Lee.org

Last year there was a new Babylon 5 movie/show, “Babylon 5: The Lost Tales”. Charlotte and I saw it last month on Netflix and we quite liked it. It got poor reviews on IMDB and Netflix but we both agreed it was probably because people’s reminiscence of the original series. Everything is better in retrospect…

My friend Will and the rest of Meerkat Manor made this. It’s pretty fun.. I dig Sweded movies :-)

local version:

Jon’s blog pointed out 9 Beet Stretch. It’s Ludwig van Beethoven’s ninth symphony stretched to 24 hours, without pitch distortion. The podcast is nice music to hardly listen to. :-)

I saw Being There with Peter Sellers the other night. I loved it absolutely. We all live in our own private world, don’t we?

Books? Feh!

The nation’s accountant and head of the Government Accountability Office, David Walker gave a speech at the National Press Club December 17th, 2007. It’s a very good speech. His news isn’t good. Here is the speech. Listen to the whole thing.

Here is the text of this speech.

I had found this speech via a Word for Word podcast. I see that David Walker and the GAO has a large archive of speeches. I’ll get to listening to them!

Breaking the Spell by Daniel Dennet – I swear, I’ll never get through this book

The New How Things Work by David Macaulay – Fun bedtime reading

Farm Show Magazine – I love it!

Listening to lots of podcasts… The Sound of Young America from PRI is surprisingly good. It took a little bit to get past the knee-jerk reaction that it’s trying too hard to be the sound of young America.

Marnia asked me to sign up for GoodReads.com. A while back, Jen asked me to sign up for…. umm something like “Book Exchange”. I’m sure they are both wonderful sites. But such sites come and go. I like to keep my commentary in one place. Hence, this post starts the “What I’m Reading” Category in my blog. Check in on this Category every now and then. Offer up a comment. Point me to your own Reading List.

Find out what I’m reading at http://lee.org/blog/category/reading-watching-listening/

All manner of solar books including (and all from the San Francisco Public Library)

• Got Sun? Go Solar! by Rex A Ewing and Doug Pratt. Excellent book. Practical. Covers the generalities very well.
• The Easy Guide to Solar Electric by Adi Pieper. It’s quite entertaining. More entertaining than educational but that can be a good thing; it makes it an easy read.
• The Passive Solar House by James Kachadorian. I’ve only just gotten started on this.
• Solar Revolution: The Economic Transformation of the Global Energy Industry by Travis Bradford – I dunno. My first impression is that it’s a little too… hand-wavy
• The Solar House: Passive Heating and Cooling by Daniel Chiras, PhD – good stuff. Now if I can only finish it.
• The Passive Solar House: Using Solar Design to Heat & Cool Your Home by James Kachadorian. I’ve barely cracked the cover yet. Looks good though.
• The Idiot’s Guide to Solar Power for Your Home by Dan Ramsey. Very good. Now if I can only finish it. (on page 132)
• The Easy Guide to Solar Electric by Adi Pieper – Very good. Now if I can only finish it. (on p 95)
• The Easy Guide to Solar Electric: Part II – Installation Manual by Adi Pieper. Very good. Now if I can only finish it. (on p 35)

Freakonomics – Very Good. Audiobook. It’s just as “useful” as Blink and The Tipping Point but I don’t like hearing this author read quite as much as I like Malcolm reading.

The Omnivore’s Dilemma – Excellent. Audiobook.

Blink by Malcolm Gladwell – Excellent. Audiobook.

The Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell – Excellent. Audiobook.

Vehicles: Experiments in Synthetic Psychology by Valentino Braitenberg- A really good “autonomous robot” book. I haven’t had time to get into it too much lately. But I will eventually!

Soon I Will Be Invincible by Austin Grossman – (Audiobook) A very fun to read/listen to story!

I listen to podcasts on my way to and from work. I hardly listen to the radio at all any more. Here are the podcasts on my Juice podcast downloader.

I’ve placed a * next to the shows I love the most

• *[RSS] Dr Karl on triple j
• [RSS] Security Now!
• [RSS] NPR: Science Friday
• [RSS] IT Conversations
• [RSS] On The Media
• [RSS] PRI: Whad’Ya Know? – All the News that Isn’t
• [RSS] NPR: Sunday Puzzle
• [RSS] NPR: Health & Science
• [RSS] NPR: 7PM ET News Summary
• [RSS] NPR: Most E-Mailed Stories
• [RSS] NPR: Story of the Day
• [RSS] PRI: To the Best of Our Knowledge
• [RSS] APM: Future Tense
• *[RSS] Best Of Decoder Ring Theatre
• [RSS] Audio Dharma
• [RSS] WGBH Morning Stories
• [RSS] CBC Radio: Quirks & Quarks Segmented Show
• [RSS] The Space Show
• [RSS] Diggnation (Mp3)
• *[RSS] Daily Breakfast – The #1 Catholic Podcast – yes, a “catholic podcast” is on my Favs list
• [RSS] The Wizards of Technology –
• [RSS] this WEEK in TECH – MP3 Edition
• [RSS] Distorted View: Daily Comedy Podcast
• [RSS] Reel Reviews Radio
• [RSS] Skepticality: The Official Podcast of Skeptic Maga
• *[RSS] Penn Radio Podcast – discontinued :-(
• [RSS] Mysterious Universe
• [RSS] KATG Backstage
• [RSS] Talking Robots – The Podcast on Robotics and Artificial Intelligence
• *[RSS] Phedippidations – I’ve only caught a few shows so far but -wow- it’s inspiring!
• [RSS] PotterCast: The Harry Potter Podcast

I’m starting to listen to more shows on SQPN. Father Roderick really has something going there!

How I play them:

1. download my shows with Juice
2. move 650 mb of .mp3 audio into a folder
3. burn that folder
4. play it on my .mp3 capable car stereo