UK and all non-US centered podcasts and I have a ton of US leaning podcasts and I want to get a range of perspectives on life the universe and everything. Though I haven't been actively searching for certain stuff (except podcasts in French in a perhaps futile - though I don't think so - attempt to improve my French by subliminal absorption) - just podcasts in general.

Boing Boing Boing feed is here. It's the Boing Boing podcast, featuring stories from the website and featuring web people, such as 43Folders's Merlin Mann and Matt Haughey of Metafilter.

More on Podcasts when I've listened to some more - I've got abut 90 or podcasts in iTunes right now, so I'm using PlayPod (which is now free) to put other feeds into as iTunes is getting overwhelmed - as am I.

Shuffle Saver (Flickr Screensaver)

One of my favourite Flickr related Things is the Flickr screensaver Shufflesaver.

Shufflesaver allows you to view a slideshow of Flickr photos from a person (or narrow down to that person's favourite photos), or you can look for photos specifying up to three tags. You can view photos from everyone's latest photos, or from everyone's interesting photos. You can also select photos from your iPhoto collection if Flickr doesn't appeal. There are various slide tramsitions to choose from and you can set the duration for slides to stay up.

There are also options that allow you to save the current slide to a folder on your hard drive, or iPhoto, or to open the photo's page in you web browser (this doesn't disturb the screensaver, it happens in the background).
A feature I would like is the ability to get photos from pools, or from one or more of a users sets - or perhaps from various sets of various users - then it all gets a bit complex, but at leat the ability to get photos from a pool - so I could see photos from the Fruit and Veg pool, for example.

Getting Into Flickr

I have at last decided to make use of my dormant Flickr account.
Here is my page - http://www.flickr.com/photos/kcanard/.

I'm finding Flickr very interesting.
Flickrbits lists many different Flickr Apps and development tools, extensions Web Apps etc. - some that I have been looking at are
Colour Picker (Colr Pickr). It's a web App colour wheel - pick a colour and you are shown Flickr pictures which consist mainly of that colour.
Flickr Leech Is very nice indeed shows a whole page of thumbnails of various Flickr htings, Interestingness (I do wonder how Flickr interestingness is calculated, gotta find out) by person, by group name, tag etc. Sometimes a page full of like 500 thumbnails. wowee zowee.

I also like looking at the food on Flickr - lots of Japanese, Singaporean and just food, food, food out there.
There's a ton of other stuff I shall be checking out.

p.s The Camera Finder is great way of checking out what kind of pics a certain camera can take and to see what kind of pics people have been taking with the model of camera you have. They have usage and popularity graphs as well.