Bruce Lerner

I have been sampling philosophy oriented podcasts lately and found one that strongly strikes a cord with me. Derek and Swoopy started their show, Skepticality, in 2005 and have interviewed a broad range of sceptical guests. There is a galaxy (star cluster, at least) of activity and discussion on these topics that I will link to as I discover them. The title Skeptic encompasses individuals and groups that include atheists, humanists, freethinkers other nontheistics that in general expect a little proof with their pudding.

Cory Doctorow gave a talk (partially) on this topic at the symposium “Ghost In The Machine” held at roboexotica 2007 on Friday, 11/23 and Saturday, 11/24 in Vienna, Austria, titled “A Singular Metaphor“. He’s informative, a deep thinker, a free (as in freedom) internet advocate, science fiction writer, BoingBoing founder, Creative Commons advocate and fun to listen to.

I just ran into the need for a podcatcher that supports authentication which my workhorse bashpodder doesn’t support (at least I don’t know about it). What I found is Icepodder, which I installed and ran with no problem. I’ll keep bashpodder running with cron for my daily downloads, but when I need authentication - Icepodder.

You’ve got to check out Jonathan Coulton.

One of the great things about podcasts are that they can surprise you. Months with nothing coming in on a feed and then blam, it goes live again. Mur and GeekFu are back as the GeekFu Morning Show with Mur Lafferty and Jason Adams. Similarly, a new episode of the Evil Genius Chronicles showed up last night. A double wow.

Over the last few months I’ve tried to get involved in the Linux community via the Ubuntu CT LoCo which seems to have started earlier this year. There were meant to be biweekly irc meetings which have proven to be lonely rooms. I have attended a couple of Cogan Fairs to staff a Linux table that was started by another member, an activity that we offered up to the rest of the CT LoCo as a ‘community’ activity but there have been no takers.

I spent most of my day in various computing oriented activities, Cleaning a PARITE infestation from XP, manning a Linux booth at a local computer fair promoting our CT Ubuntu LOCO and finally meeting up with the local Open Software User Group at the yearly picnic. Tomorrow, its back to the usual - home repair and work.