The current Sci-Fi Wire over at SciFi.com has a nice review of Azumanga Daioh, one of my favorite shows of the past year. I hope Tasha, the reviewer, keeps watching it. I found the show really does keep dragging you in more and more. And for me it was a nice break from crazy over the top action oriented shows.

Just read over on The Laporte Report that TechTV has layed off 285 workers today. Supposedly the San Francisco offices will be closing up by July and 100 off the existing jobs will be posted for those willing to move to LA. Once again, I’m dreading how Comcast is going to handle all of this. I personally think they should have gutted G4. I watched it for a little bit months ago and it was okay, but when I tried to watch it again recently I found it pretty much unwatchable. Most of the programming is just spastic and lame. TechTV has its lame bits too, but overall G4 pretty much bites. Good luck to all those people from TechTV.

These days lots of people use services like TinyURL to shorten URLs. Well, I just found a better service: EVILURL.com. It creates unique urls for any url you want. For instance, for my anime blog, you can go to http://evilurl.com/COCKMONKEYPRICK. Much easier to remember than http://tinyurl.com/2fz64 I think.

A friend of mine IMed me this link for a product called the BananaGuard:.

Are you fed up with bringing bananas to work or school only to find them bruised and squashed? Our unique, patented device allows for the safe transport and storage of individual bananas letting you enjoy perfect bananas anytime, anywhere.

The Banana Guard was specially designed to fit the vast majority of bananas. Its other features include multiple small perforations to facilitate ventilation thereby preventing premature ripening and a sturdy locking mechanism to keep the Banana Guard closed. The Banana Guard is of course dishwasher safe for easy cleaning.

It even comes in NINE different colors: Raving Red, Outrageous Orange, Mellow Yellow, Sublime Green, Skyhigh Blue, Brilliant Blue, Passionate Purple, Pretty in Pink, Glow in the Dark.

Douglas Adams: “It is a mistake to think you can solve any major problems just with potatoes.” [Quotes of the Day]

Wow. The BBC has has announced plans to open up its archives for free. This was first announced last August, but they are finally taking the first step towards making it a reality. The trial program is only open to BBC employees, but this is still quite cool. I wonder if this means they’ll have all of Dr Who available.

[Via Gizmodo]

I’ve been doing a lot of thinking lately about my whole work situation and how it fits into the rest of my life. I had a phone interview the other day and it went pretty well, but after I got off the phone I started really thinking about what work would entail. I’d have to make sure it was someplace with good handicapped parking that wasn’t much of a walk. I’d have to deal with finding a new place to live that would be good for me after my surgery. And in the middle of all this I could get the call from the hospital anytime.

The thing is, I’m really not sure why I’m looking so hard for work. It just has always felt like the thing to do once you are laid off. But when I am really honest with myself, I’m not sure I could handle the day to day work grind at this point. At my last job they really went out of their way to help me out. And I’m not sure I could handle a job w/out that. But working isn’t what is important right now. Getting healthy is. Being in as good health as I can be when I get the call to go into the hospital. So as of last week I’m officially calling off my job search. I’m still doing little one-shot consulting jobs here and there to keep myself sane, but even those sometimes feel like too much stress.

I’m not even really sure why I’m posting this to my blog. I think I kind of just want to record what was going on in these days because it feels like this is a really big step. Next step, new lung.

Due to a very kind person, I got an invite to Gmail a few weeks ago. I signed up, but hadn’t had a real chance to use it until just recently. I have to say that I like it. They have some really original ideas that I’d like to see make a move to other email programs. Or even better, have a downloadable version of their code that I can run locally.

The first thing I noticed about Gmail was that there isn’t really a concept of folders. Instead they have labels. All of your mail goes into your inbox, and then you can set one or more ‘labels’ on it. You can then view all the messages in a label. Think of it kind of like how iPhoto/iTunes works where you have your Library and then albums/playlists. It is definitely one of the more original ideas I’ve seen for email and I hope to see it more.

The thing I’m really trying to figure out is how to fit this into my whole email setup. I currently have all my mail come into my server at home and it all lives there very nicely. I’m using CRM114 for spam filtering which has been kicking ass now that it’s done a bit of learning (100% error free (no false positives or negatives) yesterday!), etc. And I use Zoe for archiving my email. The thing is, I like how Gmail does things a bit more than Zoe. But Zoe has the added bonus that it is local to my laptop, which means I can search through my old mail even when I’m not connected to the net.

I definitely think I’d recommend Gmail to someone once it is publicly open. It’s pretty slick.

Now playing: The Light Before We Land from the album Hate by Delgados

Today was a good music day. I was at the mall with my mom and while waiting for her to finish up shopping stepped into whatever big music chain store they had there. You know, the ones that usually have a pretty crappy selection of popular music, but every once in a while will have some gem you’ve been meaning to find forever. This time it was Aphex Twin‘s Selected Ambient Works 85-92. It’s happily ripping away in iTunes to be added to my music library.

And then there was The Brilliant Green, which jam1esp1ark let me listen to some of. I must say they’re quite amazing. They sound like a bunch of different music I know kinda smooshed together. They’re also listed in TIME.com’s 10 best bands from outside of the US.

Oh, and I can’t forget the songs by Chara that Lyn gave me, which also helped to rock my musical world a bit.