Friday Fives

1. What is the best thing about the city in which you live? What is the worst?

Denver - best thing is living so close to the Rockies. It is a 45 minute drive for me to be smack dab in the middle of the mountains. In fact, that is where I will be this weekend. Stay away from my house.

Worst part? I have absolutely no regrets about living here, but our Brown Cloud seems to be a bit of a health concern.

2. Describe an idea or invention of yours that you would like to see turned into reality.

hmm, so many of my ideas have already come to fruition. For example: chocolate chip pancakes, clocks on cell phones, and the iPod were all ideas of mine before they were on the market. Don't worry, I am not trying to take credit for these ideas. That would be delusional, I am just saying I too thought of those before they went public. That being said, my visions tend to pertain to media. For example, my goal is a 'personal server'. This would be an iPod like (or cell phone thingy) that held your phone numbers, CD collection, DVD collection, and be also a UHF remote for turning on and off lights and such as you approach a room. Also, it would be a garage door opener. How you think of a 'PDA', well this would be like that... but for your house. It would be bluetooth too, for easy data transferal between two devices.

One thing it would not be is a camera. For that, I would use... gasp... a camera.

3. If you could strike one word from the English language, which word would you choose and why?

nigger. No good can come from this word, it is just terrible. It's even worse that there is the new generation of blacks using that as slang for each other. I don't walk into work and say 'what up, crackers?' or 'what's crackin' honkeys'?

ok, actually I do say stuff like that... because it's funny and has some decent shock value. Regardless, the n word is bad.

4. If the world had a front porch, what would you do on it?

drink spiked lemonade and play guitar.

5. Did you think that being an adult would be cool?

No, I dreaded it. I mean, of course I hated being a kid... but being a grown up seeemed like so much trouble. Driving, bills, marriage, these things seemed like an awful lot of trouble. Plus, it turns out no one pays for food for you or nothing either. What a gyp! If only I were that handsome and delusional 19 year old. I had long hair, a great social life, my car was paid for, and no overhead financially. Plus, I thought I knew how everything worked. Good times, good times.

What is Podcasting?

I am here to tell you all. You have been hearing this term a lot lately (nod your head in agreement. thank you) and may wonder what it is. As you can imagine, the name is a derivitive of the iPod, but doesn't have much to do with it. You need not an iPod to create nor enjoy a Podcast. In the simplest of terms, a Podcast is a disposable mix tape made by web dorks. To define the term 'Webdork' means anyone more savvy than myself regarding things pertaining to the internet.

A podcast is generally an hour long piece of dialogue with intermittant music to break it up. The reason I say they are disposable is because they are generally topical, and created serially. Adam Curry, that VJ guy from way back when MTV started, invented the Podcast. He does them almost daily. One of the great beneifts of these Podcasts is they are free. You can get them from anywhere on any subject. The reason why the iPod reference in the name is because they are made available to download as MP3s. So, folks like me with iPods (and any portable music player) upload it to the iPod and listen to it driving around.

I am no expert on Podcasts, as I find most of them tedious and dork heavy. However, there is one who has mastered the genre and he is the Duke. The Duke is some Irish guy with an amazing sense of humor. He is an e mail buddy, and fellow contributor to Blogcritics with me. I've never met the Duke, but we talk at least weekly. He has a few Podcasts under his belt, and just recently published #12. I haven't even heard it yet, as it just went up today. However, having heard the others I can guarantee this will be hilarious. Warning, there is a good deal of foul language used in humor... and zombie sex has not been ruled out as content.

So what do I do, you ask? Just click this link (or the one on the right) and an MP3 will download onto wherever you ask it to. You can then listen at your desk (bad idea) or burn it to a CD, or of course to a portable MP3 player. There go do