My 2nd of 52 magazines this year (see here for setup).

I am fairly apolitical, usually voting for “none of the above”, and I never read political rags. I knew The American Spectator was a political rag when I picked it up, wasn’t sure of the orientation tho – the lead article on the cover was about the “CIA’s Baghdad blunders” which made me think this mag might be critical of the current administration. Boy was I wrong.

Anyway, the stream of consciousness…Page 5, big ad for Ann Coulter’s latest, OK I must be in a right wing magazine…ok some funny stuff in here at times – “the Ba’athist wing of the Democratic Party”, a lot of shots at Rush, some sense of humour…very critical of the CIA in Iraq over the last several administrations (can’t find the article on the website, the website sucks)…long seemingly well-written article about tensions in Iraq between US military and civilian administrations…two-page ad for the Conservative Book Club – don’t inflict new ideas on your brain…a very ugly article by Tom Bethell suggesting that democracies would be better off if we restricted the voting franchise to the people who really understand the issues, well-educated and successful men…some nice travel points by Ben Stein – Hill’s Resort and the Edgewater in Idaho…Circulation: 46,300…some truly whacky quotes from other media – Bush similarities to Bundy, an “I Hate Bush” screech by Jonathan Chait.

Net/net – this is a weird magazine to get your head around. Some truly hateful ideas, some articles that seem more well-written, a sign of a sense of humour at times – it seems like there must be 3-4 editors that each get to push their content into the mag – kind of like the latest Outkast CD. Overall it left me feeling a little dirty though, I definitely could not read this magazine regularly. As someone outside the normal target reader market, the magazine left me feeling less sympathetic toward’s its viewpoint, not more, because at times it is so strident – which will probably be my reaction to most political rags.

Holt Uncensored :: A Candid Look at Books and the Book Industry : Publishing News : Booksellers : Bookstores : Reviews Interviews

Tong Family Blog: Easy way to price video cards and CPUs – rich finds another great site with price data.

I found Lord John and the Private Matterto be a very engaging light mystery. Decent characters for a short story, a lot of period atmosphere. I’ve not read anything else by Gabaldon, apparently this is off-genre for her and a lot of readers on Amazon aren’t thrilled with the book, but I felt it was a good yarn.

Marc’s Outlook on Productivity: Calendar Update for Outlook – cool, get your favorite teams events into Outlook. and with Outlook 2003’s ability to have overlay calendars, this is very nice to work with.

Belkin’s new Bluetooth printer adapter – at first i thought this looked cool but then looking at the connectors on it, it requires its own wallwart power connector – so you don’t get rid of a cable at all, you just trade usb for power. seems dumb. can’t it leach power off the usb connector?

Marc’s Outlook on Productivity: Fix Outlook’s Address Confusion – awesome!

Due Diligence

Hack the Planet: – The EURion constellation – hmm the new US $20s have this. And I didn’t know that Photoshop and other apps also won’t let you scan and play with currency. I guess this is good tho it is a little surprising/nervewracking that the government has its hands in software and devices without our knowledge.

Lots of discussion in the MoM group about using Christmas lighting and control gear for Halloween. Lots of good pointers – Light-o-rama control software, Dasher at the Christmas Cave, Animated Lighting for all kinds of controllers and props, a simple two-outlet fade controller. Now controlling Christmas lights is actually a bit different than Halloween – Christmas lighting is not intended to surprise, so much of the software and gear doesn’t pay attention to latency, and doesn’t have all the input/control options. But some useful stuff here anyway.

The USB server: connecting USB devices to your home network. very interesting. I wonder how it resolves ambiguities – for instance my kodak camera dock, when i hit the sync button, tells my pc to sync – which pc will get the message? analogous issue for my scanner. and then the other way around – which machine is using the hard drive now, and how do i switch the drive to a different machine?

Amazon.com: Books: The Non-Designer’s Design Book, Second Edition – good quick intro to design principles, primarily for the printed page, but a little for websites too. Not that it will help my page but still nice to know in greater depth what I am screwing up.

New Scientist – yet more evidence that eating farmed salmon is just not a great idea.

52 magazines or bust (kottke.org) – a great idea, read 52 new and diverse magazines this year, one a week, things that I wouldn’t normally read.

I was overwhelmed at the magazine rack and decided the only way to implement this was to work my way through the alphabet. Magazines starting with the letter “A” the first two weeks, and so on thru the year. So my first pick is Archaeology. Circulation 215,000; fairly well educated. My stream of consciousness on the contents…published by a 125 year old organization, not a johnny-come-lately…they also offer “Dig” magazine for kids with an archaeological bent (seems like a tough sell)…amazing copper-alloy bowl from 2nd-century Roman occupation of Britain…maybe even more amazing 1000BC conical hat from Germany, what were they thinking?…book review of a brief history of the human race, sounds good…an Erich von Daniken themepark???, holy cow…they run some cool trips…a metal detector owner is called a “detectorist”.

OK net/net, this is pop archaelogy for the college educated. A fun read, not too deep. Not sure I could read this every 2 months, there is not a ton of news in this field, but fun to pick up and look at. Completely apolitical, very little opinion content that I could find.

The Furrygoat Experience: WikiPad – looks cool but the last thing i want is a client app that locks up all its data on one of my machines. I need a real server wiki that has a great editting frontend like wikipad.