Oh I wish I were in Oooooklahoma,
Where there is lots of snow.
In Maine we have no fluffy flakes
That we used to closely know.
There are cars buried under a thick white blanket
And people staying home from school (grr)…
My friends stay inside with warm hot chocolate;
I just wish it would get cool,
but…
For now I’ll wait for snow to come,
To fall on the Pine Tree State.
The first snow is such fun to see -
Especially when it’s late!
See the über-ultra-cool Flickr map for central Oklahoma snow photos from today (I LOVE that). The picture above was taken today (about 4 hours ago, from what I can tell) by jjosh2004, a person I’ve never met, in Stillwater, Oklahoma, a place I’ve never been. That’s also pretty cool.
After Matt let me know that UC Berkeley was putting some of their courses online for free, I took a spin around iTunes to see what else is out there. Here’s a quick update of the podcasts – both old and new – that I’m listening to and watching lately.
the show with ze frank
Ze does a great job with quick, sharp humor. It’s quirky, unexpected, and it’s made me literally laugh out loud almost every weekday since April.
Accident Hash & Managing the Gray
AH was my first real experience with podcasting, and I haven’t stopped listening since. C.C. Chapman does an amazing job with both his music and marketing podcasts. Accident Hash is tied with Ze for my top spot.
AmandaAcrossAmerica
Amanda Congdon (formerly of Rocketboom) has been traveling across the country doing interviews and visits along the way. The team just finished their trek, but Amanda will be showing up on random ABC shows as well as some other places pretty soon (good job Amanda!).
Psych 156 at UC Berkeley
This is a full, free Berkeley course as it happens. Of course, it doesn’t hurt that it’s a psych course… about human emotion. My face lit up as I started listening to the latest lecture. (Social psych, my all-time favorite, is also available – though I don’t think anyone could top the lectures of the late Michele Alexander at UMaine.)
Speeches and lectures from Bowdoin, Princeton, and Stanford
I went to a state school (and I’m proud of it), but hearing some of the people who pass through these campuses is awesome.
TEDTalks
TED provides the gold standard innovation video podcast. Their speakers are amazing and every session is engaging.
Entrepreneurial Thought Leaders and IT Conversations
Both of these podcasts feature speakers having to do with business and IT. Again, there are some truly amazing people who have spoken in these series.
There are many others in my list; actually, there are more than I can handle. Personally, I’m fine with an abundance of free content.
And the bonus: Jonathan Coulton, a very cool songwriter, did a Thing a Week project in which he wrote a song-ish thing a week. My favorite is Code Monkey.
I’m starting a new project today called 30holidays. From now until the 25th of December, I’ll be posting one winter or holiday-related photo a day. I didn’t really get into the holiday spirit last year, so hopefully this will help improve that a bit this time around.
Here are a few links that may be of interest:
I came home from a wonderful weekend trip to find a picture of Jessica Rose (lonelygirl15) slumped across a bed in a bad entertainment magazine style photograph on the December issue of Wired magazine. I was laughing for 3 or 4 minutes straight.
For the record, I have a year and a half’s worth of Wireds in a two foot high stack on my kitchen table simply because it takes me two or three hours to read each one. It’s simply a fantastic magazine.
Kelley and Ian recently let me know about BarCamp Manchester. It’s been a while since I’ve done anything spontaneous, so I took off from work at 5:30 and met Ian at Jillian’s. I’m excited to meet some new people.
Justin Russell, reporting from beautiful Manchester, New Hampshire.
Ze posted about Web developers today. Most of that’s true… in least in an aggregate sense of all the Web developers I know. And a couple things actually made me laugh out loud. seriously.
An interesting note: Ze’s a Web developer. *shrug* Thought it was worth mentioning.
One of the nice features of WordPress is that it automatically displays incoming links to your blog read in from Technorati. When I opened it up tonight I noticed a whole bunch of new links. After a little investigation, I found the scanned sticker from last year’s election post had popped up around the Web.
Looks like everyone from the Cato Institute (the fact that Cato visited my blog is sort of funny in itself) to J. No to Rachel liked the composition and the lighting on my sticker scan so much that they either linked directly to it or hotlinked it as an image from their site.
I guess if you’re not going to leave me a comment to say that you visited my blog or even might be reading what I have to say, and if you’re not going to provide a link to the blog from which you found the image, and if you’re not going to even mention the person who uploaded it to comply with the Creative Commons license I favor, it’s at least a sign that someone’s looking at this site. Right?
(I realize that it’s a generic image, and that I might even be violating someone’s copyright by uploading the image in the first place. This society-without-credit thing still bugs me to no end, though.)
I’ve never posted my phone number on my site. Until now.
I just registered with k7.net after hearing about it from C.C. Chapman of Accident Hash. It’s a service that allows you to send voicemails (or faxes) to a number and receive them at your e-mail address.
For example…
So give me a call (or a fax)! My number’s 206-350-HI-JR. That’s 206-350-4457 for those of you who are vanityphobic.
I’ve got a question for my loyal readers.
What site that you visit or frequent do you think is the most fun? Why?
I’ve started to look into how a site’s fun factor contributes to its success. I’m going to be taking whatever you tell me into account for a couple of projects I’m going to start pretty soon.
Think about it for a bit, and then I’d really appreciate it if you could let me know somehow: leave a comment here, talk to me in person, send me an e-mail at justin <at> justinrussell.com, send me an IM at NightThree83, send me a message on Facebook or MySpace… however you prefer.
