From Frank, pseudorandom: Vancouver Highlights. Very helpful list from insiders. We love Vancouver and try to get there at least once a year for a visit.

On the road this week, got a lot of reading done.  Micro reviews here.

Seabiscuit.  Didn’t expect to like. But great story red pollard and seabiscuit. These characters will stick with me for a while – unusual for a nonfiction book.  This is a keeper for the bookshelf.  Now I have to see the movie.

The Eyre Affair.  Fun, fun, fun.  I was immediately compelled to order the next books featuring Thursday Next.  As one of the blurbs says, “Part Bridget Jones, part Nancy Drew, part Dirty Harry.”  Also a keeper for the bookshelf.

Ice Limit.  Throwaway action fiction.  I can’t even remember the characters or main plot points 4 days later.  Something about a hunt for a meteorite that turns out to be bad.  Lots of people die.  The main character lives.  I left this book at the hotel, not worth the bookshelf space.

Quantum Psychology.  Enjoyable.  The first half is a little self-evident if you have tried to grok quantum physics and G?del at any point in your life but still worth reading and reflecting upon – the uncertainty, duality, and relativity that occurs at the quantum level, occurs at the higher level of human consciousness as well.  The last third of the book wanders into incomprehensibility but can any human ever make another human comprehend these ideas, when by definition they are so wrapped up in the viewpoint of the observer?

Black Cross.  Much better action fiction than Ice Limit.  Of course it helps that it has Nazis as the bad guys.  The moral evolution of the two characters as they wander deeper into the situation is compelling and is what sets this book apart from your standard action fiction.

Using WINKsite: Moblogging, Mobile Communities, Mobile Site Builder, npw I have a wap variant of my rss feed – man my readership is going to go thru the roof now.

Looking at PC-connected mixers as a way to augment my KVM based on a suggestion from a reader. Hercules DJ Console USB DJ/Audio Interface for PC – this will let me mix the output from one PC (acting as a usb sound card) with (it looks like) an spdif output from another pc. I can’t totally tell from the specs but software like PCDJ may do this all in software – route the audio output from one pc to the capture interface of the other, and then mix on the pc. Of course at a CPU load cost. I am sure some of these other mixers have some remote interface tho it is hard to sort thru them all.

pseudorandom: Flickr Launches – always good to see a Pacific Northwest startup making good progress. Congrats!

It is details like this, repeated over and over again in the codebase, that have so entrenched Windows – Sure, we do that

quickSub looks like a cool little widget to automate feed subscription, as well as this little yahoo widget. On my todo list for my site.

BeyondVC: Want to be your own long distance player? – Not clear that I want to be a LD provider, a crappy business (because of these economics), but interesting.

Another great utility from Rich – Tong Family Blog: SpeedFan – the guy has way too much time on his hands.

Adrian has kicked some serious butt and gotten up a weather station for the Lake Union Crew Club – Weather Page. He’s even created a wap page for the camera – http://www.theludwigs.com/smithsandbox/weather/test.wml – my gosh why doesn’t every webcam have this? Now I can walk around and look at Lake Union from my phone or bberry. Adrian is one handy guy.

Rich has dug up a lot of good stuff on power supplies – most interesting the correlation between power draw and pc stability – Tong Family Blog: Power Supply Checks… – I need to check my machines out!

Moved from yahoo groups to Methodz of Madness Forum – discussion of halloween prop building

OK it is not Hyperion but Ilium is a darn good book. I finished it in about 3 days, engrossing. I know absolutely no Proust, and not enough classic Greek literature or Shakespeare, but I still found this book engrossing and am dying for the follow-on volume. But if you have never read Simmons before, go read Hyperion first; the Shrike has stuck with me the way few characters (or whatever) have.

The Seattle Times: Sports – interesting look at the budgets of the Pac-10 athletic departments. UW at $45M, no one over $50M in the conference. Last I heard, Ohio State’s budget was on the order of $80M, and I am sure that a lot of other Big-10 and SEC schools are in this range, given stadium sizes at these schools (a primary driver of revenue). Over time it is going to be tough to keep up with programs that can substantially outspend you on facilities and staff.

Marginal Revolution: If you could only learn five things……an interesting question. Calculus is on my list. But I’d have to put Physics in, probably in place of statistics. I’d drop programming and put in an Arts choice – creative studio work, performing arts ok too. I’d probably just go with one piece of great literature, probably Shakespeare. And now I guess I’d add microeconomics as my fifth. Very tough to choose tho.