Batman, BSG and RSS feeds

Yesterday I saw another trailer for The Dark Knight, and it looked awesome. One concern I have is that they have Two-Face and the Joker in the same film. Why do they do this? These are two big guns and something has to give if they are in the same film. Seems like they could do more with the story and the interaction between Batman and the character if they just focused on one at time. Imagine the Killing Joke oneshot with another big villain running around. The impact of an amazing one on one confrontation is lost. But what do I know?

I obviously don’t know anything about BSG. I finished the third season, and I have to say I have no idea what’s going on. I am pretty sure they are not going to be able to resolve the show to my satisfaction in the fourth and last season. I am trying to put my thoughts together based on the theology of the show. Hopefully I can do that later this week.

Listened to a podcast called Hardcore History. I tried the BBC History Magazine and didn’t even make through the intro. Anyway, the host has some really interesting ideas that are lost and diffused and muddled by his presentation. He’s like a bad preacher or youth convention speaker. Lots of passion in trying to get his message across but he is not as sharp as a quality public speaker that you might enjoy, so you end up thinking, yeah, but. He goes in circles and repeats himself and says “things” a lot. I say things a lot when I can’t come up with the exact word, but I’m not speaker and I don’t have a podcast. It eats away at his credibility when he can’t articulate the concepts he his trying to convey to either history buffs or laymen like me. When he makes comments like “. . . the most powerful empire in the history of powerful empires . . .”, c’mon. I’ll probably give it one more try, but I may be looking for another history podcast.

Finally, I’m not becoming a “techie”, but I am trying to broaden my horizons and abilities. Last week, I explored the world of RSS feeds. I set up feeds from my favorite blog (this one) and several soccer blogs to see how it would work. It’s awesome. Instead of visiting a bunch of sites, the information is fed to me, which is exactly what I want. The feed goes bold, I highlight, see the headline, bam, I’m informed.

My goal is to have a series of RSS feeds on the left of my browser, with only my faceboook and Pandora pages open as tabs. I want information, but I want to minimize the effort needed to get it. I am also trying to synch my hotmail (personal) and outlook (work) email accounts. The first try didn’t go so well. Any thoughts??

what now?

Euro 2008 is over. I know that you don’t care but I do. There’s always a let down after a big tournament, and after 3 weeks of really great games, there will be an even bigger drop than usual. I’m glad Spain won on a lot of levels. Not the greatest final but it did demonstrate the gulf in class between the two teams. For greater insight into the final read these two articles from Soccernet.com contributors:

Spain
http://soccernet.espn.go.com/columns/story?id=552825&sec=euro2008&root=euro2008&lpos=spotlight&lid=tab1pos1&cc=5901

Germany
http://soccernet.espn.go.com/columns/story?id=552769&sec=euro2008&root=euro2008&lpos=spotlight&lid=tab1pos2&cc=5901

There is another gap in my life as well. The Tony Kornheiser show is on hiatus as TK Stack Money goes on vacation and prepares for Monday Night Football. His show via podcast is truly one of the highlights of my day. I’ll have to wait until January for more craptastic entertainment.

In lieu of that, I went podcast hunting. Here’s what I found:

Smodcast. Kevin Smith’s podcast with cohort Scott Mosier. The first one I downloaded was absolutely dreadful. It was Kevin and his daughter doing a special Father’s Day edition. UGH!!! I went back and got an older one, which was a little better. I’m going to give next week’s a shot and go from there. I’m on the fence on this one.

Diggnation. This video podcast focuses on articles from digg.com. Funny funny funny. The hosts drinking beer during the show adds a fantastic element to the show. Kevin Rose reminds me a lot of Jim from the Office.

A sister video podcast of Diggnation is the Totally Rad Show. I’m about halfway through my first one. It’s OK. Review of movies and gaming and tech culture. The hosts are almost dorky cool, but don’t quite pull it off. I’m going to give this another try. A lot of the stuff I’m not even familiar with so that might be an issue.

Finally, I watched the Onion video podcast. I almost peed my pants it was so funny. That one I’ll definitely get into.

Other ones I will be checking out, Ask a Ninja, Attack of the Show, and Dan Carlin’s Hardcore History.

My ipod nano is sweet. The video quality is quite remarkable. Yes it’s tiny but amazing nonetheless. I can sit on the porch while Larry plays and be responsible while being entertained. I’m planning to load it up for my drive to Mississippi later this month. Erin is going to be a lot of driving.

Finally, I’ve started BSG season 3. The human insurgency thread was interesting in that the question is raised, What will you do for freedom? The humans wanted to be freed from the Cylon occupation and the envelope kept getting pushed until suicide bombing became a real option. Everyone is against terrorism these days, and I am too, but I also realize that part of the foundation of this country is a group that rose up against those that they deemed to be the oppressors, used a mix of standard and guerilla tactics and pushed the colonizers out. Just something to keep in mind.

And on that pleasant note, I gotta go.