Today I was reading an article over at LifeHacker about XBMC. Basically, they recommended upgrading from the last, ancient stable version to the latest SVN build; which I did this evening and boy am I ever glad I did. As now, I can play Matroska video files. Wheee! True, I technically could before but they rendered so slowly it was an exercise in frustration to watch a video all the way through. Now MKV playback is much smoother and I’m much happier with XBMC. Thank you LifeHacker!

Also a quick shout out and thanks to Komainu for pointing out the wonders that are Radio Paradise. The work day goes so much quicker with a better DJ than iTunes’s random play function. 🙂

As a general rule, I love Escape Pod. The stories (and readers!) tend to be excellent, however this week must be the exception which proves the rule. Maybe it’s because I never got into the whole MMORPG thing but I found this week’s story to be a bad rewrite/adaption of Groundhog Day. The movie wasn’t all that great and Save Me Plz is even worse. At least in Groundhog Day Bill Murray’s character, Phil Connors, had to do all the work himself; in Save Me Plz, Devon forces Meg into doing all the work for him. Even worse she liked the world the way it was!

So I say shame on you Mr. Eley for bringing us this tripe and implore you to look for more stories like:

Notes…

  • Why no, this post is not a blatant attempt at being named BofW and getting a free book from Escape Pod. What would ever give you that idea. *grin*
  • Ok, I could be fibbing when I made the above comment.
  • Alright I was fibbing and it is a blatant attempt at just that.
  • However I also wrote up this post to draw attention to what I feel are the very, very best of Escape Pod. Any sci-fi and/or fantasy fans not listening to Escape Pod should start and they should definitely start with the stories on this list!

Overall a very good weekend. Saturday, Ariesna and & hung out with our friends Bryon & AWelkin. We shot a ton of pictures1 of AWelkin in a couple of her excellent suits. We also learned that velour makes an excellent burr magnet, so don’t go tramping through wood areas wearing a velour cape (especially don’t go off trail in such a thing). Sunday, Ariensa & I just enjoyed a lazy day. Mostly we just hung around the house and did a whole lot of nothing. Though we did go to the grocery store for some reconnaissance on the tea party she’s planning for October. Oddly enough when we got to the store, I noticed a flyer on the community bulletin board inviting people to the world’s biggest tea party. *shrugh* Odd timing that. Oh and the reason this post is called what it is, has to do with a startling experience I had Sunday morning. After I took my shower and was going through my morning toiletries, I caught sight of something moving by the bathroom window. I turned to look over and realized we had a wasp crawling around on the inside of the window. *shudder* I quickly finished up and got out of there. Ariesna dug up the bug spray and then we took care of the little invader. Nobody got stung or anything really unpleasant like that. It’s just if there’s a specific time you don’t want to see a wasp; it’s when you’re standing around nekked. *grin*

1 Some were digital, some were 35mm. When all the film has been developed, we’ll select some of them to send off to the magazine who requested the photos. Once I have clearance from the AWelkin & the magazine people, I’ll post some of them to Flickr.  Though we also have a couple more shoots to do, so don’t expect to see those photos any time soon.