random bits

[cellio]

I just posted more hints for the music challenge.

A few days ago I read about a skydiver who was doing his first dive, with his instructor stapped to his back. The instructor had a heart attack on the way down. That's sad, but I must admit that my first question was: was the student's technique that scary? :-)

Real Live Preacher is taking an unusual approach to publishing a (paper book), essentially soliciting enough pre-orders to pay for the initial print run. That's probably not unusual for publishing houses, but I'm not used to seeing it from individuals. He's only looking for a bit over 400, so I figured that given his popularity he'd have that in days, but so far no. It's kind of sobering that even that low-sounding goal is a challenge. (It does suggest that the likes of unknowns like me wouldn't muster enough interest to publish on dead trees. Maybe most people don't read dead trees any more, but I still prefer them for many things.)

CNN might be using your bandwidth to publish (link from goldsquare). Keep that in mind the next time you watch something live and big.

For the locals: Temple Sinai has some interesting presentations open to the public coming up; the first (on February 18) is Christiane Amanpour, CNN's chief international correspondent. I'll post more about this in a few days, but if you want to go, drop me a note. This sounds like a neat series that I want to support, so unless I get flooded, I'm inclined to buy one ticket (for any of the presentations) for anyone I actually know who expresses interest.

Comments

[cellio]

That's a much more civilized way to manage applications. Thanks for the tip. (Not all Windows apps even have uninstallers, and I'm sure I've got vestiges of assorted crap-ware that came pre-installed on the computer still lurking in the bowels of the machine.)