spilog

Sometimes xkcd is too close to the truth.

So last.fm have announced they will be offering a streaming service in the near future which will allow users to play any given track whenever they want.

As of today, you can play full-length tracks and entire albums for free on the Last.fm website.

I hope that this ends up being a real step forward in a music subscription service. I want something like Rhapsody but with the ability to play the music on any computer or with just a web browser. Hopefully with DRM going the way of the dodo on music it seems like that has a much larger chance of occurring.

Here is to hoping the music labels allow real innovation to occur.

I’m walking in the desert land
I’m walking without a plan
The sun will rise stars will fall
- Michigan “Valley of Death”

Today was the XKCD Dream Girl meetup in Cambridge.

I went it was fun. All kinds of XKCD geeks in one space. w00t!

The park was transformed:

Raptors were not allowed

Spiders showed up

The jungle gym was popular

Tape measures were used

Randall showed up

The comic was completed

Overall very fun.

Robert Jordan died yesterday. This is sad. I haven’t read the latest book in the series but I was looking forward to him finishing the series and being able to read the final chapter.

Back in the early 90s Jordan’s Wheel of Time series was one of the first large fantasy series that I read. It really got me into the genre and started my long time obsession with WoT and the world created therein.

RIP Robert Jordan.

off to the uk for a week and a half.

check twitter for any updates that might occur.
http://twitter.com/spi

*poke*

is this thing alive? I guess it has been a while. Though two months isn’t that horrible and with all of these new internet technologies people can still listen in.

Last weekend while in DC at the Museum of Natural History I saw this nice sized piece of copper

Reminded me of the huge piece that is in the Quincy mine. Though this one is also in the room with the Hope diamond.

Anyway a long way to say that it reminded me that I will be up in the UP from August 2nd to the 5th. Let me know if you will be in the area and we can get together.

So after missing my first flight from BOS->DTW I got on the second plane to MI. Eventually made it to the penuicon hotel with only a few hours delay. So that wasn’t that shabby.

Met up with techieb0y, mary, jon787, and scott. We ran and got dinner and returned in time for a few talks that occurred in the evening. I wish I had gotten to the hotel earlier so I could have caught some of the earlier talks but such is life, maybe next time I will actually get to the airport on time. Once we got back I was able to meet up with ch0ng, gzphreak, aragirn, and sgowtham.

Friday included all kinds of hanging out and eating ginger ice cream made with liquid nitrogen. The con was still going strong at 2am when I left.

So far Saturday went to a good discussion by Bruce Schneier on gov’t collection of information including gov’t databases, real id, hippa, and the switch to TCP/IP for all types of networks instead of the mix of current technologies.

Now off to even more talks.

pcon is going strong!!

Penguicon cometh and I will be there.

Should be a blast it has been 3 years since I was last at Penguicon.

w00t!

Now I just might be busy on 9/23.

Dream Girl

42.39561,-71.130509 is close to me