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Help me choose my next audiobooks
I have 2 credits to spend on my audible.com account.
Here is a copy-paste of my wishlist (ffs Audible, why cant I publish these like on Amazon!)
Help me choose which books i should do first, I cannot choose!
———————————–
True Enough
By Farhad Manjoo
Narrated by Ray Porter
Why has punditry overtaken news, with so many media outlets pushing partisan agendas instead of information? Comedian Stephen Colbert’s catchword "truthiness" has captured something essential about our age: that people are more comfortable with ideas that feel true, even if the evidence for those beliefs is thin.
- Audiobook
- 7 hours and 26 min.
True Enough (Unabridged)
Farhad Manjoo
Audiobook $17.47
$12.23 or
1 Credit
A Brief History of Time
By Stephen Hawking
Narrated by Michael Jackson
This landmark book is for those of us who prefer words to equations; this is the story of the ultimate quest for knowledge, the ongoing search for the secrets at the heart of time and space. Its author, Stephen W. Hawking, is arguably the greatest mind since Einstein.
- Audiobook
- 5 hours and 46 min.
A Brief History of Time (Unabridged)
Stephen Hawking
Audiobook $22.95
$16.07 or
1 Credit
The Universe in a Nutshell
By Stephen Hawking
Narrated by Simon Prebble
With characteristic exuberance, Stephen Hawking invites us to be fellow travelers on this extraordinary voyage through spacetime, as he seeks "to combine Einstein’s General Theory of Relativity and Richard Feynman’s idea of multiple histories into one complete unified theory that will describe everything that happens in the universe."
- Audiobook
- 3 hours and 29 min.
The Universe in a Nutshell (Unabridged)
Stephen Hawking
Audiobook $17.95
$12.57 or
1 Credit
The Biology of Belief
By Bruce Lipton
Narrated by Bruce H. Lipton, Ph.D.
Since the publication of The Biology of Belief, Dr. Bruce Lipton has received widespread acclaim as one of the most accessible and knowledgeable voices of "new biology". The science is called epigenetics – a revolutionary field that shows us how the energy of consciousness is as important in shaping life on earth as DNA and chemistry.
- Audiobook
- 3 hours and 21 min.
The Biology of Belief
Bruce Lipton
Audiobook $17.47
$12.23 or
1 Credit
The Ancestor’s Tale
By Richard Dawkins
Narrated by Richard Dawkins and Lalla Ward
The Ancestor’s Tale is a pilgrimage back through time – a journey on which we meet up with fellow pilgrims as we and they converge on our common ancestors. Chimpanzees join us at about six million years in the past, gorillas at seven million years, orangutans at 14 million years, as we stride on together, a growing band. The journey provides the setting for a collection of some 40 tales.
- Audiobook
- 8 hours and 54 min.
The Ancestor’s Tale
Richard Dawkins
Audiobook $18.42
$12.89 or
1 Credit
On the Origin of Species
By Charles Darwin
Narrated by Richard Dawkins
Richard Dawkins, author of The God Delusion and a life-long committed Darwinist, abridges and reads this special audio version of Charles Darwin’s famous book. A literally world-changing book, Darwin put forward the anti-religious and scientific idea that humans in fact evolved over millions of generations from animals, starting with fish, all the way up through the ranks to apes, then to our current form.
- Audiobook
- 5 hours and 53 min.
On the Origin of Species
Charles Darwin
Audiobook $20.63
$14.44 or
1 Credit
Eldest
By Christopher Paolini
Narrated by Gerard Doyle
Eragon and his dragon, Saphira, have just saved the rebel state from destruction by the mighty forces of King Galbatorix, cruel ruler of the Empire. Now Eragon must travel to Ellesmera, land of the elves, for further training in the skills of the Dragon Rider: magic and swordsmanship. Soon he is on the journey of a lifetime, his eyes open to awe-inspiring new places and people, his days filled with fresh adventure. But chaos and betrayal plague him at every turn, and nothing is what it seems.
- Audiobook
- 23 hours and 35 min.
Eldest (Unabridged)
Christopher Paolini
Audiobook $38.50
$26.95 or
2 Credits
Blade Runner
By Philip Dick
Narrated by Scott Brick
It was January 2021, and Rick Deckard had a license to kill. Somewhere among the hordes of humans out there lurked several rogue androids. Deckard’s assignment: find them and then…"retire" them. Trouble was, the androids all looked exactly like humans, and they didn’t want to be found!
- Audiobook
- 9 hours and 12 min.
Blade Runner (Unabridged)
Philip Dick
Audiobook $24.47
$17.13 or
1 Credit
A Scanner Darkly
By Philip Dick
Narrated by Paul Giamatti
Bob Arctor is a dealer of the lethally addictive drug Substance D. Fred is the police agent assigned to tail and eventually bust him. To do so, Fred takes on the identity of a drug dealer named Bob Arctor. And since Substance D, which Arctor takes in massive doses, gradually splits the user’s brain into two distinct, combative entities, Fred doesn’t realize he is narcing on himself.
- Audiobook
- 9 hours and 15 min.
A Scanner Darkly (Unabridged)
Philip Dick
Audiobook $24.47
$17.13 or
1 Credit
2001
By Arthur C. Clarke
Narrated by Dick Hill
It has been 40 years since the publication of this classic science-fiction novel that changed the way we look at the stars and ourselves. From the savannas of Africa at the dawn of mankind to the rings of Saturn as man adventures to the outer rim of our solar system, 2001: A Space Odyssey is a journey unlike any other.
- Audiobook
- 6 hours and 42 min.
2001 (Unabridged)
Arthur C. Clarke
Audiobook $10.49
$7.34 or
1 Credit
War of the Worlds
By H. Wells
Narrated by Blair Mellow
It is an INVASION! H. G. Wells’ classic story of Martians invading an unsuspecting and unprepared world continues to thrill and terrify listeners around the world. Following strange explosions on the surface of Mars, metallic cylinders crash in the English countryside – objects that carry hideous aliens possessed of deadly weapons and a rabid hunger for human flesh. No army can stop these monstrous hordes, no weapons can harm them – a terrified humanity watches helpless as cities are reduced to cinders and ash. There is no hope…here is no future…our world is lost – unlessa?S
- Audiobook
- 6 hours and 3 min.
War of the Worlds (Unabridged)
H. Wells
Audiobook $14.95
$10.47 or
1 Credit
Snow Crash
By Neal Stephenson
Narrated by Jonathan Davis
Neal Stephenson is a blazing new force on the sci-fi scene. With the groundbreaking cyberpunk novel Snow Crash, he has "vaulted onto the literary stage." It weaves virtual reality, Sumerian myth, and just about everything in between with a cool, hip cybersensibility – in short, it is the gigathriller of the information age.
- Audiobook
- 6 hours
Snow Crash
Neal Stephenson
Audiobook $17.49
$12.24 or
1 Credit
Ender’s Game: 20th Anniversary Edition
By Orson Card
Narrated by Stefan Rudnicki, Harlan Ellison, and more
The war with the Buggers has been raging for a hundred years, and the quest for the perfect general has been underway for almost as long. Enter Andrew "Ender" Wiggin, the result of decades of genetic experimentation.
- Audiobook
- 11 hours and 8 min.
Ender’s Game: 20th Anniversary Edition (Unabridged)
Orson Card
Audiobook $27.95
$19.57 or
1 Credit
Snow Crash
By Neal Stephenson
Narrated by Jonathan Davis
Neal Stephenson is a blazing new force on the sci-fi scene. With the groundbreaking cyberpunk novel Snow Crash, he has "vaulted onto the literary stage." It weaves virtual reality, Sumerian myth, and just about everything in between with a cool, hip cybersensibility – in short, it is the gigathriller of the information age.
- Audiobook
- 18 hours
Snow Crash (Unabridged)
Neal Stephenson
Audiobook $34.99
$24.49 or
1 Credit
Freakonomics: Revised Edition
By Steven, Stephen Levitt, Dubner
Narrated by Stephen J. Dubner
Steven D. Levitt is not a typical economist. He is a much-heralded scholar who studies the riddles of everyday life, from cheating and crime to sports and child-rearing, and whose conclusions turn the conventional wisdom on its head. Thus the new field of study contained in this audiobook: Freakonomics. Levitt and co-author Stephen J. Dubner show that economics is, at root, the study of incentives: how people get what they want, or need, especially when other people want or need the same thing.
- Audiobook
- 6 hours and 55 min.
Freakonomics: Revised Edition (Unabridged)
Steven, Stephen Levitt, Dubner
Audiobook $24.47
$17.13 or
1 Cred
Return to flight sims?, SimHQ RSS feeds and Black Shark
Last weeks news that Microsoft had fired the entire MS Flight Sim development team, came as a shock to the entire Simulation community.Here is the staple Flight sim, one of Microsofts most succesfull products, and they decide to get rid of it. The sense of this has many analysts scratching their heads.
It does, however, present an interesting prospect. It means that for the next 3-4 years at least, the community and third-party products around MS Flight Sim will stabilize. That means that right now is a good time to go buy the last MS Flight sim product, FSX (Flight Simulator 10 )
Third-party add-on producers will be churning out a lot of products, now that they know the platform will not change for next few years.
I recently lamented what I perceived as the death of realistic combat flight sims, as I hardly ever heard mention of them in the mainstream gaming press.
I needed to look a little harder though, because as it turns out, there are in fact a LOT of products on the market right now, and more coming out in 2009. They are just not getting on the radar of the mainstream gaming press, and dont even seek to. They cater, as always to the nich market of sim enthusiasts.
Even a quick glance at a site such as SimHQ, shows that the market is, in fact, alive and well.
SimHQ RSS Feeds
I am slowly adding in some RSS feeds of Sim sites to my Google Reader (check the combined feed out here
I noticed that SimHQ’s mainpage doesnt provide any RSS feeds, so I made my owning using Feed43.
RSS feed for SIMHQ Articles
RSS feed for SIMHQ Air and Land Combat News
These feeds are very ugly screen scrapes, so don’t be surprised if they are buggy. The feeds only contain a title and the link, and its not always obvious what the content is about specifically.
DCS: Black Shark
Today I saw another thing that got me very interested.
It seems the DCS, the Russian-based company behind the very excellent Lock-On Modern Air Combat, have just released “Black Shack”, the first part of what they are calling their “Digital Combat Simulator”, a platform that they will be releasing more add-on products for in future.
The “Black Shark” is the Nato codename for the Kamov Ka-50 gunship
It looks amazing, and brings back fond memories of Jane’s Longbow II, that I played to death so many years ago.
Check out the video below (if you cant see it, click here)
Fully interactive and highly realistic cockpit, super realistic flight model and avionics, see this page for details
In other words, there is a good chance that at some point in the next year, I will go out and get myself one of those Thrustmaster Cougar HOTAS sets, and dig right back into these sims!
Screentoaster test
I go an email a while back from Screentoaster, a startup that is producing a very easy to use, web-based product that allows you to capture screen imput with sound and video.
I registered and gave it a go this evening. Below is the result ( if you cant see the inbedded video below, click here )
The recording stopped halfway through, so you are warned. This was only a test though.
In the video below, I attempt to show of Microsoft Live mesh.
http://www.screentoaster.com/swf/STPlayer.swf
I am impressed so far. It works well, but the total upload is limited to 20mb, and how fast you use that up of course, depends on how large resolution you use, and if you include sound. Right now its not easy to see how much room you have, or to stop and start recordings on the fly. But this product is bran new, so it can only get better.
Give it a try yourself at http://www.screentoaster.com/
Government 2.0: The Rise of the Goverati
This Post was reposted from here
Shared by Jemimus
There are several aspects of the Obama presidency that excite me. This is probably the number 1 for me. – Seen on Readwriteweb.com
Everyone knows how well Barack Obama’s presidential campaign made use of new media to raise money and market the candidate. We also know how big a role social technology played during inauguration week, from handheld flip HD footage appearing on network TV to people reporting on Twitter about what they liked and disliked. After President Obama took office, spirited debates proliferated in the blogosphere about whether or not whitehouse.gov is Web 2.0-enabled and what the role of President Obama’s CTO might be. But one striking trend has largely flown under the national radar: the rise of the goverati.
Sponsor
What is the goverati? It is made up of people with first-hand knowledge of how the government operates, who understand how to use social software to accomplish a variety of government missions, and who want to use that knowledge for the benefit of all.
The goverati includes not only government employees, but also people from think tanks, trade publications, and non-profits. And it includes high-profile thinkers outside of the government who have an interest in a more open, transparent, and efficient government; people such as Joe Trippi, Craig Newmark, and Tim O’Reilly. Using formal and informal social networks, the goverati is networking, sharing information, and changing how parts of the government interact with each other and with citizens.
About a week ago, President Obama issued a memo on this very topic. The memo, which affects all Executive Branch employees, has three main pillars: government should be more transparent, participatory, and collaborative. Social software will be part of an overall strategy to make this happen, spearheaded by the CTO, the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), and the General Services Administration (GSA). The naming of a “New Media” czar, Macon Phillips, will no doubt push the process along and keep branches well informed.
There are many barriers to this kind of change, so many they would be overwhelming to list. But the changes that are happenening are being covered by the mainstream press, and they are being enacted mainly by — you guessed it — the goverati.
Case in point: webmasters. Numerous policies and customs restrict the government’s use of things like commercial websites to host video and cookies to track visitors. Insiders from across the government have written a number of white papers that explain the problems (without using jargon) and outline reasonable solutions (here’s one of those white papers).
Former CIO of the Department of Defense, Dr. Linton Wells II, often comments to me that battles in government are often won by the most persistent. And the goverati are certainly persistent. It knows that momentum and timing are on its side, and it is pressing its agenda on Washington.
But changing the government is not like changing Apple Computer. President Obama issuing a directive is not the same as Steve Jobs issuing one. It simply doesn’t work that way, for all kinds of reasons. To change government, you must be persistent, have a hook, and know when and how to leverage connections and power to “muscle” change. And there are usually competing factions, outside interests, political seasons, etc.; it’s a very delicate business.
But interestingly, just as the goverati is fighting for a more transparent, participatory, and collaborative government, it is also leveraging the social tools it loves so much to become a body more powerful than the sum of its parts. The informal Government 2.0 social network GovLoop was developed by a DHS employee in his spare time; in a few months, it has surged to over 5000 members. Intelink, the intelligence community’s internal social network and information hub, is awash in blogs and other communication about the topic. Events are sprouting up everywhere, most notably non-profit ones planned by insiders and advertised primarily by word of mouth.
The Sunlight Foundation, which uses the power of the Internet to shine light on the interplay of money, lobbying, and government, is hosting an unconference in late February called Transparency Camp, in which open-government advocates from all walks of life (tech, policy, non-profit, etc.) can talk across organizational and party lines in a casual atmosphere about new strategies for goverment transparency. It is sold out. This is exactly the kind of event you can expect the goverati in Washington and elsewhere to be holding in the next year as we transform President Obama’s memo into a reality within government.
Closer to home, three partners and I have recently established the Government 2.0 Club, modeled on Social Media Club. Government 2.0 Club will bring together thought leaders in government, academia, and industry from across the country to explore how social media and Web 2.0 technologies can create a more transparent, participatory, and collaborative government. Local “Clubs” will hopefully also sprout up to discuss issues specific to them. And the first Government 2.0 Camp is happening in Washingston in late March.
The excitement over new social technologies has not abated in Washington. Change is indeed on the way. The intriguing part is the mechanism by which it is happening. By using these social tools to network and share information among themselves, the goverati is helping to spread the use of these very tools throughout the government.
Dr. Mark Drapeau is a biological scientist, government consultant, and author. He has a B.S. and
Ph.D. in animal behavior, conducted postdoctoral research on complex genomic and neural systems, and has published writing in Science,
Nature, Genome Research, American Scientist, the New York Times, the Washington Times, and other venues.
Video update on what i am up to
Just a little update on what i am up to. Flat, job situation, messing with new laptop, mail and contact syncing.
The fluffshack has moved, flat empty!
Noo.. I dont mean the website… I mean my flat!
This weekend, we succesfully moved the content of the flat to belgium, to my dads place.
It was a lot of hard work, many thanx to Dirk and Greftek for helping out! |
It was quite late when we arrived in Brugge to unload, luckily all the kids helped out so it didn’t take long.
Here are teh pictures:
I gave away my TV to the kids, they where happy. I set up the surround for them aswell.
The Fluffshack in storage:
And a video:
(click here if you cant see the video below)
(click here if you cant see the video below)
Today I spent all day clearing out the large stuff, unscrewing shades, taking up the carpet. Check out this idiocy! When the builders put down the new radiators last year, looks like they screwed im into the concrete ON TOP OF the carpet!! I couldnt shift em, I had to cut away all the carpet around the feet. So dumb.
Here is the stuff I threw out today:
I will go back tomorrow for some last cleaning, and then on thursday I hand over the keys
New Logitech gaming keyboard G19 and other gear!
Logitech > Gaming > PC Gaming > Mice + Keyboards > G19 Keyboard for Gaming.
Whoot!
In the runup to CES, Logitech just announced a new G-series keyboard the G19, and other goodies. I am not looking forward to this one as much as the G13 and I wont be replacing my G15 anytime soon, but its still really sexy. The color LCD screen is sweet, opens up new avenues for game info and other apps.
They also announced a new variation on the G9, he G9x
Also new is the G35 headset. It offers virtual 7.1 surround field and lots of cool buttons! My main question is alwways how comfortable they are with prolonged use. Read more at Ubergizmo
You know I still havent seen the G13 in any shops here in the Netherlands yet!
Social Searching for specific subjects
A frequent strategy I use this days is to leverage several social web sources to search for specific subjects.
I then use RSS and Google Reader to consolidate the results into a single view
For example, this week I am working with Microsofts “Hyper-V” virtualisation technology.
I start with Google Blog Search
which produces a search-results RSS feed:
http://blogsearch.google.com/blogsearch_feeds?hl=en&q=hyper-v&ie=utf-8&num=10&output=rss
Then I go with Twitter:
http://search.twitter.com/search.atom?q=Hyper-V
And Friendfeed:
http://friendfeed.com/search?q=hyper-v&who=everyone&format=atom
Another good one to add would be social bookmark sites such as http://delicio.us
So in Google Reader, I created a folder called “Hyper-V” and added all three feeds:
The result is a very neat consolidated list of posts, dynamically updating all the time, based on the search term.
Moved out of the flat
So I have moved out of the flat now, motived mostly due to my internet being cut off.
While I search for work in the UK, I am staying at moms. This is good, though I cant claim I have improved on the amount of space I have at my disposal 😉
Here is a photosynth of the room:
Oh, and check out to what good use I have put moms monitor; its my new social media portal!
The Fluffshack 