Wasted Continuum

Today, I met Mignon Fogarty, one of my favorite podcasters. She is more commonly known as Grammar Girl in which she does a podcasts that gives a grammar tip in a fun and informative manner in every episode. I was introduced to her work on Absolute Science, her podcast about science. Being complete nerd when it comes to science, I quickly digested all the past episodes. Sadly, at the time that I started listening to Absolute Science was also when the show was nearing its end. Because I loved that podcast so much I wanted to give Grammar Girl a try too. Not surprisingly, I was hooked on it rather quickly.

Continue Reading »

Veronica Belmont has officially joined Revision3. Having recently announcing that she’s leaving Mahalo Daily, she will be co-hosting Tekzilla with Patrick Norton. I guess this is a cool move. I already watch Tekzilla so seeing Veronica on it is a plus. She’s already done several guest co-hosting since Jessica Corbin left the show. I’m going to miss seeing Veronica on Mahalo Daily though. I really liked the feel of those shows a lot. Tekzilla is definitely more traditionally structured like a TV show. I know she says that there’s a lot of talented people working at Mahalo, but I just don’t think it’s the same without Veronica.

VeronicaBelmont.com
Tekzilla
Revision3
Mahalo Daily

As everyone knows by now, Apple is going to have their big event on September 5th. Everyone has their predictions. ThinkSecret seems pretty sure about what will go down. I think I’m just believing what I want to believe. All I want is a widescreen iPod with a touchscreen, OS X and a hard drive. No flash drives! 16GB is just not enough for me. I want to be able to stuff a good 40-60GB of music, plus 5 or 6 movies and photos. On top of all that, I want to be able to fill up with video podcasts. I can finally watch the two hottest podcasters, Morgan Webb and Lindsay Campbell, on my lunch break or wherever I want.

So it’s one hour and thirteen minutes into the last day of 2006. I couldn’t say goodbye to it any quicker. It’s been a long, long year for me and I’m looking forward to the new year. I’m gonna make it a good one. As always, this is a time when we all reflect on the year passing. For me, it’s been a bit of a eventful (for better or worse) 365 days for me. Ok, not all 365 days were eventful, but quite a few were. Here are my milestones of 2006 in a semi-quasi chronological order:

• Jan – Accepted a full-time position as a web designer/developer.
• Feb 12 – Turned a year older (personally not very momentous, but it’s here by default).
• Feb 15 – My niece was born (tried to steal my birthday, but missed by a few days).
• Feb 15 (later that night) – Called up Marie to tell her the news. She, in return, tells me that she’s moving to Michigan. Awkward conversation ensues for the next two hours.
• Late Feb – Mai tells me she’s moving to San Francisco to study fashion design.
• Mar 1 – Got my first DSLR (Canon Rebel XT).
• Mar 4 – Helped Marie move out of her apartment. Had a lovely dinner with Marie and her mom.
• Mid Mar – Met the lovely Star. Watched V for Vendetta on the Ultra-Screen.
• Late Mar – Helped Mai leave for San Fran.
• Apr 7 – Drove down to KC with family.
• Jun 4 – Bought a JM Custom Strat from Guitar Center when all I went in there for were new strings.
• Jul 1 – Took first photo trek with the Canon. Star came as my photo buddy. Practice shoot with fireworks.
• Jul 4 – First real photo shoot with July 4th fireworks.
• Jul 6 – Bought my GTI.
• Jul 22 – Mai returned for her god-brother’s wedding.
• Aug 11 – Marie returns for vacation. Spend an amazing day with her. Told her how I felt at the end of the night. Everything implodes. Friendship slowly dissolves.
• Aug 25 – I fly out to SF to see Mai for her birthday. Stayed at the Hilton. Had the quickest tour of SF ever.
• Oct 6 – Watched Ben Kweller at First Ave.
• Oct 14 – Watched Shannon Curfman at Bunker’s with Ms. Linh – her first real concert.
• Mid Oct – Realized that I have a subconscious obsession with the character Rory Gilmore, not Alexis Bledel.
• Oct 21 – Watched David Sedaris at the Orpheum Theater again with Ms. Linh. She is now a fan of his.
• Oct 24 – The last time I hear anything from Ms. Marie.
• Oct 29 – Watched the Foo Fighters open for Bob Dylan at the Xcel with Ms. Linh.
• Nov 4 – The first time I listened to Mignon Fogarty’s podcast, Absolute Science. Reanimates my podcast interest.
• Nov 5 – My concert weekend streak officially ends.
• Nov 10 – Watched Roger’s band play at Half-Time Rec with Debbie.
• Nov 20 – Saw a girl at Caribou that looked exactly like Rory Gilmore who is now referred to as Ror-a-like.
• Dec 15 – Watched Shannon Curfman at Shaw’s Bar & Grill with Star – her first blues rock concert.
• Mid Dec – Saw a girl at Caribou who kind of resembled Rory. Now there may be two Ror-a-likes or this is the original Ror-a-like and she didn’t really look like Rory in the first place.
• Dec 24 – Took a photo trek to Rice Park to capture the giant Christmas tree.
• Dec 28 – Drove down to Sioux Falls to meet Mai at her family’s place.
• Dec 30 – Mai and I drive back to beautiful Minnesota to spend New Year’s here together.

Well, that’s my list. I think everyone should of made one of these lists in one fashion or another. See you all on the other side.

Ok, I guess I’ve been busy with life lately. Haven’t really had any time to write. I went to a handful of shows these last several weeks and it has left me inspired to write. This is most likely a direct result of going to a lecture by one of my favorite authors, David Sedaris. The guy is awesome. I feel like I should start writing again. I don’t even know what I want to write, but I think it would help if I just get into the habit of it again. I guess I’m starting here with my blog. That was the whole purpose of this project. My only goal for this site is to force myself to spend a few moments a day to reflect on what is going on in my life and in the world around me.

For the last two months, I have been throwing myself into my work. This really is only ten percent by choice, ninety percent because we are insanely busy right now. On the bright side, I’ve been getting a lot of experience working with CSS. I finally made my first CSS-based, table-less website last week. It turned out pretty sweet. I only had a few bumps along the way, but I got them fixed. After making that site. I think I might redesign this site a little. I’m not really digging it right now even though it’s not really done yet.
So I haven’t really jumped on the whole podcasting wagon mostly because when it first came out, I really didn’t find any good ones available. I ended up just listening to iTunes radio off and on. I started listening to a podcast show called American Cliche that’s streamed over iTunes radio. It’s a weekly show that really doesn’t have any particular focus. Is just a guy who talks about interesting news and random stuff in his life. He’s funny, so I listen to it at work. During this week’s episode he mentioned a fellow podcaster, Mignon Fogarty, who has two shows, Absolute Science and Grammar Girl. I immediately got this week’s episodes of both shows as soon as American Cliche ended. I just have to say, I was enraptured by them. This inevitably resulted in a massive search for other quality podcasts. I felt like I missed out on so much. After killing a solid two hours on the net, I found enough podcasts to keep me intellectually occupied every week. This is the current list that I’m currently subscribed to and recommend to anyone:

• American Cliche
• Absolute Science
• Grammar Girl
• DaneCAST (Podcast by Dane Cook)
• This American Life
• Urban Coffee

There are more that I’m going to try out this week, but those are a very good start. I am so excite about this right now. I have been so disappointed by radio these last five years or so that I rarely ever listen to it. It’s just mind-numbing how shallow broadcast radio is nowadays. I am so glad I have found my solution. It’s sad though. I am such a technology freak and yet it takes me this long before I adopt a technology that’s been buzzing for a long time now. So I do recommend that list to everyone and I’ll be figuring out my official favorite list of podcasts in the next few weeks. All this talk about podcasts makes me wish the widescreen iPod is coming sooner. I’m still thinking it’ll be released around Thanksgiving just in time for Christmas.