I discovered a new science fiction magazine online that publishes original and reprinted science fiction stories and interviews.

According to the Light Speed Magazine “about us” page:

Lightspeed is an online magazine focusing exclusively on science fiction. Here you can expect to see all types of science fiction, from near-future, sociological soft sf, to far-future, star-spanning hard sf, and anything and everything in between. No subject will be considered off-limits, and we encourage our writers to take chances with their fiction and push the envelope.

Each month at Lightspeed, we bring you a mix of originals and reprints, and featuring a variety of authors—from the bestsellers and award-winners you already know to the best new voices you haven’t heard of yet. When you read Lightspeed, it is our hope that you’ll see where science fiction comes from, where it is now, and where it’s going.

Lightspeed also features a variety of nonfiction features, fiction podcasts, and Q&As with our authors that go behind-the-scenes of their stories.

Our regular publication schedule each month includes two pieces of original fiction and two fiction reprints, along with four nonfiction articles. Fiction posts on Tuesdays, nonfiction on Thursdays.

I hope they can sustain their business model, because they have some great content so far.

You can also donate to help keep them going.

Enjoy.

- Dave

I’ve recently played around with Yahoo Pipes, a feed aggregation and manipulation service provided by Yahoo, (here’s a yahoo or wikipedia explanation of the service) to manipulate some of my iTunes feeds to more easily update my little green Shuffle. You see, I have a handful of feeds I drag into my Shuffle on a regular basis. Normally I would create a smart playlist in iTunes and add a bunch of podcasts to it and life would be all bunnies and tulips. However, I’m a little picky and need to eliminate PDFs from the feed (since some podcasts include them and my Shuffle can’t dispay them). I also only want podcasts that I haven’t listeded to yet (with a play count of zero) in ascending order of release date (so I can listen to them in the correct order).

Here’s where the iTunes “smart” playlists fall down the stairs before prom night.

As far as I can tell, when creating an iTunes playlist you are able to add multiple actions (or filters) to the list; however, you are forced to select a single boolean operator to affect all the actions in the list. I can select “or” to act as the operator or I can select “and.” I don’t get the option to select an operator for each action in the list. Bummer.

It is at this point that my smart playlist has smeared her make-up and fallen down the stairs in her prom dress.

This is when Yahoo Pipes shows up at the door smiling with a giant pink corsage and fresh condoms.

Since I have a yahoo account (for del.icio.us, flickr, email, etc.) by default I also have a Yahoo Pipes account. I logged in and aggregated all of the (13) podcasts I wanted on my little green Shuffle and created one feed to rule them all. I then took that feed and added it to the iTunes “smart” playlist along with the other filters (“never been played” and “no PDFs” and “ascending order”).

Badda bing. A dynamic smart playlist that includes all my favorite audio feeds and no PDFs and no episodes I’ve already listened to and all in ascending order of release date.

If you have a need to aggregate, manipulate or filter feeds of any sort, you might want to consider using Yahoo Pipes.  It uses a drag and drop interface that makes the whole experience very simple.  I haven’t really cracked the surface with Pipes yet, but it seems like it can do some amazing things.

There…now wasn’t that interesting?

-Dave

The May 10th episode of Escape Pod, an original science fiction podcast, was called Impossible Dreams and it was really quite good. It reminded me of watching old episodes of the classic Twilight Zone or Outer Limits.

Not every story is this good, but there are enough gems in the RSS feed to make listening worthwhile.

Have a great week everyone.

-Dave

The video is in both Quicktime and Windows Media player, so choose your poison.

View the video here.

If you listen to podcasts, give the Sound of Young America a shot.  Jesse is a great interviewer and always seems to have interesting guests on his show.  He is only 25 years old and speaks with the depth and insight of someone twice his age.

The podcast also has its own page on Wikipedia.

That’s all for now.  G’night folks.

-Dave

I picked up a couple books this weekend too. The first one is I, Woz – a biography on Steve Wozniak, one of the founders of Apple. He’s a nerd’s nerd and has inspired a generation of computer geeks to pick up a soldering iron and make stuff that beeps and blinks.

The second one is A Brief History of the Time, by Stephen Hawking. I can’t believe I haven’t read this yet, but I haven’t. I’m looking forward to reading both books in the near future.

Justine and I also stopped by Issues, our favorite magazine shop in Houston. We both walked out with an armload of magazines for the coming week.

I added a few podcasts to my iTunes over the last few weeks. I haven’t gotten a chance to listen to them all, but I’m hoping to work my way through them soon. Here’s a smattering of the new podcasts:

Escape Pod – Free original sci/fi stories each week.
PseudoPod – Free original horror stories each week
R U Sirius Podcast – The mastermind behind the legendary hipster technoculture magazine Mondo 2000
The Sound of Young America – A podcast about things that are awesome (their own description, not mine).
This American Life – The NPR show is now offering their weekly shows for free as a podcast (they used to cost a couple bucks, but are free now).
This week in Tech – Self-explanatory, really.
The Productivity Show – Ideas for getting things done.

That’s about it for now. Back to work tomorrow morning. I’m sure the internet will be waiting for me when I sit down to my desk to greet it.

G’night all.

P.S. – Oh, and my pal Scott started up a blog. You should visit him and say hello.

The Rapture – Pieces of the People We Love
Disco-techno weirdness. Remind me of rollerskating disco combined with some 80s techno. Interesting combo and pretty good driving music. Also a 6.

TV on the Radio – Return to Cookie Mountain
I always flinch when buying the sophmore album of a band I’ve been truly impressed with. Because it’s never as good as you hope it is. That is notthe case with TV on the Radio’s sophmore album. This is hauntingly melodic, disturbingly complex and lyrically wonderful. These gentlemen from Brooklyn will go far, I can feel it. Every bit of a 9.

Yo La Tengo – I Am Not Afraid of You and I will Beat Your Ass
Vetrans of indie rock, Yo La Tengo have produced another delightfully clever album with many more jammy tunes on it. I had heard they were goign to make a harder album with more heavy tunes (in comparison to their older albums), but that wasn’t the case with this album. It’s filled with great rolling jams and super catchy riffs. Lyrics as interesting as ever. And the title…makes you want to find your highschool bully and play this album for him, doesn’t it? A solid 8.

The Mars Volta – Amputechture
I have only listened to this once so far and I can’t quite describe it. It doesn’t seem like this band is on the same planet as you and I. I need to digest it a few more time before I can really come close to a description.

Herb Alpert & The Tijuana Brass – Whipped Cream & Other Delights
Classic Herb Alpert. One of the best album covers of all time. Herb gets a 7 for some super hits that make you smile.

Iron Maiden – A Matter of Life and Death
Hi. My name is Dave and I’m a metal fan. I admit it. Unfortunately, this is a very bad example of good metal. I was pretty disappointed in this album. These guys do not have the energy they once had. Alas, there will probably never be another Live After Death (a 10), or Power Slave (a 9), or Somewhere in Time (a 9). I miss the epic metal of the 70′s and 80′s. Maiden…you let me down. And for this, I give you a 3.

There you go.

Oh, and one more thing. If you’re into listening to podcasts, BoingBoing just kicked of its very own podcast. You can listen to the hip kids from San Francisco here:

Podcast, Podcast Feed, Subscribe via iTunes, MP3 Link

Enjoy.

-Dave

- Dave

This is one of the funniest.

- Dave