Number 2 playing Coldplay

Goodreads.com

I've been using Goodreads.com (recommended by a friend) since Jan. 2008 and I have to say that it has become one of my favorite Web sites. Joining is free, which is always good, and it was named as one of the Top Ten Web sites by Time.com this past Dec.

Goodreads.com is used to catalog books that you have read, want to read and currently reading. You can RSS feed your books, invite friends to join and see what they have read and recommend books to each other. In addition, exploring what other Goodreads community member has read, write/read reviews is easy. Other features allow you to tag your books, they call this shelves, such as memoirs, fiction, graphic novel, and sci-fi. I've been looking for something like this for a long, long time. I remember thinking about how I can catalog books that I have read and want to read...hmmmm, paper, spreadsheet, database, jotting in down on my Palm...you get the point. Goodreads.com is perfect for me.

More about corn ethanol evils

Time magazine has an article about the effect of our increasing reliance on corn ethanol. The article states "corn ethanol, always environmentally suspect, turns out to be environmentally disastrous...and jacking up world food prices."

Portable Applications

I recently tried out portable Firefox for the first time in over a year. Portable Firefox lets me run an instance of the Firefox browser on a USB drive and does not require it to be installed on a PC. In addition, once you close the application, it should leave no trace (remove history file and other temp. data) on the host PC. Wikipedia has a nice little intro as well as a list of portable software. You can also go to go over to portableapps.com to learn more about the portable applications as well make a donation. I was quite impress with the number of software applications that are now available...I wrote this entry using AbiWord one of the Office related products.

Applications are broken into these categories:

• Accessibility
• Development
• Games
• Graphics
• Internet
• Music and video
• Office
• Operating Systems
• Utilities

Short list of available portable applications :

• Firefox
• PuTTY
• FileZilla
• Sumatra PDF viewer
• OpenOffice
• Giam
• GIMP
• Opera
  

Music social network

Read a recent usatoday article about musical artists trying to reach their audience thru on-line social networks such as iLike.com, mog.com and Last.fm. I've not tried these sites but I think I may give these sites a try sometime soon. I am always looking for new music and found that music.download.com is a great site to explore, listen and download mp3s. Also, Amazon has dozens, albeit difficult to find, of free DRM-free mp3s for downloading as well. A list of artist that i have downloaded from Amazon.com:

• Catherine Russsell
• The Whitsundays
• The Bigger Lovers
• Lisa Loeb
• Bob Mould
• Justin Towns Earle
• Thrice

Recent article about Amazon's DRM-free mp3s as it takes on iTunes for music download supremacy.

Jericho canceled

I do not watch a lot of weekly TV shows but Jericho was one of my favorites. Sadly it was recently canceled by CBS...what bummer.

Power meter

I've been thinking about getting one of these power usage/monitor gadget to get a better of idea of how much power certain devices such as my hand-me-down Tivo, cordless phones, desk fan, recharging iPods and cell phones,...uses. Read this review of a gadget called the Kill-a-Watt electric usage monitor that may do the trick. An up-to-date review of Kill-a-Watt.

Robins...

Spring MUST be around the corner as I saw close to 2 dozen Robins in our backyard this weekend! Also, I saw for the first time, from our deck, a male Northern Cardinal feeding a female Northern Cardinal.

Cold

Hi - Lo temperature from last 4 days...Not only is it cold but the wind makes it that much more miserable. I am so looking forward to spring and summer. This cold weather is getting old...

18°F 0°F
12°F -8°F
19°F 5°F
30°F 11°F

I won!

That is free tickets to my first Wild game at the 'X' as it is affectionately known as. The arena is really nice with lots of concession stands to spend gobs of money on food and souvenir. Our seat were located towards the top of th arena with a steep view of the ice sheet...Sadly the Wild lost , BUT during the first intermission I was able to shoot a puck into the goal and won a furniture gift certificate.