I listen to a lot of podcasts - my primary source of audio consumption.  I listen to them because program I want are never on when I want them to be.  Another reason is because I believe podcasting is much more interesting than general talk radio.  I listened to rock stations most of my teenage life.  But, then, something happened.  I think I grew up or, most likely, got bored of the whole dee-jay thing.  I moved to news and talk radio. 

I wonder what it was that kicked my interests over to stations like CBC Radio One, Two, and Three.  Three in wonderful.  Being exposed to new music is incredibly exciting and I enjoy it.  But, nothing can replace the Radio One programming.  It is thoughtful and I can't seem to get enough.

One of my favourite podcasts is the CBC program, Outfront.  The program allows people like me who know very little (if anything) about the technical details of recording and allows them to record and build a story for the radio.  I am trying to think of a program I could offer but I don't believe that I have anything interesting enough.  Maybe something like "life at a start up".

Tags: cbc, podcast, outfront

Have you ever wished you had a master reading list that told you what books you may want to read before you die?  Do you find yourself wandering the book shelves in your local book shop and wondering what the next book will be?

I have had that problem for the last six months.  I have been starting and stopping books far too often and have yet to complete even the smallest novel since I last completed.  I have decided enough is enough with the stuttering between novels.  I wish to insert new adventures and experiences into my head.  In order to get this "reading ball" rolling, I have chosen the BBC's Big Read as a starting point.

The first 21 books are as follows:

1. The Lord of the Rings, JRR Tolkien
2. Pride and Prejudice, Jane Austen
3. His Dark Materials, Philip Pullman
4. The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Douglas Adams
5. Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, JK Rowling
6. To Kill a Mockingbird, Harper Lee
7. Winnie the Pooh, AA Milne
8. Nineteen Eighty-Four, George Orwell
9. The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, CS Lewis
10. Jane Eyre, Charlotte Brontë
11. Catch-22, Joseph Heller
12. Wuthering Heights, Emily Brontë
13. Birdsong, Sebastian Faulks
14. Rebecca, Daphne du Maurier
15. The Catcher in the Rye, JD Salinger
16. The Wind in the Willows, Kenneth Grahame
17. Great Expectations, Charles Dickens
18. Little Women, Louisa May Alcott
19. Captain Corelli's Mandolin, Louis de Bernieres
20. War and Peace, Leo Tolstoy
21. Gone with the Wind, Margaret Mitchell

Anyone wish to read along with me?  If you haven't checked out the Big Read, I would.  There are some incredibly interesting selections in there that should not be missed.

Tags: the big read, bbc, books, reading, novels

I have had several conversations in recent weeks about how we may be friendlier to the environment.  Discussions ranged widely from feeding starving masses to recycling lead batteries properly.  Long talks about using more efficient light bulbs, growing our own food, using less energy, generating a smaller "footprint" and human genocide have also been had.  (I believe I was the one who brought up genocide.)  Of course, global warming also made several appearances. 

So, what scares you the most?  Global warming?  Using up oil resources?  Destroying the ozone layer?  I suppose such things may be scary but those things can repair themselves given enough time.  If we destroy this planet - wipe it out entirely - microbes will still survive.  Cockroaches will still survive.  We believe this planet will be killed off but always with the human context of our own survival foremost in our conclusions.  Must humans be in the picture for a healthy planet?

I fear the population growth of humanity.  Over one hundred and ten billion and counting.  According to Carl Haub, a demographer in the United States - that is how many human beings have been born in the last 50,000 years and we continue to multiply.  By 2050, there may be close to ten billion living here.  This will continue to increase and, without some way of leaving this rock, the planet will suffer.  The world can survive most of what we can throw at it.  What it won't be able to survive is our own population growth.

I fear population because no matter what inventions are created and designed to help the environment, at some point, the Earth will not be able to handle us.  It will start to kill us off.  Crazy weather, bizarre diseases, or some other disasters meant to return the planet's balance.  Invention will be useless.  Innovation will cease to help.  This planet will decide to cut us down to tolerable levels.

I mentioned this to someone and they said this was too depressing a topic.  That the reality I spoke of was far enough in the future for us not to worry about it.  I suppose it may be somewhat morbid but it is a reality the human race will face.  We will worry about what kinds of light bulbs to use until then.

Tags: globalwarming, human, population

A week or so ago, I was interviewed by Carly Krug about the evolution of e-mail and what I thought about the new trend of e-mail bankruptcy. I didn't hide my opinion about e-mail - I think it sucks in a very large and non-productive way. Of course, people don't get as much e-mail as I do. Newsletters, clients, my mother, notifications from social networking sites - and, every so often, spam. Eventually, I should hire someone to deal with nothing but my e-mail. Anyone interested? You'd have to work for peanuts and the occasional rubbing of my soft hair.

I would normally post a link to an article but, according to 24, they remove articles all the time, so, here is the full article.

You've got mail!
So what can you do about it

By CARLY KRUG, 24 HOURS

Dear person-who-sent-me-a-yet-unanswered e-mail,

I'm sorry but I'm declaring e-mail bankruptcy. Your message has been trashed. If it was urgent please resend or pick up a phone.

Rude? Unprofessional? Or simply a sign of the tech times, as more and more CEOs are calling it quits on overloaded in-boxes?

"I have a friend in Toronto with a high-tech business. He has over 5,500 things in his in-box. Or he did before Christmas ... perhaps 7,000 now," says Richard Smith, associate professor at the School of Communication at Simon Fraser University.

Smith says it's no wonder people are overwhelmed by e-mails.

"It isn't surprising that faster movement means more clogs - this happens on highways. The faster people go, the faster they arrive at the same place (your inbox)," he says.

Shane Birley, a partner in Left Right Minds, a Vancouver web development, business, blogging and online content consultant company puts it more bluntly.

"E-mail sucks," he says. "It's the lazy person's way of communicating. They have this ridiculous expectation that once you send an e-mail it arrives in someone's inbox relatively instantly, which is true in most cases, but as the day goes on ... they could have hundreds waiting for them. The frustration level just grows and grows."

Add spam to the mix - "2007 is going to be the first year where spam is going to outnumber the amount of human- created e-mail," - and it's a recipe for disaster, says Birley.

So how does one avoid intentionally allowing their in box to go belly-up? Filing, deleting or acting on e-mails as soon as they come in is a good way to manage them, says Smith. His in box currently only has nine items, which constitute his "to do" list. But when they arrive by the hundreds or you return from a meeting to an in-box in the triple digits, that's not always doable.

"Perhaps popular people will have to implement a filter, akin to the personal assistant/receptionist who stood outside the office," he says.

After all, how many CEOs answer their phone? E-mail may require the same screening process.

Smith expects an entire vocation will evolve out of organizing e-life.

"Just like there are consultants that can help you with your financial bankruptcy," he says.

Birley, however, thinks e-mail will become extinct, at least for busy professionals.

"Eventually e-mail will disappear and be replaced by something else."

Perhaps, "SMS [short message service], the small text messages on phones," he says. "That's really becoming popular as a communication tool."

Birley, who receives about 150 e-mails a day, could easily spend three to four hours a day going through them. Not exactly a good use of his time, he says.

And while he has yet to go to the extreme of declaring e-mail bankruptcy he did resort to a similar tactic after returning from vacation.

"I actually grabbed my entire in box ... threw it into a sorting folder, and said 'Screw this, I'll worry about it tomorrow.'"

The problem is if tomorrow ever comes, it only brings more e-mail.

Maybe, I should invent a new way to communicate.

Tags: 24hrsmagazine, email, bankruptcy, interview, shanebirley

Hi, all you crazy kids.  There are a few things going on around here that I thought I should touch on - whether you would like me to or not.  As time has marched onward and my days are always packed, my blogging has been suffering.  Work is going great and we've been such busy beavers that I have not been as available as I would have liked.  Yet, I was able to think of all kinds of things I would have liked to have brought to the blogosphere and you people, those many that seem to like the typing I provide them.

So, I tried an experiment.  I blogged every day for the last few weeks (just offline and in paper and pen format) and found something quite interesting.  My interests have been growing and developing into voices of their own.  I didn't know what this meant at first but after a week or so of bouncing a few ideas around, I have decided to open a number of other blogs.  The thing I noticed is that because I was chatting about a variety of things, I wouldn't blog them here because I didn't feel they matched the focus of this blog.  Which is weird, since this blog seems to bounce around.  But, as I have matured as a blogger (if that is even possible), I have developed a wish to divide up my interests into blogs of their own.

Once I get them up and running, I will, of course, announce their existence here.  So, more of me is on the way, aren't you all just tickled?

Tags: shanesworld, shanebirley, blogs, blogging

Anyone who has spoken to me in recent months will know I have become quite a Buffy The Vampire Slayer and Angel fan.  We purchased the DVD collections and watched every single episode over the last five months.  It was interesting to see how the writers developed the story lines even when both shows were running simultaneously.  The characters and the actors evolved nicely as the series progressed and, as usual, I found myself identifying who the "true artists" were.

Sorry, what did you say, Shane?

I have this notion that true artists - those whom reveal themselves as the real creative types - dabble in different mediums.  Many of the "greats" have created, melded and smashed barriers and chose to experiment.  Throughout the series the one individual who stood out was Amber Benson.  She stood out because she seemed unique and headstrong - the strongest woman in the Buffyverse, in my opinion.  But, it wasn't until I was randomly navigating the BBC web site looking into some of their cult sections that I stumbled across an animated series called Ghosts of Albion.

The animated series was an on line "show" and I decided to watch the first episode.  The main credits appeared and there was Amber Benson's name as the director of the series.  I was a little stunned.  A BBC production directed by someone from the Buffyverse?  I took in the first act of the show and then, as I always do when I think I may have stumbled across a cool new artist, looked up what other things she had been working on aside from Buffy.  Here is what I found.

Books In Print

• Ghosts of Albion by Amber Benson and Christopher Golden
• Willow and Tara (Buffy The Vampire Slayer Graphic Novel)
• Accursed (with Christopher Golden) (2005)
• Witchery (with Christopher Golden) (2006)
• Wilderness, Part 1 (with Christopher Golden)
• Wilderness, Part 2 (with Christopher Golden)
• Shadowplay #1-4 (with Ben Templesmith) (2006)
• The Seven Whistlers (with Christopher Golden) (2006)

Motion Pictures Written

• Lovers, Liars and Lunatics (2006)
• Ghosts of Albion: Embers (2004) (TV)
• Ghosts of Albion: Legacy (2003) (TV)
• Chance (2002)
• The Theory of the Leisure Class (2001) (written by)

Motion Pictures Directed

• Lovers, Liars and Lunatics (2006)
• Ghosts of Albion: Legacy (2003) (TV)
• Chance (2002)

Don't assume for a moment that I feel the others involved in the production of the television show were not as cool as Benson as they were all amazing.  I just feel that out of everyone of them, Amber seemed to be the most "true" to the nature of art - whatever that may be.  I have a very clear idea of what I think art is but, I am sure it would appear twisted and crazy to anyone looking in.

And, Amber Benson, should you ever read this, drop me a line.  I'd love to chat about writing with you and about your experiences in each of the different mediums.

Tags: amber benson, christopher golden, writing, artists, art, novels, comics

We submitted a photo to Pug A Day and she was the "pug of the day" today! She is terribly cute. As a friend of mine once said: lack of children is equal to dog ownership insanity. How is the Flondon, Ontario sector, anyway.

Tags: serendipity the pug, pug a day