So, I'm really getting into the podcasts lately. I got myself a personal music player (one of these) in winter, and I've been using it to listen to podcasts while I run. Earideas has been a huge help in finding new podcasts to listen to. I've kind of graduated from the best of earideas feed, which covers a wide variety of podcasts, and I'm trying to dig into things that really matter to me. Three things in particular, of course: wine, parenting, and Open Source/Open Content. I've found a good number of podcasts on the first two subjects, but only a few on the last. Right now I listen to:

• the infrequent and misnomered FLOSS weekly, which isn't the same without Chris DiBona.
• LinuxCast, featuring the mellifluous tones of Don Marti
• LQ Radio, from Linux Questions.

So, what else is out there for Free, Libre, Open kinda people? Any podcast suggestions? tags: lazyweb podcast floss flossweekly linuxcast lqradio

My friend Hugh McGuire just launched a new Web site: earideas. It's a curated collection of the best podcasts on the Web -- kind of an interesting choice. Hugh's best known for the Librivox project -- a collaborative effort of thousands to make public-domain audio books freely available on the Web. He's also the leader of datalibre.ca and the co-founder of Collectik, the social sharing site for podcast enthusiasts. All of which is to say that he's a massive-collaboration kind of guy. So why the curated collection? Says Hugh, "It s built specifically so that you don t have to do anything much more than you do when you turn on a radio." In other words, they're finding the best stuff for you. I think the site makes a nice complement to Collectik. In any event: the gang at earideas has asked for lists of people's top 5 favorite podcasts. I'm still not very much into the podcasting thing; I don't have a portable digital music player, and I haven't found listening to music on my laptop or desktop really useful. But I do listen some of the time, so I figure I could give my suggestions.

1. Linuxcast by the personable and telegenic Don Marti. Great coverage of software and society in the Free world.
2. FLOSS Weekly. The "weekly" part is a bit of a stretch, but this is a very good interview show about Free/Libre/Open Source Software. I miss Chris DiBona as host, but Randall Schwartz is no slouch, either.
3. Destinyland. Destiny is perhaps one of the greatest pop culture researchers alive today. This very occasional podcast is just like having Destiny corner you at a party and talk for 90 minutes about the suspicious circumstances of Alfalfa's death. It's fascinating.
4. CBC Radio 3 Podcast. Yeah, it may make me terribly unhip, but I like Radio 3.
5. Radio Open Source. I want to hate this show for capitalizing on the name "open source" without actually providing any open content or talking about Free Software. But it's one of the best shows on the Web.

All right, that's my five. Good luck, Hugh and the rest of the gang at earideas.com. tags: earideas hughmcguire podcasts publicradio

Million-dollar idea So, I use a Logitech Trackman Marble for my desktop computer -- sometimes called the one true pointing device. I think it's awesome, and I've had it for maybe 10 years. The only downside is that every 6-8 weeks I have to pop off the cover and clean out all the finger oils, dust, hand hair and cookie crumbs that have amalgamated to a greasy, fuzzy crud inside. It may be one of the most disgusting things I do regularly -- and remember, I have a 2-year-old, so that's saying something. Anyways, here's my idea for a device, free for you to use. It's a self-cleaning trackball (or mouse). Just like a self-cleaning oven, every few weeks you'd click a special button on the device and it would heat itself to 800 F for about 90 minutes until the dang thing is just glowing white-hot and it vaporizes any crud that may be inside. Then, you can go about your business with a smooth, clean mouse (or trackball) again. Viola! I think the idea would work for keyboards, too, but I really rarely clean my keyboard. Filthy keyboards seem to work fine most of the time, and when they don't work well you can just throw them away and get a new one. But there's no accounting for taste and anyways people may want to buy a matching set of self-cleaning keyboard and mouse rather than just one or the other on its own. You, reader, can use this awesome million-dollar idea on your own, free of charge. Enjoy! tags: keyboard mouse trackball selfcleaning productrecall $1midea

It's a beautiful day here in wt:Los Altos Hills, wt:California, where my parents live. It's been unseasonably warm this week, ever since we hit the ground on Thursday, and we've been enjoying the warm weather to the fullest. Amita June is storing up vitamin D (a precious commodity in the Canadian north) for use during the rest of the autumn and winter. We had an early flight into wt:San Francisco from Montreal on Thursday. There's only one direct flight from Trudeau airport to SFO on Air Canada per day, and it takes off at 8:30AM. Maj is pretty convinced that we need to take direct flights with no stops while we have the baby; I'm mixed on the issue. I think a break every 2-3 hours makes it easier on all of us -- everybody gets some exercise and a little change of scenery. But Maj wisely points out that the takeoff and landing is the hardest part of flying with a little one, so direct flights minimize those. I dunno. Anyways, the 6 hour flight was uneventful, except for people coming up to us to comment on how good our baby is. The movie was "Click", which as I've mentioned before is the worst movie of 2006 bar none. It was pretty disappointing to see it come on -- I like watching movies on the plane. It was bright and sunny at SFO when we landed, and my mom met us at the baggage claim. We had a bit of a struggle getting out to the short-term parking -- for some reason the elevator queue at SFO is out of control; probably all the people loading and unloading luggage from the elevator. In any event, they now have elevator attendants and structured lines to make sure things go in an orderly, if slow, fashion. Back at the house, we had a late lunch of tuna salad and then Maj, Amita June and I did a big group nap. My mom had set up a toddler bed for AJ, and she's been sleeping in it since we got her. I think she's just turning the corner where having a little more space in the bed for herself is more important than nursing all night. Which I think is better for all three of us. Thursday night my dad came home from work in wt:Morgan Hill and we had take-out burritos with my parents, my sister-in-law Pam and Amita's two cousins Elena (3) and Tessa (10 months). The three girls got along like gang-busters; Elena seems to like being the older sister showing the younger girls what to do. tags: california travel los altos hills amitajune elena tessa

Jagi's Birthday Party Friday night we went up to the City for my brother Nate's annual Halloween party. Nate lives on a precipitous incline in North Beach, the Italian-Beatnik section in the northeast of San Francisco with steep hills, great caf s and a significant dearth of parking. We managed to get Amita June down to bed for the night, gave her grandparents far more instructions than were actually needed, and then sped off into the night. We were running late, but we stopped on the way to pick up Maj's brother Brian, who lives in Noe Valley. It was the first time we'd seen his new apartment and we probably took longer than necessary there, but we finally got off towards North Beach around 7:30PM. And... we drove and drove. Every street I drove down was packed, and I kept doing U-turns and trying alternate routes to get where we were going. Finally, on Van Ness Avenue at California Street, we got stuck in a gridlock that wouldn't move at all. Friday nights are pretty bad for traffic in San Francisco, but at this point we sat through 5 red-and-green light cycles without any motion whatsoever. Unable to turn, unable to go forward, unable to go back. When traffic finally started moving again, we saw what the problem was: the last dregs of the Critical Mass rally were just passing through. Critical Mass is a bike rally that happens on the last Friday of each month in San Francisco and elsewhere; hundreds of bike riders take over streets and block traffic. It's really fun if you're riding; it's infuriating if you're driving. We drove down further on Van Ness to go through the Broadway Tunnel into North Beach, but it was blocked by... Critical Mass! They'd turned about and come to block our way again. This time, I was able to do a U-turn and get over to Nate's house through side streets. We had a good time at the party itself. Nate and his roommates have been having a Halloween party for years, but increased size and complaints from landlord and neighbors have made them move the party to a nearby bar, Woody Zip's. With two stories, two bars and a dance floor, it was just about the right size for their event. Nate was dressed up as Buzz Lightyear from "Toy Story"; Brian had a huge fat suit and a sumo-wrestler outfit. Maj and I were millionaires, with tiaras and top-hats. We all looked pretty good. Woody Zip's even let the guys bring their own Jagermeister machine, affectionately known as "Jagi". They got the machine for one of their Halloween parties a few years ago, and they've made special costumes for it each year (this year: Spongebob Squarepants). We had a shot of Jager and toasted the machine's maturity, then moved on to karaoke and dancing. But only for a while; by 10PM we had to start heading home. We worried quite a bit about Amita June, but when we got back she was asleep in the arms of her Pappou in the TV room. The "parent curfew" is a little hard to deal with, but on the bright side it makes sure you can find babysitters so you can go out in the future. tags: halloween nate north beach party jagermeister san francisco

Baby Circus Last night we went to visit our friends Zach and Wendy in wt:El Cerrito, in the East Bay. Zach and Wendy have been our friends for... oh, more than 10 years now, I guess. They had a handsome little cowboy son two years ago, on the same weekend as my bachelor party in wt:Las Vegas (making it easy to remember his birthday... better than I remember that weekend, is for sure). They have a nice house just near the BART station, with lots of room... although about 2/3 of it is taken up with Wyatt's toys. Wendy is a Web developer for Nolo Press, the do-it-yourself law book publisher. Zach is a hard-working computer genius, one of my favorite people to work with, but he's hung up his spurs to be a full-time stay-at-home dad and go back to school. We had dinner at the Kensington Circus Pub, just up the hill from Wendy and Zach's house. It was a great place; an English-style pub with Fuller's ESB on tap, and a kids' play area underneath the dartboard. Amita June and Wyatt ran around playing while we had fish-and-chips and burgers. It's a great recipe for getting young parents to come to your restaurant; I wish more places would use it. We spent the rest of the night talking about wikis and web sites and all the opportunities there are available to share information in creative ways. We dragged home after Wyatt's bedtime, and Amita fell asleep in the car on the way back home. Greatest thing in the world! tags: zach wendy wyatt el cerrito kensington circus pub

I learn fire I had drinks with Hugh McGuire, founder of Librivox, at La ka on St. Laurent last Wednesday. It was a real good time -- Hugh has had similar experiences "leading" that public domain audiobook project that Maj and I have had with Wikitravel. Another project he's working on Collectik.net, an interesting tool for sorting and organizing podcast streams. I have to admit that I've been skipping the podcast wave -- much like I skipped blogging before it -- and I don't listen to a lot of podcasts. But Hugh got me interested, and now I'm looking around at it. I find there are a lot of interesting tools for podcast catching for Linux; even Rhythmbox, the Gnome music player, can handle podcasts. I'm finding it interesting to listen to them; DestinyLand and Chris DiBona's FLOSS TV are both interesting, as well as the CBC podcasts. I haven't figured out how to listen to Vu d'ici, though -- m-c doesn't seem to have an RSS feed with just the podcasts in it. Or am I missing something? tags: podcast destinyland flosstv vudici rhythmbox librivox collectik laika hugh macguire