Freyburg

Delicious Library is a super cool program that lets you scan all your media into a library with your iSight, then goes out to Amazon and gathers up all the relevant data. It’s great for tracking who you’ve lent books to, selling books on Amazon and just because it’s fun to play with if you’re a book nerd. This interview with Delicious Monster co-founder Wil Shipley is long but worth the read. It covers a pile of really interesting topics, as well as giving insights into the shaping of Delicious Library.

Incidentally, the other co-founder just quit the company and is toodling off to Apple to design interfaces. Cool.

I’m reasonably certain very few (if any) of my readers reside in New York City, but these timely tips for pissing people off on the subway can be applied in pretty much any rapid transit situation. Which leaves Edmonton out; that there be some SLOW transit. 🙂

This “Hollywood sucks and here’s why” thing just keeps going, though quite frankly I’m not sure the movies are any worse than the usual crop of crap. In fact, if you’re into the nerdy stuff, the last few years have been stupendous, what with X-Men, the Spiderman films, ROTS and of course the triumph of the Lord of the Rings (and let’s not forget the upcoming Superman movie, which actually looks pretty promising).

I’d agree with critics that films for adults with something more complicated than “and then the car explodes” are few and far between, but it’s like the stock market. Sooner or later it’ll correct itself, or we’ll all end up watching Bollywood dance extravaganzas.

At any rate, here’s a decent interview with film expert David Thompson with his take on the current slump.

Sorry for the multi-day absence, everyone. MY site got moved from one server to another, and in the process something got messed up, so I couldn’t log in and post anything. But it’s all fixed now, so expect a fair bit in the way of posts and linkery soon to make up for lost time.

I’ve only watched a couple of episodes, but the new Battlestar Galactica is indeed one of the best written shows on TV. It’s nice to see that a new bunch of writers have taken a bunch of cheeseball cliches, extracted what worked and made it into a new and provocative series. Much like the new Doctor Who, except for the fact that the original series was perfect in every way. 🙂

At any rate, the point of all this meandering drivel is that the New York Times Magazine has a long and interesting article about BSG.

The “Hollywood is dying” meme seems to be picking up steam, though I personally think it may be more of a temporary bout of the blahs, like the period in the Seventies before Jaws and Star Wars, I could very well be wrong. This guy does a fairly credible job of summing up the current malaise.

Nokia has a new phone without a keypad, aimed at the high-fashion set. Apparently looking good trumps any attempt at functionality, as this review on Mobileburn elucidates.

The CBC has an interview with special effects pioneer and all-around genius Ray Harryhausen. He makes a good point that for all the razzle-dazzle of current computer-generated effects, you just can’t beat the charm of the stop-motion undead.

Daniel Schorr, NPR‘s senior news analyst, lays out why Karl Rove’s nefarious underhandedness are less about politics and more about a war based on lies.

You’ll need either Realplayer or the Windows Media Player to listen to the piece.

Here’s an interesting review of a book called “The Very Small Home,” all about how the Japanese maximize space in the sometimes miniscule confines of their apartments. Since I’m currently living in a small studio in the West End (though nowhere near as tiny as a higher-end Japanese apartment, as I saw on my last trip to Tokyo in 2003), I’m pretty interested in finding ways to make my tiny living pod ever more livable.