Here's an interesting blog on productivity and life simplification: Zen Habits. Favorite recent article: Seven Powerful Steps to Overcoming Resistance and Actually Getting Stuff Done.
The author also has a new writing blog, Write to Done. He's recently gotten a book contract, so maybe he knows a thing or two about the craft and trade.
Check him out.
So, Fred has gotten himself an iPod. I haven't gotten any audio books yet (I'm still attached to paper versions). But I do have several gigs of music on my hard drive.
Typically, I take luck-of-the-draw when synching my iPod, but I also like to cut a variety of mix CDs to match my mood. These are usually for car rides only (the interior of my car is hard on CDs, so I like to use disposable, homemade, CDs rather than originals).
Here's my January 2008 mix:
1. Battleflag, Lo Fidelity All Stars
2. Pretty Pink Rose, Adrian Belew
3. The Main Monkey Business, Rush
4. Every Day is Exactly the Same, Nine Inch Nails
5. The Ecstasy of Gold, Ennio Morricone
6. Man With a Gun, Jerry Harrison
7. Ah! Leah!, Donnie Iris
8. Judith, A Perfect Circle
9. Baker Street, Gerry Rafferty
10. The Analog Kid, Rush
11. The Hand That Feeds, Nine Inch Nails
12. Malignant Narcissism, Rush
13. I Still Believe, The Call
14. Turn The Page, Rush
15. Synchronicity 2, The Police
16. Astradyne, Ultravox
A bit of this, a bit of that.
Late again! Hope to be better in the coming year.
Here's what I've read since my last report:
God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything, Christopher Hitchens. Hitchens is one of those three people I would invite to dinner, although I think I would lock up the liquor ahead of time. His style is engaging and entertaining, but I think this polemic sometimes preaches a bit too much to the atheist choir. I don't think it would really change the minds of the religious (and to be fair, I don't think that is the goal here). Recommended whether you're faithful, faithless, or somewhere in between.
The current issues of Architectural Digest, Dwell, National Geographic, and one month of Analog magazine.
In progress:
Consciousness Explained, Daniel C. Dennett.
Still on deck:
Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid, Douglas R. Hofstadter.
Soul Made Flesh: The Discovery of the Brain--and How it Changed the World, Carl Zimmer.
Still about five months' worth of Analog magazine.
Warren Ellis has a humorous revision and restatement of the famous three laws of robotics.
Via Gravity Lens.